Britain Between the Wars, pt 4 - 004 Index.jpg (1/1)

hielan' laddie wrote in
:

On Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:13:46 -0500, HEMI-Powered wrote
(in article ):

Mitchell Holman added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...


Attachment decoded: 004 Index.jpg
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Nice series you've been posting, Mitchell. Please refresh my memory,
what was the name of the bi-wing torpedo bomber the Brits used to

The Fairey Swordfish. 24 Swordfish launched from ARK ROYAL and
VICTORIOUS. The got three hits, two of which were minor, but the third
jammed the rudder and allowed the Home Fleet (dreadnoughts KING GEORGE
V and RODNEY plus several British cruisers and British and Polish
destroyers) to catch and engage.

Notable events:

Despite what is shown in the movie _Sink the Bismarck!_ no Swordfish
were shot down; several were damaged, one beyond economic repair, and
one was lost on the way back to the carriers, but none fell to AAA,
despite the fact that they were going up against the best
anti-aircraft guns afloat at the time. Persistent rumour has it that
the AAA fire-control tables (think very large, mechanical, computers)
on BISMARCK could not properly aim the 105-mm twin gun turrets at
aircraft flying slower than 150 knots. As the maximum speed of a
Swordfish was 120 knots... Certainly those same 105-mm guns, fired
both from shipboard and from land positions, were extremely effective
against both day and night bombers which moved at speeds greater than
150 knots... The Swordfish which were damaged took damage from light,
hand-aimed, automatic cannon, 20-mm and 37-mm, not the 105s.

All of BISMARCK's main battery turrets (and the 150-mm secondary
turrets, and the 105-mm AAA) were knocked out comparatively early in
the fight, apparently by KING GEORGE V's 14" guns as RODNEY's shells
tended to detonate early, but the ship proved remarkably hard to sink.
The cruiser DORSETSHIRE and five TRIBAL destroyers, plus a Polish
destroyer, went in to torpedo the BISMARCK at roughly the same time as
when the order was given to scuttle the ship. German sources therefor
tend to report that the ship was scuttled, not sunk; British sources
say that it was torpedoed and sunk, not scuttled. It is absolutely
certain that BISMARCK would not have survived torpedo hits from that
many ships and that it would have been difficult to miss, given the
facts that BISMARCK's guns were out of action and the ship was dead in
the water and heavily afire.

As a direct result of BISMARCK running loose in the North Atlantic,
and the threat of TIRPITZ doing the same, Combined Operations launched
Operation Chariot, the Commando raid at St Nazaire, which destroyed
the 'NORMANDIE' dock, the only drydock outside of Germany available to
the Germans and big enough to handle TIRPITZ.


And they did it with an American ship.........