The sneak appearance of the Royal Navy Historic Flight’s Fairey Swordfish MK.II LS326 at Duxford Autumn Airshow 2010 was one of the event’s real highlights. Even though it didn’t display – it couldn’t, yet – just to see it back in the air, where it belongs, was a thrilling and warming moment for the crowd, on what was already a thrilling and, temperature-wise, a very warm day. It’s fair to say that, in recent years, the RNHF has been plagued with bad luck, and the Swordfish has featured strongly in this misfortune. Pulled off the display circuit in 1999 after the discovery of wing corrosion, the aircraft acquired a brand new set of wings and, revitalised and raring to go, was reflown on 1st July 2008. After only a few hours in the air and a single display appearance, LS326 was, again, grounded, this time due to engine troubles.
I’ll stop there, as the Swordfish’s history of souring setbacks and technical triumphs is well covered elsewhere, not least of which on the RNHF’s excellent website. But what’s the Swordfish actually like to fly? And what can airshow audiences expect from it next year, during its first full season of airshow appearances in over a decade? I found out on 11 November, during a visit to RNHF Yeovilton on the same day as an event marking the anniversary of the Battle of Taranto, and where I spoke at length to the Flight’s Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Commander Mike Abbey, and other key RNHF personnel.
With over 6,500 flying hours on fixed-wing and rotary-wing FAA types, Lt Cdr Abbey is a vastly experienced airman, and with about 60 of these spent in the Swordfish, he’s extremely qualified to highlight the aircraft’s pitfalls and virtues. I’d hoped to catch the Swordfish in the air myself – it was due to fly in recognition of the Taranto commemoration and, of course, this was Armistice Day, too – but fierce winds and low-level gloom kept it resolutely in the RNHF’s hangar. “The maximum wind-speed for ground taxies is 25 knots but the maximum crosswind we operate to is 15 knots”, Lt Cdr Abbey tells me. “When the aircraft was in service, you didn’t have runways – you had grass strips – and you had ships that pointed into wind, so you didn’t have to worry too much about crosswinds.
“On the ground, it’s a handful because, being a typical taildragger and a biplane, if you get anything of a crosswind, it’s a real pig to taxi. The brakes work via a system of compressed air which is fed into bellows on each wing and that’s differential, so it depends on where you’ve got the rudder pedal when you squeeze the lever as to which brake is applied.”
Tricky on the ground, the Swordfish becomes a much more amiable beast when the air.
“It’s very straightforward”, Lt Cdr Abbey says. “It’s a simple biplane and the engine is very responsive, but you’ve got to remember that even though its 750hp, it’s fighting against an awful lot of drag, so as soon as you take the power away, the thing takes on the flight characteristics of a brick! So it’s a triumph of power over drag, really, but response-wise, it’ll turn on a sixpence, once you roll bank on and pull a little bit. It’s got a very, very tight radius of turn and certainly in roll, it’ll roll very quickly whichever way you want it to go. It’s not so clever in pitch: it takes a while to catch up there, but that’s not really a problem, because it’s very stable. The biggest problem that I had on the big-check test flight that we had to do recently was getting it to stall. I was on my own and if you don’t have lots of weight down the back, trying to get the aircraft to stall is almost impossible. I had the stick right back in me - as far as it would go – and the throttle closed. The speed came back to about 55 knots and the aircraft just started to mush. It was still very stable – it didn’t drop a wing or anything - and there was none of the usual buffet you usually get when encountering a stall, the thing just mushes down and then, after a while, it says “I’ve had enough of this, and I’m going to un-stall myself”. If you’ve got people in the back, then it will drop the nose a little bit, but it’s so gentle it’s hardly discernable.”
LS326’s turning qualities featured strongly in the displays seen from it at airshows past. It’s a large aircraft anyway, but when performing tight turns, at fairly low level, that never really take it outside the airfield boundary, the size factor seems even more apparent. The turns – along with the gentle wingovers, the mild swooping dives and the aircraft’s ability to carry out short take offs and landings - make it a most spirited, yet stately airshow performer. Lt Cdr Abbey is keen to point out that the aircraft is flown well within its limits. “We’re not going to do loops and barrel rolls in the Swordfish”, he explains. “We don’t need to – we’re going to leave that to the Sea Fury and the Sea Hawk.”
