The airplane that did the most to turn the tide of the war.

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I don't think I could work up the energy, I only posted about the Swordfish because I think it tends to be ignored, I did not intend to set off a fierce debate.
 
Schweik said:
I disagree - the tipping point was from late 1942 through mid 1943. The TBF was involved in the mid-war.
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I would submit that the initiative in PTO changed hands with the American invasion of Guadalcanal. After that, no Japanese offensive action had any long term success, and given the relative production capacities of the two nations, the war of attrition was a foregone conclusion. The tide had peaked and was ebbing. (Ain't hindsight wonderful?)
Cheers,
Wes
 
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It is a fact that the Stringbag was a crucial weapon in the RN's inventory and it's crowning achievement was the sinking of the Bismark. But we need to ask ourselves, did sinking the Bismark alter the course of the war in the Atlantic/ETO, or was it more of a moral booster?

On the other hand, the SBD literally deprived the IJN the ability to provide force projection by eliminating it's primary carrier force (no other warplane in history has the distinction of sinking so many enemy aircraft carriers), so in a historical context, this fact is not "flag waving" or so-called "US-centric", but rather fact.
 

The Stringbags attack on the Bismark was not a crowning achievement, only one of the early successes, it also seriously damaged the Italian fleet at Taranto and Matapan discouraging them from playing a major role in The Med, the same with the disabling of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir. The actions of the Swordfish in the Med spoiled Rommel's chances in North Africa by cutting off his supplies. The attack on Taranto was the inspiration for the Pearl Harbour attack. The sinking of the IJN carriers was significant and did turn the tide in the Pacific, but the war had been going on for a long time and it was not considered "early stages" by many who had been in action since 1939.
 
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Schweik said:
Actually the early torpedoes worked so I could just send a few squadrons of Devastators to do the job properly and actually sink it instead f just jamming the prop
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The US had not decided to enter WW2 when the Bismark was sunk so no Devastators were available, plus the flak system in the Bismark may have been successful in downing a few of them, it was the extra slow speed of the Stringbags that saved them. The devastators were retired after Midway whereas the Swordfish managed to continue for another three years.
 
MiTasol said:
Here is the full document then (or at least as full as I have) Hawk 75-A sales brochure
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Yes, exactly the same I have, one from a Finnish archive. Oy Mecantile Ab (Oy/Ab means Ltd) was one of the largest technical import companies in Finland at that time. I was at first mystified with the 24 pages but then noticed that there are three page Eights (Eight, Eight A and Eight B) and of course the cover.
Thanks a lot.
 
Schweik said:
Actually the early torpedoes worked so I could just send a few squadrons of Devastators to do the job properly and actually sink it instead f just jamming the prop
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I am not in any way the champion of the Swordfish as a combat aircraft. The nature of the war had changed and carrying ASW radar and weapons became a useful feature. In this battle, being able to fly slowly was just as useful as flying fast, no doubt other planes could have done the same but the Swordfish actually did. The Wellington was similar, being used for all sorts of "stuff" that other planes could also have done but didn't.
 
Juha3 said:
Hello MiTasol, yes the same No. 6895-A, and fuselage info on page 11, the last page (21) ends with "Packing and Shipping",
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Juha - I don't have the books mentioned. Question - are there any images of installations of basic internal systems - hydraulic, mechanical, oxygen, fuel and electrical lines with quick connect joints installed in the halves before joining the finished 'shells' together on the assembly line?
 
wingnuts said:
That seems to be a very US-centric way of thinking, I don't think a lot of other nationalities would agree.
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I share wingnuts and your POV on this. I suspect that the Merchant Marine fleets thought they were in the middle of a very successful naval war (which Germany was winning) in the Atlantic before we even contemplated Coral Sea of Midway.

As to 'turning point' vs IJN the two months between Coral Sea and the end of Midway battle in early June would have to the focus. Does anybody have a better nomination than Stalingrad and Midway (and perhaps BoB in September 1940) for definable 'turning points'?
 

I think the idea that German AAA couldn't deal with the low speed of the Swordfish has been pretty much discredited. The Germans weren't complete idiots; they would have designed the AA fire control to deal with aircraft in service when the system was being designed.
 
I don't know where I read it (but somewhere), it said Stalingrad Midway and El Alamein may or may not have been turning points but together showed that the tide had turned.
 
wingnuts said:
That seems to be a very US-centric way of thinking, I don't think a lot of other nationalities would agree.
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No, it's not even remotely "US-centric". Not everything boils down to a rivalry between US and British airplanes. I think the only factor there is a matter of familiarity with different battles based on what stories you read about most and saw on TV growing up. The primacy of the IJN is just the nature of the history of the war.
  • The Japanese were by an order of magnitude the biggest naval threat to the Allies in WW2, that is just a fact. Who else could compare?
  • The IJN aircraft carriers were by far their most dangerous asset in terms of Strategic power projection (though definitely not their only threat as their surface fleet from destroyers to super-battleships, submarines and long range land based bombers were also very dangerous).
  • The Italians, by contrast, were constrained by a lack of fuel and many other technical and logistical challenges and never posed a threat outside of the Med regardless.
  • The Vichy French were similarly constrained but even more so. From their perspective they didn't even expect to be attacked when they were.
  • You can say the war was going on since 1939 sure, you can also extend that backward another 2 or 3 years to the Manchurian War, the Spanish Civil War, the Italo-Ethiopian Wars and so on. But the fact is the naval war in WW2 didn't begin to peak until the mighty Japanese fleet was challenged.
I know a lot of people love the Swordfish, and without a doubt Swordfish squadrons achieved some impressive accomplishments in spite of the aircraft's severe limitations in performance, range, armament and so on. It's also true that the Swordfish proved to be remarkably versatile especially for such an obsolete design. But it was hardly the only aircraft to carry an ASW radar (TBFs did that too for example). I think the achievements of the Swordfish squadrons are much more attributable to highly skilled and brave pilots, good planning, and to the relatively good quality of British torpedoes which were certainly better than the American*.

