COBI Fairey Swordfish - Executive Edition Set 5769

COBI's Fairey Swordfish Executive Edition is a 1:32 model built from 959 blocks, 34 cm long with a 43 cm wingspan, in the markings of an aircraft from HMS Ark Royal. Three figures are included — pilot with interchangeable headgear, observer and gunner, in flying helmets and heavy jackets — along with a Vickers machine gun, a brick-built 18-inch Mark XII torpedo, an elaborate collector's stand and a black plaque recording the aircraft's part in Operation Rheinbung.

Taranto

The Bismarck is the famous one, but the night that mattered most came six months earlier.

On 11 November 1940, twenty-one Swordfish from HMS Illustrious attacked the Italian battle fleet at anchor in Taranto harbour. The water there was thought too shallow for air-dropped torpedoes; the British fitted wooden fins and wire to make them run flat, and sent them in anyway, at night, in two waves.

Three battleships were hit. Half the Italian capital fleet was out of action by morning, and the Mediterranean balance changed in a few minutes. Two aircraft were lost.

The Japanese navy studied the raid closely. Officers visited Taranto, and the shallow-water torpedo problem they were working on for a harbour in Hawaii had just been demonstrably solved by someone else.

In the COBI range

Set 5770 is the standard edition with 806 pieces and two figures. Sets 4854 and 4860 are the Bismarck — the ship a Swordfish crippled.

Specifications

Pieces: 959 · Figures: 3 · Scale: 1:32 · Torpedo, collector's stand and plaque included · No stickers
Model dimensions: 34 × 43 × 10.5 cm (13.4 × 16.9 × 4.1 in)