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Give the dope-covered Vindicator the SBD's all metal construction and the fixed wing SBD the Vindicator's folding wings and we've then matched the Skua's spec.For the US that rather skips over the Vindicator, the Northrop BT-1 (not the best idea) and the SBD.
Well yes, but they did actually stumble upon the 'right' design by accident, them promptly failed to notice and charged off up the armoured carrier dead end.Part of the British problem in the 1930s was that they didn't have carriers capable of holding the aircraft that would make this "No one every gave the slightest intellectual thought to, 'maybe we should send up dozens of fighters and shoot them down'." You want three dozen fighters? you need the Courageous, Furious and Glorious all operating together.
Agreed, and that needs to change. We need a revolutionary figure in the Air Ministry and FAA to see opportunities for improvement. And it's not impossible. For example, look at the Blackburn Skua, the first ever all metal, folding wing, retractable undercarriage divebomber. When it entered service in 1937 the IJN's dive bomber was the Aichi D1A and the USN's the SBC. The USN and IJN wouldn't match the Skua's spec until the SB2C Helldiver and Yokosuka D4Y both entered service in 1942, a year after the Skua retired and five years after its first flight. Even the French beat them to a Skua-like spec with the ultimately terrible, but innovative Loire-Nieuport LN.401 dive bomber.
Now like the LN.401, the Skua DB/fighter was ultimately a flawed design, but it shows that as far back as 1936 or earlier (Spec was 1934) someone in the Air Ministry and FAA saw the potential in an all metal, folding wing, monoplane, retractable undercarriage aircraft. This was leading edge, revolutionary thinking for carrier aircraft at the time. Put that same thinking and specifications into separate torpedo bomber and single seat fighter designs and we have the potential for revolutionary improvement in the FAA.
That's kind of what I'm getting at in my opening post. Given the engines available, what's the best possible for FAA strike and fighters 1939-1940?The problem, the absolute problem with British naval aircraft, was the lamentable designs largely drove doctrine...
No one in the Air Ministry in the late 30's gave even the slightest though to something like the F4U Corsair - a 400MPH monoplane naval fighter? Madness!
That's kind of what I'm getting at in my opening post. Given the engines available, what's the best possible for FAA strike and fighters 1939-1940?
given-the-engines-available-best-faa-strike-and-fighters-1939-1940.If a 230 mph, folding wing torpedo bomber akin to the B5N is available, I expect the FAA and RN might change their doctrine.
Now maybe the Italians at Taranto and the crew of Bismarck did not see Swordfishes very funny....The much maligned TBD Devastator was a direct contemporary of the laughably obsolete Swordfish, the FAA never developed a naval fighter even vaguely comparable to the F4 Wildcat, and the much later and utterly awful Barracuda wasn't a patch on the old SBD Dauntless - which, despite sinking half the Japanese Navy, was rejected by the British as 'unfit for service'!!!!....
The US got lucky and had Wright R-2600 engines 1-2 years before the Hercules really got up to snuff. And P & W was breathing down their necks.
The Boeing 314 Flying boat first flew in June 1938. Commercial flying from San Francisco to Hong Kong started March of 1939. With 1500hp versions.Beaufighter made it in service by August 1940. That is at least half a year before A-20 powered by R-2600-11 entered service.
Had HMS Glorious and Courageous survived into late 1940 they would have been ideal for any SBDs procured by the FAA. If the RN and FAA had a different doctrine based on more powerful aircraft presumably in greater number we might not have seen either of these carriers deployed and lost as they were.And maybe the fact that the fixed wing SBD did not fit the elevators of the newer RN carriers (at least those of Ark Royal and the armoured deck carriers) had something to do with the rejection of it.
Problem was the tactic/s.. Maybe with planes with longer loiter time Courageus would not have turned into wind on just wrong moment.
This doctrine saw the laughably bad Swordfish brought into service, hopelessly obsolete before it even entered FAA service
A perfect example of the deranged British naval view of aircraft interwar? Look at the Blackburn Balckburn, a plane so bad, they named it twice!
Indeed, but the whole culture was utterly toxic to naval aviation.
