1. Fairey Swordfish
Obsolete years before the war began; the Swordfish ("Stringbag") nonetheless had many successes including the Taranto raid which crippled the Italian navy, and the (later-fatal) wounding of the Bismarck (illustrated above).
2. Short Sunderland
A vast, beautiful, and beloved flying boat - converted from a pre-war airliner; the Sunderland was the most successful of the British Coastal Command aircraft patrolling against U-Boats, in the early years of the Battle of the Atlantic.
3. Hawker Hurricane and 4. Supermarine Spitfire
Victors of the Battle of Britain: Hurricanes (background of picture) made up the majority of the fighters; Spitfires (in foreground) were overall the best of the RAF's fighters.
5. Bristol Beaufighter
The first genuine nightfighter (with on-board radar); the Beaufighter served effectively in multiple roles in literally every British theatre of war from early 1941.
6. De Haviland Mosquito
The fastest warplane in the skies, when it first emerged; the "Wooden Wonder" was a superb medium bomber, nightfighter, pathfinder, and reconnaissance aircraft; through the middle-war period.
7. Hawker Typhoon
The first British aircraft to be able to overtake and destroy Focke Wulfe 190 raiders at low altitudes; the Typhoon became the main RAF fighter bomber, ground-attack, infantry-support aircraft in the period up to and around D-Day; and was the first aircraft to deploy rockets effectively.
8. Avro Lancaster
9. Hawker Tempest
The best British fighter in the last year of the war, and for several years afterwards* especially in the Fleet Air Arm. By far the most effective aircraft at destroying the V1 "doodlebug" flying bomb.
(Illustrated above, I think the Tempest is supposed to have "flipped over" the V1 with its wing, although this was a rare mode of attack - destruction by cannon fire was usual.)
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*Of the above; the Tempest was the only aircraft with a significant post-war role, especially re-engined with a Bristol Centaurus radial; and re-named the Hawker Sea Fury (illustrated below) and used by the Fleet Air Arm; where it was one of the last generation of piston-engined fighters, before jets decisively took-over.
When I was a boy, I was fascinated by the aircraft of the first and second world wars and thus I was familiar with many of the British planes of those conflicts. I memorably had a toy Hawker Hurricane with a charcoal and light grey camouflage pattern; I thought its design was appealing, and I recall the cannons sticking out from the wings (unfortunately, some of them broke off in the course of one-too-many imaginary dogfights and other engagements with the enemy). When I was older, I read Max Hastings' "Bomber Command" and became enamored (the right word, I believe) by the "pathfinders"-- planes that would fly (at night, in accordance with the British strategic bombing concept) ahead of the main bomber force to scout the target areas and light them up by dropping flares thereupon. That book contained a diagram-- among others-- of the Mosquito, and to my mind, its two-engine design perfectly embodied the idea of the pathfinder: to get in, find the target, all as fast as you can, and hopefully make it home again. I remain so enchanted by Britain's World War II pathfinders, that nary a day goes by that I don't think about them; one facet of a people's courage in wartime.
ReplyDelete@Wade - I agree. I have read Hastings book, twice; and a few others about the Mosquito with detailed accounts of the Pathfinders.
ReplyDeleteI have a similar feeling about the Beaufighter, then Mosquito, nightfighters that escorted the RAF bomber stream; as a protection against the German nightfighters.
My old man flew Beauforts and will be well pleased it did not make your list. He regrets he never got to fly a decent airplane.
ReplyDelete@to - My commiserations to your Father. The amazing thing was that the unfortunate "dud" Bristol Beaufort was developed into the excellent Beaufighter.
ReplyDeleteChristopher Martin comments:
ReplyDelete"Thank you for this. Especially for putting the Swordfish first: greatly underestimated. My father flew a Swordfish, armed with rockets, to protect the Russian convoys by keeping the U-boats submerged day and night, and thus unable to catch up with the convoys by sailing on the surface in the dark. An unspectacular role, compared with the attacks on Taranto and on the Bismark (and with the disastrous, heroic and suicidal attacks on the Scharnhorst and the Gniesenau); but of importance for the war effort, all the same. It's worthwhile comparing the losses on the Arctic runs before and after the cheap and nasty MAC carriers, with their Swordfish to give air cover, became available. The rockets were so that if a U-boat was caught on the surface, a salvo of rockets was likely to bend enough plates on the sub that she would leave a tell-tale trail of oil, so that the surface escorts could easily find her and sink her with depth charges. (Very few were so caught: the U-boat crews soon learned to stay underwater as long as they could. Thus "wolf-pack" stalking and early morning / late night mass attacks became impossible.)"
@Christopher - Fascinating stuff.
ReplyDeleteI recently re-read Alistair Maclean's "HMS Ulysses" (concerning an artic convoy) - which I hadn't looked at since I was a teenager - and found it an extremely good novel - albeit almost unbearably grim.
The great value of escort carriers - even very crudely-adapted carriers - is something that I have come across often in my reading.