Catapult launched torpedo or strike aircraft

German U-boat U-64 was sunk in the Herjangsfjord near Narvik, Norway, in approximate position 68°29'N, 17°30'E, by a bomb from Swordfish aircraft L 9767 carried on the British battleship HMS Warspite (Capt. V.A.C. Crutchley, VC, DSC, RN).

Most shipboard aircraft that were catapult launched seemed to have been used for reconnaissance and artillery spotting with very occasionally the odd bomb like the swordfish from HMS Warspite carried.

What if they were given more of a punch .

I imagine that torpedoes are a bit of a,stretch due to weight restrictions and how catapults generally worked.

So what I'm thinking is to mount RP 3 on the spotter aircraft so giving them an extra punch

Or were they more valuable in a gun spotting than strike role

Would rocket armed Walrus have been unfeasible.
 

nastle

Banned
German U-boat U-64 was sunk in the Herjangsfjord near Narvik, Norway, in approximate position 68°29'N, 17°30'E, by a bomb from Swordfish aircraft L 9767 carried on the British battleship HMS Warspite (Capt. V.A.C. Crutchley, VC, DSC, RN).

Most shipboard aircraft that were catapult launched seemed to have been used for reconnaissance and artillery spotting with very occasionally the odd bomb like the swordfish from HMS Warspite carried.

What if they were given more of a punch .

I imagine that torpedoes are a bit of a,stretch due to weight restrictions and how catapults generally worked.

So what I'm thinking is to mount RP 3 on the spotter aircraft so giving them an extra punch

Or were they more valuable in a gun spotting than strike role

Would rocket armed Walrus have been unfeasible.

It can score some lucky shots against particular enemy ships but there will be too few such planes to make a big difference
 
German U-boat U-64 was sunk in the Herjangsfjord near Narvik, Norway, in approximate position 68°29'N, 17°30'E, by a bomb from Swordfish aircraft L 9767 carried on the British battleship HMS Warspite (Capt. V.A.C. Crutchley, VC, DSC, RN).

Most shipboard aircraft that were catapult launched seemed to have been used for reconnaissance and artillery spotting with very occasionally the odd bomb like the swordfish from HMS Warspite carried.

What if they were given more of a punch .

I imagine that torpedoes are a bit of a,stretch due to weight restrictions and how catapults generally worked.

So what I'm thinking is to mount RP 3 on the spotter aircraft so giving them an extra punch

Or were they more valuable in a gun spotting than strike role

Would rocket armed Walrus have been unfeasible.

RP 3 was not available till later in the war - but if a plane can carry bombs or Depth charges then it can probably carry rockets - so feasible yes - but by the time it was you have escort carriers and MAC ships etc that carry aircraft that can do the job better and also...sorry...Amphibians started being removed from Cruisers and Battleships because they were no longer required and posed a fire risk in combat.
 
Thank you .

So if you could have earlier RP3 s before the introduction of escort carriers and the phasing out of catapult launched aircraft on cruisers and battleships.

Rockets seem fairly simple technologies in fact the Congreve rocket was used by the British Army in 1804.

Ok so they had rockets on aircrafts during WW 1

The first use of rockets fired from aircraft was during World War I. The "Unrotated Projectiles" were Le Prieur rockets which were mounted on the interplane struts of Nieuport fighters. These were used to attack observation balloons and were reasonably successful. Sopwith Baby and Pup and Home Defence B.E.2 fighters also carried rockets.[1] With the end of the war, the Royal Air Force, intent on retrenching, forgot about the potential uses for rockets fired from aircraft. The British Army, however, did see a use for rockets against low-flying aircraft; from late 1940 parts of Britain were defended by increasing numbers of "Z-Batteries" 2-inch (51 mm) rockets supplementing the conventional anti-aircraft guns.[1][2]

Other branches of the service were looking at them in the 1930s so a slightly earlier Rp 3 seems within the realms of possibility if the RAF had continued their interest or the Navy had involved the FAA in their project rather than trying to construct the world's most dangerous AA system for its user.


The solid-fuel 3 inch (76 mm) rocket used by the Z Batteries was known as the UP-3 and had been developed in the late 1930s by the Projectile Development Establishment at Fort Halstead in Kent under the direction of Alwyn Crow[1] and was related to the Royal Navy's 7 inch (178 mm) Unrotated Projectile. The naval weapon had been enthusiastically backed by Winston Churchill when he was First Lord of the Admiralty at the outbreak of war. By June 1940, Churchill was Prime Minister and he requested "large supplies of [rocket] projectors" for the anti-aircraft defence of the mainland. The development of all British rockets was under the control of Professor F A Lindemann and he enthusiastically backed Churchill's suggestion. The naval weapon was intended to bring down low flying aircraft with a trailing wire to the end of which was attached an explosive mine; however, the land based system was intended to have a high explosive warhead, detonated by a specially designed photoelectric proximity fuse. The rocket itself was propelled by special solvent-free cordite, which was initially manufactured at Bishopton in Scotland; in December 1940, a new propellant factory was commissioned at Ranskill, which was in production by the start of 1942.[2] The metal working firm G. A. Harvey and Co of Greenwich was given the contract to manufacture the rocket bodies and over 1,000 had been made by September 1940.[3]

In October 1940, an experimental Z Battery became operational at Cardiff in South Wales under the command of Major Duncan Sandys, Churchill's son-in-law. Trials against a radio controlled Queen Bee target aircraft were successful, although the Director of Artillery at the Ministry of Supply suspected that the results were "fixed". Despite this Churchill and Lindemann drove the project forward, and by 1942, 2.4 million rockets were being produced annually.[4]
 
It existed: the entire reason the Swordfish was designed the way it was was to carry a torpedo off a battleship. The capability was there, just never used - partly because it was batshit crazy and not particularly helpful.

Incidentally, some navies carried floatplane fighters on their battleships and cruisers, the better to go out and shoot down the other guy's spotters.
 
It turns out that to have a successful torpedo attack on a capital ship, they need to mount the attack with large number of planes. One or two just won't be effective. It requires a dozen or so to make a textbook perfect attack to have a significant chance of actually scoring a hit. And the procedure of launching an aircraft from the battleship or cruiser is complicated and time consuming that in the event, it won't be possible to mount a significant enough strike. The planes were there just for spotting purposes and recon. Once they have a gun-laying radar and virtually omnipresent carriers, those planes quickly lose their function.
 
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