Blackburn Skua, 800 Squadron FAA, HMS Ark Royal, October 1939

[Old Man]

 

 

 

      The Blackburn Skua was designed to be both a carrier-borne dive-bomber and a fighter. Procuring aeroplanes capable of more than one task let the Fleet Air Arm wring all the use it possibly could from its slender service strength. How slender that was, and what a minor consideration the FAA was, may be illustrated by the Air Ministry budget for 1935, the year Blackburn began designing the Skua. This proposed adding nineteen new aroplanes to the Fleet Air Arm, while proposing eleven new squadrons be formed in the Royal Air Force by year's end, as the first step in a program to form some forty new squadrons in the next three years.
      The Skua was a ground-breaking machine for the Fleet Air Arm when its prototype took flight in 1937. Though biplanes still were common in the Royal Air Force, new production underway made clear the monoplane would soon predominate. With the Skua, the Fleet Air Arm would have a monoplane too, and one of the most modern sort, a low wing cantilever monoplane of all-metal stressed skin construction, with a retractable undercarriage, enclosed accommodation for its crew of two, and a multi-gun battery mounted in its wings.
      That the Skua was designed to be a dive bomber was as ground-breaking as its construction and configuration. Procurement of a dive bomber was an innovation for the Royal Navy. Admiral Henderson, who had made his career commanding aircraft carriers, beginning with HMS Furious soon after the Great War, believed in the technique. The Air Ministry did not, but under the intricate arrangement between the Air Ministry and the Admiralty, the latter could write its own specifications. By the time the Skua's development was underway, Admiral Henderson had been appointed Controller, in charge of determining capabilities and design parameters of warships for the Royal Navy.

 

 

      The Skua was intended to engage enemy warships, whether on the high seas in aid of the fleet in action, or in surprise raids on harbors. It was a true dive bomber. The Skua could dive steeply and pull-out safely at very low altitudes, owing to air brakes under its wings, which kept the aeroplane from accelerating much in its dive. The Skua could carry a heavy bomb on the centerline, and release it while diving by means of a 'trapeze' which swung the bomb clear of the propeller's disc. The heaviest bomb available for the Skua's use was the five hundred pound semi armor piercing bomb. Roughly equivalent to an eleven inch shell, this could inflict catastrophic damage on lesser vessels, but could do little harm to the vitals of most capital ships.
      The subsidiary role of 'fleet fighter' envisioned for the Skua did not include interception and offensive patrol, roles the Skua would be pressed into by events during its service life. Carrier-borne fighters were to prevent enemy reconnaissance aeroplanes from discovering or tracking the fleet, and with the fleet in battle, were to prevent enemy aeroplanes from assisting their ships' gunnery. No great speed or agility was required to carry out such tasks, and Skuas had many opportunities, in northern waters and the Mediterranean, to see off enemy reconnaissance planes. Put to the task, the Skua proved capable of success against enemy bombers, whether in aid of ships or ground forces. What the Skua could not do was engage modern land-based fighters on equal terms, being by design too large and too heavy, and therefore too slow to do so.

 

 

      Blackburn's design was accepted for service late in 1938 only after the prototype's poor stall and spin characteristics had been sufficiently rectified (by lengthening the nose, increasing the tailplane's span, and tilting up the wingtips). The Air Ministry that summer had made a last minute attempt to quash production of the Skua, on the grounds it was obsolescent as a fighter plane (which by compare to emerging single-seat fighters in the RAF it certainly was). The Navy Board countered that nothing else was available to carry out either the fighter or the dive bomber roles, and that the latter was the Skua's most important use.
      Skuas began to trickle into Fleet Air Arm squadrons during 1939. 800 Squadron, the 'senior' squadron of the FAA, received the first three in January. These were taken to sea for service trials alongside the unit's Hawker Osprey biplanes aboard HMS Ark Royal, and the juxtaposition of the Navy's newest modern aeroplane with the Navy's newest and largest aircraft carrier drew great attention, which Blackburn stoked by  a vigorous campaign of advertisements featuring the Skua, in which the aeroplane looked quite the speedy and powerful modern fighting machine.

