With many humourous events, like nipping over to a friend who owned an inn in France, to find out how far the Germans had got in their blitzkrieg and walking in to find it full of them eating and drinking. Apologizing and the crew belting back to the field outside to go through this starting procedure and escape back to Britain without a scratch. Great book and I really must find a copy to read again.

Increíblemente esto termino por inutilizar y hundir al Bismarck porque la artillería antiaérea explotaba delante del swordfish por su lentitud Xdddddddddd Mis respetos para la Royal Navy 😂

I have one slight problem with a Swordfish crew getting lost in the Atlantic and ending up some 1,500 miles away, the range of the Swordfish was just over 500 miles when carrying a Torpedo.

Yep, thats due in part to the good Torpedo's it had. USN had lousy torpedo's at the start and for the first few years of WW2. Swordfish was a good old plane.

The cockpit was as high off the ground as the top deck of a double decker bus.

Taking off risked the carrier’s bow rising into the plane. Landing? Even worse. How do you match the rise & fall of the ship? But, these were probably the only aircraft of their day that could operate in North Atlantic swell. They were used throughout WW2.

That was a problem with the Sea Fury until they decided ignition kill switches were a good idea. {my cousin was trained on these 'planes for the RAN between '48 and '50]

I thought they were winding up the rubber band. Just joking, it's a great plane flown by pilots with guts.

The courage it took must have been tremendous. I can't imagine

Remember a interview with one of the pilots on that mission saying his gunner was hanging upside down on the side of the plane telling him to wait till the right time to drop the torpedo into the waves all that time with that huge battleship firing all her guns at them!! True heroes

My thoughts exactly, each plane must have come with three wheelbarrows for them to carry their "you know what's in" when they were on the deck. Courage beyond belief.

@@markbrown351 Agreed, John Moffat was the pilot and Observer Dusty Miller called the drop.

The 3 guys' balls probably weighed more than the torpedo!!

Gott in Himmel, Hans, vhy is it zat our gunnery systems are saying nothing can fly that slowly and our shells just pass through it ??? Is this the Tommy secret vepon ?

sinking of the italian fleet at Taranto among them, often overlooked because of the Swordfish's contribution in sinking Bismarck by fixing it's rudder.

My father, was serving onboard HMS Illustrious at that time.

The attack on Taranto was so successful, the Japanese imitated it at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Mark T. However the United States Navy ignored the success of the Taranto raid. Pearl Harbor was a sad commentary on our complacency.

@Phil Allison It was another 4 years with many failed attempts before high level bombing was able to take out capital ships. In 1944, RAF used the supersonic 5 ton Tallboys against Tirpitz. Even then, it took three missions to sink the ship.

it left 2 yrs ago-still not there yet!

Tea, anybody? We are civilized, afterall.

@@ingolfleiblle6661 lol

But if the clutch was misadjusted all that energy was lost. So one had to readjust the clutch, while an impatient pilot was tapping his foot. Then wind up the flywheel again, and hope it grabs this time. You made that mistake ONCE, and not again.😤

Well that is possible because the Swordfish was originally civil registered as G-AJVH with the Fairey Aviation co,however before that it was restored by a chap called Vivian Bellamy at Eastleigh who was ex FAA who operated it for some time,Mr Bellamy also restored the surviving Gloster Gladiator also civil registered as G-AMRK now kept with the Shuttleworth Trust at Old Warden..

Lee B: I think a few P47 Thunderbolt radials suffered a similar fate but that's not to take anything away from your superb comment..I couldn't have put it better myself. We can all imagine ourselves as a pilot in WW2 engaging in high speed dogfights in a high tech Spit or Mustang... but to have to go to war in a String bag or an Albacore???How did they ever fly off the deck s when their brass balls were that heavy. As for their missions; ' Here you go lads, the target is smaller than any power-station/bridge/viaduct factory or railway station...its moving in 3 dimensions...its armed to the teeth with highly concentrated Ak-Ak defences...IF you make a return you're flying over open water, mother nature's against you so your survival rate if you put down is near zero...and your mobile-home airport is a few hundred feet long....lot's of luck gentlemen'. There are only a few days go by when these aircrews are not on my mind...how did they do it, time and time again?

LB: Numerous aircraft lost cylinders and returned from missions. That reliablity is the primary reason why navies chose radial engines.

Oh. But definitely aesthetic.

@@acrobaticcripple8176 - You're right, I take back what I said. Aesthetic AND ICONIC.

Hitting the rudder was not intentional, the Pilot Died about a year ago.

I have known about this Swordfish from the 60s when I first saw it fly!

one fact often forgotten, Taranto also was the idea behind Pearl Harbour, the Japanese gained all the info. they could about the raid from the US, so we caused Pearl Harbour to be planned and executed, with help of the US. By an old 1930s plane.

tom lucas >>> The belief that Pearl Harbor was *too shallow* for torpedo bombers to work was a *VERY BIG* mistake....

Dambuster the intention was to hit the Bismarck with a torpedo, in doing that it achieved the purpose of the attack. Had it been hit amidships there may not have been a need fo it to be finished off.

STOL It had leading edge slats on the wings allowing a laminar flow of air over the top of the wings.

LC: No more hard to fly than any naval aircraft of the era, and no more dangerous.

@Luis Cirilo - regardless of what you heard, all the reports of those who flew them, in war and in peace, say the opposite - that the Swordfish was very easy to fly.

The Swordfish torpedo on exploding messed up the rudder. Bismark could only turn in circles as the rudder was jammed full right from the blast. The ship that cannot steer was a sitting duck to the English destroyers.

As a Scot my dad must have been a mercenary serving on an "English" destroyer and an "English" aircraft carrier , and by the way what were the English fleet doing parked in Scappa flo Scotland if they unilaterally declared war on Germany.

Tabourba : let's keep the comments relevant to the video. Political rants go elsewhere. Or I'll have you brought up on charges.

Whaligeo I totally agree with your sentiments but lets put this down to a mistake . ?