What Was The Best Torpedo Bomber of World War 2?

greetings this is greg discussing which world war ii fighter plane was the best would be a bit tricky with fighters there are just so many performance parameters time periods and theaters of operation to consider as well as individual variants of certain airplanes think about the 109 that having a conversation about which one was the best introduces a huge quagmire of problems i do want to have that discussion one day just not right now for certain types of airplanes the debate about which one was the best is a bit easier of course there's always some room for discussion and in the end which plane was the best is a matter of opinion but with torpedo bombers i think it's pretty easy to say that the best one of the war was the grumman avenger its list of abilities and accomplishments really puts it out in front of the other contenders in this video i'll give the reasons for my opinions and we'll lightly go over the technical features and history of the airplane but this is largely an opinion piece before we get into the avenger i want to mention a few other planes i thought about these are just some of the other airplanes for which i suppose an argument could be made but i don't feel quite equal the avenger as a torpedo bomber for example the douglas a-26 invader could carry two torpedoes it was fast well armored and had excellent defensive firepower not just the number of guns but the system that operated them not only could it carry two torpedoes it had a torpedo director on board so it was a legitimate torpedo bomber if we just look at aircraft statistics it appears to be far superior to the avenger as a torpedo bomber however the a-26 could not be operated from an aircraft carrier as many naval engagements during world war ii were decided by carrier aircraft i think a proven ability to fly combat missions off of a carrier is essential for a plane to be considered as the best torpedo bomber of the war so for that reason i'm excluding not only the a26 but any primarily land-based airplanes from this comparison i'm also excluding any airplanes that never actually sank a ship or an enemy ship with torpedoes the theoretical ability to do something and actually doing it are not always the same thing especially when you're talking about warplanes and i think if you're going to claim that an aircraft was the best at something you should be able to show that it actually did it i have some examples of a plane uh some planes in this later category that is to say planes that were possibly superior to the avenger in a technical sense but don't have the war record to back it up in this category we have the vaught xtbu xtbu-1 torpedo bomber vaught was heavily committed to building corsairs that is to say they were busy so this design got passed over to consolidated volte and they built it as the tby-2 sea wolf the sea wolf has more power than the avenger it was faster and by most accounts was a pretty decent airplane however only 180 were built and due to development issues it wasn't ready for service until every torpedo squadron in the u.s navy was already equipped with avengers thus while this plane could be operated from a carrier and was certainly fast it was never proven in combat as a torpedo bomber along similar lines we have the japanese b6 n2 us code named jill the jill was a very capable airplane but was never really able to shine i hate to quote wikipedia but they really hit the nail on the head with this statement quote due to its protracted development a shortage of experienced pilots and the united states navy's achievement of air superiority by the time of its introduction the b6n was never able to fully demonstrate its combat potential unquote that's exactly right torpedo bombers for the most part and especially naval torpedo bombers have a very difficult time operating in areas of enemy air superiority the nakajima b6n2 jill was the victim of really bad timing the plane entered service in mid to late 1943 and had there had they been a little earlier then maybe we'd have more to talk about here for the most part these planes were just fodder for u.s fighters and were also used as kamikazes the british torpedo bombers of the royal navy run the full spectrum in terms of both combat success and performance and capability and thus have to be mentioned here the most famous and most successful was the fairy swordfish i'm going to talk about this plane for a few minutes because while i don't think it was the best torpedo bomber of the war historically it's very significant the swordfish entered service in mid-1936 but was completely obsolete about one year later because in 1937 the new all-metal monoplane torpedo bombers came on the scene the japanese b-5n kate first flew in january of 1937 and was in combat in 1938 i think the kate like the jill shown earlier is a really nice looking airplane side note now that i think about it most planes from nakajima look great it's odd to me that their cars are not that way by world war ii torpedo bomber standards the swordfish was a poor airplane it was slow exposed the crew to weather had very poor protection had a poor service ceiling it didn't do anything particularly well yet as a combat airplane as a torpedo bomber it was hugely successful during the time between the world wars there was quite a bit of debate about the possible effectiveness or lack thereof of aircraft attacking ships tests were conducted which showed that aircraft could strike and sink unmanned undefended stationary target ships some of which were older obsolete battleships of course sinking a stationary unmanned ship versus one that's fighting back are two very different things a warship with a crew on board could shoot back and damage control efforts by the ship's crew might greatly reduce the chances of it being sunk or knocked out of action not to mention the ship's maneuvering is going to make it harder to hit so the question was could aircraft attack and do effective damage to a modern battleship defending itself with a crew on board well it was the swordfish more than any other airplane that answered that question in july of 1940 flying off hms ark royal swordfish conducted successful torpedo attacks on one of the most modern battleships in the world and scored very damaging hits causing extensive damage to the bow the ship receiving the damage was the french battleship dunkirk the dunkirk had previously been out hunting for the german pocket battleship graph spay and had joined up with hms hood to search for other german warships but now she was in a harbor in french controlled algeria when the winds of war changed the french surrendered to germany and the british were concerned that the french navy might start fighting for the third reich the british attack on the french fleet is still a sensitive subject there is some room for the debate about the justification or lack thereof for this attack i'm leaving that for other channels the point i'm concerned with here is that the attack showed that aircraft and specifically carrier carrier-launched torpedo bombers could attack and a modern crude battleship of course the dunkirk wasn't free to maneuver she wasn't at sea but some questions about the effectiveness of naval aircraft had been answered the swordfish then performed a similar attack on the italian fleet at toronto in a daring night attack again the swordfish showed the effectiveness of torpedo bombing and three italian battleships and a number of lesser vessels were disabled in may of 1941 swordfish scored hits on the german battleship bismarck which was maneuvering at sea one of these famously jammed the ship's rudder which led to her eventual demise at the hands of british battleships in this action no swordfish were shot down although some were hit military history visualized has an entire video about this and it's a very good video you should watch it but the short version is that the bismarck as with all other battleships in 1941 didn't really have nearly enough anti-aircraft capability of the weaponry she did have for this purpose some of the guns couldn't depress