Britain's Ugly (But Surprisingly Effective) Fighter-Bomber: Blackburn Skua

Video Description

In this video, we take a look at the Blackburn Skua, a British carrier-based fighter and dive bomber from early World War II. We first talk about aircraft designs looking cool, and how that can, at least in theory, provide a minor advantage in combat. We then move to the Skua and its very uncool design, and talk about its origins back in the early to mid 1930's. We talk about its revolutionary (for the time) design, its mediocre but acceptable performance, and its rapid acceptance for production. We talk about how the Skua, at a glace, appeared to be a terrible aircraft, with poor speed and a subpar armament, but when you dig below the surface, it actually was a pretty powerful carrier-based plane. We talk about how it became rapidly outdated by the evolution of aircraft technology, and how, despite that, it still ended up performing decently well in early WW2. We talk about its relatively brief combat career, it being replaced by the Fairey Fulmar, and we end by talking about the pure fighter variant of the Skua in the Blackburn Roc, one of the worst fighters in all of WW2.