Fairey Swordfish, A Plane Reborn. The Aircraft That Crippled The Mighty Bismarck

[Dronescapes]

Fairey Swordfish, A Plane Reborn. The Aircraft That Crippled The Mighty Bismarck


View: https://youtu.be/419TE84W9tY

 

[elbmc1969]

More properly, "An aircraft that got incredibly lucky and crippled the Bismarck."

That has nothing to do with the quality of the aircraft, only that the sequence of events on that attack produced a lucky outcome for the British.

 

[Dronescapes]

More properly, "An aircraft that got incredibly lucky and crippled the Bismarck."

That has nothing to do with the quality of the aircraft, only that the sequence of events on that attack produced a lucky outcome for the British.

The Swordfish has a very interesting record, including for example the battle of Taranto. There might be reasons why the Swordfish was oddly effective. despite being antiquated, and perhaps it was not entirely as lucky as you think. Just food for thought. I might be incorrect, but it seems that it sank more tonnage than any other aircraft during the war.
It looks like the slow speed was an advantage, rather than a disadvantage. Again, just thoughts.

 

[elbmc1969]

My comment only relates to the attack on the Bismarck.

 

[Dronescapes]

My comment only relates to the attack on the Bismarck.

since they seem to have hit the rudder in other instances, perhaps they were not just lucky. Apparently being able to fly so low was also a plus, as the Bismarck could not shoot so low. what I mean is that there might have been more planning rather than just a lucky shot.
This might be interesting (direct testimony):

View: https://youtu.be/lrot1rwakvo

 

[EwenS]

since they seem to have hit the rudder in other instances, perhaps they were not just lucky. Apparently being able to fly so low was also a plus, as the Bismarck could not shoot so low. what I mean is that there might have been more planning rather than just a lucky shot.
This might be interesting (direct testimony):

I've always had an issue with the story that Bismarck's AA guns couldn't depress far enough to tackle the Swordfish. So let's look at that more closely.

Location of the AA guns
Bismarck's freeboard amidships is given 4.45m – 5.67m or 15-18ft. The 105mm guns and half the 37mm mounts were one deck higher with another pair of 37mm mounts one deck higher again. The remaining pair of 37mm mounts and the quad 20mm where higher still on the forward superstructure. Then there were single 20mm spread around from main deck to the forward superstructure. Then figure in the height of the guns on each mount above the deck on which they sit.

The aft 4 105mm mounts were capable of 8 degrees depression with all the other mounts of the various calibres capable of 10 degrees depression.

So all her 105mm guns and 12 of the 16 37mm barrels are approximately 30-45ft above sea level.

Where dropping heights are noted for the Victorious & Ark Royal Swordfish crews they are between 50ft and 100ft. So it seems to me that not very much of Bismarck's AA battery needed to fire with angles of depression in the first place.

FAA torpedo attack tactics.
The first thing to note is that these were completely different from those of the USN at this time. They had been developed inter-war with a view to minimising the danger to a torpedo bomber force attacking an enemy fleet.

The technique called for medium altitude approach at c10,000ft to cross any enemy escort screen at a height relatively safe from their AA fire, followed by a steep dive to very low level once inside the screen, intending to arrive at a spot approx 2,000 yards from the target. Then slow down to approx 100 knots, steady the aircraft at about 100ft and drop the torpedo when they were 1,000 yards from the target. Those limits were set by the capabilities of the torpedoes in use. In practice many pilots would go lower and closer to the target if conditions permitted to try to ensure a hit. The object was to do this in flights of three aircraft with a flight attacking on each bow and, if enough aircraft were present, also from each quarter. That way no matter which way the target turned he would expose a flank to one batch of torpedoes. It was also designed to make the life of the ship's gunners much harder in predicting where they needed to set their shells to explode.

Sighting in a Swordfish wasn't very sophisticated. It called for the pilot to estimate the speed and use a row of lights on a frame ahead of the cockpit to assess how far ahead of the target he needed to aim his torpedo. So he was pointing his aircraft at the spot he expected the target to be at once the torpedo had been dropped and run its course. He was not pointing his aircraft at the ship itself (unless it was stationary as at Taranto). The objective was to put enough torpedoes in an enemy battleship to slow it down for the RN battlefleet to sink. It would be Dec 1941 before aircraft sank a battleship at sea.

