Torpedo bombers

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A torpedo bomber is a military aircraft that is able to transport torpedoes and use them to attack ship targets.

history

Fairey Swordfish with a torpedo attached. Aircraft of this type were involved in the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck .
Torpedo attack by a Heinkel He 111

The Short Type 184 was a British torpedo bomber in World War I . It was the first aircraft to sink a ship with a torpedo: On August 17, 1915, Flight Commander Charles Humphrey Kingsman Edmonds took off with a Short 184 from the aircraft carrier HMS Ben-my-Chree and sank a Turkish merchant ship with a 14-inch torpedo (corresponding to 356 mm).

As early as autumn 1915, the Siemens-Schuckert company undertook torpedo gliding tests with the Army airship P IV (Parseval PL 16) in Berlin-Biesdorf . Tests with the Parseval airship PL 25 followed, also in Biesdorf . In the summer of 1917 torpedo gliders were dropped and remote-controlled near Hanover ( Vahrenwalder Heide airport ) with the army airship Z XII (LZ 26) . The naval airships L 25 (ex Army Airship LZ 88) and L 35 also undertook experiments with torpedo gliders at various locations from the summer of 1917 until the end of the war in 1918, including the central airship port in Jüterbog . A Siemens-Schuckert torpedo glider was last dropped on August 2, 1918. The glider weighed 1,000 kg, flew 7.6 km and was dropped from a height of 1,200 meters. With the armistice in November 1918, Siemens-Schuckert had just started a new series of tests in Nordholz . It was about the giant R VIII aircraft (also built by Siemens-Schuckert), but there were no more drops. Siemens-Schuckert built around 100 torpedo gliders by November 1918.

The first bombers of this type were made between the two world wars . The British biplane Fairey Swordfish was one of the most famous. Developed in 1934, it played a major role in World War II : the battleship Bismarck was rendered incapable of maneuvering by its torpedoes, the Italian fleet was decisively weakened by a torpedo bomber attack in the port of Taranto . The planes were also used in the Pacific , mainly Japanese Mitsubishi G4M Hamakis and American Grumman TBF Avengers, especially in the Battle of Midway and the sinking of the Yamato .

After the Second World War , this type of aircraft quickly lost its importance with the introduction of effective radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns and the development of rockets and cruise missiles for attacks against sea targets. Today torpedoes are only dropped from planes for submarine hunts .

List of torpedo bombers (selection)

See also

literature

Web links