DBWI TSR1 ( Fairey Swordfish) not cancelled and served in WW2

Looking through the archives of Fairey aircraft I have discovered a design for a Torpedo Spotter Reconnaissance Aircraft . Their is a footnote that refers to potential names . So for ease of reference lets call it the Swordfish . It was a design to meet the needs of the Greek Naval Air Service . However their interest waned . The Royal Navy showed an interest but the prototype crashed . Factions inside Fairey decided that biplanes were a thing of the past and instead we saw the Fairey Barracuda which first flew in late 1937

Would a slow , biplane torpedo bomber have been of any use in WW 2 or was it an inter war design that came too late.
 
A slow biplane of any sort, no matter the role, had no business on the fleet carriers that fought in WW2. But, if we forget about it being a torpedo bomber, it might still have a role to play. Remember that the Atlantic convoys suffered huge losses from U-boats, often because they had no air cover to spot U-boats and force them to submerge. A slow biplane, capable of carrying a few depth charges, might have been able to fly off the decks of specially modified tankers or cargo ships, effectively producing a 'merchant aircraft carrier'. This could have been a huge help in defending convoys.

So yes, I think the design could have been useful. You'd have to be mad to use them as front-line torpedo bombers, of course, but there would still have been some niche roles for them.
 
The odd thing about torpedo bombers is that, until right towards the end of the war, they all had to fly slow and low on their attack runs because that was what the torpedo dictated.

This meant that they all took murderous losses when faced with fighters directed by a competent control system - just look at what happened to the Barracudas on the Channel Dash! Similarly, against a target without air cover, they still have the same attack profile, and so are similarly vulnerable to AA fire.

So what are the differences? Range, and the cruise speed to a target? So I'm going to risk saying that the differences might somewhat less than expected.
 
Look what happened to the barracudas that attacked the Bismarck half was shot down and she made it into brest. No lessons were learned from the debarkal.
 
This Swordfish design did have 5-6 hours endurance so patrolling over a convoy would have been a natural fit. Could the Allies spare the tanker hulls for these "MAC" ships ?

They might have been able to use those RP 3 rockets that the Douglas Sea Mink (Devestator) used on the Escort Carriers
 
The planned 60 gallon in cockpit (in lieu of the TAG) overload tank and/or the torpedo crutch 69 gallon overload tank would have extended her range and duration noticeably. Still room for a couple of 500 pounders on the wings with the whole 129 gallon set.
 
Why would they go with the Fairey? The Blackburn Shark was more advanced and had better performance. Once they got rid of the Tiger engine and put in the Perseus it was a very good machine for its day, and the Mk3 with the enclosed cockpits was only a little inferior to the American monoplane Devastator. The obsolete before it flew TSR would just have delayed the design of the Barracuda.
 
I know, but I opted for the Perseus to have the same engine as the Skua. It simplifies the provision of spares on the carriers.
 
Look what happened to the barracudas that attacked the Bismarck half was shot down and she made it into brest. No lessons were learned from the debarkal.
OOC: Why would a more advanced torpedo bomber be less effective against Bismarck when she was already limping from battle damage sustained in the Denmark Strait? Also, what the hell is a debarkal?:confused:
 
The Blackburn Shark did sterling service it's true and there is little point replacing one obsolescent biplane with one of possibly poorer performance (cough albacore cough). Where the Shark excelled was in anti shipping strikes from Malta .While they were very vulnerable , they were easier to keep flying than a modern aircraft would have been and operating at night they achieved notable successes . The achievements of Eeyore, Pooh , Tigger , Wol, Piglet and Kanga are rightly remembered by the Maltese to this day . The 100 acre memorial wood on Gozo is well worth a visit.
 
OOC: Why would a more advanced torpedo bomber be less effective against Bismarck when she was already limping from battle damage sustained in the Denmark Strait? Also, what the hell is a debarkal?:confused:
There is a theory that the Bismarck's AA director couldn't track aircraft as slow as the Swordfish. I'm not sure I believe it myself.

He means Debacle, a disaster or fiasco.
 
Sea Mink? Eeyore, Pooh and Tigger? My god, what an evil, evil man you are...Tony like...

This Swordfish design did have 5-6 hours endurance so patrolling over a convoy would have been a natural fit. Could the Allies spare the tanker hulls for these "MAC" ships ?

They might have been able to use those RP 3 rockets that the Douglas Sea Mink (Devestator) used on the Escort Carriers

The Blackburn Shark did sterling service it's true and there is little point replacing one obsolescent biplane with one of possibly poorer performance (cough albacore cough). Where the Shark excelled was in anti shipping strikes from Malta .While they were very vulnerable , they were easier to keep flying than a modern aircraft would have been and operating at night they achieved notable successes . The achievements of Eeyore, Pooh , Tigger , Wol, Piglet and Kanga are rightly remembered by the Maltese to this day . The 100 acre memorial wood on Gozo is well worth a visit.

P.S. You forgot Sleepy, Grumpy and Doc...
 
Of course their was a scramble to find suitable aircraft that might not have happened if we'd had the Swordfish . We'd probably have avoided the Brewster SB2A . This was a single-engined mid-wing monoplane scout/bomber aircraft built for the United States Navy during the early 1940s which was licence built by Blackburn but was quickly relegated to second line duties and saw a very short production run.
 
To be fair the Brewster was only ever meant to be insurance against the failure of the Firefly fighter bomber, and the British built ones were more reliable than the ones built by Brewster.
 
To be fair the Brewster was only ever meant to be insurance against the failure of the Firefly fighter bomber, and the British built ones were more reliable than the ones built by Brewster.

It was luck that they were able to get the Consolidated SeaWolf in production at Fairey's Stockport factory. Consolidated had a good design but had no production space, and had a 70 mph better speed and twice the range of the troubled Barracuda , and twice the bomb load of the equally troubled Bermuda from Brewster
 
I still think they should have kept the American designation. Blackburn Buccaneer has a certain ring to it , I don't know why.
 
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