The Swordfish was a brilliant design. British aircraft manufacturers did NOT set out to design ridiculous airplanes and HM's government could take it or leave it. The Air Ministry (or whoever) issued specifications for what it felt were required for an aircraft. Given the parameters specified, that's what the tech and industry of the time could produce to meet those parameters. I checked out the performance of the TBD and the Swordfish a while ago. Close enough. Neither plane puts up really eye catching numbers. The Swordfish, however, could take off and land on shorter flight decks and I'm guessing at lower speeds too. The Swordfish carried and operated radar. It could and did strike at night. The Admiral had brought up an intriguing "what if" about an RN carrier at the battle of Midway launching a night strike. It would be a couple of years until the USN carried out night operations deliberately. The Swordfish was a modern plane built to an obsolete spec.
Plus what said.
Oh dear, the laughable rhetoric-spouting machine that is Macandy is on form here...
Actually it wasn't. The Swordfish entered service in 1936, what else was in service round the world? The Martin BM in US Navy service, the Mitsubishi B2M in IJN service, all welded steel fabric covered biplanes with similar performance and capability to the Swordfish, so....
Again, sweeping incoherent statements. The Blackburn was indeed a bit of an ugly beast alright, the Avro Bison to the same requirement for an observation airframe, but you're hanging the FAA out to dry on this? Come now... The Fairey Flycatcher, Hawker Osprey, Fairey IIIF, Blackburn Ripon and Baffin for example were equal to and better than their global naval aviation contemporaries.
No it wasn't utterly toxic, again an enormous dramatisation of the situation you are demonstrating a complete lack of knowledge of. So much so that indulging your statements is simply laughable.
But, you are right, Rhetoric-Macandy in saying the FAA's Air Ministry driven doctrine required changing. The thing about doing so was that there was not the perceived need to do so in the early 1930s, precisely when it should have happened. Britain had suffered far greater than either Japan and the USA, both big carrier nations between the wars, during the Great War and armaments was simply not something the British government saw fit to throw large sums of money at. Peacetime is the great leveller when it comes to pre-WW2 military aviation. Britain simply did not have the funding nor the desire to improve on what it had in service or for the immediate future. Now, the biggest fallout from this was the decision not to develop a modern single-seater, but in terms of torpedo and attack aircraft, the FAA is in good hands. Seriously. The problem is the persistent need to combine roles within existing aircraft that went on from when the RAF took over from the RNAS and created the Fleet Air Arm. The Skua, Fulmar and Barracuda are pertinent examples of this, which during the age of biplanes with open cockpits and fixed gear, that role sharing policy is okay, as the Hawker Osprey reconnaissance bomber was almost as fast as contemporary carrier-based fighters, but in the age of all-metal monoplanes with sophisticated role specific requirements? Not smart.
The Swordfish was a good aeroplane. Easy to maintain, easy to manufacture, easy to fly. Most suitable for military service and its versatility served it well; it outlived its contemporaries and its intended replacement and saw exceptional service during the war, racking up the highest tonnage of enemy vessels sunk of any aircraft in the ETO/MTO. In the Apple Core as a replacement, yup, it had all the modern accoutrements of a modern aeroplane, all metal construction, enclosed cockpit, landing flaps, but some of the hang-overs of its predecessor in a biplane layout with fixed undercarriage. These offered their own advantages in service in terms of ease of repair and less complication, but indeed, there is no reason the Albacore could not have been a monoplane. It was designed and pressed into service in a hurry though, so it would have been late to the table...
The problem we have with the FAA is that in hindsight it is too easy to criticise. It has a big fat target on it, but let's not get our wires crossed as to what is worthy of criticism and what isn't. The FAA was equal in technology to its foreign contemporaries to a point throughout the 1930s. We know for a fact that the Admirals wanted more modern aircraft on their carriers, we know that even the Air Ministry regarded the Blackburn Skua, a contemporary of the TBD Devastator, the first modern monoplane on US Navy carrier decks as being obsolescent before it entered service (the same year as the TBD), especially since high level discussions were carried out within the admiralty decrying the lack of an advanced fighter like the Spitfire or Hurricane in 1937, so the direction, but not necessarily the technology the FAA was set on since the early 30s most certainly left a lot to be desired.
