biplane made from struts and wires and covered in linen cloth. At the behest of the Admiralty, it was designed as a maritime aircraft that, flying off carriers, could carry out antisubmarine patrols, reconnaissance and torpedo-dropping. Carrier aircraft, coming in at speed, needed to be extremely robust to withstand the heavy landings on deck and, operating far out at sea, often a long way from their targets, they also needed to have longer legs than most. The Swordfish had a range of 450 nautical miles, and that could be doubled by strapping on an extra fuel tank.
It was never imagined that the Swordfish would be able to hold its own against the speedy, powerful fighters of the Italian or German air forces. The Swordfish could reach 100 knots at a push, but nothing like that when laden with fuel and bombs or a torpedo. The Me109, the Luftwaffe’s workhorse fighter, was four or five times faster; its armament of fixed machine guns and cannon immeasurably more powerful and accurate than anything the British biplane could put up. The Swordfish’s only form of defence was a fixed forward-firing Vickers machine gun and a swivel-mounted Vickers or Lewis gun at the back of the open cockpit; these were so cumbersome and inaccurate that the gunner/wireless operator rarely bothered to use them and they were often removed altogether. A handheld pistol was seen as a more effective means of defence. Slow, defenceless and made from stretched cloth . . . the sight of a leisurely approaching Swordfish was unlikely to put the fear of god into its enemies. The hope was that they would rarely meet.
The Swordfish might not have been the most sophisticated piece of kit to take to the air in the Second World War, but they didn’t build 2,392 of them for the amusement of the Germans and Italians. Speak to the pilots of the Fleet Air Arm who flew her throughout the war, and you won’t hear anything but affection and admiration for the aircraft. They will tell you that the Swordfish had three outstanding qualities: it was extremely manoeuvrable, highly adaptable and, in spite of its flimsy-looking cloth frame, it was as hard as nails.
Its aerobatic qualities certainly came in handy when being chased by German fighters in the Norwegian campaign a few months earlier. A number of Me109s, chasing Swordfishes up fjords, found it hard to lay a round on them as the biplanes twisted and turned. In the aerobatic tangle, the less manoeuvrable German fighters sometimes crashed into the steep rock faces of Norway’s jagged coastline. The Swordfish was highly unlikely to shoot down an enemy fighter, but she could certainly give him the runaround. The aircraft’s versatility earned it the nickname ‘Stringbag’. The Swordfish was happy to drop anything: bombs, torpedoes, flares, depth charges, mines . . . Like a housewife’s string shopping bag, the Swordfish could carry any number of items of equipment at a time. But above all, she could take a great deal of punishment, more than any other aircraft in operation at the time. Most rounds passed straight through her linen-covered fuselage and wings.
Since the emergence of military aircraft thirty years earlier, no strike from the air had ever been attempted on a heavily defended naval base anywhere in the world. This was in part down to the very sensible reasoning that such an operation could have only one outcome: disaster for the attacking force of aircraft. Taranto, like Portsmouth and Wilhelmshaven, was one of the world’s great naval bases, protected by layer upon layer of defences. In addition to dozens of shore batteries, there were, of course, the countless guns of the ships themselves to see off any aircraft mad or brave enough to fly within their range. But Admiral Cunningham was not the only senior commander in the Med to believe that a surprise night attack on Taranto could be carried out. It was a happy coincidence that his air adviser, Rear Admiral Lyster, now in charge of carriers in the