enough to hit a close-in low-flying aircraft and it said that other guns couldn't track slow-moving targets effectively if that's true the part about a gunmere gunnery system unable to track slow-moving aircraft then that represents a huge failure on the part of the germans who put that system on the bismarck because they had to know about the swordfish and they had to know it was the plane most likely to be attacking the bismarck plus the swordfish wasn't even that slow the tvd devastator flew at about the same speed when conducting torpedo runs in any case it's my view that these three events the attack on the french fleet in algeria the raid on toronto and hitting the bismarck at sea proved the viability of the torpedo bomber and it was the swordfish that did that the swordfish also sunk a lot of axis shipping probably more than any other single type of aircraft although that's a bit hard to quantify they did this primarily by operating at night from malta in the mediterranean this picture shows the uss wasp delivering swordfish to malta the wasp although a us carrier was part of the british home fleet for a while she was one of the worst u.s carriers there was some tonnage left over from treaties in effect at the time of her design and they forced the wasps designed to fit the remaining tonnage a bit like trying to make a meal entirely out of leftovers you can do it and it's probably gonna be okay but it's not likely to win any five-star awards the uss wasp was an interesting ship she eventually fell prey to a japanese submarine actually that was the fate of a lot of aircraft carriers in world war ii anyway those swordfish the wasp delivered to malta dealt a heavy blow to the axis sinking around 50 000 tons of shipping per month for a nine month period that's a lot for all the success though that the swordfish had i just don't consider it to be a great torpedo bomber by world war ii standards it was an obsolete airplane that succeeded due to superior british tactics bravery of the crews and to some extent and i hate to say this but the general ineffectiveness of the french and italian defenses as an example the italians at toronto didn't even have effective torpedo nets in place neither did the french and algeria for that matter now i know the italians were busy doing this that or the other thing and that's why they didn't have their torpedo nets up yeah i don't care they're at war they should have been ready for that and they weren't so in that respect the swordfish really caught a break i have to look at it like this the success of the swordfish had little to do with the plane itself had the british been flying japanese a5m kates i think they would have even been more successful overall more importantly i have to give considerable weight to the fact that when the british pacific fleet set off to take on the japanese they left the swordfish behind i think that was a good decision and it clearly shows that it's not just my opinion the royal navy knew that the swordfish was not the best torpedo bomber of the war so what torpedo bombers did the british take with the pacific fleet well one type they took was the fairy barracuda however when operating in the high temperatures of the pacific the barracuda's performance diminished to the point where it wasn't worth keeping around and it saw minimal combat from british carriers operating the pacific the british actively replaced barracudas with avengers i think that by itself ends any discussion of which plane was better it was probably an easy decision the avenger was better in nearly every way the british used the avenger to great effect in the pacific it performed well in battle for the royal navy even scoring hits on one of the last remaining japanese aircraft carriers in july of 1945. this video has gone on a pretty long time and we haven't even talked about the avenger itself yet so let's move on and do that the plane meaning the avenger first flew august 1941 and in an incredible coincidence grumman showed the plane to the public on december 7th during a ceremony to open a new manufacturing plant of course that was the very day the japanese attacked pearl harbor so it's a bit ironic that the new torpedo bomber named avenger was unveiled to the public on that day and it was named avenger before they knew about the pearl harbor attack it you would think that's not the case but it is the avenger came out at exactly the right time timing is often what makes the difference between a great plane and an also ran for example we usually think of the tbd devastator as a failure history has dealt with a bad card it was a decent airplane but my point is that it entered service in 1937. had it been used in naval warfare in 1938 we would probably be talking about how the devastator was one of the best planes of its time but by 1942 it was obsolete at least for the task of facing the japanese navy the avenger was dealt just the right card in this respect it came out at the end of 1941 and was in service just as the u.s really started to ramp up the pacific war during 1942 and not only was this just the right time for a new u.s warplane to come on the scene but even more so for a torpedo bomber in 1941 there were really only two reliable ways for an aircraft to hit and seriously damage a ship maneuvering at sea these two methods were dive bombing and torpedo bombing there were attempts at level bombing ships from altitude but it rarely worked if attacking a ship maneuvering at sea there are some cases of b-17s managing to do it but it's the exception not the rule more often than not they miss the torpedo bomber only had a very small window in history where it could be effective prior to about 1935 carrier aircraft couldn't really carry and launch torpedoes effectively they could kind of do it but but not very well after 1945 there were no conflicts involving torpedo bombing at least on any scale in fact i can't think of any case where that happened and the very concept of torpedo bombing was soon made obsolete by new weaponry that's not to say you couldn't do it outside of those years but 1935 is about when all the needed technologies converged to make it practical and after 1945 newer weapons were on the horizon so the avenger made its debut at exactly the right point in history of course it takes more than fortuitous timing to make a plane great it takes a great design a good engine and more in regards to the engine i really consider it to be just okay i wouldn't say it was great the right r 2600 used in the avenger was a 14 cylinder air cooled engine about 2600 cubic inches of displacement its design is very similar to the bmw 801 used in some german fw190s the air cooled ones i have an entire video about these types of engines you might be interested in that in any case the r 2600 had some development problems early on most of which were resolved by the time the avenger was really pressed into service however the 2600s still suffered from some issues well into 1943 these include high oil consumption and corrosion which would accelerate wear the truman report had some criticism of curtis wright quite a bit of it actually and it had a lot to do with these engines now most of the problems were solved and by the time the avengers were going into combat in significant numbers the right r 2600 was at the very least a decent engine but i don't consider it quite up to the level of say the pratt whitney r 2800 or the uh merlin or some others in the avenger the r2600 was set up with a dual speed single stage supercharger and an injection carburetor which was basically a primitive form of fuel injection the injection carb was fed air by a very good ram air system but if operating in icy or dusty conditions the control for car the carb air source could be put into an alternate position to protect the engine but sacrificing a bit of power in short the engine was set up in a good but fairly simple configuration that was adequate for the avengers job it didn't have a dual stage supercharger intercooler or water injection but hey it's not a fighter plane performance for the right engine was pretty good at military