Swordfish vs Devastator

Schweik said:

I really don't think it was..

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I agree.
Thanks for posting that A-B listing of performance stats, too.
I obviously misread/misremembered those posts.
Thank you for setting the record straight.

Elvis

RCAFson said:

VNE on an Albacore was 215 knots IAS and it seems that exceeding 200 knots was likely in a steep dive.

I provided the Boscombe Down measured speeds for both aircraft, but as I stated, AFAIK (and I searched the thread) there were no prior comparisons between the Albacore and TBF. As had been discussed in prior threads The FAA needed aircraft that had good STOL characteristics to operate off the RN's older, slower, carriers with their shorter flight decks. The TBD and even the B5N2 would not have met FAA requirements due to their poor STOL characteristics and probably not the SBD-2/3 either.

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I don't know if that makes sense, US had some quite small CVE etc., and they were flying TBFs. Kinda hard to believe if you've ever seen one (they are the size of a bus) but they did.

Fixed undercarriage, low speed biplane like the Albacore would have been impressive in 1918, in 1942 it was a joke.

Elvis said:

I agree.
Thanks for posting that A-B listing of performance stats, too.
I obviously misread/misremembered those posts.
Thank you for setting the record straight.

Elvis

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You might have been thinking Swordfish - Devastator which is a much closer match.

Schweik said:

I don't know if that makes sense, US had some quite small CVE etc., and they were flying TBFs. Kinda hard to believe if you've ever seen one (they are the size of a bus) but they did.

Fixed undercarriage, low speed biplane like the Albacore would have been impressive in 1918, in 1942 it was a joke.

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There were no CVEs until 1941. TBFs used catapults to launch from USN CVEs. RN CVEs without catapults needed aircraft with superior STOL performance.

Anyways, the TBF didn't operate from carriers until July 1942, IIRC, and the Albacore was clearly superior to the TBD, in most respects.

Schweik said:

The Albacore was more flexible (able to dive bomb) and probably safer to fly than the TBD. Had better range, had the potential for radar and therefore night-ops, was almost certainly more manoeuvrable (not the most acrobatic biplane apparently but nothing like a 'cathedral' hahahahaha), and was stressed for high G turns albeit at very slow speed. So no argument there. But the vulnerability to fighters is a big problem in the Pacific, a 50% loss rate in one encounter is nothing to brag about, and isn't viable for carrier ops in that environment. And ultimately pilots actually preferred the Swordfish

The Barracuda was another disaster on so many levels, apparently for the most part killed in the pre-design specs phase. I often wondered if this was the main issue with all the FAA designs, naval battleship officers just couldn't get their head around aviation. The SB2C probably would have been a good aircraft if the length hadn't been limited by aircraft carrier elevators and if Curtiss aircraft wasn't having so much trouble. If you lengthened the fuselage by 3' it would have been a good overall design, maybe they could have also fit some more fuel in it. They still did pretty well with it and compensated for some of the problems, but you can see the design flaw just looking at it in profile.

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"The SB2C probably would have been a good aircraft if the length hadn't been limited by aircraft carrier elevators and if Curtiss aircraft wasn't having so much trouble. If you lengthened the fuselage by 3' it would have been a good overall design"

Its pretty hard to eliminate the problems created by not having a long enough tail moment arm except with fly by wire or some kind of pitch/yaw damper.. Curtiss clearly tried with a big tail area. It's not the first aircraft to suffer this problem, the Me 210 springs to mind. They tried everything slats, wing twist, bigger tail area. Non of these worked. There were many others. A little bit of wing sweep can help pitching characteristics and slats can help as well but neither do much for lateral stability.

Where did the reference to the 3 inch increase in tail length come from?

As the Grumman Tarpon has been mentioned, I took a quick look at it and the Fairey Battle. Similar in size but the Tarpon has a 70% more powerful engine which allowed for a 7,000kg loaded weight over 5,000kg for the Battle. Bung the Tarpon engine onto a Battle (and engine test bed Battles did carry more powerful engines) then The Battle could carry the extra weight of the features that the Tarpon did and a similar war load.