To make this work took a lot of practice. And there was plenty room for error in getting it to happen as designed. And all the time the target is firing at you, and manoeuvring to throw off your aim. There is simply no way for anyone to pick a spot on a target ship, like the stern with its rudders, and be able to aim with the intention of hitting that spot. The odds between obtaining a hit and missing completely in trying to do that are just too long.

Comments by Terry Goddard in the video.
He notes that the flak was bursting ahead and above his aircraft.

Now look at the attack profile I described above. It was used at Taranto and against Bismarck and Vittorio Veneto with adjustments where necessary for the prevailing weather conditions.

The approach on Bismarck was above cloud but at lower levels due to icing conditions. But they still used that height where possible to make a diving attack out of the cloud. So Bismarck's gunners were faced with targets appearing out of the cloud at relatively close range on an approach path that saw them changing height rapidly in the dive and then slowing down significantly as they closed to 1,000 yards or less prior to the drop point. That would have made the prediction of the point where an aircraft would be much harder and seems to fit with the report that her AA shells were exploding above and ahead of Goddard's aircraft. As the usual response to an attack is to increase speed then the point of impact of an aimed torpedo would move aft.

If my maths is correct, to cover the 1,000 yard distance from the bottom of the dive to the drop point at 100 knots would take about 20 secs! It really doesn't give Bismarcks's gunners a lot of time to make corrections for the speed reduction.

There was another problem for Bismarck's gunners as noted on the Navweaps site given that she was fitted with two different types of 105mm mount:-

"The mixing of Dop. L. C/31 and Dop. L. C/37 mountings on Bismarck may partially account for her poor showing against British aircraft during her only operational sortie. These mounts had different training and elevating characteristics that were apparently not accounted for in her AA fire control systems."



Conclusion

The fact that Swordfish were able to get 3 hits on the Bismarck (1 by Victorious & 2 by Ark Royal) should not be a surprise. It was what these crews had been trained to do over a long period of time.

The luck came with one of those hits being on the rudders and not somewhere else on the ship where it might not have had such a great nor immediate effect.

 

[RCAFson]

More properly, "An aircraft that got incredibly lucky and crippled the Bismarck."

That has nothing to do with the quality of the aircraft, only that the sequence of events on that attack produced a lucky outcome for the British.

Luck aided by ASVII radar. Finding Bismarck in the prevailing weather would have been extremely difficult without radar, and in May 1941 the lowly Swordfish was the only carrier borne strike aircraft to have it.

 

[EwenS]

Luck aided by ASVII radar. Finding Bismarck in the prevailing weather would have been extremely difficult without radar, and in May 1941 the lowly Swordfish was the only carrier borne strike aircraft to have it.

And even then it was only just beginning to be fitted so not every Swordfish had it. 825 on Victorious was lucky in that all its aircraft did. But on Ark Royal numbers were limited with precedence being given to flight leaders. Then the problem became keeping the flight together with so much cloud around.

 

[Geoffrey Sinclair]

There are a number of statistics on axis merchant ship losses, all different. One figure I have seen for Swordfish is around 300,000 GRT of merchant shipping sunk. Then comes warships, SBD's have over 120,000 displacement tons of aircraft carriers at Midway alone.

USSBS Japanese Merchant ship losses
260 Ships 774,680 GRT Army Air
130.5 Ships 363,518 GRT Navy land based
359.5 Ships 1,329,184 GRT Navy carrier based
750 Ships 2,467,382 GRT Total

RN History axis merchant ships.
446 Ships 643,631 GRT Italian losses
312 Ships 511,689 GRT Germany in Mediterranean (of which 224 of 321,571 GRT in 1944)
509 Ships 941,198 GRT Axis ships to Western Aircraft in "Home Waters", including 220 ships 367,504 GRT in port and 164 ships 309,956 GRT in 1944/45
101 Ships 182,704 GRT Axis ships to USSR Aircraft in "Home Waters"
1368 Ships 2,279,222 GRT Total

Consider the sea state during the final air attack on Bismarck, which would have made aiming difficult and explain claims waves were hiding the attacking aircraft at times. It also broke up the attack, originally briefed to find Sheffield then attack some flights ended up back at Sheffield given Bismarck was steaming through a weather front as the attack commenced.

