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you did 17 minutes on this and not once mentioned, how those men flew those tiny planes, crammed into the cockpit with their enormous balls (bollocks).
@@dave_h_8742 Especially since its direct replacement, the Fairey Albacore, proved to be a big disappointment in service. It wasn't until after 1943 that the Fairey Barracuda finally replaced the Swordfish in front-line roles of torpedo attack.
The night witches in WW II also flew ridiculous outdated bi planes. They received the highest proportion of Hero of the Soviet Union awards of any unit.
They were brave, insane and very skilled pilots who knew how to use their old bi-planes attributes. The low stall speed meant the night witches would intentionally stall their engines and bomb their targets in absolute silence. That's what earned them their nickname and the Germans were absolutely terrified of these incredible women.
Unless he's covered them in an earlier video from years ago, as far as I know, Simon has never covered the Night Witches and that surprises me because it sounds like a fascinating story.
Oh yes, the Polikarpov PO-2 (U-2 in earlier notation) was a heck of a biplane. I saw a later, Polish-built version airborne: she's SLOW, off-balance and therefore agile. Flies like a butterfly, you never know where she will go next. They had a very good glide ratio and the Nachtshexen (Night Witches-German called them this) used them approaching German troops very low, flying black painted planes, and closing to the target they emerged a bit and turned off the engine. They didn't even make a noise but the whooosh of the strings that tightened the wings. A purpose-built glider makes more noise I believe (I flew a Gobe ages ago, and I've heard her from the pretty noisy cockpit, and saw the PO-2 (CSS-3 in the Polish notation) from the ground, so it is a vague idea about their noise.) FW-190s just darted over them without hitting or sometimes even finding them, bullets often just went through the canvas without any serious damage, and due to their low speed their target precision was lethal. They really worth a video (but I am not sure that Simon hasn't any.)
there is a lovingly restored Swordfish at my local aviation museum. the one thing that surprised me the first time i visited: just how big it actually is when you stand next to it!
Ah, yes…the plane that sank the Bismarck. Still remember the Dogfights episode “Hunt For The Bismarck” that featured this beauty in the finale. Thanks for this one, Simon!
The attacks by the courages Royal Navy airmen haven't sunk the Bismark. One of their torps inhibited the rudder, so the Bismark could only run in circles. Making her a sitting duck for the approaching Royal Navy Battleships, who've wrecked the Bismark. In the end, it was (likely) sunk by self-destruction. The discussion about this still going....which doesn't matter in the end. Just another cruel act in another totally pointless war...
The difference between the Japanese plane and the British swordfish is simple. If the Japanese aircraft was hit by anything, it was wrecked, would go down in flames. The Swordfish with its fabric covered wings and fuselage would simply let the bullets pass through harmlessly. It would not set off the fuses of proximity shells and timed fuses with air bursts of shrapnel went through the fabric with superficial damage. Unless the pilot or engine was hit, the plane would simply shrug off the damage and fly on. The plane was difficult to detect on radar, having no large, flat surfaces to reflect from. It also flew so low and slow that it was difficult to see and attack from the air. It excelled at night attacks, coming in from seaward to drop torpedoes just inside of anti torpedo nets and then turning back out to sea. The biplanes exceptionally high turn rate combined with low speed made this possible. The A-10 of its day.
I read "War in a Stringbag" by Commander Charles Lamb many, many years ago. He details the successful exploitation of the Swordfish's seemingly underwhelming capabilities, especially in the Mediteranean campaign. Whether used in a carrier-borne or land-based role, the slow-moving, low-flying torpedo bomber almost always frustrated the Axis defences. Great video, and superb aircraft.
It may have looked archaic but it certainly kicked the shit out of the Italian Navy at the battle of Taranto, which was so successful it actually inspired Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour a year later.
Like the Frogfoot or the A-10 Warthog, the plane excelled at flying low, slow and resoundingly steady. The perfect navel bomber and camera platform. This formula was generations ahead of its time.
Canvas on _steel_ - the Swordfish was NOT made of wood. It was designed the way it was specifically for use on carriers, the biplane design needed MUCH less runway to take off than the more modern designs everyone else was using, and the Swordfish cost a fraction of the resources to build and maintain. It was a genuinely brilliant bit of design that outlived several newer planes that were introduced supposedly to replace it. There were many stories of Swordfish turned into swiss cheese by anti-air fire, but the shots passed straight through without doing damage and the plane could still fly home. My great uncle was a flight instructor with the RAAF during WW2, and he had nothing but praise for the Fairey Swordfish.
I came to say exactly what you did! I had the great honour of being able to call an ex-swordfish pilot a friend ( he flew against the Bismarck and ended the war flying a martlet in the Pacific).
My grandad was an Airframe Rigger with the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm. He worked mainly on Corsairs but when he did his trade training his intake were stationed at Garston, Liverpool and they had to strip a Swordfish down to component level then reassemble it to flight. It might have been obsolete but it taught them a lot of practical skills and he had a soft spot for it.
My dad was also a flight mechanic -airframes and worked on various Royal Navy aircraft, including the swordfish ...just after the war though 1947-9. I still have one of his manuals.
It is worth saying that since pales started moving faster, radar mattered more. The fact that the Fairey Swordfish had a low radar signature because of its build actually made it what we would call today a "low observable" or "low signature" aircraft if not even a stealth aircraft. Basically by the time the enemy detected or observed it, it was set on its target and maybe even launched the torpedo. That's a huge advantage. Also, the sights on anti-aircraft defences were adjusted for faster aircraft so, being slow was an advantage.
@@peaceleader7315 To be fair... they measure torpedoes in inches only in diameter. The Swordfish carried an 18 inch diameter torpedo that weighed 1600 pounds.
The Swordfish was also an excellent dive bomber. The biplane wings, braces, and guywires created so much drag the pilot could throw the plane into an almost vertical dive allowing the pilot to deliver its bomb with almost pinpoint accuracy. Bonus advantage was its speed was so slow that it confounded German fire control directors which were calibrated to fire against much faster contemporary modern aircraft so that they were always firing where the fire control directors thought the plane was supposed to be but that being where the Swordfish wasn't.
