Ww2 Torpedo Bombers - Two General Motors-built TBM-3Es from the National Museum of World War Aviation fly near the museum grounds in Colorado Springs, Colo. (Paul Bowen Photography)
Like the balloon and flying, the torpedo bomb is a weapon we will never see again. Its demise was covered up nearly 40 years ago, but the brief Falklands War of 1982 showed that anti-ship weapons like the Exocet could do more. More than an entire air wing of World War II torpedo bombers. They can complete their mission from standstill at supersonic speeds. No one wants airplanes today that land fast cars, fast-flying motorcycle boats.
Ww2 Torpedo Bombers
The torpedo bomber's heyday lasted from late 1940 to late '42 when Japan lost vital aircraft carriers in the Pacific and bombed German ships and all Italian warships in the European theater. However, the Grumman TBF Avenger, the best torpedo bomber to fly in any war, lived on beyond its star turn. As naval targets disappeared, Avengers began to drop more bombs than torpedoes, and as World War II progressed, aircraft developed new roles: anti-submarine hunter-killer, convoy guardian, anti-aircraft air support, radar platform, early airborne spinning center, and long. . - Range reconnaissance patrol, and finally the most useful jobs, a carrier on a cargo truck. The large Grumman had a large bomb bay, an unusually spacious interior, plenty of seating, and excellent flight performance.
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At right, Leroy Grumman shows how he used an eraser and scraps to capture rare Avenger folding stow-wings. A plane captain looks at the landing gear of a Grumman TBF-1 aboard an escort carrier in mid-1943. (Right; Cradle of Aviation Museum, Left; Naval History and Heritage Command)
Although it is not clear, this monster of an aircraft was a supersized version of the F4F Wildcat. Both were mid-size, barrel-bodied, hell-bent fighter jets that were often considered underpowered but with impressive performance. The Avenger introduced the aircraft carrier to Grumman's amazing stow-wing system, enabling the aircraft to fold its wings along its body like a bird. Stow-wings were soon installed on the Wildcat, starting with the F4F-4 version. On the successor they shortened the wingspan from 54 feet 2 inches to 18 feet, eliminating the need for an additional cabin on the carrier deck.
Leroy Grumman came up with the stow-wing, using a designer's screen to represent the fuselage and sheets attached as wings. He hit an inclined axis fixed pivot at the wing root that allowed the Avenger's wings to rotate and fold at the same time. The stow-wing remained standard on many Grumman aircraft until the E-2 Hawkeye.
Grumman's stow-wing system reduced the large bomber's wingspan to 18 feet. (National Archives)
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While it is clear who created Stow-Wing, naming the Avenger's creator is more difficult. Some say it's Roy Grumman, while others vote for company founder and chief engineer William Schwendler. But the man in the trenches was engineer Robert Hall, former air racer and designer of the Granville Brothers Gee Bees. Around the same time, Hall built the first Avenger, which flew on August 7, 1941.
With a maximum takeoff weight of 17,893 pounds, the Avenger was the largest single-engine aircraft of any fighter aircraft built during World War II. It was lifted by a P-47 Thunderbolt weighing only 400 pounds. The Avenger's bomb-bay load was a good ton: 2,000 pounds of torpedoes, or four 500 bombs.
TBM-1 prepares to take off from the light carrier Monterey in June 1944 to attack targets in Tinian. (Naval History and Heritage Command)
Among pilots, a funny joke about the Avenger is that it is so heavy it can fall faster than it can fly. This has certainly often felt true when taken from escort carriers. The bombarded Avengers were to be attacked, but the carrier's cat was only 45 feet long and the best the ship could do in the wind was 19 knots. “We were flying at 90 knots—not much,” recalled gunner James Gander. "We were going to sink when we got off the deck until we got more speed." The aircraft's extreme performance compared to the Wildcat led the carrier to be nicknamed the "Turkey".