The way LS326 is flown now contrasts heavily with operational wartime Swordfish flights, during which airframe and speed limits were often exceeded.
“Our top speed is 137 knots, which we do on a test flight once a year. The rest of the time, its top speed is about 100 knots, so it’s way within the design spec of the aircraft. If you speak to some of the guys that flew the aircraft during the Second World War, they used to do dive-bombing in the Swordfish, tipping in from 10,000 feet, at 85 degrees nose-down, in a 200 knot dive towards the target. They’d be pulling out at 500 feet to be level at 50 feet to drop the torpedo. Can you imagine the stress that must have put on the airframe?! We get nowhere near that!”
This leads us on to the Swordfish’s future airshow prospects and, indeed, those of the Flight as a whole.
LS326’s airshow career really began in 1947, when – in Fairey’s ownership – it began performing in the happily de-conflicted skies of the immediate post war years. After a brief period of storage and airframe decline, it was rebuilt at the insistence of company founder Sir Richard Fairey and, rejuvenated, its airshow displays resumed in the mid-1950s. We’re used to seeing LS326 in 326 Naval Air Squadron markings, as it’s appeared since 1987, but five decades ago, it was painted blue and silver – Fairey’s house colours of the time. These lasted four years and, following the Swordfish’s participation in ‘Sink the Bismarck’, a suitably wartime look was adopted and, as it turned out, retained for many years thereafter. While it’s changed clothes several times, the Swordfish’s popularity has remained constant. This is, quite simply, an aircraft that people love to see, whether they’re directly connected to it through former service life, whether they’re aircraft enthusiasts or whether they’re regular members of the public that just enjoy watching it move about the sky with a kind of stately grace that few other types possess.
“The airframe was designed to last for 15 hours or six months – whichever came first”, Lt Cdr Abbey states. “We’ve managed to keep it going for 70 years with what we were given after the war, and there’s absolutely no reason why it couldn’t keep going for another 100 years. That’s why we tend to wrap it up in cotton wool, and only bring it out on nice days.
“Our priority at the moment is to get a guaranteed Swordfish on the airshow circuit. To guarantee that, I need two, and I need a spare engine for those two as well, so what we’re aiming for is two ‘Fish and three engines. That’s going to cost me about £200,000. Airshow appearances still generate funds, but we’ve been behind the drag curve and it only needs an aircraft to go U/S (unserviceable) for a year to really affect us. All of our main income is from sponsors and personal donations and we’re kept afloat by the Fly Navy Heritage Trust, but we’re still uncertain about the future of the Flight, to be honest.
“Our saving grace at the moment is the BBMF, because if they keep going then there’s no excuse for sacking us, bearing in mind we’re only partially MoD-funded [the BBMF is entirely MoD funded].”
It’s possible, then, that the RNHF’s current set-up could change in the months to come but, for now, I for one am still very much looking forward to watching and photographing this glorious aircraft sweeping down the flightlines of the near future. Based on the season just gone, the RNHF expects high levels of interest in the Swordfish among airshow organisers.
“We don’t start taking bookings until after Christmas and then we have an allocation meeting about February, but if this year’s anything to go by, we’ll be fully booked. We’re restricted on the number of hours that Commander Air lets me fly – 50 hours – and if it had been ready at the beginning of the season, we’d have flown all of those hours – every single one was booked.”
This just reaffirms the sheer popularity of the Swordfish – an aircraft appreciated and enjoyed by all who see it.
The peak of the RNHF’s Swordfish operations occurred between 1993 and 1999, during which time the Flight had two ‘Fish in the air and, so, was able to carry out duo routines. With Mk.1 W5856 being restored right now, a 21st century Swordfish duo is a potential future prospect. For now, though, the Flight’s single, airworthy Swordfish will grace every show it attends, simultaneously acknowledging the people on the ground and the people of the past.
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