When the Swordfish (or "Stringbag") was adopted (and it was a contemporary to the Spitfire), the Royal Navy saw no need for a fast aircraft; one of the many enormous miscalculations the RN made in the interwar years, but in the case of the Swordfish it's hard to fault their logic. It quickly sprang to fame though, starting at the Second Battle of Narvik. First Narvik was a scrimmage between RN and German destroyers, and the RN, reckoning the Germans would send-in a cruiser or two to beef-up their remaining destroyers in Narvik, sent ( - I mean, really - what would anybody do? - ) a battleship, HMS Warspite, which had a very happy war and showed a positive genius for getting in the thick of things. Warspite launched its Swordfish to scout side fiords for any naughty German destroyers that might be loitering in ambush to launch torpedoes - that being done, the Swordfish went up to the town where it caught U-64 just submerging off the wharf, and bombed and sank it. Most of its crew survived, and the mighty Swordfish earned two feathers in its cap - first u-boat sunk by aircraft in WW2, and only u-boat ever sunk by an airplane launched off a battleship. It just got better from there - the Swordfish earned its 'Stringbag' moniker, not because it was a wired-together biplane, but because, like a lady's string shopping bag that could expand to carry just about anything, the swordfish, which was often the only airplane available to most RN ships, was certified able to carry just about any cargo or spare part it could lift off the ground. BTW it's most likely that Bismarck scuttled itself, though undoubtably HMS Dorsetshire's torpedoes hastened the result. It's also possible that HMS Rodney hit Bismarck with one of its torpedoes, which if true would be the only time in history a battleship torpedoed another battleship. But Bismarck was running for Brest, and almost within range of German air cover - Swordfish raids from HMS Ark Royal were the last gasp for the British to slow it down and allow pursuing RN battleships to catch it. Indeed, Ark Royal's first raid against Bismarck came out of the murk to target a large warship in about the right place, and nobody had told the flight crews that HMS Sheffield was now close behind, shadowing Bismarck - only superb seamanship and defective magnetic exploders on the torpedoes prevented a tragedy, and as the Swordfish motored away into the murk, one of them flashed-back to Sheffield with an Aldis lamp, "Sorry for the cock-up". The aircraft landed back on Ark Royal and the crews returned to the briefing room while the armourers slaved down below taking off fresh torpedoes' magnetic exploders and replacing them with contact exploders, then winching them back up under the refuelled Swordfish; very late in the day they took off again, bound for Bismarck - and the rest is history. The Channel Dash spelled the end of the Swordfish's anti-warship career. The British were caught flat-footed, and the first airborne responders to the large German fleet advancing up the channel, six Swordfish that went in alone, were comprehensively slaughtered by AA fire from the ships and Luftwaffe fighters that ranged overhead, Adolf Galland himself flying among them. Swordfish were relieved of anti-warship duties after that, but they soldiered-on until the end of the war and the Mk. IV version, equipped with radar, antisubmarine weapons and (at long last for its crew) a canopy, was a formidable foe until the end of the u-boat war. Indeed, the Swordfish outlived two new aircraft types that were built to replace it. I sum-up the Swordfish with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, for which the Japanese had carefully studied the RN's Swordfish attack on Taranto. As you mention, the Japanese were flying much more modern aircraft than the venerable Swordfish; I insist that's because the Japanese, though the best naval aviators in the world at the time, were insanely brave but weren't brave enough to fly Swordfish - and besides, with the Swordfish's slow top speed, if the Japanese had tried flying Swordfish over the vast distances of the Pacific they'd still be up there! 🤣
The Swordfish was the only plane that could take off in atrocious weather, be it the Atlantic or the Arctic, heavy winds, ship rocking about, icy conditions, and most importantly, at night. The British could conduct night operations as early as 1938 (HMS Glorious).
About 45yrs ago, the publisher Orbis, did a monthly magazine called War Machine and it was there as a wideyed 9yr old I learnt about the Swordfish and the fate of the Bismarck. This channel is like the natural successor to that publication for me...
In 2013 I was in Southampton and while I was there visited the grave of RJ Mitchell of Spitfire design fame. The cemetery is almost on top of the airport and as I was standing at the grave I heard an unfamiliar aircraft going overhead. I left the grave and went into the open, raising my camera just in case. Overhead a white painted Swordfish came into view, complete with torpedo! It was amazing because I was in a place with so much Spitfire related history, but a Stringbag stole the spotlight. The one advantage that the Swordfish had in all of its many successes was dedication and courage of the flying crew, the skill of those who kept them flying, and the ships that mothered them and gave them a safe haven. They have not been forgotten.
It was an informative and wonderful historical coverage video about 🇬🇧 designed Sword fish aircraft, which gained a great role-playing to sinking German and Italian battleships during WW2. Swordfish aircraft's proved supermarcy of aircraft carriers' overall battleships . WW1 battleships glorious over.
When everyones bullets are designed to shear through metal, when you are made of wood and canvas you will have a odd advantage This plane along with the De Haviland mosquito are criminally underrated, some of the best planes of the war
You also sight your AA guns to lead where you aim them slightly as aircraft are moving targets. This gives crap biplanes like the swordfish or the WW1 surplus bombers the 588th soviet night bombers used a slight edge as the the AA guns are sighted to hit things whose stall speed is higher than the max speed they can reach
G'day, The Swordfish is a Biplane, with Fabric covered Wings, Tail, & Rear Fuselage..., But the Airframe is Metal. The Royal Naval Fleet Air Arm gave up on Wooden Airframes in about 1930. I can't recall if it was Aluminium, or Steel - but I think it was Steel Tubes & Stamped Sheetmetal (?). Just(ifiably ?) sayin'. Have a good one. ;-p Ciao !
After watching this video the other week I found, quite by coincidence, a book from 1959 on the Taranto raid which I've just started reading. It's an amazing aircraft and one that certainly deserves its place in history, along with its incredibly brave and effective crews of course.
TBH there's plenty more about the Stringbag that you've not even touched on. For instance, the Mk 3 version incorporated our most advanced centimetric radar. It blows my mind that an apparently antiqued design was in fact a cutting edge weapon delivery system that not only flew throughout the war but was still in production into 1944.
On the day, it’s the Man in the Box. An amazing design piloted by extraordinary aircrew that grew to love it. Led by the best the Fleet Air Arm produced
Good review Simon. I've watched a documentary on the Bismarck. As Germany expecting dive bombers their anti aircraft guns could not get low enough to shooting at a slow moving biplane flying just above sea level. Also it said that the captain eventually scuttled her after she was so critically damaged. The Swordfish was indeed a loved plane by her crews and an example of not judging a book by its cover. Merry Christmas. 🎄
The survivors from the Bismarck reported that the order to scuttle was given after the guns were disabled, how successfully it was carried out in the chaos is questionable. By the time the order was given Bismarck already had a serious list that the crew could no longer control by counterflooding and the ship was down by the stern, it was probably going to sink anyway. The Swordfish contributed 3 of (probably) 7 or 8 torpedo hits along with over 50 large shell hits on the Bismarck before she sank. Which was more than Bismarck was designed to withstand.
Logical people the Germans, presumably the need for anti-aircraft guns that fired downwards to attack aircraft flying below your ships deck never occurred to them.
They had to be good to work out when to start their take-off run from the carrier lest they go straight into a wave. Or hit the back of the carrier as a wave heaved the ship up.
And don't forget the fighter that flew cover for the Swordfish (including Matapan): the equally outclassed (at least on paper) Fairey Fulmar, which had the highest kill to loss ratio of any Fleet Arm Arm fighter of WW2. Sub-Lieutenant Stanley Orr, the Royal Navy's highest scoring ace with 17 victories, scored 12 of these in Fulmars.
The Fulmar was able to be so successful despite its many limitations thanks to the early adoption of radar aboard Royal Navy ships and the very efficient system of Fighter Direction used. Together these meant that Fulmars could consistently be in the right place to intercept incoming Italian and German raids.
Whoa, I didn’t know that about the Fulmar. I’ve heard mention of it (on Drachinifel’s naval history channel) but didn’t know if it was a particularly effective aircraft.
Great video. My uncle was a navigator in the stringbag. He flew against the Bismark amongst other targets, sadly he is now gone and woukdn't talk about the war at all. I know his pilot was killed but that is about it.
I’ve heard it said that the Swordfish’s canvas construction meant that some anti-aircraft shells would simply punch neat holes through it rather than exploding, as they would for a metal skinned plane. Not many planes can claim a service history spanning the entirety of WW2…
@megaprojects 8:22 that is understatement, the Royal Navy didn't take it rather badly more they were enraged and became the whole mother lion who found her cubs slaughter, they were not going to stop until Bismarck was destroyed no matter what
Exactly, if anyone wants to see the differences they may want to compare a Fairy Swordfish with the EXISTING Torpedo Bomber of 1918, the Sopwith Cuckoo. The Swordfish is more advanced in every category.
The one singular negative incident, the 'Channel Dash', that has reflected on the Swordfish was mostly to do with the lack of intelligence and support from other branches (ie the fighter escort). A great piece of engeineering nonetheless
I feel like drawing a parallel between the Swordfish, and the A-10 Warthog. While very different aircraft, they were both slow when compared to their contemporaries, and were both devastating to their heavily armored targets.
The A10 is on paper devastating to heavy armor, but in reality isn't as effective due to its very inaccurate Gau-8. It is able to carry a lot of missiles though, but their effectiveness is limited due to a subpar avionics package that was outdated before it even entered service.
@@logansmall5148GAU-8 is plenty accurate for its task, modern tanks are generally just tough enough to take 30mm cannon hits. APCs are significantly less likely to survive the Brrrrrt.
