Torpedo bombers
A torpedo bomber is a military aircraft that is able to transport torpedoes and use them to attack ship targets.
history
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Fairey_Swordfish_on_Airfield.jpg/220px-Fairey_Swordfish_on_Airfield.jpg)
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)
- Aichi B7A Ryūsei
- Bristol Type 156 Beaufighter
- Douglas TBD Devastator
- Fairey Swordfish
- Fairey Barracuda
- Grumman TBF Avenger
- Heinkel He 111 (actually a medium-weight bomber; versions J-0, J-1, H-4, H-5 and H-6 were torpedo bombers)
- Heinkel He 115
- Junkers Ju 88
- Mitsubishi G4M Hamaki
- Nakajima B5N Kankoh
- Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero
- Short 184
See also
literature
- The torpedo glider. Documentation of the "Marine Luftschiffer Kameradschaft Hamburg". Issue III / 1989.
- Douglas H. Robinson : The German naval airships 1912-1918. Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-8132-0786-2 , p. 267.
- Hans-Jürgen Becker , Rudolf Höfling : 100 years of airships. Motorbuch, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-613-02071-8 , p. 73 ff.