Just to note that your Historical Consultant, Yuriy Kruchkov, is a bit off at 14:32. The reason for the British R&D lag in naval aviation was not the Admiralty but the Air Ministry, who had total control of the Fleet Air Arm from 1924 to May 1939 when the Admiralty took direct control over the FAA. Consequently the FAA was competing for resources with other branches of the Royal Air Force during the period of modernisation and re-armament, and the results of that are well known. I can't provide a source, but I recall that land-based aircraft would provide modern fighter coverage to the Fleet as all action was expected to take place near land bases. A bureaucratic handicap that no other nation had to endure. When the war did start it was a case of making do with what they had, however obsolete.
That seems to be a recurring theme with British naval aviation. When the Invincible class were built in the 70's they were classed as 'Through deck cruisers'. Fortunately sense prevailed and the Sea Harrier was developed.
My late Uncle was in the Fleet Air Arm in WW2. He was an electrician working on Swordfish aircraft. When they fixed one they had to go up on a test flight with the pilot. One way of ensuring they did a good job.
no, it wasn't the swordfish was a 1930s era Biplane utilizing a powerplant far more powerful than anything available to the engineers in the 1920s no different than any other navy at the time. The UK, US, and Japan utilized 1930s era biplanes until the mid to late 1930s its important to note the era from 1935-1950 was some of the fastest eras of aviation development with planes being made obsolelescent months after they enter service
Just think of what the brave British Naval flight crews of the Swordfish could have achieved if that had been given modern up to date aircraft, and not open cockpit bi-plains with fixed landing gear. And the poor Westland Wyvern was developed at a time when prop-fighters were a thing of the past and no one was dropping torpedoes from fixed wing aircraft anymore. What bunch of "Desk Joke" Admirals would send men out to fight in outdated equipment like this?
I really enjoy the naval legends series. Especially something like this one where they go through the history of some aspect of the navies of the world.. be it aviation, gunnery, or whatever else. The ships specific ones are great too. Especially when they go into the history of why that ship came to be, what factors and historical events influenced its design.
Ely, Eugene Burton was the first. Ely joined the Curtiss Exhibition Team and performed successful exhibition flights at numerous events. In 1910, made the first successful unassisted airplane takeoff from the wooden deck of the USS Birmingham. In 1911 he made the first successful airplane landing on the USS Pennsylvania, the first ship to be equipped with a landing deck and arresting system.
Since this new WG vid is about British naval aviation, I get this feeling a premium HMS Ark Royal, or HMS Furious is in our future. I wonder what British CVs and their load outs will be like?
Well, you’re looking at Swordfish, Fulmars, Skuas, Rocs, Seafires, Corsairs, Fireflies and finally Sea Furies, which should utterly kick arse as the final generation of piston fighters. Apart from Ark Royal, most Royal Navy fleet carriers sacrificed hangar space for armoured decks - which was helpful against the Japanese. But this was made up for with deck parking systems later on, allowing a larger complement of aircraft to be carried.
ah the channel dash when the raf were busy with the suicide run to berlin... indeed while the swordfish was outclassed, getting creamed on the deck trying to land was more of an issue and something that biblically slow was still handy.
I love the name of the *SUPERMARINE WALRUS!* Also While I like be this I think the Aviation should be on WoWP Edit: Fun fact the British attack on Turanto Actually inspired the attack on pear harbor.
It could be a bad idea, because went landing in the water, the water will push the landing gear, if it landing gear being push too much, the landing gear will broke off. except went the plane goes very slow
It's always weird when they say a number converted to metric from it's original specification. They have some odd number convention as a result. For instance 272 kg instead of 600 lbs.
Parliament "There is a controversy between those who say that the Admiralty did not get what it wanted for the Fleet Air Arm and those who say that the Admiralty was not very clever at explaining what exactly it 796 was that it wanted. I noticed quite recently that Air Marshal Dowding has gone on record as saying that the Admiralty got precisely the types which it specified and demanded." Hansard Fleet Air Arm HL Deb 27 January 1943 page
We had been using it before what it is saying in the video, perhaps they are just suggesting that balloons were the predecessor of the aircraft. There are plenty of records of the British military using balloons in the 19th century, and there were plenty of nations using them too, both at that time and before the USA was even founded! I believe the first use was in China centuries ago, but I don't know enough detail about stuff that far back
Its actually not French but its inspired by them. The French used Blue-White-Red rudder stripes on their aircraft as national markings, the RAF during the battle of France adopted the same idea with a fin flash of their national colors Red-White-Blue frequently with a smaller white stripe (today they either don't use the white stripe at all or make it equal to the other stripes so it will look like a backwards French flag).