At Cape Matapan the torpedo hit on Vittorio Veneto was right aft, near the outer port propeller,and jamming the steering gear. Check out what happened to Prince of Wales (underway) and Pennsylvania and Gneisenau (both at anchor) when hit in that area. The propellor shafts make good water entry points with just a little damage, let alone the moving shaft itself breaking loose and adding to the damage.

Friedman in US Battleships notes Pennsylvania was hit right aft, in the propellors and took 3,400 tons of water on board, even though she was at anchor, it sounds like if she had been underway the result could have been a sinking given the extra damage a rotating propellor shaft breaking free would have done. As it was she made Puget sound with one shaft working and taking water. The damage was so great it justified her scuttling two years and two atomic tests later, rather than the damage caused by the nuclear weapons.

The USS Intrepid, torpedo hit jammed the rudder, when the wind came up the ship kept being pointed towards Japan, it took a sail to enable a different course.

 

[EwenS]

Friedman in US Battleships notes Pennsylvania was hit right aft, in the propellors and took 3,400 tons of water on board, even though she was at anchor, it sounds like if she had been underway the result could have been a sinking given the extra damage a rotating propellor shaft breaking free would have done. As it was she made Puget sound with one shaft working and taking water. The damage was so great it justified her scuttling two years and two atomic tests later, rather than the damage caused by the nuclear weapons.

Pennsylvania was not fully repaired before being selected as a participant in Operation Crossroads in early 1946. She was partially stripped of her armament before leaving Puget Sound under her own power in March 1946 for Bikini, at which point she was still leaking from the Aug 1945 damage. She survived both Bikini blasts, despite only being 1,000 yards from the underwater Test Baker.

Pennsylvania is on the right in this photo

http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/013813a.jpg

Despite her damage and leaks she remained afloat until scuttled in Feb 1948 off Kwajalein Atoll.

The reason for her scuttling was not the physical damage she suffered in her lifetime but the fact that Test Baker had contaminated her so heavily radioactively that it proved impossible to decontaminate her to a level sufficiently safe to allow her to be crewed for a journey home.

The USN used 4 of its 5 oldest Battleships at Bikini. Arkansas was sunk in Test Baker. New York and Nevada were only returned as far as Pearl Harbor before decisions were taken that they were too heavily contaminated to return to the mainland. Texas escaped Bikini as efforts were already underway to preserve her.

IIRC the largest ship returned to the USA was the carrier Independence. She became a guinea pig for decontamination efforts at San Francisco. This proved impossible and resulted in radiological contamination of the dockyard and surrounding environs. She was eventually towed out to sea in 1951 to be scuttled, only to be "rediscovered" in 2015.

 

[elbmc1969]

I've always had an issue with the story that Bismarck's AA guns couldn't depress far enough to tackle the Swordfish. So let's look at that more closely.

Location of the AA guns
Bismarck's freeboard amidships is given 4.45m – 5.67m or 15-18ft. The 105mm guns and half the 37mm mounts were one deck higher with another pair of 37mm mounts one deck higher again. The remaining pair of 37mm mounts and the quad 20mm where higher still on the forward superstructure. Then there were single 20mm spread around from main deck to the forward superstructure. Then figure in the height of the guns on each mount above the deck on which they sit.

The aft 4 105mm mounts were capable of 8 degrees depression with all the other mounts of the various calibres capable of 10 degrees depression.

So all her 105mm guns and 12 of the 16 37mm barrels are approximately 30-45ft above sea level.

Where dropping heights are noted for the Victorious & Ark Royal Swordfish crews they are between 50ft and 100ft. So it seems to me that not very much of Bismarck's AA battery needed to fire with angles of depression in the first place.

FAA torpedo attack tactics.
The first thing to note is that these were completely different from those of the USN at this time. They had been developed inter-war with a view to minimising the danger to a torpedo bomber force attacking an enemy fleet.