My point is that operational comparisons have to include the overall environment. Both Battles and Tarpons need a permissive environment of either a fighter escort or absent enemy fighters to deliver their weapons. In the case of the Swordfish in the OP a night operation is an option the Devastator did not easily have. Both would be shot down by enemy fighters if found in daylight. The Grumman Tarpon was a successful aeroplane but part of it's success was that it went into the bulk of it's service when the USN could provide fighter escort and the IJN was declining in effectiveness. Rivet counters ignore context. Overall I think that the Swordfish gave a better chance of success (and that the Albacore was a substantial step up) over the Devastator but the rivet counters are too busy looking at the minutiae of performance figures to see the context. Later what the Swordfish could do was operate of smaller decks than a Devastator could and performed the role of the ASW helicopter of modern times. Both the Swordfish and Devastator were of the same vintage. The Devastator was the first of it's new design generation and the Swordfish the norm of the day. As is often the case, the first of the new had yet to excel the last of the old.

Koopernic said:

"The SB2C probably would have been a good aircraft if the length hadn't been limited by aircraft carrier elevators and if Curtiss aircraft wasn't having so much trouble. If you lengthened the fuselage by 3' it would have been a good overall design"

Its pretty hard to eliminate the problems created by not having a long enough tail moment arm except with fly by wire or some kind of pitch/yaw damper.. Curtiss clearly tried with a big tail area. It's not the first aircraft to suffer this problem, the Me 210 springs to mind. They tried everything slats, wing twist, bigger tail area. Non of these worked. There were many others. A little bit of wing sweep can help pitching characteristics and slats can help as well but neither do much for lateral stability.

Where did the reference to the 3 inch increase in tail length come from?

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Just a guesstimate, probably more like 3 feet would have been needed. Just saying it was clearly too short. Also, giant tail fins are usually a sign of problems

yulzari said:

As the Grumman Tarpon has been mentioned, I took a quick look at it and the Fairey Battle. Similar in size but the Tarpon has a 70% more powerful engine which allowed for a 7,000kg loaded weight over 5,000kg for the Battle. Bung the Tarpon engine onto a Battle (and engine test bed Battles did carry more powerful engines) then The Battle could carry the extra weight of the features that the Tarpon did and a similar war load.

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I don't think the Battle really compares with the 'Tarpon' for a number of reasons. The Battle was lighter - because it didn't carry any naval gear (like folding wings, arrestor hook, extra navigation kit etc.) was not strengthened for carrier landings, and also didn't have self sealing fuel tanks (as far as I know) didn't have armor, and was far less well armed - it also certainly couldn't carry an internal torpedo! So I don't think it's a realistic comparison. The 'Battle', a much earlier design, was not really ready for "BATTLE", let alone carrier operations. The differences in the combat histories are also pretty stark.

My point is that operational comparisons have to include the overall environment. Both Battles and Tarpons need a permissive environment of either a fighter escort or absent enemy fighters to deliver their weapons. In the case of the Swordfish in the OP a night operation is an option the Devastator did not easily have. Both would be shot down by enemy fighters if found in daylight. The Grumman Tarpon was a successful aeroplane but part of it's success was that it went into the bulk of it's service when the USN could provide fighter escort and the IJN was declining in effectiveness.

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I don't think that is actually true. The Avenger / Tarpon was in action at Midway and pretty heavily engaged from Nov 1942. At that time US fighter protection was pretty marginal both because of limited numbers and relative effectiveness compared to Japanese fighters. Fighter cover tends to sometimes be looked at as a binary thing, either they have it, and you are good, or they don't and your bombers have to fend for themselves. The reality is that it's quite a wide range, and fighter escort does not automatically equal air superiority / supremacy. Until large numbers of F6F and other modern fighters were available in the Pacific in 1944, strike aircraft active there were decidedly not in a permissive environment.

The F4F Wildcat was hard pressed to survive an engagement with A6M or Ki-43 fighters, and often provided little protection for US strike aircraft from 1942 through the end of 1943. This was particularly true in carrier engagements. So any strike aircraft needed to have characteristics - defensive armament, maneuverability, armor, and good handling, that enabled them to survive attack by fighters and evade destruction. The SBD was quite good at this (despite not looking so good on paper or from a 'rivet counting' perspective). The Devastator, Swordfish and Albacore did not seem to be. The Avenger / Tarpon was somewhere in the middle. They took losses but being intercepted wasn't necessarily a death sentence. They were strongly built, armored, had self sealing tanks, and had fairly heavy defensive armament including a power turret with a 12.7mm defensive gun, plus a 7.62 mm in the ventral position. A Fleet Air Arm Tarpon once shot down a Ki-44 in an aerial duel over Sumatra. I don't think you'd want to fight that engagement in a Swordfish, a Devastator, or a Battle.

