Fairey

Interesting question!

Quite a lot of scope here.

One factor is Stalin simply didn’t care how many Russians died stopping the Nazis.

And often forgotten is that almost all theatres of W.W.II and periods were utterly different to each other. You may as well compare France 1944 to France 1940 as Eastern and Western Fronts.

The Fulmar was rarely used (only really in the Med) against top class land based fighters, where it did not do well. Otherwise it was up against less effective opposition, which sometimes it could catch. I like the Fulmar, but only the obscenely incompetent Lordships of the Admiralty could believe it was a front line fighter. At least they were consistent in providing the FAA with appallingly unsuitable aircraft throughout W.W.II. Only the imported American types were remotely up to their jobs.

Cheers!

You have made some very valid points there which I had overlooked but my remarks about the Il 2/10 machines still stand. I don’t know how true it is but I once heard it said that a German pilot claimed the only way to bring them down in air to air combat was to ram them and even then it wasn’t guaranteed.

See this thread for Swordfish pictures:
http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=43336&highlight=swordfish

Interesting question!

Quite a lot of scope here.

One factor is Stalin simply didn’t care how many Russians died stopping the Nazis.

And often forgotten is that almost all theatres of W.W.II and periods were utterly different to each other. You may as well compare France 1944 to France 1940 as Eastern and Western Fronts.

The Fulmar was rarely used (only really in the Med) against top class land based fighters, where it did not do well. Otherwise it was up against less effective opposition, which sometimes it could catch. I like the Fulmar, but only the obscenely incompetent Lordships of the Admiralty could believe it was a front line fighter. At least they were consistent in providing the FAA with appallingly unsuitable aircraft throughout W.W.II. Only the imported American types were remotely up to their jobs.

Cheers!

I wish I had a photo of the Battle that our local ATC unit had during the war to play with. It was the trainer version with the two single cockpits & had been in France during the Blitzkreig.

If they’d built the twin-engined Battle proposed by Fairey in 1933… ‘The Battle File’ by Air-Britain says at one point ‘The Ministry was also interested in posible conversions of Battles to take P24 or Sabre engines for use as cannon armed fighters’!!

Geoff.

The difference could have been that the Il 2/10 were designed as flying artillery more or less, they were fitted with respectable forward firing armament (2x20mm cannon?) and were basically an armoured bathtub. Basically better battlefield survivalbility as it is called nowadays. They certainly gained the respect of Luftwaffe pilots who nicknamed it the flying tank

How about the one fitted with a Rolls-Royce Exe 24-cylinder, sleeve-valve, air-cooled engine? Development was stopped to concentrate on the Merlin but it was a popular and reliable hack with RR pilots for some years.

Not as impressive as a Battle with a Fairey Prince and contra-rotating prop but…

Best wishes
Steve P

How about a pic of a Battle with a Napier Sabre up front ? 😮 ….the Sabre was first air tested using a Battle (flown from Northolt). anybody ever seen a pic. of it ?

Here’s the RAF Museum’s Battle.

Beat me to it there Moggy –

Battle …………………………………………………………………………… Sturmovik!

Cant wait til the RAFM have their IL-2 on show (think its an IL-2 and not an IL-10, will google)

TT

edit –

Its an IL-2M3 i think – cant find any pix, Tempest Two dont appear to have a website sorry..

NASM Garber Flying Tank can be seen here:

http://aeroweb.lucia.it/~agretch/Features/IL2M3.html

I wonder why the Battle was such a disaster yet the Fulmar did ok, and the Stormovik which was basicly the same design was so legendry? Could it have have been the addition of armour and plenty of weapons?

“Basically the same” in the way that the TA152 and the Commonwealth Boomerang were both single-engine, single-seat fighters you mean?

I suspect the answer lies in

Numbers – There were shed loads of IL2s chucked into the fight as against handfuls of Battles

Tactics – The Battles suffered their losses in what were effectively the opening days of the war. Much was learned and relearned over the years.

But I guess the armour and armaments helped a bit too.

Moggy

Difference was that the Battle was designed as a light bomber, and had little to protect itself – one rearward machine gun and one fixed forward firing machine gun in the wing if i recall correctly – no match for the Luftwaffe fighters, whereas the Fulmar was an aircraft carrier based fighter to protect convoys from enemy aircraft such as the Fw200 Condor four engined maritime bomber, and also to help protect against U boats (although in this role all it could do is strafe the sub and/or report it’s position)

Woops, for “through” read “throw” – it’s been a long year!

OK, I’ll through one into the pot. A formation of 105 Squadron machines up from Harwell.