though there were also successes throughout the war, especially given the dearth of targets and the environments they operated in. The Brits did use US aircraft throughout the war, but plenty of their own too (Seafire, Barracuda) and had the war gone on longer there'd have been a resurgence in British built types.ĭoctrine was good and bad, going U-boat hunting with fleet carriers at the start of the war was a pretty catastrophic decision. The German Fiesler was a bi-plane too, the Japanese were flying the biplane A4N as a primary fighter until 1940.The Swordfish was only bought into service in 1936, so it was hardly old in 1939/1940, if outdated in concept. That said the RN wasn't that far behind the times in 1939-1940, pretty comparable to the USN's offerings at the time such as: Gotta have a navigator/observer in that fighter, flying over water is hard :(ĭon't worry, no one's ever going to use >500lb bombs.ĭive bombing is completely pointless and bad, the worst! You're correct that it was a problem that the RAF - IMO Britain's worst performing service branch in WWII - had control of aircraft design and advising the navy with such chestnuts as: By mid to end war, the Brits just used US carrier aircraft and followed US practices. (The carriers themselves were decent though in some ways.) That's pretty much why the swordfish was still in use by WW2. They handed control of all aircraft over to their air force (who didn't care for carriers and didn't want money wasted in lean-budget years on specialized naval aircraft) and the end result was that British carrier aircraft were awful and their carrier doctrine was terrible. They had a lot of the same problems the Germans had with infighting between their air force and navy.
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