From Bristol Bulldog to Spitfire, Handley Page Heyford to Lancaster - the revolution in aircraft design in the late 1930s

[Ozexpatriate]

10 hours ago, drmditch said:

If I have followed this thread correctly, no-one yet seems to have mentioned the development of Naval aircraft, both land/coastal-based and those capable of being flown-off and recovered on/by ships.

...

the RN suffered in 1918 by the removal of it's Air Arm from Admiralty control,

British naval aircraft went through the same sort of contortions from biplanes to monocoque designs as the RAF, though you could argue the transition was delayed. By 1945 some carriers were equipped with Seafires, but there might have been more Vought F4U Corsairs on RN carriers at that time - certainly in the British Pacific Fleet. The Fleet Air Arm operated 2,012 Corsairs.

 

The latter was covered, including oblique references to RAF Coastal Command and 'bomber' Harris in a related thread.

 

RAF Coastal command flew a large number of Consolidated PBY Catalinas* and B-24 Liberators** - many equipped with British RADAR.

 

* 602 according to the RAF Museum

** A substantial fraction of the 1,900 - 2,100 in the RAF, including the 20 Liberator I

 

10 hours ago, drmditch said:

** Could the Sunderland have been developed further?

No. It was a developmental dead-end. The Martin Mars is an example of a next-generation long-range, four piston engined, maritime aircraft. Too late for the war, it didn't have an application in the jet age. Introduced in 1943 it was retired from the USN in 1956.

 

EDIT:
Martin would try to build a jet-powered flying boat with the P6M SeaMaster. It was not a success.

 

Edited March 6, 2023 by Ozexpatriate
links

[jjb1970]

Conventional wisdom is that the FAA went into WW2 hobbled by their time as part of the RAF, during which naval aviation was seen as at best a sideshow. The aircraft carriers were good ships, maybe not the best carriers in the world but with good aircraft they were fine.

 

Things weren't helped by an RN view that naval fighters should carry an observer. The Fairey Fulmar in its own way was a modern aircraft with an excellent engine, but woefully inadequate as a fighter. The less said about the Blackburn Roc the better, the Skua was a little better but still rather mediocre and the British never really warmed to dive bombing in the way the US, Germany and Japan did. The Swordfish was an anachronism which gave superb service, but much of its service was as an ASW aircraft rather than a torpedo bomber. It's qualities of ruggedness and capability to fly off small flight decks was ideal for the escort carriers and keeping U-boats under.

 

Hawker and Supermarine developed navalised versions of the Hurricane and Spitfire, but both suffered short range for naval use and while the Seafire remained an outstanding fighter once airborne right up until the end of the war (and after) its landing gear wasn't ideal for carrier operation and losses to flight deck incidents appear to have been high.

 

The Fairey Barracuda was a decent bomber/torpedo bomber and the Firefly became an excellent ASW aircraft but the FF really relied on the US for fighter, and the Wildcat, Hellcat and Corsair gave superb service.

 

Amphibians have been having a bit of a renaissance recently, Japan put the ShinMaywa  US-1 back into production as the upgraded US-2, the Chinese AVIC AG600 is in an advanced stage of development and Beriev of Russia has their A-42 and Be-200 jet powered amphibians. The US is working on a scheme to attach floats to the C-130J.

[drmditch]

3 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

The Swordfish was an anachronism which gave superb service, but much of its service was as an ASW aircraft rather than a torpedo bomber. It's qualities of ruggedness and capability to fly off small flight decks was ideal for the escort carriers and keeping U-boats under.

 

Indeed so. But wasn't it the Swordfish that made the first large-scale airborne torpedo attack on a modern fleet in harbour? (Taranto, in November 1940)

Edited March 7, 2023 by drmditch

[whart57]

Did the Royal Navy of the 1930s envisage a war in which land-based and carrier-based air forces would clash? The Americans planned for a possible war with Japan and that meant defending ships from land-based bombers and escorting carrier-borne bombers to land targets as much carrier versus carrier battles. The Royal Navy on the other hand considered the carrier borne torpedo bomber as an extension to the range of the battleships' heavy guns, to be operated way out on the ocean. Since none of Britain's potential enemies had carriers there was a limited need for fighters. When war came of course it turned out differently.

