FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1943
1943 - 0306.PDF
FLIGHT Thirty-fourth of the New Recognition Series Aircraft Types and FAIREY SWORDFISH AGREAT deal has been said lately about improvingthe equipment of the Fleet Air Arm by supplying• it with rather more up-to-date aircraft than some of the types still in service. Admittedly it now has little to complain about where its fighter aircraft are. concerned, what with Seafixes, Sea Hurricanes and Martlets, but when it comes to the torpedo department, it is something of a mystery to many people why such obsolete types as the Fairey Swordfish are still in operational service. But perhaps the F.A.A. pilots and air crews can feel encouraged by the recent debate in the House of Lords in which Lord Winster championed their cause and was backed up by Lord Trenchard and Lord Keyes. The "Stringbag," as it is nicknamed in the Service, is actually of 1934 vintage, and the prototype appeared as a replacement for the Baffin. But it was 1937 before the first Swordfish reached the T.S.R. squadrons on the aircraft carriers. But in spite of its obsolete design, the Swordfish has done some very fine work during the present war, and many of them are, as has been said, still giving reliable, if limited, service. It was Swordfish, for example, which covered themselves with glory in the Taranto victory—or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it was the pilots and crews of these antique biplanes who played the heroic part in this action. Nor will our readers have for- gotten the desperate valour of the men who took off in six Swordfish to try to torpedo the German warships, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prince Eugen, escaping up the Channel from Brest under an umbrella of swarms of modern fighters ; such men deserve the latest and best machines their country's engineers can devise. Powered by a Bristol Pegasus HIM 3 nine-cylinder air- cooled radial engine of 750 h.p., the Swordfish has a top speed of 141 m.p.h. at sea-level or 154 m.p.h. at 7,000ft. Its armament is about on a par with its performance, and comprises a synchronised Vickers machine gun firing through the airscrew disc and a free Lewis gun in the back of the rear cockpit. One i8in. torpedo or an alternative load of bombs is carried. The wheels of the unfaired fixed undercarriage are interchangeable with twin floats, but the landplane version is the more common. UNEQUALSPAN LARGE FIXED UNFAIRED.UNDERCARRIAGE SHORTCOWLING DIMENSIONS Span Length (landplane) Length (seaplane) Wing area OF SWORDFISH .. 45ft. 6in. .. 36ft. 4\n. .. 40ft. II in. .. 542 sq. ft. IRREGULARTAILPLANE FLOATPLANEVERSION WINGS OFUNEQUAL AREA STRUTBRACING CUT-AWAYCENTRE SECTION TOP WINGBACKSWEPT
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
