Talk:Torpedo bomber

Needs work.
This article could use some work; it doesn't have much cohesion, just a lot of little entries kind of thrown together, and it lacks relevant information and includes some not-very-relevant information. I deleted the following passage, as I don't see how it pertains to the article on "Torpedo bomber":

''Pearl Harbor had an average depth of just 42 ft, a little more than Taranto. So the Imperial Japanese Navy took a very keen interest in the British victory at Taranto. The naval attaché in Berlin visited the harbour. The Japanese Government asked their Axis partner, Nazi Germany, to provide intelligence on Pearl Harbor. The German Abwehr asked their Yugoslav agent Dusan Popov to travel to Hawaii to prepare a report. Unbeknownst to the Germans Popov was a double agent working for the British under the code name Tricycle. British Intelligence sent Popov to meet the head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover in Washington with a long list of questions, and the suggestion that he should travel to Hawaii and provide false data just as he did three years later for the D-Day Normandy landings. Hoover dismissed him from his office. ''

It may be referenced, but I'd say it belongs in the article on Pearl Harbor, not the one on torpedo bombers.

I have also modified the sentence saying "most torpedo bombers are single engined" as it is untrue. Perhaps the most popularly-known torpedo bombers of WWII were single engined, but if you go through the List of torpedo bomber aircraft, you will see that a large number of them are multi-engine aircraft. Therefore, I have changed it to say "many" aircraft are single engined. .45Colt 04:35, 17 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Agree, this article seems to be a good starting point but still needs rework. The lack of citations to references or sources used does not help. Regards, DPdH (talk) 09:29, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 09:05, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Various
1. Why is every single aircraft in the first 2/3rds of the article British? I'm sure there were other nationalities using torpedo bombers, some even more intensively than the British, between WWI and WWII. At a glance it appears to be about (British) torpedo bombers, with a paragraph about how the Americans used various torpedo bombers in WWII, and a paragraph detailing how the Japanese used torpedo bombers against the British (basically the Repulse and Prince of Wales, ignoring all the hundreds of other combats that the Japanese used torpedos in) 2. Why do we need an section describing how aerial rockets work? Doesn't that belong in the article on aerial rockets? All this needs to say is that "torpedos were largely replaced by aerial rockets, among other weapons, due to them being harder to evade. Dedicated torpedo bombers have given way to multi-purpose aircraft able to deploy a wide range of munitions, including modern guided torpedoes when the situation calls for it". We don't really need descriptions of how aerial rockets were used, and various examples of submarines sunk by aerial rockets. Unless perhaps they were aerial rockets fired by ertwhile torpedo bombers. But rather than showing a picture of a Swordfish hung with rockets and ready to go hunting, someone chose a photograph of a Hawker Hunter armed with rockets. Not sure why, since as far as I know Hurricanes didn't do a lot of ship/sub-busting with rockets, or anything else for that matter. 3. A torpedo travelled at 40 knots. A fast battleship traveling at 32 knots is not "able to keep up" with the torpedo. The high speed makes it more difficult to aim, since you need to aim further ahead, and there is a wider variety of speeds the ship can accelerate and decelerate to in order to throw aiming calculations off. It is even concievable that a ship that can travel at 32 knots might run past the end of a torpedo's range if was launched at very long range. But 8 knots is a huge difference in speeds at sea. A 32kt fast battleship is still being overtaken at 8kts, which is not outrunning, or even keeping pace with the torpedo. 4. Back to the rocket subject, I have more doubts; I don't think rocket-armed places "replaced" torpedo bombers at all. They are not equivalent. Rockets are great anti-sub weapons, not so great at sinking armored ships. They have far smaller warheads. Some torpedo bombers were given rockets and sent to hunt subs, and rockets were used to attack ships when they were opportune targets, but I don't think any Navy re-armed their torpedo bombers with rockets instead of torpedos and expected them to perform the same role. That was more like a useful side-job that could be accomplished by the same aircraft. As far as I know, air-launched torpedos were in constant use until the end of the war, and when a carrier fleet was expected to engage enemy surface ships, they armed torpedo bombers with torpedos, and dive bombers with bombs. Rockets were for attacking submarines while on patrol, or merchant ships if you found one. But rockets just don't have the warhead to efficiently deal with larger vessels. I have my serious doubts about that whole section. It strikes me as someone's cockamamie personal theory, not fact backed up by any actual evidence. Rockets Were useful, but totally different weapons, with a small overlap in applications with torpedoes.

Idumea47b (talk) 07:51, 29 September 2018 (UTC)

Rockets
A rocket travelling at 1000 mph is another matter and is not so readily avoided. The first air-launched rocket was the Le Prieur rocket, fired in 1916 by Nieuport 11s of the French Armee de l'air (AdlA) at German observation balloons on the Western Front. Due to their short range (115 metres; 126 yards) and inaccuracy, the French abandoned the concept and few other air services became interested in developing them, however, research into air-launched rockets continued in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s.

In 1940, during the Battle of Britain, the British Army also trialled the use of rockets against low-flying bombers, without much success. The following year, however, similar technology was adapted by the Desert Air Force against Afrika Korps panzers. The casing was enlarged from 2 in to 3 in, allowing the use of a larger 28 lb and 60 lb high-explosive warheads, and as the RP-3 was fitted to Hawker Hurricanes and other aircraft from June 1942.

On 23 May 1943, a Fairey Swordfish of the British Fleet Air Arm used rockets to destroy the German U-boat U-752 in the North Atlantic. Five days later, a Lockheed Hudson of RAF Coastal Command destroyed another in the Mediterranean. These rockets were fitted with iron spikes and fired at a shallow angle into the sea, puncturing the hull and making it impossible for a submarine to submerge.

I have moved this paragraph about aerial rockets to here for safekeeping. As you can see, it is cited, but I think you will not find anything in any of those sources about rockets replacing torpedoes or torpedo bombers. Torpedo bombers were sometimes armed with rockets and used to sink subs as described, but that is not a job for a torpedo. You don't sink subs with torpedos. A rocket can be launched from a number of sources, including torpedo bombers when they aren't carrying torpedos, but this is not evidence of rockets supplanting or replacing torpedos. This is an example of torpedo bombers being used to fire rockets because they can. The coming of multi-role aircraft IS relevant, since they found that it was more efficient to have one plane that could do numberous things...but they never adopted Fleet Rocket Attack Planes to replace torpedo bombers, and rockets are no swap for torpedos, which is exactly what this paragraph seems to be implying. The only bit of relevance I see at all is that a Swordfish torpedo bomber was one of the planes that is listed as having sunk a sub with rockets. But that is not explaining how or why multirole aircraft took over. If Swordfish torpedo bombers could use rockets and sink subs, why did we need multirole aircraft then? And again, rockets are not even close to direct replacments for torpedos. Try sinking a battleship with 5in rockets! Idumea47b (talk) 08:05, 29 September 2018 (UTC)