power which had a 5 minute limitation they would put out 1700 horsepower there were a few variants that had 1900 but normally avengers had 1700 horsepower engines which is pretty decent for a non-intercooled radial the plane was big the biggest single-engine airplane of the war and that r 2600 could pull it to a top speed of 278 miles per hour and it could do that with a torpedo on board because it carried the torpedo internally the navy wanted 300 miles per hour but the avenger just couldn't couldn't do that but 278 not bad at its normal rated power meaning a power setting with no time limit it could cruise at over 240 miles per hour with a torpedo or equivalent internal payload and was even faster than that at optimal altitudes let's take a look at a performance chart for the plane to get an idea of how fast it was we'll open up the pilot's manual for the tbf-1 note that the manual also covers the tbm the tbf avengers were built by grumman the tbms by general motors in fact that's an entire story on its own but for now just know that grumman was really busy so production of the avengers was largely handled by general motors and the planes gm built are designated tbm we'll flip to the loading schedule and find that an avenger loaded for combat with a torpedo will weigh 15 thousand and two pounds note that it refers to this as the wheel up weight below that number you'll see the total weight wheels down this is in reference to the landing gear position which does not affect the weight the plane doesn't get lighter or heavier as it extends or attracts the gear but as with nearly all airplanes gear retraction has some effect on the center of gravity which is shown in the index numbers to the right that's a very small change and of no real consequence but in certain airplanes it has a bigger effect it's not much of a factor in the avenger because its main gear retracts outwards notice our weight for this chart is 14 500 pounds so this is representative of a typical avenger going into combat with the torpedo assuming it took off at a normal combat mission weight right around 15 000 pounds then burn nominally 83 gallons of fuel so this isn't a cherry-picked lightweight situation it's where the plane would likely be going into battle the weight at which it would be flying uh at going into battle at sea level and max continuous power which is 2400 rpm about 38 inches of manifold pressure we can reach 215 knots of indicated airspeed no manifold pressure is not shown in this chart now flip over to our air speed correction table and we find that our indicated air speed is about two knots faster than reality so our calibrated air speed will be 213 knots and this is at sea level on a standard day so that's also our true air speed converted to miles per hour 245 miles an hour or 394 kilometers per hour of true airspeed at sea level sustainable not with a 5 minute limitation and with a torpedo on board under those conditions 245 is pretty good take a look at 10 000 feet we find the plane can indicate 193 knots correct for instrument error convert to true that's 220 knots so 253 miles an hour or 407 kph up at 18 000 and now we're on the high blower chart meaning the supercharger in high speed now i can reach 226 knots 260 miles an hour or 418 kph and again these are all sustained numbers it can we can maintain these speeds sadly we don't have performance charts for the plane at military power which it could run at for five minutes at least i don't have those charts but the maximum speed number i see quoted frequently for this airplane is 278 miles per hour considering that it can sustain 260 miles per hour continuously when loaded for battle i think the 278 miles per hour number is reasonable at military power these charts are in the manuals and all of the manuals from this video are in the patreon section so if you're a patreon member there's a couple avenger manuals in there and uh the manual for the very barracuda and some other stuff related to this video moving on it's worth noting that weight has a minimal effect on the maximum speed of the avenger actually in all airplanes weight has a smaller effect on top speed than you might think and viewers of this channel probably understand why that is because at high speed the primary form of drag that's causing you problems is parasite drag and that's not affected by weight but this issue weight not being really not really affecting speed is especially true of the avenger largely because with its big internal bombay it doesn't incur an increase in parasite drag from carrying a bomb or torpedo there is a chart for this find the 14 500 pound column go to the far right find 220 knots notice you if you increase weight all the way up to 16 500 pounds you only lose one knot of indicated airspeed dropping weight to twelve thousand five hundred pounds you only gain two knots so weight has very little effect here now at lower speeds at given power settings weight will have a bigger effect on speed due to the larger amount of induced drag which is largely affected by weight so when calculating things like maximum endurance speeds or stall speeds weight is a pretty big factor but it's not much of a factor on maximum speed and again i cover this extensively in other videos that were done earlier on this channel so in terms of speed the avenger was no fighter plane but by torpedo plane standards the avenger was pretty fast about 40 miles per hour faster than a kate or a barracuda and about 130 miles per hour faster than a swordfish that's not to say there were no torpedo planes faster than the avenger there were let's talk about that for a moment the consolidated sea wolf which i already mentioned also carried its torpedo internally and with the more powerful pratt whitney r 2800 was about 30 miles per hour faster than the avenger however the plane was too late the reasons for that are debatable but in any case never saw combat we also have the curtis helldiver it was more of a dive bomber hence the name but could carry a torpedo the helldiver was faster than the avenger by quite a bit but i can't find any performance charts for this airplane and i'm not sure the helldiver would be faster when loaded for a mission with a torpedo i don't think it would have been also the helldiver would be slowed down with its rear gunner's hatch open for combat not a problem in the avenger even if the helldiver was faster than the avenger when loaded with a torpedo which i doubt but even if it was it had a lot of other problems and was never successful as a torpedo bomber the british flat out rejected the plane and it wasn't really popular with u.s navy pilots either speaking of the british they had some very late war torpedo planes that were extremely fast like the fairy spear fish shown here they also had the blackburn firebrand very fast airplane however few were built and they never saw combat during the war at least they never hit an enemy ship with a torpedo the japanese b6n was certainly faster than the avenger without a torpedo however there are some big holes in the available performance data for this plane and i'm not sure how the speed of the two planes would compare if both were loaded with the torpedo my feeling is that the jill would maybe have a slight edge but i'm really guessing there either way the jill never really had any impact on the war as we talked about earlier it was just too late then we have the japanese b7a which was absolutely faster than an avenger with or without a torpedo however it was designed for larger aircraft carriers both in the japanese only had two aircraft carriers big enough for this airplane both of which were sunk before the b7as were ready for action thus they never went into combat from a carrier in fact i don't think they ever conducted a torpedo attack on an enemy ship i could be wrong about that as records from the japanese side of the war uh especially late war are pretty spotty not to mention allied recognition of japanese aircraft types was really poor you know for a while every fighter plane was reported as being a zero even though there were no zeros anywhere nearby however in