 

 

      When war with Nazi Germany began, 800 Squadron and 803 Squadron, assigned to HMS Ark Royal, had nine Skuas each, and 801 Squadron, assigned to HMS Furious, had a dozen. Ark Royal, Furious, and HMS Courageous were sent into the Western Approaches, where their aircraft were to search out submarines, and respond with bombs to reports of submarines sighted. Two Skuas of 803 Sqdn, engaging a surfaced submarine, pressed their attack so low the blast of their own hundred pound bombs slapped them out of the sky (and without harm to the U-boat, which rescued aircrew). Despite a web of searching aeroplanes, and destroyers in close escort, German submarines found their way to the carriers. Ark Royal sighted and avoided the torpedoes of a U-boat, which escorting destroyers then sank. HMS Courageous, however, was struck and sunk by a U-boat's torpedoes.
      HMS Ark Royal sortied into the North Sea with battle-cruisers late in September, in aid of a Royal Navy submarine in distress near the German coast. 800 Sqdn Skuas drove off two German flying boats seeking to spot and shadow the capital ships, and Skuas of 803 Sqdn drove down a third. The position of the force had been reported, however. When twin-engine German bombers approached, Ark Royal's aeroplanes, Skuas included, were down in the hangers, drained of fuel and stripped of munitions, for the safety of the ship in case of a hit. There nearly was one, a 1000kg bomb close enough by the bow to have been honestly reported as a hit. The German bombers carried out their business without hindrance or hurry, though with no success, and the ineffectiveness of the anti-aircraft fire put up by a sizeable group of vessels including capital ships, particularly in the face of dive bombing, led the Admiralty to abandon the view defense against air attack was the responsibility of the gunners, and to direct that henceforth, carrier-borne fighters should aid the gunners by engaging bombers.

 

 

      At the start of October, the Admiralty had confirmation that Nazi Germany's Graf Spee was loose in the South Atlantic shipping lanes. HMS Ark Royal was ordered to leave the Home Fleet for the South Atlantic, and there to join Force K (the battle-cruiser HMS Renown and several destroyers) at Freetown. Ark Royal reached Freetown on October 12, carrying a half-dozen Skuas of 800 Sqdn, and three slim squadrons of Swordfish.
      Force K at sea seeking for Graf Spee could employ carrier-borne aeroplanes in just the way the Navy had always thought to be their crowning use. They would extend vision many miles beyond the horizon. If the quarry were spotted, they would help HMS Renown hurry into battle, by keeping Graf Spee in sight, and even striking to slow it down in a prolonged chase. There would be no more than a float-plane or two by way of aerial opposition, which the Skuas could easily deal with.

 

 

      It is one of the minor yet intriguing 'might have beens' in naval history, what could have occured had Force K encountered the Graf Spee. A strike would certainly have been launched from Ark Royal if the enemy vessel were sighted at any distance from the guns of HMS Renown. A dozen or more Swordfish coming in low from all directions with torpedos, while half a dozen Skuas overhead dove down with bombs equal to Graf Spee's main deck armor, might well have put paid to the German ship, and made Graf Spee the first capital ship sunk by air attack on the high seas.
      It was not to be, however. On November 18, Force K departed Freetown for the Cape of Good Hope to rendezvous there with a pair of heavy cruisers, after report was received Graf Spee was in the Indian Ocean south of Madagascar. By the time Force K reached the Cape, on December 1, Graf Spee had doubled back into the South Atlantic, where it was soon to meet the cruisers of Force G off Montevideo.
      While HMS Ark Royal was with Force K, when the Skuas of 800 Squadron went aloft they remained near the carrier, while search at distance was carried out by Swordfish. The Skuas spent so much of their time immured in the enclosed hanger deck the flyers dubbed themselves 'the pit ponies', after the animals once employed down the mines. Still, on December 8, one Skua came down in the sea. The wireless man was rescued, but the pilot was lost.

 

 

      HMS Ark Royal was to remain in the South Atlantic till February 6, 1940, when it set sail for Portsmouth. It arrived there the day after Valentine's, and remained for a month's refit. 800 Sqdn took its Skuas to Hatston in the Orkneys, where it was joined by 803 Sqdn and a freshly formed Skua unit, 806 Squadron. During March they flew convoy protection patrols over the North Sea, engaging German U-boats (rarely) and bombers (fairly often). The remaining Skua squadron, 801, was ashore at Scapa Flow with the Home Fleet.
      A Royal Navy operation to mine Norwegian waters collided with a German invasion of the place on April 9. 800 Sqdn and 803 Squadron flew their Skuas through the night to attack German vessels in Bergen harbor at dawn on April 10, sinking the German light cruiser Konigsberg at anchor. The Germans had quickly seized airfields in Norway, and flew in a strong force of bombers, which soon made the coastal waters untenable for English warships without a scrap of air cover. HMS Ark Royal, with the Skuas of 800 Sqdn and 801 Sqdn, and HMS Glorious, with the Skuas of 803 Sqdn, were dispatched to provide air cover for Allied forces at sea and on land, arriving April 25. The situation for Allied ground troops in central  Norway had become dire, and their evacuation began in early May even as a fresh landing was made on the north coast at Narvik. 806 Sqdn Skuas, flying from HMS Furious, joined the three Skua equipped squadrons now operating from Ark Royal, but when the Narvik effort collapsed, 801 Sqdn disembarked from Ark Royal at Scapa Flow.