 

The bigger shortcoming was the failure to see the need for long endurance bombers to give air cover for the convoys. Germany had used U-boats successfully in World War One and was building loads again in the late 1930s. However the Avro Ansons of Coastal Command had neither the range nor the carrying capacity to provide effective air cover and it wasn't until the American Liberator bomber came along in 1943 that the "air gap" in mid-Atlantic was closed.

[OnTheBranchline]

7 hours ago, drmditch said:

Indeed so. But wasn't it the Swordfish that made the first large-scale airborne torpedo attack on a modern fleet in harbour? (Taranto, in November 1940)

 

The hunt for bismarck and Taranto flattered the Swordfish a bit - on the one hand, the anti-aircraft fire control on the Bismarck couldn't match the slowness of the Swordfish and on the other hand, any plane would have done well against a sitting duck fleet at Taranto. 

 

Compared to the Channel Dash with proper air cover, the Swordfish did way worse. 

[Ozexpatriate]

18 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

Amphibians have been having a bit of a renaissance recently, Japan put the ShinMaywa  US-1 back into production as the upgraded US-2, the Chinese AVIC AG600 is in an advanced stage of development and Beriev of Russia has their A-42 and Be-200 jet powered amphibians. The US is working on a scheme to attach floats to the C-130J.

I like the 'romance' of such craft but one wonders (other than sea rescue, and helicopters are good at that) what the operational mission profile of flying boats makes them more useful than land or carrier-based craft.

 

Originally their advantage was related to operating globally without runways, but there are lots of operational constraints and with the hull requirements for landing in water, tend to be heavier relative to load capacity.

 

Rough water, having to tender out to the boat or a taxiing to a jetty are all awkward operationally for water loading and unloading.

 

Truly amphibious operations* - where the aircraft taxis out of the water - need very specialized boat ramps. Less real estate than an airstrip but still need a lot of tide-resistant infrastructure.

 

* Separate from water takeoff/ground landing.

[jjb1970]

The RN saw Japan as a possible opponent in the inter-war period, hence building the great naval base of Singapore and providing it with 15" guns to defend it against the Japanese fleet along with smaller coastal defence fortresses and batteries. And the IJN was known to have a highly developed naval aviation capability.

 

The carriers were deployed in home and Mediterranean waters where the RN was well aware they'd be within range of land based aircraft.

 

The Fairey Fulmar was built as a fleet air defence fighter, it was probably adequate to defend against unescorted bombers, strike and reconnaissance aircraft, though it was outclassed by German and Japanese fighters.

[jjb1970]

2 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

I like the 'romance' of such craft but one wonders (other than sea rescue, and helicopters are good at that) what the operational mission profile of flying boats makes them more useful than land or carrier-based craft.

 

Originally their advantage was related to operating globally without runways, but there are lots of operational constraints and with the hull requirements for landing in water, tend to be heavier relative to load capacity.

 

Rough water, having to tender out to the boat or a taxiing to a jetty are all awkward operationally for water loading and unloading.

 

Truly amphibious operations* - where the aircraft taxis out of the water - need very specialized boat ramps. Less real estate than an airstrip but still need a lot of tide-resistant infrastructure.

 

* Separate from water takeoff/ground landing.

 

The odd one is the program to fit floats to the C-130J.

 

I can see niche military and SAR roles for which long range amphibians are still very useful, as well as smaller firefighting aircraft like the CL-415.

 

It's harder to see why you'd fit floats on a cargo lifter, one of which main attributes is a large drive on/off cargo deck accessed via a rear loading ramp. I tend to think that if the USAF wants or needs amphibians it'd be lower risk to buy some ShinMaywa US-2s.

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

The carriers were deployed in home and Mediterranean waters where the RN was well aware they'd be within range of land based aircraft.

Largely true until late 1944, when a very large (by RN standards) contingent of carriers was included in the British Pacific Fleet.