regard to this torpedo bomber we know that only 114 of them were built they showed up very late and only operated from land bases had this plane had a chance to prove itself it would be a real contender for best torpedo plane of the war however the reality puts it into the category of also rans in short the avenger was pretty fast of all the carrier aircraft commonly used for torpedo attacks the avenger was the fastest one there were a few torpedo planes that were faster but in every case it was built it was a plane that was built in very few numbers that had no effect on the war as a torpedo bomber of course a carrier-based torpedo bomber has to be able to fly slowly as well just going fast isn't enough it has to be able to fly slowly so that it can take off and land from a carrier and in some cases torpedoes or other weapons would have to be dropped from relatively low speeds this wasn't a common issue with the avenger but it was famously the case with the tbd devastator it had to be below 100 knots before releasing its torpedo now the avengers minimum speeds are surprisingly low here are the stall speeds from the manual if it takes off at fourteen thousand five hundred pounds the avenger will lose about two thousand pounds just from dropping its torpedo probably burn around nine hundred pounds of fuel on its mission thus will be down to around 11 500 pounds or if it takes off on a longer emission at a higher weight by the time it returns it will burn fuel down to that point so this would be a typical weight when it's coming coming back from a mission at that point the airspeed at which it will stall with power off is about 56 knots indicated at that point unfortunately we don't know what the calibrated air speed is at that speed but we do know that the lowest published speed of 100 knots indicated at that speed the avengers airspeed indicator is indicating 9 knots fast and the trend shows an increasing error with decreasing speed thus it's very likely that the avengers stall speed in terms of calibrated airspeed and that's what really counts here at or near the landing weight was in the low 50s possibly lower which is remarkable for such a big airplane to put that into perspective we can look at a spitfire mark ii which has a famously low stall speed the mark ii is an earlier lightweight spitfire they got heavier as time went on and the mark ii has a stall speed with the flaps down of 62 knots indicated and its airspeed indicator reads low at slow speeds so its actual true speed was higher so the avenger even if you look at the avenger at really high weights the avenger still has a stall speed that's at least equal or lower than an early model spitfire now this isn't a perfect comparison because we lack information about the airspeed indicator errors at low speeds but no matter what data we look at or what plane we compare it to the avengers stall speed looks really impressive now there isn't any magic to this or at least not much magic to it the avenger is a really big airplane but it also has a really big wing to make up for it even at 14 500 pounds it's 490 square feet of wing area gives it a wing loading of 29.6 pounds per square foot for comparison with equivalent payloads meaning a torpedo and equivalent time of fuel the wing loading of a helldiver or barracuda is just over 32 pounds per square foot a typical early spitfire before they got heavier was around 27 pounds per square foot so the avengers write in terms of wing loading right between an early lightweight spitfire and a helldiver or barracuda so the avenger looks pretty good here the kate was amazingly good in this regard typical of a japanese airplane the kate's wing loading was 21 pounds per square foot even when it was heavily loaded it said that the kate had a 43 knot yes 43 knot stall speed of course it had a lot of sacrifices in terms of protection to keep the weight down which contributed to the low wing loading and stall speed i'm still impressed though by that low stall speed on the subject of low wing loading the swordfish is the obvious king here with its biplane design it has about 24 percent more wing area than even the avenger and with its far lower weight it has an incredibly low by world war ii standards wing loading of 12.5 pounds per square foot however that's not as great as it seems and i'm not going to get into the aerodynamics of biplanes here just know that biplanes usually don't have stall speeds as low as their wing loadings would indicate and the swordfish is no exception here the only manual i have for this plane shows a stall speed between 48 and 52 knots indicated but there's again no airspeed indicator error data for the airplane that i have and in almost every case british indicators read low thus it seems the swordfish had a stall speed only slightly lower than the avenger if lower at all and quite a bit higher than the kate the avengers also have excellent handling characteristics down near the stall speeds partially due to the slots located in the leading edge of the wings forward of the ailerons these are not slats they're not things that move forward and open up like you'd see on a 109 they're slots and these slots keep the ailerons working well at high angles of attack near the point of stalling now why does this matter well because the low speed and controllability of the avenger allowed it to be operated off of very small carriers not only was the avenger the largest u.s navy plane operated from a carrier in world war ii it operated from some of the very smallest aircraft carriers the ability to operate from the smaller carriers was important because out of the 151 aircraft carriers built in the united states during the second world war 122 of them were escort carriers when talking about u.s navy carriers in world war ii most people immediately think of the big carriers the enterprise yorktown the later essex classes and so on but the reality is that the vast majority of u.s carriers were the much smaller escort carriers thus a torpedo plane that couldn't operate from an escort carrier would have had very limited use to the navy by the way did i mention that the us built 151 aircraft carriers during the war we sometimes forget the sheer scale of things in world war ii the bose class of us carriers had an overall length of under 500 feet it was one of the smallest carrier types of the war 45 of them were built avengers operated from these this picture shows an avenger landing on the uss card a bogue class aircraft carrier or bosch class i suppose here's a picture of an avenger tied down on an escort carrier rolling in heavy seas that wing folding system saved a lot of space which was of obvious importance on any carrier and especially an escort carrier the avengers wing folding system was pretty special designed and patented by leo grumman himself it did a great job of minimizing the space taken up by the airplane that's a big part of the reason u.s carriers were able to carry so many airplanes additionally like most u.s navy aircraft avengers were rugged and weatherproof enough to be stored on the deck which contributed to the large complements of planes on u.s navy carriers let's look at some examples this isn't a ship channel so we're just going to blow through this but we'll compare three big carriers all of the same vintage the uss enterprise commissioned in 1938 hms arc royal commissioned in 1938 and from japan the shokaku commissioned in 1941. ship specifications vary greatly from source to source and there are a lot of reasons for that but rather than get into a long discussion about it i'm just going to put up the basic specs from wikipedia you can take them for what they're worth or look this up on your own and go to town the enterprise's displacement in my opinion is falsely low due to the us trying to fit the ship into treaty limitations but that's okay because the exact specs don't matter for our purposes which is why we don't need to have that discussion the key takeaway here is that all three of these ships are about the same size with the shokaku being the largest of the three in spite of this the enterprise carries