Unusual Swordfish

Cheers, Aerotony. Nice to hear the Lee/Swordfish connection is still being kept up.

I did once see W5856 in the air but only as a speck in the distance! It was still under restoration at Strathallan when the collection closed. One of several aeroplanes that I would have loved to have seen fly there but it was not to be sadly. 

Thanks for that very detailed information.

A Swordfish (not sure which one) was back at Lee to-day for the D-Day 80 event as part of of the Navy Wings trio with the Harvard and Reliant. 

Hi Aerotony,

Some more info for you on the aircraft in your photo –

K8346 was delivered to C Flight School of Naval Co-operation at Lee-on-Solent 15.10.36 for TAG training then went to A Flight at Calshot and on to Co-op Flight Mountbatten in 1937.In February 1938 it was with the Seaplane Training Squadron at Calshot moving back to Lee-on-Solent in April that year to join the Float Plane Training Flight there. It moved on to 765 Squadron (still at Lee) on 24.5.39 remaining with that unit till April/May 1940.

For 2 months after that the Swordfish was at Pembroke Dock with 764 Sqn During 1941 it was back with 765 at Sandbanks. After that it headed north to join 769 Sqn at Arbroath then 9(P)AFU at Errol. K8346 was struck off charge in October 1944.

It certainly had quite a few moves in its life.

I notice the date given for its arrival at 9(P)AFU Errol (April 1943) coincides with that of another Swordfish which had a brighter future ahead of it – W5856. 

Hi Tony

We did a little gentle digging this morning and found a wee bit more info on Dual Swordfish.

There must have been a reasonable number of them as it looks like they were also used for Deck Landing training (presumably for swordfish bound pilots) at Arbroath  (+ from 1943 East Haven for the Deck Landing Officer training school) and they also had some at Crail for  training.We still have not found any mention of total numbers.

Swordfish Deck Landing Training Arbroath/East Haven,in the background can be seen the dummy ‘Island’ superstructure.

The wonderful Dummy ‘Island’ Bus conversion 🙂

Thanks for all that Baz. 

I had thought, wrongly it seems, that K3846 may have been some sort of trials aircraft. Possibly involved with torpedo drop testing at the nearby torpedo range at Stokes Bay.

Hi Tony

OK some more info courtesy of the boss 🙂

Not sure how many dual control Swordfish in total.

Your original picture of K8346 is possibly when she was on the strength of the FPTU (Float Plane Training Unit ??) Gosport.

Interestingly the Prototype Fairey TSR II K4190 was converted to dual control in 1937 whilst being used for development work and was on floats at that time.

K5661 was at one time with the Gosport Catapult Flight.

K5993 was based at Calshot (Seaplane Training Squadron) (1937 ? delivered by Flt Lt Moneypenny )

K8875 was also a dual control A/C.

There may be others – we do not have that much info about Swordfish.

Sorry Tony – I do not have any more info – it was probably a fairly rare beast and I have always just guessed that they were normally used for training/conversion training for pilots going on to the seaplane version as the landplane version was so docile that a 2 seat trainer was not really required.

I have only seen a few pics of the twin stick version over the years – I will check with the boss tomorrow to see if we have any more info.

cheers baz

Juanita Franzi appears to have done a profile of the same Swordfish in this configuration, her website is very basic, but you might find further details on her Facebook page.

Do you have anymore information? I’ve not been able to find any references to a trainer version or any other pictures.

Hi Tony

It is a trainer (ie a twin sticker in more modern parlance) for pilot training.

cheers baz