A good friend was a Swordfish pilot in the Med in WW2 and once mentioned flying off HMAS Glorious during the defense of Malta. He said the Swordfish had the advantage of flying so slow that fire from BF109s went ahead of his nose. While he never mentioned it to us, we were told at his funeral that he was one of the Swordfish pilots who launched torpedos at Bismarck. I'm told that after his funeral, his ashes were taken by RAN helicopter and buried at sea off Sydney.
Imo it is worth mentioning that the Battle of Denmark Strait was a mission kill on Bismarck. It came at an extremely high cost with the loss of HMS Hood and so many lives but enough damage had been dealt that she was having cancel the break out into the Atlantic. When the Swordfish swooped in and took her rudder, she was trying to make her way back for repairs. I only mention because there are so many tellings of this action that make it sound like Bismarck effortlessly swatted Hood and wandered off over the horizon unscathed when that's not what happened. She sustained multiple hits and enough of her fuel had been either lost or contaminated that they couldn't carry on with her mission objective. It could even be argued that it was this that stopped Bismarck from getting away. It was Bismarck that served as decoy to allow Prinz Eugen to get away after all. Could have easily been the other way round if Bismarck had the fuel to carry on. Not to take anything away from the Swordfish and their pilots. Their strike stopped Bismarck's run in it's tracks. There are even accounts of Swordfish being ordered very bluntly to "go away" when they could have gone in for follow up strikes. Royal Navy ships deffinately wanted revenge for Hood so there was no way they were letting flimsy little planes get the glory.
I remember seeing the Royal Navy Historic Flights's example flying at airshows and the gunner in the back standing up in the air flow saluting as it flew past. Classic. Didn't Taranto change Naval Warfare forever? The doctrine of Battleships slugging it out became obsolete as just a few aircraft could potentially put a fleet out of action (eg Pearl Harbour just a year later) and from then on it became all about Aircraft Carriers?
A key part of the success of the Swordfish was the failure by Axis air forces to recognize & respond to the threat. They simply didn’t have anything that could engage the Swordfish in the air effectively, meaning it largely had free reign against shipping. Especially in night raids the Axis consistently failed to counter Allied air power. The Allied Mustang is another great example. Combining British engined with American deployment capacity & military logistics made for a higher flying, faster, and more heavily armed aircraft than anything the Japanese could ever deploy. The Swordfish was essentially in the same situation as the Axis did not have fleet air arms that they could deploy.
The reason few were shot down by enemy aircraft in dogfights is because of a particular maneuver that caused faster aircraft to overshoot the Swordfish. Charles Lamb (To War In A Stringbag) explained how while practicing the maneuver, the British aircraft assigned to play the enemy role, overshot so badly on its second pass that it crashed into the sea, killing the pilot.
A HE or flqk shell would indeed rip a swordfish apart, but like the hurricane, it's flimsy canvas made it almost immune to any contact fused ammunition which the German pilots and I'm sure German aa guns used. Also, flak was more of a zoning method as the altitudes were set before they were fired so slow swordfish would see a flak barrage and just fly round it lol. Also, please do an episode on the Warspite, Queen Elizabeth class battleship. It's impact was insane.
There is something missing in this celebration as deserved as it is. That is Radar. Swordfish aircraft were equipped with it in due course and the RN with ship and aircraft equipped radar owned the night. In terms of tonnage sunk it bested all the rest. And maybe something on their work from escort carriers deserves an expanded review. Lastly a mate of mine quite a few years ago, whose father was a Swordfish pilot, explained that because they could fly so lowl and slow fighters attacking them experienced some problems. One of his father's colleagues, a friend in a squadron flying Grummans, was tasked with carrying out an attack on exercise and flew into the sea trying to line up for an attack. Oooops.
Ah, the Fairey Swordfish. Its only my second favourite aircraft of WW2. Only behind the De Havilland Mosquito 👌🏻 Edit: Yes, Megaprojects have obviously already done a video on the De Havilland Mosquito.
Think of the Swordfish as a biplane doing helicopter stuff before helicopters made them fashionable. You wouldn't expect an Apache to do bombing runs like a B52 does, but it can loiter and put down very precise fire due to it's relatively slower approach speed. Same applies to the Swordfish, not just with the torpedoes against surface vessels but also with depth charges and/or rockets against submarines.
One correction it's true one direct hit from an explosive anti aircraft munition would destroy a Swordfish but the same is true of any carrier launched aircraft of the day however an impact fused round could pass completely through the Swordfish's body or wings without encountering enough resistance to detonate unless it hit a structural component making it strangely less vulnerable than a metal skinned aircraft. Just as you noted the enemies anti aircraft gun sights were calibrated to deal with much faster aircraft so too was their ammunition designed to deal with much sturdier targets.
There's always something to be said for the MVP. Minimum Viable Product. The tricky bit is getting something to be exactly what it needs to be, and no more, and NO LESS. I have no doubt many of the specifications of the Swordfish were extremely well considered, but I can't help but feel that Serendipity was leaning heavily on the scales.
When Napoleon was asked about a general he responded ...is he lucky ? the swordfish certainly was , Napoleon would have nodded in approval P.S. during the Norway campaign it even was operated from a frozen lake with miserable support and still did good .
I do not agree. You see the problem is when people look at the Swordfish they assume it was designed to operate like other WWII Torpedo Bombers, mostly making daylight strikes. The Swordfish however was not designed to operate during the day, it was designed to operate AT NIGHT. Swordfish crews even before WWII were trained to take off, find and strike their target, then return to and land on their carrier, at night. When you look at that at night part, some of the decisions about the Swordfish design start making a HELL of a lot more sense....
I had never heard of this aircraft until I read The Stringbags by Garth Ennis and P.J. Holden awhile back. Highly recommended for anyone who likes this video.
As someone below says. We had one parked near us for the Normandy Commemorations. Some years ago. Big .... yeah ... Big ! 😮 The old film and pictures just don't give any real indication of the size of the thing. Impressive ! We often think older means smaller and inferior. No this looks the part.
Simon, when are you going to do a MegaProjects video on the time travel machine? One obviously exists and you have access to it because at 5:30 you instanteously transported the WW2 Battle of Madagascar *10 years* into the future and extended the rule of the Axis Vichy France regime into the 1950s!
It's really hard to get your head around the fact that it's lack of speed made it harder to hit. I've always loved the Swordfish as an aircraft and now I know why.
The swordfish had a single forward firing .303 machine gun. Located starboard side engine compartment. Low and slow, gunners aboard ship had little training on something so low and slow. Despite the fabric covering that 45 ft wingspan it is true that light machinegun fire would pass through without critical damage.
One of my teachers at school PUB Adams (I hope those were his initials not his call sign) flew Swordfish in WW2. He told me that the reason they were so good was that the AA fire control could not cope with the incredibly slow speed of the planes and always missed in front. His squadron was slated to attack the Yamato but the US insisted that it be an all American affair. To his great relief.
another interesting part of the swordfish's success comes from its canvas construction. The contact fused HE shells from small caliber AA guns (30-40mm) that would be most likely to actually hit anything wouldn't detonate on the canvas and the canvas and wood construction didn't care about small holes. One shell exploding might kill the swordfish (or any other aircraft) but you could shoot it's wings full of holes without a single shell detonating.
There was virtually no wood in a Swordfish, its internal framing was all metal. Even the propeller was metal. On the wiki page for the swordfish it literally has a picture of the internals of an actual Swordfish wing and it is patently clear that it is all metal....
Another advantage advantage of the slow speed and the biplane design was that they could fly very low. Sometimes they were so close to the water that enemy air defense guns couldn't aim at a low enough angle to hit them.
War in a Stringbag, by Charles Lamb tells it all. Lamb was the last pilot to take off from his carrier just before it was sunk, chronicled the Taranto attack, flew into Vichy North Africa and spent some time as a “guest “ of the Vichy French before they flipped sides. Lamb was one of those chaps who could say “I was there”.