the most aircraft she carried a maximum of 96 and was typically loaded with 80 to 90. the ark royal had a maximum of 72 but an actual practice sailed with 50 to 60 quite a bit fewer the shokaku carried 72 aircraft and 12 spares i haven't seen any official source or pictures showing how these 12 spares were stored but my impression which kind of means my guess in this case is that the shokaku stored those spare aircraft in a disassembled state so they could be tucked away and not use up the prime main hanger deck space but no matter how you count them the u.s carriers usually carried more aircraft than their british or japanese counterparts a big part of the reason u.s carriers could fit so many airplanes was because of the grumman wing folding system often called the stow wing stowa's sto avengers use this type of folding mechanism so did some other aircraft like the wildcats in this picture aboard the uss charger which was another escort carrier speaking of escort carriers if we compare escort carriers from the u.s to japanese carriers of similar size in other words japanese escort carriers again the u.s carried more aircraft in almost every case the casablanca-class ships which were only 512 feet long carried 27 aircraft the japanese kaio was much larger carried only 24. even though the japanese planes were smaller because of their wing folding mechanisms they took up more space than a typical avenger or hellcat you can see that pretty clearly in this picture of a japanese d3a val or vaal dive bomber the japanese kate was set up pretty much the same way this picture uh this particular kate is in the surrender paint scheme which was white with green crosses it's pretty rare to see pictures of japanese planes in that paint scheme the sad part of this picture though is knowing that this plane made it all the way to the end of the war only to be scrapped that's unfortunate because today there are no complete kates in existence except maybe at the bottom of the ocean somewhere this one is from the museum at pearl harbor and it's about the best example of a kate that we have i've heard there's one in a museum in england it's reported to be in similar condition to this one couldn't find any pictures of it in addition to space savings the avengers wing folding mechanism has an additional advantage over most of its contemporaries it was hydraulically powered this allowed the avenger to taxi into takeoff position and unfold its wings at the same time with no need for a ground crew to handle the unfolding after landing it could taxi and fold its wings at the same time again with no ground crew this was a big time saver for launch and recovery and saving time is a big deal in carrier warfare i should mention that british aircraft from ferry had an unusual folding mechanism as well partially due to the limited headroom on hanger decks of certain british carriers the barracuda's trailing edge portion of the wing including the flaps folds over on top of the forward portion the whole thing then pivots back the plane does have hydraulics to perform the first part of the process but not the main part of pivoting the wings aft so the avenger was pretty fast could also fly slowly enough to operate from the smallest carriers the avenger could also be catapult launched and in some cases would catapult launched out of the hangar deck in other words they'd blast the thing out of the side of the aircraft carrier and it would fly away and uh go off to attack that's pretty impressive not only does the plane obviously need a very low stall speed to be able to do that it has to be really rugged to withstand that tremendous acceleration now even though the avenger was big it didn't take up too much hanger deck space um or main deck space and could launch and recover pretty quickly due to its hydraulically powered wing folding system so all these things are great now what about defensive firepower i would say it's pretty good for a carrier-based torpedo bomber but compared with a land-based bomber not good at all in terms of machine guns the avengers had either a 30 caliber gun mounted on the fuselage firing through the propeller or later avengers had two 50 cows one in each wing in both cases the guns can be charged which means cocked and made ready to fire from the cockpit this seemed to be a thing for the u.s navy as all their aircraft have guns that can be charged in flight by the crew this is probably because there's a high risk to the ship and crew if the guns fire on a carrier so they don't charge them until after takeoff this is in contrast to the us army air force airplanes like the p-47 or p-51 which must have their guns charged on the ground and if that gun jams after takeoff it can't be cleared until the plane lands there was also a 30 caliber tunnel gun in most variants this gun had a very limited field of fire below and behind the airplane it was operated by the bombardier radio operator i'll get to the crew positions later and you'll see why this makes sense the avengers main defense was a single 50 caliber gun mounted in a ball turret at the time most turrets in u.s aircraft like the b-17s ball turret shown here used hydraulic power to traverse the turret and elevate or depress the guns these hydraulic turrets were usually manufactured by sperry or bendix not the aircraft manufacturer now using hydraulics to power turrets made a lot of sense because most u.s airplanes had pretty extensive hydraulic systems already in place the us designers seem to love hydraulics and they use these systems to power nearly everything in fact as a general rule u.s planes were big on hydraulic systems the british generally preferred pneumatic systems and focal wolf at least in regards to the fw190 series were really big on electrically operated systems of course that's a simplification there was some crossover the wildcat used pneumatics for the flaps the barracuda uses quite a bit of hydraulics but in a general sense the us aircraft favored hydraulics over pneumatics or electrical actuation of components the avenger was no exception it used hydraulics for operating the landing gear including the tail wheel the bombay doors the cowl flaps the oil cooler flaps wing folding and spreading wing flaps gun charging and for the autopilot you might think that with that hydraulic system there already in place they would have used a hydraulically powered turret from bendix or sperry like just about everybody else was doing but they didn't grumman went another way and built the turret in-house furthermore they did not use hydraulics to power the turret it was electric to make this work they took a page from naval gun turret design for ships and used something called an amplidyne and i have to say when i first came across this word in the pilot's flight manual i didn't know what an ampline was it turns out an ampline was a device which raised voltage above what could be had via conventional generators or batteries of the time at least one small enough to be used in an airplane the amplidyne is outside my scope of knowledge by some distance so i won't get into how it works you can look it up on your own obviously if you want and it is slightly described in the pilot manuals it seems that they're no longer used in the modern world as they have been replaced by newer technologies in any case the avengers turret with the ampline system worked very well it could move at 30 degrees per second in elevation and 45 degrees per second in the horizontal that is really fast of course it could also move slowly if desired for aiming the speed at which it moved was proportional to the gunner's input to the control and with the mark 9 illuminated gunsight the single 50 caliber gun could be quite accurate in one case a royal navy gunner in an avenger turret shot down a v-1 buzz bomb at 700 yards that's a really long way he was awarded a medal for making that shot it is quite impressive the turret system incorporates cams and a micro switch to prevent the gunner from accidentally shooting his own airplane this chart shows the areas to which the gun cannot fire um interestingly it does not prevent him