Still intermittent activities

The absence of regular blog postings reflects the fact that complete immersion in the project remains pending.  As much time is spent at present on seasonal activities, ongoing administration (given the time of year mostly related to recruitment), and reading pertinent to teaching (Colin Smith’s England’s Last War With France, which benefits from the thoroughness of his Vichy-related research as the breadth of his British sources) or as part of a never-ending endeavour to catch up (notably Peter Conradi’s insightful and illuminating biography of Frank Thompson – as revealing about Edward Thompson as it is regarding his older brother).  The Colin Smith account of the 1940-42 fighting with Vichy has a vague connection with the Fairey project in that the Swordfish features prominently in naval operations across the Mediterranean, and further afield.  Thus at roughly the same time a Swordfish was crippling the Bismarck, off Syria another was sinking the French super-destroyer Chevalier Paul.  In fact the biplane’s record in sinking or badly damaging French surface ships was astonishingly good, but postwar it was clearly deemed impolitic to highlight its success in attacking the vessels of our past and future ally travers la manche.  The Swordfish aptly demonstrated how obsolescence is relative when measuring fitness for purpose, its slow speed without stalling rendering it ideal for Fleet Air Arm operations early in the war – but by 11 February1942 and the notorious ‘Channel dash’ of the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen, the destruction of Eugene Esmonde’s strike force signalled the Royal Navy’s urgent need for faster, better armed, more lethal single-wing attack aircraft, most of which would come from the United States given the Admiralty’s inability in the early1930s to issue specification akin to the Air Ministry’s generation-jumping demand for what would become the Hurricane and the Spitfire.