After the Salerno landings, we heard at Henstridge that the commander of the inshore operations — Rear Admiral Vian — had severely criticised the Seafire on three points. The first was that it had a weak undercarriage and was also entirely unsuitable as a carrier-borne fighter. Secondly, it was not fast enough to catch the low-flying Fw 190 fighter-bombers over the beach-head — its main task. Third, it lacked endurance to remain on CAP for the necessary two hours in spite of the 45 gallon slipper tank.
It was true that out of 500 sorties there had been only two or three successful interceptions and out of this number of landings there had been 50 crashes on deck. However, most of these criticisms could have been avoided by better planning before the operation started. First, by arranging for the fighters to operate from faster carriers capable of a better speed that 15 knots, so giving them more wind speed for landing in the calm conditions prevailing in the Mediterranean at that time of year. Second, by operating the carriers further offshore, clear of the radar ‘ground clutter’.
The accident rate of about ten per cent of landings was inevitable, for, with the maximum vertical touchdown velocity of 7ft/sec allowed in the Seafire, a mandatory 3½ degree descent path and with only 15 knots of wind over the deck, an undercarriage failure was a mathematical certainty, even on a perfect landing. Many pilots knew this and tried to ‘flare out’ at touchdown. However, this resulted many times in the aircraft floating over the wires and making a full toss into the barrier. Others landed off-centre or stalled, with the same result.
The second criticism — that the Seafire LIIc was too slow — was very hard for us to believe for it was the fastest low-level version of the hooked Spitfire Vb in existence. The poor interception rate was entirely due to our radar suffering ‘the robbing effect’ of ground clutter, and the ships and thus the aircraft received little or no warning of the low-flying approaches of the Fw 190 fighter/bombers by radar. With but a couple of minutes warning at the most, the Seafires on CAP, at their maximum feasible 240 knots patrol speed to conserve fuel, found it impossible to accelerate to the 350 knots diving approach speed of the Fw 190s and in the poor visibility which prevailed, the enemy got away each time. The Germans, like ourselves, already knew — even at this stage in the war—that all they had to do was to keep a bit of high ground behind them, in-line with their sea-level approach, and they could not be detected at any range by the ships’ radars. If the carriers had been ordered to keep further offshore and away from the ground clutter, the sea-level approach of the Fw 190s would have been detected at 20 miles, and this might have been sufficient for a powerful fighter like the Seafire LIIc to accelerate to the Fw’s get-away speed of about 300 knots in good time.
The third criticism — that the Seafire’s endurance of two hours was insufficient — was perhaps less unjustified. However, with the need to conserve fuel having to give second place to a high patrol speed, and the fact that the Admiral’s positioning of the carriers made a careful and relaxed landing approach impossible in the short period of the carrier maintaining a straight course before hitting the shore and the crashes on deck further delaying matters, pilots would ask for a landing with plenty of fuel in hand. This considerably shortened their useful time on patrol.
The Naval Staff who planned the Naval task at Salerno should have learned from past history — two months previously — when radar clutter in operation ‘Husky’ caused a similar ‘robbing effect’. (Readers will also remember that the Navy struck exactly similar troubles at San Carlos Bay in the Falklands in 1982 and officially blamed their heavy losses on the ‘robbing effect’ of ground clutter affecting the accuracy of their missiles, and the ‘wave-top’ approach height of the Argentinian Air Force planes allowing them to get in unobserved.)
When the decklanding trials unit in the UK got to hear of the Seafires’ efforts at Salerno, it carried out its own trials in Ravager. However, the test pilots, keen to break new frontiers of science, used their own private techniques — not the curved approach but a ‘crab’ approach — so that their results were of no interest to the squadrons, who would not use such a dangerous method. So that, even if Admiral Vian had asked for advice on how to avoid Seafire troubles in the future, he would have received nothing useful in reply from the carrier trials unit.