2 Wings

[carrick58 23]

I am not sure if this has been post but it is worth a look.

[Slartibartfast 153]

It was an attack by Swordfish from a British carrier that bent the rudder of the Battleship Bismark, forcing her to steam in circles, until the British fleet caught up to her, and finished the job

 

If I remember correctly, an entire wing of Swordfish made the attack, none survived

 

Incorrect the Swordfish attack was successful and only 5 where damaged but they all made it back to the Ark Royal... The attack your thinking of Uncleal was the attack on Scharnhorst Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen when 6 Swordfish attacked them in the English channel and all where shot down.

[Olham 164]

Shot down by the ships' AA, or by escorting fighters?

[ConradB 0]

Shot down by the ships' AA, or by escorting fighters?

 

Both if memory serves. The escort fighters had to drop their gear and flaps from what I read on it, as the Swordfish flew very slow compared to the then, modern monoplanes.

 

Like Torpedo Squadron 8 at Midway. 15 TBD Devastators without fighter cover attacked the the carrier fleet attacking Midway Atoll, and the flak and Japanese fighter cover knocked them all down, Out of the 15 2 man crews, only Ens George Gay survived, and was resued by American forces. The one thing their sacrifice did, was to pull the fighter cover down to wavetop level, and before the zeros could reclaim their altitude, the SBD divebombers showed up, and in the next 5 minutes, 3 of Japan's most experienced carrier crews and the airmen they carried were gone.

[RAF_Louvert 101]

.

 

You folks likely already know this, but you can fly the Swordfish in CFS3. Here's one belonging to the BRN operating at dawn near Tripoli in the Mediterranean:

 

 

 

Lots of fun making runs with these against big ships.

 

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[Olham 164]

Like Torpedo Squadron 8 at Midway. 15 TBD Devastators without fighter cover attacked the the carrier fleet

attacking Midway Atoll, and the flak and Japanese fighter cover knocked them all down, Out of the 15 2 man crews,

only Ens George Gay survived, and was resued by American forces.

 

Man, imagine to be sent out for such a mission... Poor souls!

[ConradB 0]

Man, imagine to be sent out for such a mission... Poor souls!

 

Trouble was, they missed their rendevous with the fighters who linked up with the divebombers fine, so they set out on their own. The problem with the TBD Devastator was that it was very underpowered, and obsolete when the war began. The cruise speed of the plane was only 178mph. When the average cruise speed of other planes of the era was 200 to 220 mph. So they were sitting ducks in the combat zone and made very easy targets. And after Midway, the TBD was pulled from frontline service and replaced by the Grumman TBF Avenger, but after the mauling they took, the Americans were very leary of using them for torpedo attacks, and for most of the war, they were used for what they called "glidebombing" where the plane went into a rather shallow dive, or for horizontal level bombing from lower levels. More like a strike aircraft where it really did well.

 

Not to say they weren't used at all in the torpedo bomber roll, but it wasn't as much as the Japanese Naval Airforces did. Trouble with torpedo runs from the planes was you had to fly at about 100ft or less off the water or the torpedo would break apart on impacting the water, or it could detonate. The other thing too was that you had to fly just above stall speed too, which leaves you no room to jink and bob around for defense from AA fire. So in essesnse it was like the slow targets at a shooting gallery at the local fair. So just being in that position alone was suicide. Which is why the American Naval Airforces didn't use that tactic all to often.

 

What they did figure out though, and the Army Airforce could do it too, was skip bombing, similar to the Dambusters. A bomber like the B-25, and B-17 could use a bomb with a delayed fuse, and get low over the water and drop the bomb at a good pace, and it would skip like a stone and slam into the side of the target ship and detonate. Worked great for harbors and shipyards. And since the planes came in low, they weren't usually detected until they started their attackruns on the ships.

 

Rather interesting tactics they used.

 

One of my favorites was the 5th Airforce in the Southpacific. They had a bunch of 25 to 50 lb pounds, and they were pretty useless from high altitude, so they figured out they could attach a small parachute to the tails of them, and twin engined medium bombers could attack things like Japanese airfields from treetop level, the chute slowing the bomb enough to let the plane get far enough away so the blast and fragments didn't damage the plane dropping them. They could even damage or destroy planes that were in revetments with them. Again, the attacking planes could drop their loads before ground forces could respond to them. Since they had the advantage of suprize.

[Olham 164]

Especially the fighters and bombers operating from carriers had a straining job.

Here is a videa I just found about crash landings on carriers - don't be afraid;

all pilots seem to have got away from them alive.

 

 

I found this, when I was searching for a film I had once seen about a squadron, who had on their return

flight to the carrier been attacked by Japanese fighters.

They had fought them, and now returned with fuel gauges on "Zero"!

It was so tragic to watch, how most of them crashed onto the deck, or did lose all lift before touch-down

and hit the carrier. The deck crew just gave up assigning anything and could only hurry to get the poor guys

out of their wreckages, which they then simply pushed overboards.

[ConradB 0]

Yep seen those before. The film with the Hellcat striking the island, and breaking the fuselage in half is actually in color. Just like the footage of the Arizona blowing up, at Pearl Harbor, I found out on a documentary, the original film was in color too. Taken by a doctor.