from shooting off the radio antenna or the pitot tube but those are the only parts of the plane the turret gunner can shoot off on the plus side the turret's fast accurate has good safety provisions built in and a really good field of fire the downside is that the single 50 caliber gun in the turret while better than a 50 caliber on a swivel type mount you know in the slipstream and a lot better than nothing really isn't a lot of firepower the turret was small so there wasn't room to use a 20 millimeter cannon or dual 50s and still have room for the gunner the controls the gun sight the gun camera the oxygen system and all the other stuff that's in there in short no carrier-based torpedo bomber could reliably fend off fighters on its own the avenger included however the avenger with its guns covering most angles and its accurate and fast turret had a better chance than most certainly better than the kate swordfish or barracuda now i want to talk about the crew positions for a moment as the avenger is unusual in this regard first we have the pilot nothing unusual here the cockpit is located conventionally and the pilot enters and exits and bails out if needed through the canopy as with with most other naval aircraft used during the war the pilot is well protected by standards of the day with armor behind him and the engine in front of him the pilot's compartment aka the cockpit is not accessible from any other part of the aircraft next i want to talk about the gunner who is seated obviously in the turret all the way at the aft portion of the canopy the turret has considerable armor so the gunner is also pretty well protected last we have the bombadier radio operator slash radar operator slash tunnel gunner i'm just going to call him the bombardier he is located below and behind the turret most naval torpedo bombers had three crewmen in a row with the second crewman usually either a bombardier or navigator seated right behind the pilot with its long canopy the avenger looks like it's set up that way but in most cases it isn't now you may see some photos with a person in that middle cockpit and that is what it's called middle cockpit sometimes it's called second cockpit but that's usually either a very early airplane if you see a person in that middle cockpit or a plane on the ground with someone climbing in and out using the mid canopy opening or in some rare cases it's one of the passenger versions of the airplane there was a passenger version of the plane called the tbm-3r which carried six passengers plus the pilot two passengers were seated side by side in the middle compartment two side by side where the turret would normally be located in this variant the turret was replaced with a conventional canopy back there and then there were two seats one facing four one facing half so they were facing each other in the bombardier compartment the 3r variant also had some sort of cargo pod which fit into the bombay i've never been able to find a picture of that but i know it existed however an avenger used in combat in world war ii would not normally have anyone in that middle compartment in flight much of that space is taken up by radio and autopilot equipment although the space is accessible to the bombardier and turret gunner in flight they can climb up into there at low altitudes that wouldn't really be a problem but there's no provision in that compartment to connect an oxygen mask and it doesn't look like the bombardier's flexible oxygen hose is long enough to reach that far once the plane was above ten thousand feet it's unlikely any other crew members would go up there um during flight and they just don't have a reason to now the bombardier station is below and aft of the turret and he also mans the tunnel gun the crew members have very different levels of protection the pilot has the best deal here he's well protected can escape the plane with relative ease in either a bailout or ditching situation the turret gunner has reasonable armor protection but can't wear his parachute when he's in the turret thus if he has to bail out he will need to climb down out of the turret which is not easy um i think chris from military aviation history has a video of him climbing into that turret now he's a bigger guy but still it shows you how difficult it is um so you gotta climb down out of the turret to bail out which isn't easy then don your parachute then exit through the door now the entire door can be jettisoned to make bailing out a bit easier there's a big red handle just forward to the door you pull that it removes the door hinge pins then you push or probably kick the door and it's going to fly off the airplane plus by the time the turret gunner gets out uh the vomiteer is probably already long gone so i don't think the turret hunter's gonna have to push out the door but in any case it's tough for the turret gunner to bail out of an avenger now i don't think there are any statistics on avenger turret gunner successful bailouts but i'm sure the number is very low especially considering that these planes often fought at low altitudes and i've seen comments by people that flew avengers during the war or recruitment on avengers saying that they didn't know of any uh turret gunner that successfully bailed out of an adventure so i think it was very rare now if the plane ditches that's a much better deal for the turret gunner the turret has a round hatch on the port side which can be so to the gunner's right when he's facing aft which can be jettisoned making exiting into the water pretty easy note that in this picture you can see uh both the jettison turret hatch and the jettisoned entry door the artist i thought this through now the bombardier probably has the worst deal here first of all he has no armor protection of his own i suppose he's pretty well protected from fire from the front as there's just he doesn't have specific armor for that but there's just a lot of stuff between him and the front of the airplane not to mention the engine and the armor for the pilot and the turret however from the rear side or below he has essentially nothing if he has to bail out that's not too bad he can just jettison the door and be on his way if ditching it's not great but not terrible you can crawl up to that middle compartment and there's a hatch in the canopy through which you can exit earlier i mentioned that middle compartment containing autopilot controls so that brings us to the autopilot yes the avenger has one and i'm sure that the pilots appreciated it because while the avenger had good flying qualities and it also had three axis trim so you could trim it up pretty well but the avengers controls were very heavy and required a lot of stick force to operate the navy actually tried to do something about this there's a report about that so having an autopilot was a real luxury and allowed the pilot to take some of his attention off flying the airplane for use in other tasks of course i don't think that's why grumman and the navy put it in they put it in there because they had to in order to allow the bombardier to steer the airplane on the bomb run you see the avenger was built so that it could do level bombing or torpedo bombing and various other missions it could lay smoke fire rockets all kinds of stuff we're mostly focused on torpedo bombing today in this video so for the avengers designers the idea of having a modern bomb site and connected autopilot to allow the bombardier to aim and drop the bombs made a lot of sense when grumman started the project however in actual practice the bombardier was rarely the one who released the weapons it was usually the pilot for a few reasons first of all the torpedoes could only be released by the pilot the same was true of the smoke system rockets and of course the forward firing machine guns very often when bombing avengers and avengers employed a glide bombing technique it's a lot like dive bombing but done at a much more shallow angle the avenger cannot legitimately dive bomb but it can glide bomb and during glide bombing the pilot would release the bombs so the only time an avenger bombardier would be likely