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Show Britain's Swordfish By Scott Netchall (WNU Feature Through special arrange-ment arrange-ment with Collier's Weekly) Though most Americans wouldn't believe their eyes if they saw it, the plane known as the Fairey Sword-fish Sword-fish is one of the mainstays of Britain's Brit-ain's Fleet Air Arm. Every time a Swordfish goes roaring roar-ing down the flight deck of a carrier and claws its way aloft, the pageant of man's conquest of the air is lived again for a few tense seconds. For, to the casual spectator, a Swordfish flying off to battle in this war looks about as efficient and dangerous as a crossbowman on his way to tackle a squad of Commandos. A Swordfish is a large, gangling biplane. It would fit comfortably into any movie sequence of the period peri-od 1917-1918. The wings and fuselage fuse-lage arc covered with fabric, which is originally painted in shades ranging rang-ing from gray to blue, but because every Swordfish invariably has a light rash of patches on its skin, the general result is a sort of mottled shade. The patches are the icajlt of a curious hazard in a Swordfish's life. After some service, the fabric becomes be-comes brittle, and curious visitors find that their fingers inadvertently punch holes in the wing surface.' Also, in a dive or tight turn, the fabric covering sometimes flutters in an unpleasant, nervous fashion. Fleet Air Arm pilots, both in affection af-fection and alarm, call these planes Stringbags. The space between the two wings Is pretty well filled with struts and wires and such, and back by the tail a lot of wires come out of the fuselage and run to the control surfaces. sur-faces. The fuselage itself is a long, narrow structure. The three open cockpits start immediately behind the following edge of the upper wing, the pilot in the first, the observer in the second, the aerial gunner in the last.. So the Swordfish looks and sometimes acts like something out of a mail-order catalogue. Aerial Hide and Seek. Yet, regularly, storiesme back on how these planes can muddle through. For example, in the Norway Nor-way campaign a Stringbag from the Ark Royal found itself on the business busi-ness end of a Heinkel 111. The Swordfish, however, came back to Its carrier with nothing worse than a slight case of dizziness aboard. The pilot merely dived. down on a Norwegian mountain and then flew In tight circles around it. The Heinkel Hein-kel couldn't cut corners so sharply, so he finally gave up and flew away. . As a matter of fact, one school of Swordfish philosophy argues that the Incredibly slow speed of the aircraft is an asset. - The fast-attacking enemy en-emy aircraft simply cannot slow down enough to get in an efficient burst. The Royal Navy calls its Sword-fish Sword-fish torpedo-spotter-reconnaissance aircraft. Every carrier in the fleet has flown them off to seek the enemy en-emy and, if possible, get a torpedo into him. To be a naval success a plane must have a quick takeoff, a low landing speed, and carry a heavy load. And that is where the lumbering Swordfish excels. There is no sense in trying to make a silk purse out of a Stringbag. It is painfully slow and awkward and ugly. Its performance has guaranteed that as long as the war lasts there will always be a Sword-fish. Sword-fish. It has a great record behind It. On many and curious missions this strange craft has proved its worth. The crews who fly the Stringbags have developed an odd and somewhat contemptuous affection affec-tion for their planes. Italy's Bad Luck. Swordfish flew into the Italian fleet at Taranto, putting three battleships out of action and changing the balance bal-ance of naval power in the Mediterranean. Mediter-ranean. They bombed Genoa early In the war, covered countless Malta convoys and put torpedoes into the French fleet at Oran. Again, Sword-I Sword-I fish were down in the Channel fog looking for the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau when the German ships made their dash from Brest. That time only a few came back. But it was . in the wintry North Atlantic that the Swordfish did its greatest job. Stringbag torpedoes disabled dis-abled the Bismarck so that the surface sur-face fleet could close in for the kill. Stringbags have also engaged in extracurricular activities. At the time of Dunkerque, some of them were sent over the French and Belgian Bel-gian coasts. So they flew up and down the coast in tight formation, pretending to be fighter coverage for the troops below. Apparently they got away with it, too. In another case a Swordfish was turned into a fighter when, after the two machine guns were emptied, an observer drew his revolver and assaulted as-saulted an attacking Italian plane with that The Italian flew home cross the Mediterranean. |