Fairey Swordfish

The Fairey Swordfish is a British biplane torpedo bomber built by Fairey Aviation, entering Fleet Air Arm service in 1936 and remaining in front-line use throughout the Second World War despite being significantly slower and more obsolete in appearance than the monoplane fighters and bombers it operated alongside. Built with a fixed undercarriage and fabric-covered biplane wings, an old-fashioned design even at its introduction, the Swordfish, affectionately nicknamed the Stringbag by its crews, proved remarkably effective in practice, most famously in the November 1940 attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto, which crippled several Italian battleships, and in the May 1941 attack that damaged the German battleship Bismarck's steering gear, contributing directly to its sinking. The Swordfish's continued frontline service, despite its obsolescence, is often attributed to its low stall speed and slow flying characteristics, which paradoxically made it a stable and effective torpedo attack platform and made it harder for faster contemporary fighters to hit at very low speed.