 

Before that however, HMS Indomitable was sent to Singapore in 1941, but was too late by the time it got there to support Force Z.

 

HMS Indomitable and HMS Formidable were part of Somerville's "Force A" and HMS Hermes was in the slower "Force B" in the (unsuccessful) RN operations against the IJN Indian Ocean Raid in April 1942.

 

The IJN was unsuccessful in finding Force A, though the IJN carriers in the raid were spotted multiple times by British aircraft and unsuccessfully attacked by unescorted, land-based RAF Bristol Blenheim bombers (despite the Blenheims achieving total surprise.).

 

Hermes was evacuated (without aircraft) from Trincomalee when the Japanese raid became apparent but it was spotted and sunk, despite trying to return to the cover of land-based aircraft. Six Fairey Fulmar II fighters were no match for 85 Aichi D3A dive bombers, escorted by nine Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters.

 

Edited March 8, 2023 by Ozexpatriate

[jjb1970]

My comment on carriers wasn't to infer they'd operated exclusively in home waters and the Medi, but rather that they had been assigned to operate in areas where exposure to shore based air attack was all but unavoidable. 

 

Though it is also true that the Japanese placed much more emphasis on range for their aircraft than European powers, so in the Asia - Pacific theatres carriers were within strike range at greater distances from land than in Europe. The German AF had some very long range aircraft like the Condor, but in trivial numbers, most of their attack aircraft were tactical bombers like the He111 and Ju88 and their fighter escorts had very short range for naval operations (which was also true of the Spitfire and Hurricane).

[JeremyC]

Some interesting information on RN carrier thinking around WW2:

https://www.armouredcarriers.com

[Flying Pig]

18 hours ago, OnTheBranchline said:

Compared to the Channel Dash with proper air cover, the Swordfish did way worse. 

 

How well did unescorted torpedo bombers do in general against targets with fighter cover?

[whart57]

On 08/03/2023 at 04:18, jjb1970 said:

The RN saw Japan as a possible opponent in the inter-war period, hence building the great naval base of Singapore and providing it with 15" guns to defend it against the Japanese fleet along with smaller coastal defence fortresses and batteries. And the IJN was known to have a highly developed naval aviation capability.

 

The RAF were also supposed to provide Singapore with air cover, but too few Hurricanes and absolutely no Spitfires were assigned to the Far East until well on into the war. In the Far East the British (and Dutch) were defending territory, unlike the Americans who went on the attack.

 

On 08/03/2023 at 04:18, jjb1970 said:

The carriers were deployed in home and Mediterranean waters where the RN was well aware they'd be within range of land based aircraft.

 

However the French army was supposed to keep the Germans well back from the North Sea and Channel coasts. The war that actually came was different from the one planned for. In the 1930s German naval building was concentrating on submarines and commerce raiding surface ships, varying from heavy cruisers through "pocket battleships" to fully fledged battleships like the Bismarck. These were all built with enough speed to evade the Royal Navy's own battleships and the purpose of the RN carriers was to find and disable these German ships way out in the Atlantic with the main battleships delivering the final blow. As happened in the actions to locate and destroy the Bismarck.

 

On 08/03/2023 at 04:18, jjb1970 said:

 

The Fairey Fulmar was built as a fleet air defence fighter, it was probably adequate to defend against unescorted bombers, strike and reconnaissance aircraft, though it was outclassed by German and Japanese fighters.

 

However in the Med the main enemy was the Italian air force, who weren't that well equipped.

[OnTheBranchline]

There was a planned proper Seafire before it was decided that the RAF needed all the Merlin engines it could get it’s hands on. 

[durham light infantry]

22 hours ago, OnTheBranchline said:

There was a planned proper Seafire before it was decided that the RAF needed all the Merlin engines it could get it’s hands on. 

 

The type 338 to a revised specification N.8/39 with a Griffon engine. Rejected at a conference on the 5th January 1940 in favour of the Fairey Fulmar, "on the basis that the Spitfire's view for deck landing was judged to be poor".