There is nothing particularly unusual about a slow torpedo bomber. Most early air-launched torpedoes in fact required the aircraft to fly very slowly to launch them. The TBD Devastator cruised at 128 mph, the TBF at 153 mph.
The (obsolescent) TBD was indeed replaced, because the USN had better aircraft available to replace it. Like the Swordfish it was reasonably advanced when it came out in 1936, but like the Swordfish, it was past it's prime by 1940.


S


* the best torpedoes though were probably Japanese and then Italian
 

I think the word you are looking for is 'versatility' and I'll grant you the Swordfish certainly had that. The Wellington had it in spades (and was one of the good twin engined torpedo bombers I should have included on my list of them upthread, I knew I was forgetting some) but versatility was hardly unique to those two aircraft. Most of the USN aircraft were highly versatile as well and were used for ASW, as emergency fighters, night fighters, intruders, etc. etc.

I just think the Royal Navy, FAA, whatever authority could and should have come up with a functional monoplane aircraft to carry torpedoes so they didn't have to rely on one with a 150 mph top speed and a 500 mile range. The Fairey Barracuda was the closest they came but it was obviously a struggle to get into action


Oh and by the way, Shortround6, here is yet another example where the engine design delayed the development of a major and potentially very important combat type, from Wiki:

"The Barracuda had originally been intended to be powered by the Rolls-Royce Exe X block, sleeve valve engine. However, production of this powerplant was problematic and eventually abandoned, which in turn delayed the prototype's trials.[1][6] Instead, it was decided to adopt the lower-powered 12-cylinder Vee type Rolls-Royce Merlin 30 engine (1,260 hp/940 kW) to drive a three-bladed de Havilland propeller; the prototypes eventually flew in this configuration.[1][7] Expe "
 

I was kidding about using the TBD, I don't think it was really much better than the Swordfish to be honest. The TBF though, however flawed that it was, was clearly a step up from the old stringbag and it was even considered better than the Albacore and Barracuda that replaced it - by the Royal Navy itself which adopted the TBF as a replacement.

Part of the problem with the Barracuda was the FAA's insistence on a low altitude rated engine, which they seemed to do for almost all of their aircraft requirements.
 
I think with torpedo planes in general, the requirements were often the death-knell of the designs. Many second or third generation torpedo bombers were required to also be dive bombers and to have an internal bomb-bay so they could have a reasonable cruising speed. Dive bombing and carrying a ten or fifteen foot long torpedo were almost diametrically opposed design traits and this was really a bit too much for a single engined prop driven aircraft given early war manufacturing capabilities and engines. Many strange and ungainly designs were the result. Only the Aichi B7A really managed to thread this very tricky needle in time to see some action in the war.

However a couple of the end of the war designs, especially 'strike fighters' also looked promising but by the time they were ready for action the war was over and the heyday of torpedo planes and prop driven aircraft in general had passed.

The highly versatile Ju 88 was capable of both dive bombing and torpedo bombing (in slightly different configuraions) as was the Barracuda and the Albacore, but neither really excelled as dive bombers.





Some time around 1944-1945 or a little later designers had managed to figure this out and a new generation of "strike fighter" planes came into production. If these had been available during the war they could have had an impact. Some were just prototypes or 'proof of concepts' but many saw limited production Some of the more interesting I found so far include:

Fiat G.55/S - a very promising development of that excellent fighter design. They did torpedo trials successfully before the wars end but it never saw action.
Blackburn Firebrand - an attractive and powerful multi-role strike fighter, though Eric Brown apparently didn't like it much.
Westland Wyvern - another capable multi-role design which replaced the Firebrand, fought in the Suez crisis
Douglas BTD Destroyer - a formidable dive bomber (340 mph, 1400 mile range, 2 x 20mm cannon) which ended up as a stepping stone toward the A-1 Skyraider
Martin AM-1 Mauler - rival to the AD-1 Skyraider, it was more powerful and capable but a bit harder to use in carrier operations (330 mph, 1500 mile "combat range", 4 x 20mm and up to 3 torpedoes).

The Aichi B7A2 compares pretty well to these with 350 mph top speed, 1,100 mile range, 2 x 20mm cannon (and excellent handling).

Probably the most famous result of those was the Douglas A-1 /. AD-1 Skyraider which ended up being tailored for CAS mostly because of the type of wars being fought in the 50's and 60's. The other persistent variation was as an ASW specialist, probably best represented by the Fairey Gannet
 
Schweik said:
I think the word you are looking for is 'versatility' and I'll grant you the Swordfish certainly had that. "
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Well it is serendipity that became versatility. No one ever said "design me a war plane that is very slow and can lift a lot with too many people in it for anything I can foresee in the future".
 
Schweik said:
But the fact is the naval war in WW2 didn't begin to peak until the mighty Japanese fleet was challenged.
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Are you choosing to ignore the near starvation of Britain by U-boats and the arctic war on the Murmansk run? Hmmm, Murmansk: nobody seems to acknowledge the crushing drain on German resources imposed by the Soviets. This was huge among the tide turning causes.
IIRC, the first US hostilities in the war were pre-Pearl Harbor, in protecting convoys from U-boats.
"Oh what were their names, tell me what were their names"
The men who went down on the good ship Reuben James?"
Cheers,
Wes
 
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