It was probably case of the Royal Navy make the very best of what they had in the early years of the war. If they had had (say) the SBD Dauntless instead, no doubt that could have been used to devastating effect on the Bismarck or the Italian battleships in Taranto. They might not have penetrated the armoured decks of the more modern battleships, but making a mess of the superstructure above would have been enough to cripple the ship (as did the later Fairy Barracuda raid on the Tirpitz).
Would you be willing to do a Mega Projects video about the development and flights of the Rutan Model 76 Voyager and the Virgin Global Flyer? Similarly, could you do a video on the Gossamer Albatross and the history of human-powered flight?
It was all very well for people to have favoured all metal designs and said they were modern tech et cetera, but that’s only an advantage if you have metal, if you have metal workers, if you have the supply chains and factories to support that. The thing with something made of wood, canvas and glue is that you can make it out of wood, canvas and glue. You can make it using carpenters. You can train or obtain base level carpenters more easily than you can train metalworkers given the skill set of the contemporary population. Yes, a master carpenter is a rare beast, but you don’t need a master carpenter . You just need competent. You need something that you can turn out in high numbers very quickly with very limited supply chains. High tech and high resource requiring equipment doesn’t fulfil that role. Which is another area in which equipment such as the swordfish absolute winners. a metal plane is no good if you’ve only got one or none of them. But you might have 100 swordfish and you could keep them going.
A wood and fabric biplane has only one big advantage: A higher lift component at slower speeds. Just what was needed to haul a big torpedo into the air from the deck of a small aircraft carrier or from a short runway.
Sinking the Bismarck was undoubtedly a team effort for the Royal Navy. But the Taranto raid was all carrier launched aircraft. A single aircraft carrier and a couple of waves of biplane torpedo bombers. And a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The sinking of U-64 is one of the most ridiculous moments of the Swordfish's career. A floatplane launched from a battleship with some small bombs that required very specific conditions to achieve the success it did, divebombing at a speed so low that it might as well be hovering because of the amount of drag from the floats, and not even something that was planned, because it was just meant to do some spotting.
It was a very cunning plan, a dive bombing attack that took so long due to the slow speed. That half the crew of the target ship would have a nervous breakdown caused by long term stress. So that by the time the bomb was dropped they were incapable of evasive action.
As much as I love the Swordfish, I feel this video missed a trick by not covering the (disastrous) use of the Swordfish during the Channel Dash, which really illustrated how it's weaknesses could bite (fatally) in the wrong circumstances and with rushed or bad planning.
In fairness, I don't think more advanced aircraft such as Grumman Avengers would have done particularly well against organised land fighter plane opposition as the Germans had arranged during the Channel dash.
@@geoffreypiltz271 People are forgetting something about the Swordfish, something I see time and time again in discussions such as these. The Fairey Swordfish was NOT designed to operate during the Day, it was designed as a NIGHT Torpedo Bomber. The Royal Navy was well aware of the issue of slower bombers being cut to pieces by Fighters, and figured the best way around that was to operate at Night. Most of the design decisions that went into the Swordfish were entirely based around that premise, that the aircraft had to take off, find its target, strike that target, find its carrier, then land on that carrier, AT NIGHT..... Now when you look at the characteristics of the Swordfish with that criteria in mind some of the decisions made in its design suddenly start making a LOT more sense....
it was nicknamed the stringbag for good reason, apparently there was nothing it couldn't carry, which along with its brace of wires made it look like the string bags wives used to use when shopping. the swordfish could carry an impressive load, include once a tug tractor off a carrier. its saddest story was when the sharnhorst did the channel dash with other german ships. a flight of swordfish where called upon to act if the ships sailed with a promise of spitfire cover to protect from the luftwaffe. the ships sailed and a group of six i think it was swordfish scrambled. but for some reason the spitfires never appeared. the flight leader regardless made the decision to press on as it was a rare opportunity to get at the ships. sadly though its very antiquation worked against it and the captain of one of the german ships commented that they were the bravest men he had ever seen as the pilots knew it was suicidal but pressed the attack anyway and all were shot down.
One common mistake repeated about the Swordfish is that it was kept in production in favour of its replacement the Albacore. The Albacore was certainly the better aircraft and the only reason the Swordfish outlived it was because Fairey had farmed out Swordfish production to poor old struggling Blackburn, who were now committed to carrying on. Fairey only stopped the Albacore because they were moving to the Barracuda. The Swordfish was still useful, especially from the smaller escort carriers and if the interruption to production at Blackburn had been possible Blackburn would have certainly made Albacores instead. By the way, you made great emphasis on the "big torpedo" but my books say it carried the 18" torpedo which was smaller than both the 21" ship and sub torpedo and the 22" that the Avenger carried..? ( I see it sunk Barham apparently!)
Simon forgot to mention 450 000 tons of shiping sunk from Malta which was huge. Its second life happened because it could do a second job very well which was flying off small carriers in anti submarine duty. Not many submarines sunk but all it had to do was keep them away from the convoy
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But our cupboard, sorry closet contains our cosplay
you did 17 minutes on this and not once mentioned, how those men flew those tiny planes, crammed into the cockpit with their enormous balls (bollocks).
Soyjack aneurysm
The swordfish disabled the Bismarck and ravaged the Italian fleet at Toronto
It's still amazed me that the Swordfish remained in front-line service until V-E Day, having outlived some of the aricraft intended to replace it.
Becouse they were crap
@@dave_h_8742 Especially since its direct replacement, the Fairey Albacore, proved to be a big disappointment in service. It wasn't until after 1943 that the Fairey Barracuda finally replaced the Swordfish in front-line roles of torpedo attack.
The night witches in WW II also flew ridiculous outdated bi planes. They received the highest proportion of Hero of the Soviet Union awards of any unit.
Those gals were either borderline insane or ridiculously brave, possibly both.
They were brave, insane and very skilled pilots who knew how to use their old bi-planes attributes. The low stall speed meant the night witches would intentionally stall their engines and bomb their targets in absolute silence. That's what earned them their nickname and the Germans were absolutely terrified of these incredible women.
Unless he's covered them in an earlier video from years ago, as far as I know, Simon has never covered the Night Witches and that surprises me because it sounds like a fascinating story.
@@Kaltagstar96 It would make a great "Today I found out" or Warographics
Oh yes, the Polikarpov PO-2 (U-2 in earlier notation) was a heck of a biplane. I saw a later, Polish-built version airborne: she's SLOW, off-balance and therefore agile. Flies like a butterfly, you never know where she will go next. They had a very good glide ratio and the Nachtshexen (Night Witches-German called them this) used them approaching German troops very low, flying black painted planes, and closing to the target they emerged a bit and turned off the engine. They didn't even make a noise but the whooosh of the strings that tightened the wings. A purpose-built glider makes more noise I believe (I flew a Gobe ages ago, and I've heard her from the pretty noisy cockpit, and saw the PO-2 (CSS-3 in the Polish notation) from the ground, so it is a vague idea about their noise.) FW-190s just darted over them without hitting or sometimes even finding them, bullets often just went through the canvas without any serious damage, and due to their low speed their target precision was lethal. They really worth a video (but I am not sure that Simon hasn't any.)
there is a lovingly restored Swordfish at my local aviation museum. the one thing that surprised me the first time i visited: just how big it actually is when you stand next to it!
Ah, yes…the plane that sank the Bismarck. Still remember the Dogfights episode “Hunt For The Bismarck” that featured this beauty in the finale. Thanks for this one, Simon!
The attacks by the courages Royal Navy airmen haven't sunk the Bismark. One of their torps inhibited the rudder, so the Bismark could only run in circles. Making her a sitting duck for the approaching Royal Navy Battleships, who've wrecked the Bismark. In the end, it was (likely) sunk by self-destruction. The discussion about this still going....which doesn't matter in the end.
Just another cruel act in another totally pointless war...
