NAVAL AIRCRAFT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 January 1941, Page 9

NAVAL AIRCRAFT

TORPEDO & BOMBING ATTACKS

DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH TECHNIQUE.

ENEMY OUTCLASSED (British Official Wireless.i RUGBY. January 23

; The British Admiralty has always I put its faith in the torpedo as the ; primary weapon of naval aircraft, said ; a naval officer today, explaining the i efforts over a long period cf years to : make the naval aircraft a highly effi- : cicnt striking force. The torpedo at- ! tacks a ship in its ’most vulnerable i part —below the water—and can effect j considerably more vita! damage titan ! the bomb. This policy was fully jusi titled by the great victory nt Taranto, ! which exceeded even the most san- ' guinc British expectations. In many other instances the aircraft torpedo attack has proved its worth. The naval officer instanced the phenomenal success of an attack bv throe

naval aircraft on Italian ships in the Cretian roadstead, when three torpedoes were fired and four enemy craft destroyed. One submarine was sunk, then another submarine and a destroyer were sunk and a depot ship lying between the latter vessels was destroyed by the explosions on either side. This attack took place in broad daylight and there were no British casualties.

The success of the Taranto attack might be mainly attributed to the perfecting of the technique over two decades. Aircraft of the Fleet Air Ann had to be ranged on deck in the darkness. take off and go into formation without lights and fly a long distance over the dark sea. It was essential that each squadron should arrive at the right place at the right time, as any delay would spoil the element of surprise, and so high navigational skill was entailed.

Dive-bombing is used by naval aircraft when torpedo work is impossible, and here again a long period of training was needed to develop this technique. The main reason for the naval use of dive-bombing is that the expectation of hits is greater than from high altitude bombing. All naval aircraft are designed as dive-bombers, and the Skuas exclusively so. but the Swordfish are also excellent for the purpose. The latter also carry a heavy load of bombs and their ease of manoeuvrability makes them also equal to the Skuas. All the British naval dive-bombing types are superior to the Gorman Stuka.

Dive-bombing was carried out successfully by Swordfish against German troops in the spring, and recently they i have obtained highly-successful results against Italian aerodromes in Sardinia. Sicily and the Dodecanese. It is recalled that the first occasion in history when a major unit of an enemy fleet was destroyed by aircraft attacks was when Skuas gained a.success against a German cruiser of the ! Koenigsberg class at Bergen. After an honest and careful analysis! of the statistics it is fair to say that ■ British naval aircrcaft dive-bombing is : far ahead of the German Speaking of future divo-tv.mbimi the ’ naval officer said that though. Britain had been very lucky in sufformi’ t<-w ' casualties as a whole when using this j method as compared with the high Stuka losses, dive-bombing might become very expensive ax the result of an improved method of defence and—i ihi ugh it seemed a long way off—it' might become unptvfiiable in naval ' warfare. Naval aircraft. however, 1 were not relying upon it as the only ; alternative to the torpedo attack and j were pressing forward with improving j methods of high-altitude bombing.