Rivet counters ignore context. Overall I think that the Swordfish gave a better chance of success (and that the Albacore was a substantial step up) over the Devastator but the rivet counters are too busy looking at the minutiae of performance figures to see the context. Later what the Swordfish could do was operate of smaller decks than a Devastator could and performed the role of the ASW helicopter of modern times. Both the Swordfish and Devastator were of the same vintage. The Devastator was the first of it's new design generation and the Swordfish the norm of the day. As is often the case, the first of the new had yet to excel the last of the old.

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Well, I hope you aren't referring to me as a 'rivet counter'. I am personally far more focused on context, as in the historical records of combat, than on statistics, but I think in naval combat a 100 miles or more of a range advantage is not insignificant, it's one of those hard realities. Things like top speed, dive speed, rate of climb and cruise speed, armament, armor, and so on are more incremental, but they do add up. Ultimately though, the proof is in the pudding. And by that I mean, what actually happened when they were put to hard use in action against the enemy.

I was comparing the Avenger-Tarpon to the Albacore in my post showing relative performance, not the Swordfish / Devastator. The two debates have become somewhat overlapped.

The Devastator was just a bad design. Many other designs of that same early era were far more advanced and effective. Some like the Spitfire and the Bf 109 remained in use through the end of the war because they were so effective. Others like the designs which became the D3A and SBD, proved highly lethal and versatile in combat through at least the mid-war.

The Swordfish may have been the result of the severe limitations of the ships they were meant to fly from, I find less credibility in that explanation for the Albacore. The Avenger was a huge, ungainly, lumbering gas-guzzling beast of an aircraft, certainly not an elegant or beautiful design, but it turned out to be the best torpedo bomber in the Allied service for the period of the war when the fighting was heaviest. It was the one both the Americans and British relied on.

What they did with the Swordfish, such as effectively fitting radar to it, is pretty amazing, and I think it does tip the scales in advantage of the Swordfish over the Devastator. But given the choice for operations in the Pacific, you'd be better off with Avengers/ Tarpons, which is why that is what they actually used.

Schweik old son. I was not pointing at you. Merely that the Grumman beast had been mentioned.

Speaking generally to the forum: The Tarpon was undoubtedly a better choice and the Battle was only mentioned as a comparator in that it was of similar size but with 700bhp less power. By mid war in 1942 even the Albacore was supposed to be being replaced by the Barracuda just as the Swordfish had been replaced as a Fleet TBR by the Albacore.

Putting it simply all TBR aeroplanes of the day were slower and vulnerable to air attack and all torpedo attacks limited to the dropping speed of the torpedo. The latter did get raised during the war and the British Highball was an attempt to raise that bar even further. The Devastator/Swordfish comparison is a snapshot of one period where one can see the inherent weakness being evident. The RN and USN were choosing different designs for the TBR task at the same time for different environments. Both had similar performances in an actual operation but the Swordfish had the edge in bad conditions and at night. Both needed replacing with more modern aeroplanes and the Swordfish had almost left RN Fleet service in the 4th year of the war for a better design at the time the Devastator had only just begun to be replaced by the Avenger. The nest period comparison should have been Barracuda v Avenger except the RN cocked up the Barracuda with it's changing requirements and it not being around a Griffon instead of the Exe. But that would be another thread.

I think a torpedo carrying carrier aircraft is one of the most difficult design challenges of the war. And I think the early attempts were basically marginal. Swordfish proved a bit more versatile than the Devastator, though it's questionable if they should have made so many. Avenger was ultimately adequate, if not charming. Barracuda seems like a missed opportunity. B5N was also 'marginal', maybe slightly better than the Swordfish and Devastator, but not great. B6N wasn't terrible, but not great either. The B7N may have been the only real standout to actually see combat, but it came too late for more than a token role.

The Italians quite interestingly had torpedo carrying versions of some of their fighters, including the Re 2001 and 2002, but more notably the G.55. That was made for coastal defense but I think it might have had the potential to be a formidable carrier aircraft!

It's also interesting that the Swordfish lingered longer than the Albacore, or is that a myth?