Dogfights such a great show... Whatever happened to it 🤔
@@Shoelessjoe78probably like every other history channel show...replaced by aliens and Bigfoot
You telling me Bigfoot couldn't dogfight an alien?@@kirkfsu
The difference between the Japanese plane and the British swordfish is simple. If the Japanese aircraft was hit by anything, it was wrecked, would go down in flames. The Swordfish with its fabric covered wings and fuselage would simply let the bullets pass through harmlessly. It would not set off the fuses of proximity shells and timed fuses with air bursts of shrapnel went through the fabric with superficial damage. Unless the pilot or engine was hit, the plane would simply shrug off the damage and fly on. The plane was difficult to detect on radar, having no large, flat surfaces to reflect from. It also flew so low and slow that it was difficult to see and attack from the air. It excelled at night attacks, coming in from seaward to drop torpedoes just inside of anti torpedo nets and then turning back out to sea. The biplanes exceptionally high turn rate combined with low speed made this possible. The A-10 of its day.
I read "War in a Stringbag" by Commander Charles Lamb many, many years ago. He details the successful exploitation of the Swordfish's seemingly underwhelming capabilities, especially in the Mediteranean campaign. Whether used in a carrier-borne or land-based role, the slow-moving, low-flying torpedo bomber almost always frustrated the Axis defences.
Great video, and superb aircraft.
It may have looked archaic but it certainly kicked the shit out of the Italian Navy at the battle of Taranto, which was so successful it actually inspired Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour a year later.
And it took the battleship Bismarck to pound town
Like the Frogfoot or the A-10 Warthog, the plane excelled at flying low, slow and resoundingly steady. The perfect navel bomber and camera platform. This formula was generations ahead of its time.
Canvas on _steel_ - the Swordfish was NOT made of wood. It was designed the way it was specifically for use on carriers, the biplane design needed MUCH less runway to take off than the more modern designs everyone else was using, and the Swordfish cost a fraction of the resources to build and maintain. It was a genuinely brilliant bit of design that outlived several newer planes that were introduced supposedly to replace it. There were many stories of Swordfish turned into swiss cheese by anti-air fire, but the shots passed straight through without doing damage and the plane could still fly home.
My great uncle was a flight instructor with the RAAF during WW2, and he had nothing but praise for the Fairey Swordfish.
This is info the video should have told. Especially its carrier design
I came to say exactly what you did! I had the great honour of being able to call an ex-swordfish pilot a friend ( he flew against the Bismarck and ended the war flying a martlet in the Pacific).
My grandad was an Airframe Rigger with the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm. He worked mainly on Corsairs but when he did his trade training his intake were stationed at Garston, Liverpool and they had to strip a Swordfish down to component level then reassemble it to flight.
It might have been obsolete but it taught them a lot of practical skills and he had a soft spot for it.
My Godfather had a very similar naval career and spoke highly of the swordfish.
My dad was also a flight mechanic -airframes and worked on various Royal Navy aircraft, including the swordfish ...just after the war though 1947-9. I still have one of his manuals.
It is worth saying that since pales started moving faster, radar mattered more. The fact that the Fairey Swordfish had a low radar signature because of its build actually made it what we would call today a "low observable" or "low signature" aircraft if not even a stealth aircraft. Basically by the time the enemy detected or observed it, it was set on its target and maybe even launched the torpedo. That's a huge advantage. Also, the sights on anti-aircraft defences were adjusted for faster aircraft so, being slow was an advantage.
The mosquito also kinda benefited from having a lower radar signature.
This plane is the literal example of, "size does matter but, how you use it is more important" 😂
Thats what she said
Yeah, 6 inches is what I have.. and love it when I use it the right way..
she said... 😂..
@@peaceleader7315 To be fair... they measure torpedoes in inches only in diameter. The Swordfish carried an 18 inch diameter torpedo that weighed 1600 pounds.
@@Adierit 🤣😂😅... you're just too funny..🤣.
@@Adierit I was just being cringe 😬.
Love that u did a vid on this plane it will go down in history as one of the all-time best planes of it's time
The Swordfish was also an excellent dive bomber. The biplane wings, braces, and guywires created so much drag the pilot could throw the plane into an almost vertical dive allowing the pilot to deliver its bomb with almost pinpoint accuracy. Bonus advantage was its speed was so slow that it confounded German fire control directors which were calibrated to fire against much faster contemporary modern aircraft so that they were always firing where the fire control directors thought the plane was supposed to be but that being where the Swordfish wasn't.
When the Swordfish (or "Stringbag") was adopted (and it was a contemporary to the Spitfire), the Royal Navy saw no need for a fast aircraft; one of the many enormous miscalculations the RN made in the interwar years, but in the case of the Swordfish it's hard to fault their logic. It quickly sprang to fame though, starting at the Second Battle of Narvik. First Narvik was a scrimmage between RN and German destroyers, and the RN, reckoning the Germans would send-in a cruiser or two to beef-up their remaining destroyers in Narvik, sent ( - I mean, really - what would anybody do? - ) a battleship, HMS Warspite, which had a very happy war and showed a positive genius for getting in the thick of things. Warspite launched its Swordfish to scout side fiords for any naughty German destroyers that might be loitering in ambush to launch torpedoes - that being done, the Swordfish went up to the town where it caught U-64 just submerging off the wharf, and bombed and sank it. Most of its crew survived, and the mighty Swordfish earned two feathers in its cap - first u-boat sunk by aircraft in WW2, and only u-boat ever sunk by an airplane launched off a battleship. It just got better from there - the Swordfish earned its 'Stringbag' moniker, not because it was a wired-together biplane, but because, like a lady's string shopping bag that could expand to carry just about anything, the swordfish, which was often the only airplane available to most RN ships, was certified able to carry just about any cargo or spare part it could lift off the ground.
BTW it's most likely that Bismarck scuttled itself, though undoubtably HMS Dorsetshire's torpedoes hastened the result. It's also possible that HMS Rodney hit Bismarck with one of its torpedoes, which if true would be the only time in history a battleship torpedoed another battleship. But Bismarck was running for Brest, and almost within range of German air cover - Swordfish raids from HMS Ark Royal were the last gasp for the British to slow it down and allow pursuing RN battleships to catch it. Indeed, Ark Royal's first raid against Bismarck came out of the murk to target a large warship in about the right place, and nobody had told the flight crews that HMS Sheffield was now close behind, shadowing Bismarck - only superb seamanship and defective magnetic exploders on the torpedoes prevented a tragedy, and as the Swordfish motored away into the murk, one of them flashed-back to Sheffield with an Aldis lamp, "Sorry for the cock-up". The aircraft landed back on Ark Royal and the crews returned to the briefing room while the armourers slaved down below taking off fresh torpedoes' magnetic exploders and replacing them with contact exploders, then winching them back up under the refuelled Swordfish; very late in the day they took off again, bound for Bismarck - and the rest is history.
The Channel Dash spelled the end of the Swordfish's anti-warship career. The British were caught flat-footed, and the first airborne responders to the large German fleet advancing up the channel, six Swordfish that went in alone, were comprehensively slaughtered by AA fire from the ships and Luftwaffe fighters that ranged overhead, Adolf Galland himself flying among them. Swordfish were relieved of anti-warship duties after that, but they soldiered-on until the end of the war and the Mk. IV version, equipped with radar, antisubmarine weapons and (at long last for its crew) a canopy, was a formidable foe until the end of the u-boat war. Indeed, the Swordfish outlived two new aircraft types that were built to replace it.
I sum-up the Swordfish with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, for which the Japanese had carefully studied the RN's Swordfish attack on Taranto. As you mention, the Japanese were flying much more modern aircraft than the venerable Swordfish; I insist that's because the Japanese, though the best naval aviators in the world at the time, were insanely brave but weren't brave enough to fly Swordfish - and besides, with the Swordfish's slow top speed, if the Japanese had tried flying Swordfish over the vast distances of the Pacific they'd still be up there! 🤣
The Swordfish was the only plane that could take off in atrocious weather, be it the Atlantic or the Arctic, heavy winds, ship rocking about, icy conditions, and most importantly, at night. The British could conduct night operations as early as 1938 (HMS Glorious).