 

 

      In Norway, Skuas made dive bombing attacks on German shipping in harbor and German occupied airfields, and flew frequent offensive patrols over the coast to protect ground forces, and break up bomber formations heading out to sea. The impression Skuas were not up to the task in Norway owes more to their being far too few of them by compare to the German aerial fleet mustered there than to the aeroplane's (quite real) deficiencies. While German bombers were generally faster than the Skua, over the North Sea Skua pilots had learned they could get enough speed diving without their brakes to manage a firing pass. Skua pilots found over Norway that deploying the brakes in level flight made the aeroplane much more manuverable, which proved some defense against the only fighters available to the Germans in Norway, twin-engined zerstoerer such as the Me110, and Ju88s fitted with a gun-pack.
      Skuas were flown in aid of the Dunkirk evacuation even as they continued to cover Allied forces disengaging from battle in Norway. From late May and into June, 806 Sqdn and 801 Sqdn engaged in both dive bombing in direct support of ground forces, and offensive patrols. There were some successes against bombers, but the Skuas were roughly handled by Me109s. June 13 brought another demonstration of the Skua's vulnerability to the Me109. Fifteen Skuas of 800 Sqdn and 803 Sqdn took off from HMS Ark Royal to attack the Scharnhorst at Trondheim, as part of a combined operation that became a ghastly muddle, with eight of the Skuas downed by defending German fighters.

 

 

      By late June Skuas ceased operating over the channel. 801 Sqdn went to Hatston, and during the summer flew long-range raids to bomb installations on the Norwegian coast, while 806 Sqdn embarked on the new carrier HMS Illustrious for training on the new Fairy Fulmar fighter, an aeroplane better armed if not much faster than the Skua. HMS Ark Royal, carrying the Skuas of 800 Sqdn and 803 Sqdn, patched up after the Trondheim debacle, set sail for the Mediterranean on June 17, to provide air cover for the fleet there now that Italy was entering the war. The Ark Royal operated in the Mediterranean till it was sunk late in 1941, with several sojourns into the Atlantic, three times after German surface vessels (including the Bismark), and once to attack Vichy French forces.
      Employed against the Vichy French and Italian navies the Skua's operations took on much the same contours as in Norway and the North Sea. Skuas flew to drive off reconnaissance aeroplanes, and intercepted formations of bombers intent on attacking English warships. Single seat land-based fighters were largely absent. HMS Illustrious joined Ark Royal in midsummer, with 806 Sqdn, which still had Skuas in reserve for the frequent occasions the new Fulmars were out of repair. 803 Sqdn left Ark Royal for re-equipping with the Fulmar in October. It was not till June of 1941 the Skua was taken off front-line operations in the Mediterranean, with the final departure of 800 Sqdn from HMS Ark Royal. 801 Sqdn, flying under Coastal Command orders from St. Eval, had already been stood down by May, and was being re-equipped with Sea Hurricanes.

 

 

      This model represents Skua L2878, 'L' of Yellow Section, 800 Squadron Fleet Air Arm, as it probably appeared when embarked on HMS Ark Royal in the South Atlantic. Though allocated to Ark Royal, 800 Sqdn was ashore at Hatson when the war began, and orders to see a black port wing (an important identification marking for ground observers) would have seen to. I have made the demarcation the join of the folding wings, since this would expose the under-surface, and be fair easier to paint. I think the colored wing-tip on the port wing under-surface would have been retained, and doing so would not be difficult. 800 Squadron does not seem to have got camouflage paint till Ark Royal returned to Plymouth in February, 1940 (803 retained its peacetime finish only till October, when it disembarked Ark Royal for Hatston).

 

 

 

      This model is one from the shelf of doom, brought out by a 'shelf-queen group build' on an other site. When the Special Hobby 1/72 Skua kit was new I took a run at it. I don't recall much about the original build, except that the engine was a gem, I put a lot of effort into the cockpit, and had to trim the turn-over pylon a bit to get the canopy on, and put a lot of effort into the cockpit.

 

 

At the end I did not like the finish I'd got with silver acrylic, noticed I had misaligned (and sealed down) the fuselage roundels, and the last straw was decals for 803 Sqdn chevron stripes (from the old Pavla/Octopus kit) dissolving on contact with water. A while later I stripped the paint, and in the course of this, all the little bits came off, and the big pieces separated. I stuck the wings and tailplane back on, and the whole affair resided for years in a box.

 

 

      When I decided to take it up, I decided the plain finish of 800 Squadron was a better choice than trying to make or procure 803 chevron stripes. I was fortunate enough to receive information on Ark Royal's Skuas at this time from FAA boffins here. The finish is Tamiya rattle-can silver over foil. I foiled intending to brush on a thin coat of silver lacquer, a procedure which I had previously got a good result from, but true enough to form for this, I could not make the trick work this time --- I had not got brushmarks before, but this time I did. I noted the problem early enough it was easy to remove what had been applied. There probably should be 'universal carrier' bomb racks under the wings, but I am by now disinclined to scratch such to acceptable standard.

