Fairey Albacore. Was so awful?

Thumpalumpacus said:

Dive bombers are gonna have a hard time sinking battleships.

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Bombs both dive bomber and bomber dropped, proved singular effective at sinking battleships.

WARSPITER said:

Don't forget the achievements of these planes as well. Other types of torpedo bombers also suffered badly at times and
yet performed well at others.

The Swordfish can hardly be called awful considering it's contributions to the allied effort. The Albacore didn't seem to get
the breaks it needed to be better recognised.

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No matter that the Swordfish got the occasional lucky hit, they did so with zero air opposition - even the most pedestrian fighter, even loat planes, proved to be a very formidable threat to the WWI technology hang over.
100mph downhill with a following wind and a .303 Vickers K gun on a scarf ring didn't cut it after 1920.

The indisputable fact is it still has the record it has. Not many torpedo planes did well against air opposition.

I don't know of many capital ships that were solely sunk by bombs.

WARSPITER said:

I don't know of many capital ships that were solely sunk by bombs.

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Well I get the following:-

Arizona 7/12/41 Pearl Harbour. 4x800kg AP hits and 3 near misses.

Roma 9/43 hit by 2x Fritz X 3,500lb AP guided bombs while at sea.

Tirpitz 12/11/44 hit by 2x12,000lb Tallboy plus a near miss (plus the earlier Tallboy hit that wrecked her bow)

Ise 28/7/45 Finally sank after 2 days of air attacks that resulted in 16 bomb hits and numerous near misses.

Hyuga 24-26/7/45 slowly settled to the bottom and abandoned after receiving 10 bomb hits and at least 30 near misses on the 24th.

Haruna 28/7/45. Finally sank after 2 days of air attacks that only succeeded in hitting her 13 times and near missing her 10 times.

Note only one of those sinkings occurred while the ship was sailing in open water, and just how much difficulty the USN had in sinking those 3 in Japanese harbours.

WARSPITER said:

I don't know of many capital ships that were solely sunk by bombs.

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to follow this up.

I don't know of any capitol ships that were sunk by a single torpedo hit.*
Several that were crippled by a single torpedo hit and finished off by other things.
However the sample is too small to flip it around, How many capitol ships were crippled by a single bomb hit and finished off by other things.

BTW one of my favorite statistics
More Battleships (includes pre-dreadnoughts) were sunk by their own magazines (without enemy action) than were sunk by enemy gun fire. (excludes bombs, torpedoes and mines)

*edit. Modern capitol ship and/or Aerial torpedo. There may have been Pre Dreadnought that were sunk by single submarine torpedoes or destroyer/torpedo boat torpedoes.

The things one learns here.

Shortround6 said:

I don't know of any capitol ships that were sunk by a single torpedo hit.*

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Conte di Cavour at Taranto.

EwenS said:

Conte di Cavour at Taranto.

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thank you

From wiki corrections welcome.
On the night of 11 November 1940, Conte di Cavour was at anchor in Taranto harbor when she was attacked, along with several other warships, by 21 Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers from the British aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious. The ship's gunners shot down one Swordfish shortly after the aircraft dropped its torpedo, but it exploded underneath 'B' turret at 23:15, knocking out the main bow pump. Her captain requested tugboats to help ground the ship on a nearby 12-meter (39 ft) sandbank at 23:27, but Admiral Bruno Brivonesi, commander of the 5th Battleship Division, vetoed the request until it was too late and Conte di Cavour had to use a deeper, 17-meter (56 ft), sandbank at 04:45 the following morning. She initially grounded on an even keel, but temporarily took on a 50-degree list before settling to the bottom at 08:00 with an 11.5-degree list. Only her superstructure and gun turrets were above water by this time

Thumpalumpacus said:

Dive bombers are gonna have a hard time sinking battleships.

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Indeed. That is why Albacores were carrying torpedoes and not dive bombing.

Macandy said:

The Ablacore proved to be even more vulnerable to ground fire and fighters than the awful Swordfish.


FWIW, the British had some VERY strange ideas of what represented an acceptable naval aircraft - They rejected the superb SBD Dauntless as 'unsuitable' for combat operations and over its flight characteristics.