For those that may want to see one in person, Shearwater Aviation Museum in Dartmouth ,Nova Scotia , Canada has one on display.
About 45yrs ago, the publisher Orbis, did a monthly magazine called War Machine and it was there as a wideyed 9yr old I learnt about the Swordfish and the fate of the Bismarck. This channel is like the natural successor to that publication for me...
One of my most favourite Mega Projects yet!!!
Good example of matching the task to the capability of the tools available.
In 2013 I was in Southampton and while I was there visited the grave of RJ Mitchell of Spitfire design fame. The cemetery is almost on top of the airport and as I was standing at the grave I heard an unfamiliar aircraft going overhead. I left the grave and went into the open, raising my camera just in case. Overhead a white painted Swordfish came into view, complete with torpedo! It was amazing because I was in a place with so much Spitfire related history, but a Stringbag stole the spotlight. The one advantage that the Swordfish had in all of its many successes was dedication and courage of the flying crew, the skill of those who kept them flying, and the ships that mothered them and gave them a safe haven. They have not been forgotten.
It was an informative and wonderful historical coverage video about 🇬🇧 designed Sword fish aircraft, which gained a great role-playing to sinking German and Italian battleships during WW2. Swordfish aircraft's proved supermarcy of aircraft carriers' overall battleships . WW1 battleships glorious over.
When everyones bullets are designed to shear through metal, when you are made of wood and canvas you will have a odd advantage
This plane along with the De Haviland mosquito are criminally underrated, some of the best planes of the war
You also sight your AA guns to lead where you aim them slightly as aircraft are moving targets. This gives crap biplanes like the swordfish or the WW1 surplus bombers the 588th soviet night bombers used a slight edge as the the AA guns are sighted to hit things whose stall speed is higher than the max speed they can reach
@@vonfaustien3957 You just proved "Crap" is subjective...
And anti air guns had magnetic amo that would explode near metal planes. The flak
G'day,
The Swordfish is a
Biplane, with
Fabric covered Wings, Tail, &
Rear Fuselage...,
But the
Airframe is Metal.
The Royal Naval Fleet Air Arm gave up on Wooden Airframes in about 1930.
I can't recall if it was Aluminium, or Steel - but I think it was Steel Tubes & Stamped Sheetmetal (?).
Just(ifiably ?) sayin'.
Have a good one.
;-p
Ciao !
Goiring was obsessed with the mosquito
We🇩🇪 tried copying it but never got it right
After watching this video the other week I found, quite by coincidence, a book from 1959 on the Taranto raid which I've just started reading. It's an amazing aircraft and one that certainly deserves its place in history, along with its incredibly brave and effective crews of course.
OUTSTANDING! Reminds me of a few baseball pitchers who are almost un-hittable due to their extremely slow pitch.
TBH there's plenty more about the Stringbag that you've not even touched on. For instance, the Mk 3 version incorporated our most advanced centimetric radar. It blows my mind that an apparently antiqued design was in fact a cutting edge weapon delivery system that not only flew throughout the war but was still in production into 1944.
1:15 - Chapter 1 - Design & capabilities
3:05 - Mid roll ads
4:05 - Chapter 2 - Service history
7:00 - Chapter 3 - Sinking the bismarck
10:10 - Chapter 4 - The battle of taranto
13:05 - Chapter 5 - The historians
On the day, it’s the Man in the Box. An amazing design piloted by extraordinary aircrew that grew to love it. Led by the best the Fleet Air Arm produced
Good review Simon.
I've watched a documentary on the Bismarck. As Germany expecting dive bombers their anti aircraft guns could not get low enough to shooting at a slow moving biplane flying just above sea level.
Also it said that the captain eventually scuttled her after she was so critically damaged.
The Swordfish was indeed a loved plane by her crews and an example of not judging a book by its cover.
Merry Christmas. 🎄
The survivors from the Bismarck reported that the order to scuttle was given after the guns were disabled, how successfully it was carried out in the chaos is questionable. By the time the order was given Bismarck already had a serious list that the crew could no longer control by counterflooding and the ship was down by the stern, it was probably going to sink anyway. The Swordfish contributed 3 of (probably) 7 or 8 torpedo hits along with over 50 large shell hits on the Bismarck before she sank. Which was more than Bismarck was designed to withstand.
Logical people the Germans, presumably the need for anti-aircraft guns that fired downwards to attack aircraft flying below your ships deck never occurred to them.
A wonderful plane. Those crew had to have huge balls of steel to go up against those huge gun platforms.
They had to be good to work out when to start their take-off run from the carrier lest they go straight into a wave.
Or hit the back of the carrier as a wave heaved the ship up.
@@myparceltape1169 Something which thr North Atlantic is known to frequently
@@casualmilsim2459 We were taught at school, Plimsoll line WNA=Winter, North Atlantic.
And don't forget the fighter that flew cover for the Swordfish (including Matapan): the equally outclassed (at least on paper) Fairey Fulmar, which had the highest kill to loss ratio of any Fleet Arm Arm fighter of WW2. Sub-Lieutenant Stanley Orr, the Royal Navy's highest scoring ace with 17 victories, scored 12 of these in Fulmars.
The Fulmar was able to be so successful despite its many limitations thanks to the early adoption of radar aboard Royal Navy ships and the very efficient system of Fighter Direction used. Together these meant that Fulmars could consistently be in the right place to intercept incoming Italian and German raids.
Whoa, I didn’t know that about the Fulmar. I’ve heard mention of it (on Drachinifel’s naval history channel) but didn’t know if it was a particularly effective aircraft.
@@andrewp8284 ua-cam.com/video/jMmjDf42_ac/v-deo.html
@@GorgeDawes Early fighter direction was just a cruiser telling them where to go (e.g. HMS Sheffield with HMS Ark Royal).
@@andrewp8284 a proper channel.
Great video. My uncle was a navigator in the stringbag. He flew against the Bismark amongst other targets, sadly he is now gone and woukdn't talk about the war at all. I know his pilot was killed but that is about it.
Thank you for the video. The Swordfish was my first ever Matchbox model I built, the first of many
I had no idea. Simply awesome! Thank you megaprojects.
10:30 I always smile when Her Majesties Karel Doorman (1950's outfit) makes an appearance anywhere. 😆
These were bloody awesome! Sank more Axis shipping than anything else, as noted.
I’ve heard it said that the Swordfish’s canvas construction meant that some anti-aircraft shells would simply punch neat holes through it rather than exploding, as they would for a metal skinned plane. Not many planes can claim a service history spanning the entirety of WW2…
The Swordfish's glory owed more to the courage of its crews than anything else.
A video on the Mosquito would pair nicely with this. Instead of being slow, it was incredibly fast and built mostly out of wood rather than metal.
Can we please have the Sunderland flying boat and its work hunting submarines in the Atlantic and elsewhere? 😊❤❤❤😊
I loved this one. Wow the sawrdfish is insane.
@megaprojects 8:22 that is understatement, the Royal Navy didn't take it rather badly more they were enraged and became the whole mother lion who found her cubs slaughter, they were not going to stop until Bismarck was destroyed no matter what
Swordfish wasn't a "WWI throwback". It was so advanced from anything in WWI that there isn't even a fair comparison to be made.
Exactly, if anyone wants to see the differences they may want to compare a Fairy Swordfish with the EXISTING Torpedo Bomber of 1918, the Sopwith Cuckoo. The Swordfish is more advanced in every category.
A wonderful video. Thankyou.
The Glorious Stringbag!
Great video for a great plane.
The one singular negative incident, the 'Channel Dash', that has reflected on the Swordfish was mostly to do with the lack of intelligence and support from other branches (ie the fighter escort). A great piece of engeineering nonetheless
I feel like drawing a parallel between the Swordfish, and the A-10 Warthog.
While very different aircraft, they were both slow when compared to their contemporaries, and were both devastating to their heavily armored targets.