to release a weapon was during level bombing but when level bombing was done it was often from an altitude too low to use the site in automation so in those cases the pilot usually released the bombs as well so what did the bombadier do in this airplane well first of all let's remember he's a bombardier radio operator tail gunner and when installed he's also the radar operator so even without bombardier specific duties he still has some work cut out for him now as a bombardier he can open and close the bombay doors so the pilot can do that as well the bombardier can release the bombs if needed and the bombardier controls the intervalometer which is pretty important this device is located on the left side wall of the bombardier's compartment and it sets the spacing of the bombs when dropped in other words if bombing troops in a jungle the avenger would likely be carrying 12 100 pound bombs that's one of its many possible loadouts now you of course don't want to drop all 12 bombs at once you don't want to kill one person really really dead you want to spread the carnage out over some distance the whole idea is to spread the damage out and destroy as many soft targets as possible the intervalometer allows for that i've never found instructions on how to use it or how it works but we can surmise some things just from looking at it it appears that the bombardier could set the bomb spacing in terms of feet thus could space the bombs out from seven to four hundred feet each it's interesting to me that the setting is in terms of distance and not time that means the intervalometer the system has to know aircraft speed in fact it has to know true aircraft airspeed which you would have to calculate from from indicated so it's somewhat complex some avengers were radar equipped and the bombardier also served as the radar operator in world war ii these radar units could detect enemy ships at a range of about 20 miles and i've heard it claimed that a good operator could actually tell the difference between an allied ship and a japanese ship by what he saw on the screen this radar system plus the avengers radio altimeter in the pilot's cockpit allowed the crew to fly low over the ocean at night and or in low visibility conditions and effectively search for and attack enemy ships and surfaced submarines operation of the radios for communication was also the bombardier's responsibility and a pretty big deal a lot of communication was done via morse code and that had to be handled by the bombardier because it's a labor-intensive thing to send and receive morse code messages in fact in an interview on youtube and i'll link it in the description a former avenger bombadier said that his training for this position in the u.s navy took about four months maybe five months and he specifically mentions that they were able to uh they're required to be able to send out 16 words a minute in morse code of course the bombardier also operated the tunnel gun sometimes called the stinger so he had quite a bit of responsibility however in certain types of late war missions he didn't have much responsibility at all for example if the plane wasn't going to encounter enemy fighters wasn't radar equipped and didn't need to use morse code and if it was going out armed with a torpedo the bombardier wouldn't have much to do but would be at great risk due to a lack of armor in the position i've read some secondary sources that on some late war missions the avengers sometimes flew with a two-man crew that kind of makes sense for some reason i mean why expose someone to danger if he's not needed on the mission the only hesitation i have to agree to that is there are some electrical controls including power to the turret that are switched on or off from the bombardier's position and it would be difficult for the turret gunner to get out and reset things and get back in so i'm not really sure if they always flew missions with the three-man crew on avengers in combat or not certainly not in combat you know they could do it so speaking of combat how did the avenger do in combat well it debuted at midway which didn't go well there were only six of them there uh the squadron had just got them the pilots had just been trained on them they were all based on the island of midway they were not operating off of a carrier and they were the first or among the very first americans to attack the japanese fleet at midway they did so without fighter cover and they suffered the full wrath of the defending japanese fighter pilot no avenger scored a torpedo hit five out of six were shot down and the single plane that made it back was badly damaged with two wounded and one dead crew member this wasn't a great start for the us navy's new torpedo plane but in defense of the avenger and cruise i'll say they were dealt a really bad hand i don't think any six world war ii navy torpedo bombers of any type with any crew could have succeeded in that mission they went in without fighter cover and tried to attack a carrier group with four aircraft carriers not to mention a lot of a lot of other ships putting up anti-aircraft fire and the defending fighters were all flown by uh they were all zeroes with experienced pilots now the single surviving but heavily damaged avenger was sent back to the united states for post-battle evaluation i don't know exactly what happened in that evaluation but considering that they continued to use avengers i think the navy's conclusion was something like my own that the lack of the plane's success at midway was not due to shortcomings of the airplane itself i also suspect that after midway at least some people must have been questioning the use of torpedo bombers in general as opposed to dive bombers in april of 1942 well yeah let's back up a little bit go over a little bit history so i can explain my viewpoint here in april of 1942 the japanese sank the british aircraft carrier hermes this isn't a battle that's discussed very often but it did happen and the hermes was a very old aircraft carrier but in any case the japanese attacked her and sank her exclusively with dive bombers there were no torpedo bombers involved the next month at the battle of coral sea which most of us have heard of the japanese carrier shoho was hit and probably knocked out of action by u.s navy dive bombers she was also hit by torpedoes from tbd devastators but the dive bombers hit her first and scored decisive blows in fact the dive bombers hit her 13 times easily enough to sink her in the same battle us dive bombers also hit the fleet carrier shokaku didn't sink her but knocked her out of the fight and forced her to retreat on the other hand u.s torpedo bombers failed to score any hits on shokaku in the same battle japanese dive bombers hit uss yorktown damaging her um pretty extensively but they didn't score any torpedo hits and they did try the uss lexington took hits from both dive and torpedo bombing thus up to this point in the pacific war dive bombers were proving to be much more effective against aircraft carriers than torpedo bombers hms hermes was sunk exclusively by dive bombers yorktown and chicago were both attacked by torpedo bombers at coral sea yet neither took any torpedo hits however both were knocked out of the fight and forced to retreat by dive bombers shoho and lexington were both hit by bombs and torpedoes but in the case of the shoho the bombs were the first hits and were decisive in other words shoho would have sunk whether she got hit by torpedoes or not the uss lexington did take serious damage from japanese torpedo bombers but she was also hit by dive bombers also and this is a side note but apparently the uss lexington had an unusually large turn radius making her easier to hit with torpedoes but that's a whole nother story and really one for another channel now the very next month at midway well what happened there all four japanese carriers were sunk by dive bombers no carrier launched u.s torpedo plane scored a hit and neither did the new avengers which of course were launched from midway the only plane as a point of interest and i have a video that covers this but the only