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The Avenger lacked hard ordepoints, but it did find rails for HVARs – high-speed anti-aircraft rockets, four under each wing. They were powerful missiles and gave the aircraft the firepower of a destroyer. In fact the rockets usually contained heavy, solid-metal warheads, designed to easily penetrate the center of the submarine by force of inertia. Although the rockets were unguided, Avenger pilots quickly became skilled at digging explosive HVARs inside Japanese caves.
The most common legend about the Avenger is that it first appeared in public on December 7, 1941, and was given the name Avenger that same day. In fact, the plane was named in early October, two months before anyone planned to replace Pearl Harbor. The first production Avenger hit the road on January 3, 1942—the first new American design to enter the war.
Her first fight was a disaster. TBF-1's six torpedo squadron VT-8 deployed from the carrier Hornet to Midway Atoll and attacked the Japanese fleet on 4 June 1942. Only one returned and opened fire, killing its turret gun and wounding the radioman. The Navy is having second thoughts about its new torpedo plane.
It was this TBF-1 that survived an attack by six Avengers from Torpedo Squadron VT-8 on 4 June 1942 during the Battle of Midway. (Naval History and Heritage Command)
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But the great Avenger quickly recovered as the pilots gained experience. Three months later, during the battles of the Eastern Solomon Islands and Guadalcanal, the Avengers sank the light carrier Ryujo and the battleship Hie. Ultimately, the Avengers sank 12 carriers, 6 battleships (including the superships Yamato and Musashi), 19 cruisers, 25 destroyers, and 30 submarines in the Pacific and Atlantic.
Most of the Avengers were built by General Motors, not Grumman. Using five empty car factories in the Northeast, GM created a division called Eastern Aircraft. When Grumman found itself overwhelmed by the need to build the new F6F Hellcat, it took over production of the Avenger. Grumman built about 3,000 TBFs; Over 7,500 selected TBMs by GM. (Think M for motors, and you'll never confuse the two.)
"What followed was a conflict between two nations," wrote David Doyle in his book TBF/TBM Avenger. "It will show that GM started... Grumman many airplane designs. Grumman started with the idea that GM would be lucky if it could build an airplane. GM has done more wrong than right. Grumman has been more right than wrong."
Cars and airplanes are complex machines, but they have very different manufacturing requirements. Cars could be built by thousands of people on non-stop production lines, while airplanes were made in a stop-and-go manner. Although weight was not as important in pre-EPA vehicles, it was important in airplanes. Aircraft tolerances were tight, and cars could handle quarter-inch panels. Processing during production is usually by plane, rarely by car.
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Grumman facilitated the process and sent a "P-K plane" east — a TBF assembled entirely with sheet-metal screws made by the Parker-Kalon Corporation so that the plane could be disassembled and reassembled until GM customers found it.
The Avenger featured an electrically powered gun turret made by Grumman, rather than purchased from Sperry, Bendix, Erco, or other manufacturers. Such turrets were made electrically or hydraulically and were not very precise in movement. The Grumman turret was designed by the company's own electrical engineer, Oskar Olsen, who came up with the idea of using amplidynes—electromechanical amplifiers commonly used to drive large naval guns. Reduced by GE at Olsen's request, the Amplidynes proved to be excellent at providing fast and consistent motion to the Avenger's large "goldfish bowl." When Olsen told Bill Schwendler about his idea, Schwendler said he hoped it would work because they could have a four-foot hole in the plane.
The Avenger turret gun didn't hit the enemy behind a set of cigarette grips, a comic-book design. He sat beside his .50 caliber rifle, the breech close to his left ear, controlling the movement of the turret and the firing of the gun with the trigger handle.
Actor Paul Newman, who joined the Navy wanting to be a pilot but failed a preflight physical due to his color blindness, ended up as a radioman and gunner in The Avengers. How Newman achieved world fame as a motor racer in a sport that relies on colorful lights and flags is a question aviation surgeons have yet to answer. Although he was often described as a gunner, Newman controlled the .30 caliber Stinger mount on the rear fuselage from his port.
Tbf Avenger Torpedo Bomber Editorial Stock Image. Image Of Open
It has been variously written that the Stinger Gun was fired standing up, or
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