 

 

 

(Moment of 'D'oh': I only noticed after posting up pictures I have got the black walkway wrong. It should extend a bit onto the butt-end of the wing's folding portion. Guess I got carried away by the trickiness of freehanding just the stationary stub of the wing roots. It will be an easy fix.)

 

 

Edited June 11, 2021 by Old Man

[Grey Beema]

Great job on a remarkable aircraft.

[Alan P]

Beautiful clean build and an educational article to boot!

 

Thanks very much for sharing,

Alan

[Wulfman]

Nice work on the Skua !

 

Wulfman

[billn53]

Thank you for posting. An interesting read and lovely model. 

[RMCS]

Niiiice 

[spitfire]

Looks good to me and a great write up of the Skua's activities.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[Old Man]

On 6/10/2021 at 10:43 PM, Grey Beema said:

Great job on a remarkable aircraft.

 

Thank you. It is quite a machine, looked at closely. Had there been a lot more of them they'd likely have a higher renown.

[Old Man]

On 6/11/2021 at 12:07 AM, Alan P said:

Beautiful clean build and an educational article to boot!

 

Thanks very much for sharing,

Alan

 

Thank you. It ran a tad longer than I like, but it is a lot to cover.

[Old Man]

On 6/11/2021 at 5:15 AM, Wulfman said:

Nice work on the Skua !

 

Wulfman

 

Thank you. I'm glad to have finally got this one done.

[Old Man]

On 6/11/2021 at 5:19 AM, billn53 said:

Thank you for posting. An interesting read and lovely model. 

 

Thank you. It is a shiny beast, and that makes anything look better. It was interesting taking a look into the operations around the Skua. I had only a hazy knowledge of most of it.

[Old Man]

On 6/11/2021 at 12:43 PM, RMCS said:

Niiiice 

 

Thank you, Sir.

 

Glad you liked it.

[Old Man]

16 hours ago, spitfire said:

Looks good to me and a great write up of the Skua's activities.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

Thank you. It does better at a distance than up close.

 

Glad you liked the account. That's a good part of the enjoyment for me, putting those together. Sometimes I start up a model with some tale in mind, other times looking into a subject reveals a ripping yarn....

[Old Man]

Here are a couple with the walk-way blacking fixed.

 

 

 

Used a strip of black decal to set the edge, than did my best to paint within the lines....

[Cookenbacher]

Wonderful history and a great looking model - lacquer over foil, what will you think of next? I still remember your YP-37 with egg shell infused foil.

[Old Man]

 

On 7/1/2021 at 1:05 PM, Cookenbacher said:

Wonderful history and a great looking model - lacquer over foil, what will you think of next? I still remember your YP-37 with egg shell infused foil.

 

Glad you like the write-up and the model, Sir. It was fun looking things up, I had no idea about most of it when I started. I've been fond of the Skua ever since I came upon the Frog kit (Air Lines over here) when I was a kid. It has a sort of 'brutalist' look to it, the same sort of business-like air as Polikarpov's I-16.

 

Thanks for the memory.

 

That YP-37 was rum fun to build....

 

 

 

The lacquer over foil business was on a Type 96 Carrier Fighter. I had built it and foiled it, then found out over on J-Aircraft that they had aluminum lacquer, so I gave it a try:

 

 

It came out pretty well, but whatever I did then, I couldn't manage it this time.

 

The Tamiya rattle-can over the foil looks the same as if it were over plastic or primer, as a look at the un-foiled control surfaces of the Skua shows.

 

 

[stevehnz]

A very nice job on the Skua, Old Man. Thanks too for the history of it, always amazing what the FAA accomplished in trying conditions with inadequate resources, one of which your model illustrates well. 👍

Steve.

[Old Man]

On 7/3/2021 at 4:22 AM, stevehnz said:

A very nice job on the Skua, Old Man. Thanks too for the history of it, always amazing what the FAA accomplished in trying conditions with inadequate resources, one of which your model illustrates well. 👍

Steve.

 

Thanks, Steve.

 

On its own terms, I think it would have to be said the Skua over-performed: it did to acceptable standard things in excess of the roles it was designed for.

 

In a way, the FAA was hampered by lack of opponents. Some lip service was paid to the possibility of carrier v. carrier engagements, in which enemy carriers would be leading targets, but in the Atlantic no likely enemy had a carrier, so there was a make-believe air to it, like some USAAC planning for interception of trans-Atlantic bomber fleets that never would or could materialize.

[Gatesy64]

Great article showcasing a fine model of an under appreciated aircraft.