This video is an opinion piece on what I consider to be the best Torpedo bomber of WW2. I also cover torpedo bombing in general and the various types of aircraft that did it.
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Update, I want to address to common points/questions that keep coming up in the comments.
1. I said in the video "The Japanese were caught down low when the U.S. dive bombers came in and they couldn't defend the fleet, they were out of position down low because they had been dealing with the torpedo bombing threat" That's an exact quote of what I said in the video.
Numerous people have pointed out that in the book Shattered Sword the author makes it clear that the Zeros had plenty of time to climb back up between the torpedo and dive bombing attacks. That's true, but if you read or go back and listen to what I said, nothing is in disagreement with this. I'm not saying the Zeros didn't have the time or ability to reach the dive bombers, I'm saying they didn't reach the dive bombers specifically because they were out of position when the dive bombers showed up and thus were unable to attack them. Why were they out of position? I think the answer to that is obvious. They had incurred at least two torpedo attacks from the US at that point, and certainly knew how effective torpedo bombers could be (Pearl Harbor, Repulse etc.). Had the US torpedo bombers not been there, I think it's much more likely the Zeros would have been up high and ready to intercept the dive bombers.
2. Alternating sides when torpedo attacking a battleship was a common tactic. This was used from the time the Prince of Wales was sunk by Japanese Torpedo planes around the start of the Pacific war in Dec. of 41, and the Musashi was sunk with this tactic in Oct. of 1944. That's most of the Pacific war, the vast majority of sinking at least in terms of significant warships were during that period. Some of you are saying that attacking Musashi on both sides was a mistake and that the US Navy learned from it and attacked Yamato on one side.
First of all, I'm not advocating tactics here, but I'm pointing out a fact, and the fact is that attacking on the up side of a listing ship was safer and was done. What I said in the video is that this was done, and stated the logic behind it. In regards to the Musashi vs. Yamato sinkings there is a lot more going on here than just the side to side issues. The Yamato was attacked on one side to make here more likely to sink faster. However I think people are missing the fact that the attacks on Musashi were spread out over a five hour period giving damage control a lot of time to try to save the ship. Even after the last attack she floated another 4 hours or so.
All the attacks on Yamato leading to her sinking took place over about an 80 mins period in which she was hit by around 11 torpedoes and 6 bombs. In that amount of time, meaning the first 80 mins of the attacks on Musashi she had been hit by one bomb which didn't explode and 1 torpedo. That's vastly different. The next attack which came about 90 mins from the first added another 3 torpedoes and two bombs one of which didn't detonate. It went on like this for about 5 hours. I think the difference in the total number of hits required to sink the two ships had as much to do with time as with the side to side issue, but that's just my opinion. Obviously any talk along these lines is just speculation.