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Might be a tricky job inserting a lot of 12.5 metre fixed wing Dauntlesses into FAA carrier hangers and where would you mount the torpedoes?

The glove box?

Macandy said:

Bombs both dive bomber and bomber dropped, proved singular effective at sinking battleships.

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Not correct. With the exception of those which were tied up, motionless, and often struck by level bombers (which you didn't mention in the reply I quoted, so this is a moving goal-post here anyway) dropping specially-designed or -modified bombs, when did dive=bombers kill a battleship while it was steaming without any torpedoes landing?

Here's your original post:

Macandy said:

But everyone forgets that Albacores caught Tirpitz cold in the North Atlantic in March 1942 and it was an utter fiasco.
They were simply too slow to mount an effected attack on a fast warship with relative speed advantages often down to double digits.

If the FAA had a credible dive bomber such as the SBD, the Kriegesmarines battleships and heavy units would have had very short and very exciting wars.

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EwenS said:

Well I get the following:-

Arizona 7/12/41 Pearl Harbour. 4x800kg AP hits and 3 near misses.

Roma 9/43 hit by 2x Fritz X 3,500lb AP guided bombs while at sea.

Tirpitz 12/11/44 hit by 2x12,000lb Tallboy plus a near miss (plus the earlier Tallboy hit that wrecked her bow)

Ise 28/7/45 Finally sank after 2 days of air attacks that resulted in 16 bomb hits and numerous near misses.

Hyuga 24-26/7/45 slowly settled to the bottom and abandoned after receiving 10 bomb hits and at least 30 near misses on the 24th.

Haruna 28/7/45. Finally sank after 2 days of air attacks that only succeeded in hitting her 13 times and near missing her 10 times.

Note only one of those sinkings occurred while the ship was sailing in open water, and just how much difficulty the USN had in sinking those 3 in Japanese harbours.

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And the one at sail was struck by a new type of bomb -- guided-- dropped by a level bomber.

I think M Macandy is overvaluing the effectiveness of DBs against battleships.

yulzari said:

Indeed. That is why Albacores were carrying torpedoes and not dive bombing.

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Read the post I was replying to.

Sorry, my mistake. When I said bombs sinking battleships I meant from dive bombers.

The dive bomber boys tended to over estimate their ship killing ability.
However the Kriegsmarine didn't have that many big ships and there was a big difference between the big four and the smaller stuff.
The RAF/FAA did screw up. It took 4 years from when the Bismarck was laid down to when it was commissioned. Still needed working up.
How much the British knew about the Bismarck in 1936-34 I don't know.

Specification S.41/36 by the Air Ministry on 11 February 1937 was the official start of the Albacore so it started after the Bismarck. It first flew in Dec 1938 and production was getting underway in 1939, just not fast enough like many other British aircraft. The problem was not the Albacore itself, it was that it too slow to get numbers in service in 1939-40 and that it's replacement dropped in hole.

I would note here that the entire world was having a problem with aerial torpedoes. They were specifying faster aircraft but they all had to slow down to near WW I speeds in the attack/drop zone as AA guns (and directors) were making large jumps in capability. Not a good mix even without factoring in fighters (either carrier or shore based).

The US "doctrine" such at it was, called for fighters to strafe (small bomb) the decks of the enemy ships, suppressing their AA while the dive bombers went in with the 500lb bombs to wreck the top sides and the torpedo bombers came in for the coup de grace. Aside from minor things like the enemy not having aircraft of their own and the US planes coming in at different altitudes and at slightly different put precise times (details, details) no problem
Once the dive bomber boys got 1000lb bombs to play with illusions of grandeur started to creep in.
Trouble is to actual pierce thick deck plating you have to drop the 1000lb AP (and larger) bombs from thousands of feet in air which means a much lower standard of accuracy.
It also means that you have to suit the bomb to the intended target, you need one fuse to hit a BB with a 3-4in deck and different fuse to attack a cruiser with a 1in deck.
If you hit the cruiser, even with a lower altitude drop, you can punch the bomb right though several decks and out the bottom of ship. Yes you have a heck of leak but no where near the destruction you were hoping for.