The A10 is on paper devastating to heavy armor, but in reality isn't as effective due to its very inaccurate Gau-8. It is able to carry a lot of missiles though, but their effectiveness is limited due to a subpar avionics package that was outdated before it even entered service.
@@logansmall5148GAU-8 is plenty accurate for its task, modern tanks are generally just tough enough to take 30mm cannon hits. APCs are significantly less likely to survive the Brrrrrt.
1:11 design and capabilities
4:01 service history
6:54 sinking the Bismarck
10:08 the battle of Taranto
13:00 the historians
🫡
My uncle worked on these during WW2 at a Fleet Air Arm (FAA) shore facility. He always had kind thins to say about them
A good friend was a Swordfish pilot in the Med in WW2 and once mentioned flying off HMAS Glorious during the defense of Malta. He said the Swordfish had the advantage of flying so slow that fire from BF109s went ahead of his nose.
While he never mentioned it to us, we were told at his funeral that he was one of the Swordfish pilots who launched torpedos at Bismarck.
I'm told that after his funeral, his ashes were taken by RAN helicopter and buried at sea off Sydney.
Excellent stuff bro
I’m just opened this video… as an Italian, this already hurt 😂
Imo it is worth mentioning that the Battle of Denmark Strait was a mission kill on Bismarck. It came at an extremely high cost with the loss of HMS Hood and so many lives but enough damage had been dealt that she was having cancel the break out into the Atlantic. When the Swordfish swooped in and took her rudder, she was trying to make her way back for repairs. I only mention because there are so many tellings of this action that make it sound like Bismarck effortlessly swatted Hood and wandered off over the horizon unscathed when that's not what happened. She sustained multiple hits and enough of her fuel had been either lost or contaminated that they couldn't carry on with her mission objective. It could even be argued that it was this that stopped Bismarck from getting away. It was Bismarck that served as decoy to allow Prinz Eugen to get away after all. Could have easily been the other way round if Bismarck had the fuel to carry on.
Not to take anything away from the Swordfish and their pilots. Their strike stopped Bismarck's run in it's tracks. There are even accounts of Swordfish being ordered very bluntly to "go away" when they could have gone in for follow up strikes. Royal Navy ships deffinately wanted revenge for Hood so there was no way they were letting flimsy little planes get the glory.
Pure love Simon
Please please please never stop ♥️
Saw one of these flying at Duxford. Seemed to just hang in the air. So stable
When I was a kid I had a plane phase and this was one of my more favorite planes... Completely because of the name. 😂
It was one of the first models in 1/72 that I built. Even rigged it with thread to live up to its nickname “stringbag”.
Perfect name for a torpedo bomber.
I remember seeing the Royal Navy Historic Flights's example flying at airshows and the gunner in the back standing up in the air flow saluting as it flew past. Classic.
Didn't Taranto change Naval Warfare forever? The doctrine of Battleships slugging it out became obsolete as just a few aircraft could potentially put a fleet out of action (eg Pearl Harbour just a year later) and from then on it became all about Aircraft Carriers?
A key part of the success of the Swordfish was the failure by Axis air forces to recognize & respond to the threat. They simply didn’t have anything that could engage the Swordfish in the air effectively, meaning it largely had free reign against shipping. Especially in night raids the Axis consistently failed to counter Allied air power. The Allied Mustang is another great example. Combining British engined with American deployment capacity & military logistics made for a higher flying, faster, and more heavily armed aircraft than anything the Japanese could ever deploy. The Swordfish was essentially in the same situation as the Axis did not have fleet air arms that they could deploy.
Fun fact, the specification the Stringbag was designed to was TSR2.
So at least one of them made it...
The reason few were shot down by enemy aircraft in dogfights is because of a particular maneuver that caused faster aircraft to overshoot the Swordfish. Charles Lamb (To War In A Stringbag) explained how while practicing the maneuver, the British aircraft assigned to play the enemy role, overshot so badly on its second pass that it crashed into the sea, killing the pilot.
A HE or flqk shell would indeed rip a swordfish apart, but like the hurricane, it's flimsy canvas made it almost immune to any contact fused ammunition which the German pilots and I'm sure German aa guns used. Also, flak was more of a zoning method as the altitudes were set before they were fired so slow swordfish would see a flak barrage and just fly round it lol. Also, please do an episode on the Warspite, Queen Elizabeth class battleship. It's impact was insane.
There is something missing in this celebration as deserved as it is.
That is Radar. Swordfish aircraft were equipped with it in due course and the RN with ship and aircraft equipped radar owned the night.
In terms of tonnage sunk it bested all the rest. And maybe something on their work from escort carriers deserves an expanded review.
Lastly a mate of mine quite a few years ago, whose father was a Swordfish pilot, explained that because they could fly so lowl and slow fighters attacking them experienced some problems. One of his father's colleagues, a friend in a squadron flying Grummans, was tasked with carrying out an attack on exercise and flew into the sea trying to line up for an attack. Oooops.
Ah, the Fairey Swordfish. Its only my second favourite aircraft of WW2. Only behind the De Havilland Mosquito 👌🏻
Edit: Yes, Megaprojects have obviously already done a video on the De Havilland Mosquito.
i love them both, glad to see a fellow Mosquito fan, i love most of the twin engine heavy fighters
Think of the Swordfish as a biplane doing helicopter stuff before helicopters made them fashionable. You wouldn't expect an Apache to do bombing runs like a B52 does, but it can loiter and put down very precise fire due to it's relatively slower approach speed. Same applies to the Swordfish, not just with the torpedoes against surface vessels but also with depth charges and/or rockets against submarines.
One correction it's true one direct hit from an explosive anti aircraft munition would destroy a Swordfish but the same is true of any carrier launched aircraft of the day however an impact fused round could pass completely through the Swordfish's body or wings without encountering enough resistance to detonate unless it hit a structural component making it strangely less vulnerable than a metal skinned aircraft. Just as you noted the enemies anti aircraft gun sights were calibrated to deal with much faster aircraft so too was their ammunition designed to deal with much sturdier targets.
The bi-plane configuration gave for good landing qualities on an Aircraft Carrier.
10:35 This photo is from 1957 just in case anyone thought it looked a little strange.
There's just something about the Stringbag that truly endears it.
man i love this little aircraft
There's always something to be said for the MVP. Minimum Viable Product. The tricky bit is getting something to be exactly what it needs to be, and no more, and NO LESS. I have no doubt many of the specifications of the Swordfish were extremely well considered, but I can't help but feel that Serendipity was leaning heavily on the scales.
When Napoleon was asked about a general he responded ...is he lucky ? the swordfish certainly was , Napoleon would have nodded in approval
P.S. during the Norway campaign it even was operated from a frozen lake with miserable support and still did good .
I do not agree. You see the problem is when people look at the Swordfish they assume it was designed to operate like other WWII Torpedo Bombers, mostly making daylight strikes. The Swordfish however was not designed to operate during the day, it was designed to operate AT NIGHT. Swordfish crews even before WWII were trained to take off, find and strike their target, then return to and land on their carrier, at night.
When you look at that at night part, some of the decisions about the Swordfish design start making a HELL of a lot more sense....
I had never heard of this aircraft until I read The Stringbags by Garth Ennis and P.J. Holden awhile back. Highly recommended for anyone who likes this video.
Simon, you should do a video on the Kingfisher planes. They are pretty neat
As someone below says.
We had one parked near us for the Normandy Commemorations. Some years ago.
Big .... yeah ... Big ! 😮
The old film and pictures just don't give any real indication of the size of the thing. Impressive !
We often think older means smaller and inferior. No this looks the part.
Simon, when are you going to do a MegaProjects video on the time travel machine? One obviously exists and you have access to it because at 5:30 you instanteously transported the WW2 Battle of Madagascar *10 years* into the future and extended the rule of the Axis Vichy France regime into the 1950s!