The technique called for medium altitude approach at c10,000ft to cross any enemy escort screen at a height relatively safe from their AA fire, followed by a steep dive to very low level once inside the screen, intending to arrive at a spot approx 2,000 yards from the target. Then slow down to approx 100 knots, steady the aircraft at about 100ft and drop the torpedo when they were 1,000 yards from the target. Those limits were set by the capabilities of the torpedoes in use. In practice many pilots would go lower and closer to the target if conditions permitted to try to ensure a hit. The object was to do this in flights of three aircraft with a flight attacking on each bow and, if enough aircraft were present, also from each quarter. That way no matter which way the target turned he would expose a flank to one batch of torpedoes. It was also designed to make the life of the ship's gunners much harder in predicting where they needed to set their shells to explode.

Sighting in a Swordfish wasn't very sophisticated. It called for the pilot to estimate the speed and use a row of lights on a frame ahead of the cockpit to assess how far ahead of the target he needed to aim his torpedo. So he was pointing his aircraft at the spot he expected the target to be at once the torpedo had been dropped and run its course. He was not pointing his aircraft at the ship itself (unless it was stationary as at Taranto). The objective was to put enough torpedoes in an enemy battleship to slow it down for the RN battlefleet to sink. It would be Dec 1941 before aircraft sank a battleship at sea.

To make this work took a lot of practice. And there was plenty room for error in getting it to happen as designed. And all the time the target is firing at you, and manoeuvring to throw off your aim. There is simply no way for anyone to pick a spot on a target ship, like the stern with its rudders, and be able to aim with the intention of hitting that spot. The odds between obtaining a hit and missing completely in trying to do that are just too long.

Comments by Terry Goddard in the video.
He notes that the flak was bursting ahead and above his aircraft.

Now look at the attack profile I described above. It was used at Taranto and against Bismarck and Vittorio Veneto with adjustments where necessary for the prevailing weather conditions.

The approach on Bismarck was above cloud but at lower levels due to icing conditions. But they still used that height where possible to make a diving attack out of the cloud. So Bismarck's gunners were faced with targets appearing out of the cloud at relatively close range on an approach path that saw them changing height rapidly in the dive and then slowing down significantly as they closed to 1,000 yards or less prior to the drop point. That would have made the prediction of the point where an aircraft would be much harder and seems to fit with the report that her AA shells were exploding above and ahead of Goddard's aircraft.

The puffs should be a bit ahead of the target. When the shell explodes, the shrapnel continues on the ballistic course, plus the vector from the blast, plus the changed air resistance. As the shrapnel expand to its maximum "radius," it's actually sweeping a cone from the point of detonation. You can detonate the shell 10 feet above an aircraft and completely miss with the shrapnel. With fast aircraft (jets, mostly), the speed of the aircraft requires the burst to be even further ahead. When firing at high angles at level targets, getting a cone to intercept the target gets to be absurd. (Totally off-topic, this effect is truly horrible if you're firing Mach 4 missiles with frag warheads at Mach 6 SRBMs.)

As the usual response to an attack is to increase speed then the point of impact of an aimed torpedo would move aft.

Why would the impact point move aft? Or are you jumping back from the Swordfish to the Bismarck?

"The mixing of Dop. L. C/31 and Dop. L. C/37 mountings on Bismarck may partially account for her poor showing against British aircraft during her only operational sortie. These mounts had different training and elevating characteristics that were apparently not accounted for in her AA fire control systems."

Interesting. My immediate response was, "Well, that's typical of the Kriegsmarine." Probably unfair, given that the RN's fire control was bad and the way the US botched torpedoes.

The luck came with one of those hits being on the rudders and not somewhere else on the ship where it might not have had such a great nor immediate effect.

Yup.

 

[Gnomey]

Good one!

 

[GTX]

Another video:


View: https://youtu.be/owA82z5-JoM?si=V4yeFB2n9S67UNpc

 

[SaparotRob]

Another video:


View: https://youtu.be/owA82z5-JoM?si=V4yeFB2n9S67UNpc

I found an error in the first 28 seconds. Pictures are nice.

 

[elbmc1969]

Another video:

That dude does terrible videos. Be sure to thumbs-down if you watch one--otherwise, the algorithm promotes the video to everyone else. That's the problem with an algorithm that just counts views.

 

[GTX]

That dude does terrible videos. Be sure to thumbs-down if you watch one--otherwise, the algorithm promotes the video to everyone else. That's the problem with an algorithm that just counts views.

While some of the videos have errors, overall all I like them.