The British thought they had a solution with the diving torpedo attack cutting down the exposure time. Germans co-operated by building one of the fancier near worthless light AA guns. IF the British pilots made through the 10.5cm AA guns they had to very unlucky to get hit by the 37mm AA guns.

With more aircraft (bigger aircraft complements per ship) the FAA could have used dive bombers in the suppression mode ( a few 500lb HE hits) to scramble the top side of the BB and seriously threaten even 10-14,000 ton cruisers. Then let the torpedo bombers mop up. Team work, not a competition.

Dodging AA basically means not being where the AA gun was aimed when the shell gets to the interception point. This is a lot easier at longer ranges but it does work at close range against certain types of guns. heavy ones that are hard to turn and hard to stop once turning. If the gun was pointed at the right place and fired at the right time there is little the plane can do about it but most shells were only fired close to the target. Keep the swabbies cranking on the handles of the gun mounts

Maybe the Albacore wasn't really much worse than the Swordfish, maybe it was. Without some good tests there is no way to know but the crews thought there was something to it and since they are the ones that have to fly through the gunfire it is hard to tell them they are wrong without proof.
For anti sub work in bad conditions it may have come down to more comfort in the cockpit and a higher pucker factor and more accidents while take-off and landing, not a happy choice.

The term bomber mafia is used to describe those who stuck to an air doctrine right or wrong. Cavalry mafia
also comes to mind when it came to the employment of tanks (Army resistance - particularly in the interwar years
in England).

To add to the problems for the FAA I would submit 'Battleship mafia', those who stuck to the thought of paddling their
massive armoured bathtubs to glory in battle against other bathtubs. Air power at sea wasn't given high priority by those who thought this way.
This was not confined to the Royal Navy either and coloured the thinking prior to the reality that unfolded in WWII.

WARSPITER said:

To add to the problems for the FAA I would submit 'Battleship mafia', those who stuck to the thought of paddling their
massive armoured bathtubs to glory in battle against other bathtubs.

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Trouble it to took over 4 years to make the Switch.
It also took a few stumbles along the way.
And a lot of money/effort went into the armored bathtubs.

German twin 10.5cm AA mount. the tilt shows the amount of tilt the triaxial mount could reach. It was supposed to cancel out the ships movement (pitch and roll) and the guns were aimed by directors. Several other navies were working on similar systems

Germans tried a similar system on their near useless 37mm guns.
While gun systems, after making little progress for many years after WW I, were making some very large strides in the late 30s. Trouble was that with 4 years of so to build a battleship it was possible for the aircraft to outpace the ship builders. I said possible, some countries were slow.
Some countries went down the wrong tracks with the guns.

The Proximity fuse for the allies was game changer, but it showed up mid war.
The was a precision aimed fire school and there was sort of a rapid fire blast away school. It took until the post war to sort of combine the two.
Aircraft did work, but it took a while to short things out and with a few changes it might have taken a lot longer.
The Germans were not as clever as they thought.
The British didn't have enough money to to do it right for most of their ships.
Dual purpose guns often weren't and only lured captains into bad decisions.

One might note that the Albacore was a dive bomber.

Shortround6 said:

The US "doctrine" such at it was, called for fighters to strafe (small bomb) the decks of the enemy ships, suppressing their AA while the dive bombers went in with the 500lb bombs to wreck the top sides and the torpedo bombers came in for the coup de grace. Aside from minor things like the enemy not having aircraft of their own and the US planes coming in at different altitudes and at slightly different put precise times (details, details) no problem

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The primary target for the US dive bombers was the enemy carriers by ripping up their flight decks denying them both strike and defensive capabilities, and to do it first before the enemy could do it to them. Some US admirals considered the carrier a one shot weapon. In the early 1930s the USN didn't even favour the aerial torpedo, at one point only having one squadron. The TB only came back with the arrival of the TBD Devastator in 1935. And TB were never expected to deliver the "coup de grace". They were merely there to slow down the enemy fleet for the big guns to do their work and deliver the "coup de grace".