It's really hard to get your head around the fact that it's lack of speed made it harder to hit. I've always loved the Swordfish as an aircraft and now I know why.
I wonder how much inspiration the Taranto raid and it's success had on the Pearl Harbour attack, just under a year later.
The swordfish had a single forward firing .303 machine gun. Located starboard side engine compartment. Low and slow, gunners aboard ship had little training on something so low and slow. Despite the fabric covering that 45 ft wingspan it is true that light machinegun fire would pass through without critical damage.
One of my teachers at school PUB Adams (I hope those were his initials not his call sign) flew Swordfish in WW2. He told me that the reason they were so good was that the AA fire control could not cope with the incredibly slow speed of the planes and always missed in front. His squadron was slated to attack the Yamato but the US insisted that it be an all American affair. To his great relief.
another interesting part of the swordfish's success comes from its canvas construction. The contact fused HE shells from small caliber AA guns (30-40mm) that would be most likely to actually hit anything wouldn't detonate on the canvas and the canvas and wood construction didn't care about small holes. One shell exploding might kill the swordfish (or any other aircraft) but you could shoot it's wings full of holes without a single shell detonating.
There was virtually no wood in a Swordfish, its internal framing was all metal. Even the propeller was metal. On the wiki page for the swordfish it literally has a picture of the internals of an actual Swordfish wing and it is patently clear that it is all metal....
The P40 is weeping at the Swordfish greatness
Another advantage advantage of the slow speed and the biplane design was that they could fly very low. Sometimes they were so close to the water that enemy air defense guns couldn't aim at a low enough angle to hit them.
War in a Stringbag, by Charles Lamb tells it all. Lamb was the last pilot to take off from his carrier just before it was sunk, chronicled the Taranto attack, flew into Vichy North Africa and spent some time as a “guest “ of the Vichy French before they flipped sides. Lamb was one of those chaps who could say “I was there”.
It was probably case of the Royal Navy make the very best of what they had in the early years of the war. If they had had (say) the SBD Dauntless instead, no doubt that could have been used to devastating effect on the Bismarck or the Italian battleships in Taranto. They might not have penetrated the armoured decks of the more modern battleships, but making a mess of the superstructure above would have been enough to cripple the ship (as did the later Fairy Barracuda raid on the Tirpitz).
Truly the vehicle equivalent of “it’s so bad it’s good.”
Would you be willing to do a Mega Projects video about the development and flights of the Rutan Model 76 Voyager and the Virgin Global Flyer?
Similarly, could you do a video on the Gossamer Albatross and the history of human-powered flight?
0:28 Thats the HMS Barham
Pretty sure it wasn't the Swordfish 🛩
an episode on its torpedoes wouldve been a much more fitting thing and to call those a megaproject
Has there been a mega projects video on the Spitfire yet?
It was all very well for people to have favoured all metal designs and said they were modern tech et cetera, but that’s only an advantage if you have metal, if you have metal workers, if you have the supply chains and factories to support that. The thing with something made of wood, canvas and glue is that you can make it out of wood, canvas and glue.
You can make it using carpenters. You can train or obtain base level carpenters more easily than you can train metalworkers given the skill set of the contemporary population.
Yes, a master carpenter is a rare beast, but you don’t need a master carpenter . You just need competent. You need something that you can turn out in high numbers very quickly with very limited supply chains. High tech and high resource requiring equipment doesn’t fulfil that role. Which is another area in which equipment such as the swordfish absolute winners. a metal plane is no good if you’ve only got one or none of them. But you might have 100 swordfish and you could keep them going.
A wood and fabric biplane has only one big advantage: A higher lift component at slower speeds. Just what was needed to haul a big torpedo into the air from the deck of a small aircraft carrier or from a short runway.
Sinking the Bismarck was undoubtedly a team effort for the Royal Navy. But the Taranto raid was all carrier launched aircraft. A single aircraft carrier and a couple of waves of biplane torpedo bombers. And a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese undoubtedly took note.
@@jamesharmer9293 That's a historical fact.
The sinking of U-64 is one of the most ridiculous moments of the Swordfish's career. A floatplane launched from a battleship with some small bombs that required very specific conditions to achieve the success it did, divebombing at a speed so low that it might as well be hovering because of the amount of drag from the floats, and not even something that was planned, because it was just meant to do some spotting.
It was a very cunning plan, a dive bombing attack that took so long due to the slow speed. That half the crew of the target ship would have a nervous breakdown caused by long term stress. So that by the time the bomb was dropped they were incapable of evasive action.
As much as I love the Swordfish, I feel this video missed a trick by not covering the (disastrous) use of the Swordfish during the Channel Dash, which really illustrated how it's weaknesses could bite (fatally) in the wrong circumstances and with rushed or bad planning.
Sadly the Swordfishes attacked without fighter cover due to various reasons.
In fairness, I don't think more advanced aircraft such as Grumman Avengers would have done particularly well against organised land fighter plane opposition as the Germans had arranged during the Channel dash.
@@philiphumphrey1548 Certainly not without fighter cover to match the German fighters.
@@geoffreypiltz271 People are forgetting something about the Swordfish, something I see time and time again in discussions such as these.
The Fairey Swordfish was NOT designed to operate during the Day, it was designed as a NIGHT Torpedo Bomber. The Royal Navy was well aware of the issue of slower bombers being cut to pieces by Fighters, and figured the best way around that was to operate at Night. Most of the design decisions that went into the Swordfish were entirely based around that premise, that the aircraft had to take off, find its target, strike that target, find its carrier, then land on that carrier, AT NIGHT.....
Now when you look at the characteristics of the Swordfish with that criteria in mind some of the decisions made in its design suddenly start making a LOT more sense....
@@alganhar1 Can you give a reference for that information? Night carrier operations were highly dangerous, especially in the 1930's.
Im sure someone else will mention. But one of the reasons it was good is the wood and canvas design saved valued metals which where in short supply
No wood in a Swordfish, Simon got that wrong. Steel tube frame.
it was nicknamed the stringbag for good reason, apparently there was nothing it couldn't carry, which along with its brace of wires made it look like the string bags wives used to use when shopping. the swordfish could carry an impressive load, include once a tug tractor off a carrier. its saddest story was when the sharnhorst did the channel dash with other german ships. a flight of swordfish where called upon to act if the ships sailed with a promise of spitfire cover to protect from the luftwaffe. the ships sailed and a group of six i think it was swordfish scrambled. but for some reason the spitfires never appeared. the flight leader regardless made the decision to press on as it was a rare opportunity to get at the ships. sadly though its very antiquation worked against it and the captain of one of the german ships commented that they were the bravest men he had ever seen as the pilots knew it was suicidal but pressed the attack anyway and all were shot down.
One common mistake repeated about the Swordfish is that it was kept in production in favour of its replacement the Albacore. The Albacore was certainly the better aircraft and the only reason the Swordfish outlived it was because Fairey had farmed out Swordfish production to poor old struggling Blackburn, who were now committed to carrying on. Fairey only stopped the Albacore because they were moving to the Barracuda. The Swordfish was still useful, especially from the smaller escort carriers and if the interruption to production at Blackburn had been possible Blackburn would have certainly made Albacores instead. By the way, you made great emphasis on the "big torpedo" but my books say it carried the 18" torpedo which was smaller than both the 21" ship and sub torpedo and the 22" that the Avenger carried..?
( I see it sunk Barham apparently!)
Simon forgot to mention 450 000 tons of shiping sunk from Malta which was huge. Its second life happened because it could do a second job very well which was flying off small carriers in anti submarine duty. Not many submarines sunk but all it had to do was keep them away from the convoy
The claim that they sunk more Axis shipping then any other aircraft but which aircraft sank the most shipping.
What even more amazing about the Swordfish is the fact that it outlived the plane that suppose to replace it the Fairy Albacore.
7:31 Prince what ugen, uschen.. 😂
Eugen Oigen
You didn't even try🇩🇪😢
Simon is always allowed to mispronounce anything, thems the rules.
well said