Quote:
Originally Posted by vanjast
In reality the Swordfish was harder to down than the then modern bombers because of one simple fact.... it was made of fabric and the AAA shells passed right through it without exploding. The Bismark had this horrible experience.. and was torpedoed.
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Do you have a single citation for that? I meant the part about shells passing through the fabric? According to every source I've seen,
Bismarck's AA fire was innefective due to rangefinders being calibrated for faster aircraft. The Swordfish were save because they were too slow for the tracking equipment, and being made of fabric had nothing to do with it. When a Swordfish squadron attacked
Prinz Eugen,
Scharnhorst and
Gneisenau, all six aircraft were shot down, so those bullets apparently didn't pass through the fabric.
When hundreds of bullets are in the air, which part of an aircraft is hit becomes a statistical probablility. Some might pass through without causing damage, but that is true of metal as well as cloth. There is always a chance of control or engine damage, or the pilot being hit, and those chances don't change no mattere what the plane is made of.