Where did you get Japanese aviators have poor eyesight from my post? Did you read "Samauri" by Saburo Sakai? The pilots of his squadron would pick out the brighter stars during daylight. The Swordfish was a radar carrying night strike capable attacker (not initially). It's one thing to find ships at night from phosphorescent wakes and another to get to the right spot over a big, empty ocean at night to see those wakes without radar. It met the specs issued by the FAA (or whoever) and did its job. Kind of a high scorer at that! Admiral Cunningham would've loved to have HMS Prince of Wales (the current 2022 one). He didn't have it. The RN needed a plane that could operate off the flight decks it had. As to the Swordfish being easily dispatched by Zeroes, are you familiar with Torpedo Squadron 8's experience?The Swordfish would have been a 'brilliant design' in 1918, but when service, its performance was so poor, it was utterly unable to operate in any contested airspace - It was so slow and poorly armed, a WWI Biplane fighter would have been a deadly adversary.
It was laughable bad - even more laughable the 'best' replacement Fairy could come up with was the even more awful Albacore, another Biplane - replaced in service by the Swordfish. The FAA were quite literally catapulted forward two generations when they received their first TBM Avengers!
Ah yes, the old' but the Swordfish could operate at night, it could have sunk the Japanese fleet!' canard.
One is reminded of that bon mot of 'intelligence' fed by there Admiralty to the British Fleet operating off Cylon in 1942 - sagely advising the Admiral to engage the Japanese in night actions as 'the Japanese have poor eyesight and can't see in the dark' - Might not have ended well, see the disaster that befell the USN when it assumed it too owned the night off Savo Island - and was shot to pieces by the Japanese who had superb night optics.
As for IJN pilots 'not being able to see in the dark'? Actually, ALL IJN pilots were selected for visual acuity and night vision - it was one of the reasons they were training so few pilots, they set the bar so high.
Swordfish attacking the IJN off Midway? If only it wasn't a nice moonlit night and perfect conditions for A6M's to hunt such vulnerable prey.
Hint, the Swordfish was hastily withdrawn from East of Suez, every time it came upon the Japanese, it was shot down at will by the vastly superior Japanese fighters.
And the Americans were quite capable of carrying out night attacks…
"...Before the B-17's returned, a flight of four PBY-5A's, each carrying one MK XIII Mod. I torpedo took off on an historic mission, "the first night torpedo attack by our patrol planes on surface ships." The pilots were volunteers, led by Lt. William L. Richards, Executive Officer of Patrol Squadron FORTY-FOUR. The flight commander's orders were to locate the enemy force sighted that morning on bearing 261° from Midway, deliver a torpedo attack and return to base. Priority of targets was aircraft carriers, battleships, transports. The exact composition of the enemy force was unknown, but it was believed to include a carrier. The B-17's had not yet returned and details of their attack were not known.
The flight left Midway at 2115 on June 3d. The weather was clear, with broken cumulus clouds at 1,000 feet. Some hours later (about 2400 and 0100) the third and fourth planes were lost from the formation in passing through cloud banks, but one of them succeeded in finding the target alone.
At about 0115 on June 4th, radar indicated a group of about 10 ships 10 or 12 miles to the port of this group. As our planes approached, the silhouettes of the enemy ships became visible in the moonlight. There were 10 or more large ones in 2 columns, escorted by 6 destroyers. It was probably the same force the B-17's had attacked several hours before, now only about 500 miles from Midway. Our planes approached without lights from down moon, engines throttled back. The target selected was the largest ship, which was leading the northern column. It had been thought that this might be a carrier, but on the approach it was identified as a transport. The planes glided down to 100 feet and the leader dropped his torpedo at 800 yards, then climbed in a turn over the target. It was thought that an explosion followed. Lt. (j. g.) Daniel C. Davis in the second plane was not satisfied with his approach and withdrew for a second. He dropped his torpedo at 200 yards, but no results were observed. As he opened his throttle to pass over the target, he strafed the ship with .50-calibre machine-gun fire, while the leading ships opened fire on him. Subsequent information indicated that this strafing attack caused several enemy casualties.'
Battle of Midway: 3-6 June 1942 Combat Narrative
Copy No. 286 Combat Narratives Battle of Midway June 3-6, 1942 U.S. Confidential ** British Secret [declassified] Office of Naval Intelligence U.S. Navywww.history.navy.mil
I'm a fan of the PBY. It carried out the only successful American torpedo attack during the battle of Midway against the Akebono Maru. However great it was, and it was, it was a terrible carrier borne strike aircraft though I don't have any stats to back that up.