Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "The Battle of Taranto: When Biplanes Crippled a Fleet" video.

Amazingly, the Swordfish ended the war as a radar equipped, rocket firing, antisubmarine and antishipping bomber. This one ancient and obsolescent outlived two other more modern types meant to replace it. No other British carrier plane sunk more Axis shipping than the Swordfish.
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@BHuang92 The Swordfish survived for many of the same reasons the Grumman Wildcat/Martlet and Douglas Dauntless were in use after more modern and presumably more effective aircraft were available. They were planes that filled a role on small carriers or in specific circumstances that made them the best plane of the task. I don't think anyone could make a successful argument that the Swordfish was a better plane than the Avenger or the Wildcat/Martlet was better than the Hellcat or Corsair, but they were better planes in those limited circumstances that made them the best for the job at hand.
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@TheArgieH LOL. I'll bet some crews figured out how to make a boiler powered by the engine. Swordfish were also used to land agents behind enemy lines and drop supplies to resistance fighters in France and Norway. There really wasn't another low and slow plane that could carry a 1500 pound loadout, so it got used for tasks not even dreamed of by its designers.
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@TheArgieH Yes, and Fairy also produced the Barracuda, an all metal monoplane that, except for the closed cockpit, was hardly an advance of the old Stringbag. The Fulmar and Firefly were both tough but pedestrian aircraft, and the Firefly finally convinced the FAA that British industry wasn't going to produce a carrier fighter better than the Corsair. It wasn't until the Gannet that the FAA got the plane it really needed. A massive, three place, tricycle geared, jack of all trades, able to perform all the roles of the Grumman Tracker, but with turbine power and more endurance. Unfortunately, management decided the Rotodyne was the aircraft of the future. It wasn't, and, by 1960, Fairey was gone, merged into Westland.
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@TheArgieH The Sea Fury, while still developed initially as the "Light Tempest", and entering service just too late for the war, finally gave the FAA a really modern carrier borne fighter capable of taking on and beating any other carrier borne (and many land based) fighters of the day. It was so good that it lulled the RN into a false sense of confidence about how long it had to develop a jet fighter, so the FAA started Korea with the Sea Vampire and, later, the Supermarine Attacker as their only jets.
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@TheArgieH LOL, yes it was. The FJ-1 was named Fury over the objections of the RN, and it's one reason why the Sea Fury always has the "sea" part in front. The FJ-1 was a rare airplane though. It was a naval fighter first developed from a land based fighter, the p-51. Thah aircraft served as the basis for the F-86, and the F-86 was later developed into the FJ-2 Fury. I can't think of another plane that went from land based fighter to naval fighter back to land based fighter and the back to s naval fighter again.
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@TheArgieH It was actually named after River Exe, but it also could have been a portmanteau from both the river and X shape of the block. The working name was Boreas for the god of the north wind. I assume because this was the first RR air cooled aircraft engine, so naming it for a wind god seems appropriate. The only other air cooled X block engine during the war was the 24 cylinder Isotta Fraschini Zeta, a not very successful unit, since it was two V12's on a single crankshaft, something totally beyond Italian production standards of the time. The Exe was only ever installed in a Fairey Battle, an airplane otherwise best forgotten, as a test bed. It apparently flew for a number of years as a station hack with various squadrons until at least 1942 or 1943, depending on the source. It was noted as being docile, dependable, and easy to work on and repair. It never had the horsepower needed for high performance work, but it could have been a good relatively lightweight engine for communication and liaison craft if it had been developed.
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@TheArgieH LOL. Yes, it's a nice day here so I'm going to go out and pick branches downed by our last storm before the next storm get here. I forgot about the Vulture also being an X block. Probably an engine best forgotten anyway. The Boreas name was before RR had come p with any gas turbines so it seems like to was a one off that wasn't repeated. Napier was great designing very high output engines but not so great at making them work reliably without a workshop full of staff and parts. The Sabre was a good example of this. While it became the highest horsepower piston engine ever, I doubt it would have survived in production if not for English electric taking over Napier in 1942 and fixing the cooling issues. If jest hadn't come along for a few more years it would have been interesting to see if a reliable 5,000 version of the Sabre could have really been developed and what it could have been used in. Imagine eight of those things in a Bristol Barbizon!
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@kdrapertrucker I wouldn't be too hard on the British. At least they didn't come up anything like the Brewster Buccaneer, an aircraft so terrible it's always in the running for the worst aircraft of WWII. We built 771 of those dogs at a time the the US and its allies were desperate need of good planes. Not one ever saw combat, spending most of their time as target tugs.
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