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HMS Ark Royal - an aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy that operated during the Second World War.
(lemmy.world)
Biplanes in World War 2, huh?
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2026
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That's a Fairey Swordfish, which was the type of plane launched by the HMS Ark Royal to disable the Bismarck.
On 26 May, Ark Royal launched two Swordfish strikes against Bismarck. The first failed to locate the ship. The second attack scored two torpedo hits, one of which jammed the ship's rudders at a 12° port helm. This made Bismarck unmanoeuvrable and unable to escape to port in France. She sank after intense Royal Navy attack within 13 hours. Some of the Swordfish flew so low that most of Bismarck's flak weapons could not depress enough to hit them.
Thanks for the info... that musta been a real propaganda win: battleship sunk by a biplane.
I don't know if that particular detail was a propaganda centerpiece. Mostly people just celebrated that the Bismarck was sunk.
It was a real monster of a ship, with it's final engagements being back to back (for it, essentially one long engagement with a chase in the middle) from the 24th to the 27th of May 1941. The final engagement was 1 aircraft carrier, 2 battleships, 2 heavy cruisers, and 8 destroyers against the Bismarck. The British really, really did not like the idea of it existing.
It's definitely spawned its fair share of memes.