Ah, sorry, I should say it's basically displayed front of the plane to the back, such that on the left side it would look like the back of the flag being flown. So only on the opposite side it would appear reversed. As read the french fin (rudder) flash looks more like their flag (blue white red). Whereas the UK one used here is red white blue.
A history is only good if it covers failures and successes. Where is the Fairey Albacore and a few others? Why not speak of the shortcomings of land planes converted for carrier use? In particular range. The Westland Wyvern was a robust plane but had problems. 1) Range, The Python turbine burned excessive fuel. 2) Was difficult to throttle, so ran at constant speed. Aircraft speed was controlled by the pitch of the counter rotating propellers. The video was good, but incomplete
all the wehraboos crying about bismarck, sorry but it sunk and so did tirpitz and there is no museum made after it unlike yamato which had a huge museum dedicated to it. i'd much like to see the USS North Carolina and do a match up of who would win in a fight with Bismarck if america in the war since NC was the most powerful allied warship in service at that time. myself, well after careful analysis i've concluded NC would win, her Armor and Armament design is far more suited to the Long range plunging fire exchanges of ww2, while Bismarck's armor and armament is more suited to the outdated short range slaughter fests of ww1. infact bismarck is massively overrated in regards to it's fighting capability and performance at the Denmark straight, we all know it 1 shot Hood, but hoods deck was massively i'll suited to time delay fuses that bismarck was throwing and it was a very lucky hit. But what people don't know is the skirmish she had with Prince of wales and how it for a time was losing the fight and the damage that POW did massively led to bismarcks demise before POW eventually gave up at the loss of hood and didn't risk fighting a 2v1 and losing. POW rear gun turret jammed and was out of action and the other 2 were working but not very well(also massively contributed to why she retreated) so bismarck has a huge advantage, Bismarck scored 7 hits on POW, 4x 8inch shells and 3x 15inch shells an 8 and a 14 of them hit the rear smoke stacks and boats doing little damage, an 8 and a 14 hit the bridge and fire control director but did little damage, 2x 8 hit the rear starboard stern above the water line causing a bit of flooding but little damage overall and 1 15 hit below POW belt and just a few feet above the keel, luckily it was a dud otherwise this hit could have been devastating. so the damage was minimal, she took was really only electrical damage and a tiny bit of flooding and a tiny list to starboard, now lets look at the damage POW did to Bismarck POW scored 3 14inch hits on Bismarck, 1 hit a sea plane doing little to no damage but 1 hit below bismarcks armor belt, this did lots of damage, it penetrated, exploded and sent shrapnel into the Port Turbo generator room and forward port steam boiler flooding the Turbo generator room entirely and half flooding the boiler room causing a decnt 9.5 degree list to port and reduced power, but the 3rd hit was even worse, it hit the massive fuel tank stored in the bow of the ship and caused Bismarck to lose over 1,500 tons of oil to sea water contamination and flooded over 2000 tons of sea water and caused the bow to lean by 3 degrees, thats the bow 5-6 meters below it's normal water line!!!, the forward flooding was so severe that no matter how much they counter flooded the stern they couldn't get it back to normal. by the end she lost 2 boilers, a turbo generator, 1500 tons of fuel and gained well over 3000 tons of sea water and was still slightly tilting forward massively limiting her options weather or not to return to port and reducing her top speed of 30kts to 26-27. so despite POW landing half the hits, she did far more damage.
Need to do more homework the " Westland Wyvern " that you are showing is NOT a turboprop model, it is the 'H-block Rolls-Royce Eagle 22, a piston engine". Look there are, 12 on each side, 24 in all, exhaust pipes!
She was a QE class, another sister ship to Queen Elizabeth and Warspite. She was named Malaya because the funds to build her were donated by (at the time) British Malaya.
shock wave By the time HMS Rodney and HMS King George V finished firing, the Bismarck was a wreck, on fire and with only one way to go. I've never really seen what is so great about destroying your own ship. The Germans were very addicted to it, though. The HSF was scuttled in Scapa Flow, Graf Spee in S. America and most of the German Navy not sunk in port were scuttled as a final act shewing how impotent the GN had become.