The Airplane Everyone Hated But It Ended Up Saving the War



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According to an interview with RAF pilot Bud Abbott, it was: (QUOTE) ā€œA flying abortion.ā€

The Fairy Barracuda was freakishly constructed with high wings, a T-tail, and L-shaped landing gear. It was underpowered and impossible to see out of. Yet here it was, about to take on the mightiest ship that still remained of the German Navy.

Deep in the protective embrace of the Norwegian fjords, towering cliffs, and thick pine forests hid the German Battleship Tirpitz, now deemed the ā€œLonely Queen of the Northā€ by some and the ā€œIron Whoreā€ by others.
As the Allies closed in on victory in the spring of 1944, Tirpitz was still one of the biggest threats in the German Navy. Although she was stuck sulking in the Arctic, her mere presence continued to prove a distraction for Allied shipping ā€“ to the point that the British decided they had finally had enough.
On the morning of April 3, 1944, the stillness of Tirpitzā€™s hiding place in the fjord was interrupted by the shattering roar of approaching engines. Before the ship could fully deploy the smoke screen generators, forty Fairey Barracudas appearedā€” their Rolls-Royce Merlin engines dragging them through the air.

The Barracudas carried a potentially devastating mix of 1,600- and 500-pound bombs. Fully loaded, they were fat, heavy, and slow ā€“ barely able to take off from their carriers. Now they were being asked to waddle in and finish the job that proper and more illustrious bombers such as the Halifax and Lancaster had failed to do beforeā€¦

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40 thoughts on “The Airplane Everyone Hated But It Ended Up Saving the War”

  1. The Barracuda looked like it was designed by amateurs. It was ungainly, woefully underpowered, and was virtually defenceless against enemy aircraft. It lacked the range for long-range patrolling, yet the requirement of carrying a 3-man crew precluded their use as fighters. Designed to perform multiple roles, the Barracuda failed to perform any of them adequately.

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  2. There have been a lot of warplanes designed for a new, cutting edge engine that hadn't even left the prototype stage, but built with an inferior one, because the new, cutting edge engine program was unsuccessful. Almost all of theses combat planes were failures. There have even been a couple of commercial airliners that met this exact fate.

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  3. Yetā€¦.. despite this ā€œwondermentā€, the minute the NAS could dump this loser for the TBF, wonder of wonders, it disappeared from British carrier flight decks in one big POOF!

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  4. I agree with other comments about the start. It doesnā€™t become clear that this video is about the Barracuda until we are a couple of minutes into it. What ruins the video for me, once again, however, is the cringeworthy way that Tirpitz is pronounced. It is ā€œtirā€ as in ā€œsirā€ not tier as in pier. For goodness sake. How I wish the voiceover artist would check his pronunciations before releasing his videos. Itā€™s just so unprofessional.
    Quite what a crashing DH Mosquito is doing in this video is also beyond me.
    Apart from all that the video was quite interesting.
    Keep going but do please take the fair criticism on board. If something is worth doing, itā€™s worth doing well. Very best wishes, Adrian

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  5. This appears to be well researched with good footage, the narrator is easy to understand. However the music track is unnecessary and irritating.
    The only computer game that I didn't disable the music track was the GTA series where the music did add to the game. Unfortunately there are too many factual YouTube channels that believe you have to have music and it is impossible to turn the noise off other than skipping the video.

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  6. The Corsairs alone could've carried out bombing attacks against the Tirpitz, it was 10 times the combat aircraft than the Baracuda, faster, more maneuverable and capable of carrying two 500 lb. bombs. It defies logic some of the decisions the FAA made about fighting the war. Alas, nowadays, net even a faint shadow of what they once were.

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