plane that scored a torpedo hit um at midway from the u.s side in other words the only u.s airplane to score a torpedo hit at midway was a pby catalina and it flew in at night and it and it didn't even sink anything it hit an oiler or something a little bit did some damage now throughout the rest of the war it was usually the dive bombers not the torpedo bombers that hit japanese carriers the us navy prioritized dive bombing enemy carriers because a bomb hitting the flight deck of a japanese carrier or a u.s carrier for that matter would very likely prevent it from launching a recovering aircraft until repairs could be completed thus in a battle between aircraft carriers dive bombing was more likely to be the deciding factor as compared with torpedo bombing so why not just pack the carriers with dive bombers and forego the torpedo bombers entirely well there are actually at least two really good reasons not to do that and keep the torpedo bombers around first of all with regards to carrier-on-carrier combat if only dive bombers are involved in an attack that makes it easier for the enemy fighters to stop the attack and defend the fleet in fact it makes it much easier because the fighters can loiter up at relatively high altitude and attack the incoming dive bombers but when torpedo bombers are present or when there's a threat of torpedo bombers coming in at least some of the fighters some of the time are gonna have to be down low and will not be able to climb up fast enough to stop the attacking incoming dive bombers and this is part of what happened at midway the japanese fighters were caught down low when the u.s dive bombers came in and they couldn't defend the fleet they were out of position down low because they had been dealing with the torpedo bombing threat so even though no u.s carrier plane scored a torpedo hit at midway they still contributed to the victory by bringing the japanese fighters down to the deck and although it wasn't part of the plan it inadvertently cleared the way for the dive bombers uh frankly the u.s got very lucky in midway yes we had broken the japanese code and we had some good airplanes and good care good carriers and um overall pretty good organization but there were a lot of things that happened at midway that were just very very lucky for the u.s and uh thankfully it went that way of course when talking about torpedo bombers it's not all about attacking carriers naval aircraft had other duties when attacking battleships or other big gun warships heavy cruisers like cruisers and so forth the torpedo bomber has an advantage over the dive bomber and it's one that's seen many times over and over during world war ii when the torpedo bomber is down low it's very hard for anti-aircraft guns to target them don't get me wrong they can still do it and low-flying torpedo bombers were shot down it was a dangerous job um but shooting them down when they're when they're low could be difficult for anti-aircraft fire and i've heard accounts of avenger pilots flying so low that water spray from the propeller would get into the bomb bay when they opened the gear doors and they stayed that low specifically to try and stay under the anti-aircraft guns field of fire now this tactic was especially effective once a battleship or heavy cruiser or whatever started to list and this was a common tactic used by both the us and the japanese once a battleship starts to list torpedo bombers can then attack from the opposite side with greatly reduced chances of it being shot down the first modern battleship to be sunk by aircraft while maneuvering at sea was the hms prince of wales this was right after pearl harbor she was sunk by japanese twin engine land-based not carrier-based torpedo bombers but land-based torpedo bombers the prince of wales had a modern for the time anti-aircraft battery but once she started listening the guns couldn't depress enough to be effective against the torpedo bombers coming in on the high side of the ship and they made pretty quick work of her from that point so it's a good thing the u.s navy kept the avenger after midway the new torpedo bomber really started to show its capabilities in august of 1942 adventures avengers sank the japanese carrier ryujo hey and i'm not sure of the pronunciation of any of these japanese names but ryujo is r-y-u-j-o no promises on pronunciation of japanese names today the ryujo had been causing some real problems all over the pacific in the early part of the war she fought at singapore the philippines and at dutch harbor many other locations she sunk or damaged a lot of allied ships and furthermore she survived a lot of attacks however at the batter of battle of the eastern solomons avengers from uss saratoga found and sank her from that point on avengers participated in battles with a lot of success until the end of the war it's impossible to say how many ships they sank because normally the u.s attacked enemy ships with multiple types of aircraft at the same time or in successive waves in other words they sent in dive bombers and torpedo bombers and sometimes surface ships or submarines got involved as an example the zuikaku was hit by seven torpedoes and nine bombs before she sank so who's to say if that should count as a ship sunk by torpedo bombing or by dive bombing the battleship uh hi h-i-e-i anyway uh she was knocked out of action by a combination of naval gunfire from surface ships dive bombing and torpedoes from avengers before she was scuttled during the battle she was even attacked by b-17s bombing from altitude as usual the b-17s missed she can be seen in this picture maneuvering to avoid the bombs you know i shouldn't sound too much like i'm criticizing the b-17s here because i'm not the plane just isn't too well suited for attacking ships at sea actually it's not even the plane that isn't suited for it it's the type of airplane or type of attack that's not suitable for that mission and it's true in reverse too if we sent a formation of a hundred avengers to bomb cologne from twenty thousand feet uh in the daytime i don't think that would have been effective either now on some rare occasions b-17s did actually hit ships maneuvering at sea so it wasn't impossible a b-17 sank the japanese destroyer asashio at the battle of the bismarck c b-17s also hit the c-plane tender akitsushima i think is how it's pronounced um and at least one other ship that was at sea so while it was rare it did happen and the b-17 was one of the few four engine bombers to actually make that happen but let's get back on track because of the nature of the pacific war i can't say how many ships the avengers sank but they participated in the sinking of 12 aircraft carriers both of japan's super battleships the yamato and the musashi four other battleships 19 cruisers 25 destroyers and 30 submarines no other torpedo bomber has a war record that is anywhere close to that now when you add all this up the avengers speed the ability to operate from very small carriers um also the ability to be catapulted off the side but it wasn't common but it could do it um we gotta factor in the plane's ruggedness the technology in the airplane including the electric turret the radar the radio altimeter the autopilot then add in the plane's war record with both the us navy and the royal navy and i think it's pretty easy to conclude that the avenger was the best torpedo bomber of world war ii and not by a small margin so that's all for this episode uh thanks to all my subscribers i appreciate uh you guys commenting and reading those comments i do try to answer them and special thanks to all the patreon members and for you folks um i will have all the manuals related to this video up within 24 hours of the videos released and of course the patreon members got early access to this video that's all for today have a great day thank you for watching and goodbye you

Channel: Greg's Airplanes and Automobiles

Views: 439,288

Keywords: TBF, TBM, Kate, Swordfish, Avenger, B5N, B6N, Jill, Grace, Midway, Coral Sea

Id: 46R16G0iRAQ

Length: 70min 22sec (4222 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 15 2022