Torpedo bomber

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A Sopwith Cuckoo dropping a torpedo—one of the first torpedo bombers

A Heinkel He 115 torpedo bomber seaplane

A Fairey Swordfish with a torpedo

A torpedo bomber is a bomber aircraft designed primarily to attack ships with torpedoes, but they could also carry out conventional bombings. Generally, they carried torpedoes designed for air launch, that were smaller and lighter than those used by submarines.

The torpedo bomber first appeared during the later years of World War I. As an airborne torpedo could weigh as much as 2000 pounds (or 907 kilograms, more than twice the bombload of a contemporary single-engined bomber), the aircraft carrying it needed to have a more powerful engine. Carrying torpedoes also required a long bomb-bay (or in any case a longer fuselage), which was why a special type of plane was needed for this role. However, a number of multi-engined, heavier aircraft have also been used in torpedo bomber role.

Torpedo bombers existed almost exclusively prior to and during WWII. During the war they were an important player in many famous battles, notably the British attack at Taranto and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. They did particularly well in these attacks as the targets were stationary. In other battles, when the targets were ships able to maneuver at high speed and hence much harder to hit, torpedoes proved less effective, except in cases when the crews launching them were especially well trained (for an example, see Sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse). Still, even a single torpedo hit on an enemy warship could cripple it decisively (as during the hunt for the Bismarck), so the torpedo bomber remained a very dangerous weapon. One crucial limitation of a torpedo bomber was that it had to fly a long, straight course at a constant altitutude towards the target ship before launching its torpedo, and hence was highly vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire. The torpedoes were also very sophisticated weapons and were prone to damage when landing on water, especially on a wave; they were normally aimed at the bottom of a wave but, needless to say, this was rather difficult.

Technically, the best way to achieve a hit was an "anvil attack", in which two torpedo planes approached the target ship's bow at an angle of about 45 degrees, one on each side of the ship. The torpedoes were to be launched at the same distance from the ship; this would have ensured a hit no matter where the ship tried to maneuver. In practice, this kind of attack was extremely rare. Anti-air fire quickly broke approaching plane formations, after which each plane was on its own and could not coordinate such an attack.

Torpedo bombers disappeared almost immediately at the end of the war, replaced by more generalized aircraft, and then missiles. However some postwar jet aircraft were adapted as torpedo bombers in the late 1940s and 1950s. The North Korean Air Force notably had the world's last operational torpedo bombers in the 1980s.

In a parallel development, some maritime strike aircraft and helicopters have been capable of launching guided torpedoes against submarines. However, the mode of operation of these aircraft is considerably different.