Tell me more about the "highball" is that a torpedo design? I'm interested in the torpedo performance but too lazy to read the books linked up above

Barrett said:

This is a very long string so I might have replied before...

Anyway:

Starting with Flight Journal (1996) back when it actually paid authors, I began a campaign to rehabilitate the TBD almost in the Stalinist sense. It was a two-front war involving the Brewster Buffalo as well. The things they had in common: both were first-generation carrier monoplanes and both were/are known almost solely for one disastrous mission each.

Sadly, far too much of what We "know" about the TBD lingers from the Sole Survivor (who wasn't.) But comparing the TBD to the Swordfish is an exercise in futility. Other than both being mid-30s carrier designs, they had almost nothing in common operationally. For starters, nearly 20 Stringbags were built for each Devastator. Then the S/F operated almost wholly in what today is called a Permissive Environment (very very little fighter opposition) hence its longevity.

Fact is (and I stressed the point in my Osprey TBD book), despite the so-called "suicide coffin" of internet wisdom, NO TBDS WERE LOST IN FLIGHT TO ENEMY ACTION IN THE SIX MONTHS AFTER PEARL HARBOR, up to the morning of 4 June.

Somewhere I also have a side by side comparison of the vaunted B5N "Kate" with TBDs in the same battles, and the overall attrition was roughly comparable, with the Nakajima having the edge.

Just FWIW.

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I'm very interested in the TBD's performance as experienced by it's crews in mid 1942. From the accounts that I've read it was somewhat less than it's official stats.

Schweik said:

I think a torpedo carrying carrier aircraft is one of the most difficult design challenges of the war. And I think the early attempts were basically marginal. Swordfish proved a bit more versatile than the Devastator, though it's questionable if they should have made so many. Avenger was ultimately adequate, if not charming. Barracuda seems like a missed opportunity. B5N was also 'marginal', maybe slightly better than the Swordfish and Devastator, but not great. B6N wasn't terrible, but not great either. The B7N may have been the only real standout to actually see combat, but it came too late for more than a token role.

The Italians quite interestingly had torpedo carrying versions of some of their fighters, including the Re 2001 and 2002, but more notably the G.55. That was made for coastal defense but I think it might have had the potential to be a formidable carrier aircraft!

It's also interesting that the Swordfish lingered longer than the Albacore, or is that a myth?

Tell me more about the "highball" is that a torpedo design? I'm interested in the torpedo performance but too lazy to read the books linked up above

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Pedantically the Albacore served later in that they were still being operated out of Aden in 1946 but the Swordfish in it's ASW role did outlast the Albacore in escort carriers and lastly Channel ASW in early 1945.

The Highball was the RN mini Upkeep (bouncing bomb) for the Mosquito and some Mosquitos were sent to Australia for service in 1945 but never used.

Schweik said:

It's also interesting that the Swordfish lingered longer than the Albacore, or is that a myth?

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Swordfish production ended in Aug 44 (~2400 built) versus early 1943 (800 built). By 1945 the few serving Albacores were getting long in the tooth.

Schweik said:

You might have been thinking Swordfish - Devastator which is a much closer match.

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You mean my opening post? LOL!

RCAFson said:

Swordfish production ended in Aug 44 (~2400 built) versus early 1943 (800 built). By 1945 the few serving Albacores were getting long in the tooth.

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The last RAF Albacore squadron in Europe had its planes replaced by Swordfish to combat S-boats and mini U-boats off the coast of Belgium and the Netherlands.

The ultimate air dropped torpedo was the British Helmover. 33' long powered by a RR Meteor V8 engine. Range 50miles. A ship launched version would have been 44' long and had a range of 150 miles. Warhead was 1 ton of Torpex.

fastmongrel said:

The ultimate air dropped torpedo was the British Helmover. 33' long powered by a RR Meteor V8 engine. Range 50miles. A ship launched version would have been 44' long and had a range of 150 miles. Warhead was 1 ton of Torpex.

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Trivial pedantry but the V8 was the Rover Meteorite. This is a prototype trial fitting into a Lancaster.

Good god that's a beast!

I'm wondering about the name "helmover. Was it because that thing would chase a ship down no matter how many times it put its helm over?

Was it a homing torpedo? Seems like that must have been made for dealing with some of those German battleships...