Wales-Swansea Bay Air Show 2024. Part-One.

 Fairy Swordfish-II.

A vintage visitor to Swansea this aircraft was conceived in 1933 and was much needed in 1939 on the out break of World War-II (1939-45), she was a bi-plane and stood her ground beside the famous Spitfires and Hurricanes on many an airfield.

Yet she was a torpedo bomber and came into her own right serving on the aircraft carriers HMS Ark Royal, Courageous, Eagle, Furious and Glorious, despite looking old of another era she was well capable for the task in hand and could armed with various machine guns and bomb pods, despite still carrying a 730 Kg torpedo.

Operational from 1936 with the RAF and Fleet Air Arm she claimed her first success in 1943 destroying Nazi-German U-boat U64 in the Atlantic ocean, despite an open cockpit and suffering weather the crews fought on with determination against a vile enemy!

Some aircraft were fitted with floats, others with a catapult and the first enclosed cabin came on the Canadian Mk4 

After the war the type continues to operate in Canada, China and Brazil and were eventually phased out for improved types.

Warships? Part-Two.

Aircraft Carriers, Helicopter cruisers and Other.

The world of war shipping is very extensive in the last one hundred years we have moved from big guns to missiles defence systems and the role to mine the seas and have torpedo tubes have all been incorporated into several designs large and small!

The aircraft carrier one would like to think came with the arrival of the aeroplane, but new data has revealed that ships fitted with hot air balloons though limited were prevalent in the 19th Century.

Today there has been a need to save money and to multitask war ships with helicopters, jump jets and now drones both aircraft and rotor and as we move on this is much cheaper and safer in the long term with the microchip and satellite communications?

The U.S. perhaps leads the world in nuclear powered vessels followed by Russia, the U.K., France, China, Japan, Australia, India, Thailand, Italy, Spain and Brazil?

Ballooning.

First solar powered.

We tend to forget about the balloon in the age of machines, but it was the balloon (Montpelier's) that opened modern society to aviation well before the invention of the (Wright brothers) aeroplane. Today ballooning is a major sport and can be a dangerous pursuit.   

Recently Bristol University in England have been the first to develop the totally Solar powered balloon and fly it safely, this a a major breakthrough that will perhaps spread to Micro-Lights and Gliders/Hand-Gliders in the near future.

Solar scientists in Wales have been developing a flexible solar panel skin and I had wondered if this had been Incorporated into the Bristol project.