AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 101 / 264

Plate 101 of 264 · Second World War · Carrier fighter and dive bomber

Blackburn Skua Mk II

Skua Mk II, L2889 ‘A7G’, painted as L2889 ‘A7G’, a Blackburn Skua Mk II of No. 803 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm, embarked in HMS Ark Royal in the summer of 1939: the Fleet Air Arm’s first operational monoplane, a two-seat carrier fighter and dive bomber with an 890 hp Bristol Perseus XII sleeve-valve radial driving a three-bladed propeller, a long glazed canopy over the pilot and the rear gunner, a low wing of 46 ft span with split flaps that doubled as dive brakes, four Browning machine guns in the wings and a crutch under the fuselage for a 500 lb bomb, shown standing tail-down on its main wheels and tail wheel with its wings spread: aluminium dope overall, a blue, red and blue band round the rear fuselage carrying the white code ‘A7G’, ‘L2889’ in black ahead of the fin, no fuselage roundels, and red, white and blue roundels above and below the wings (shape from the airwar.ru Skua Mk II three-view, cross-checked against the 1939 L’Aérophile drawing; markings matched to the 803 Squadron air-to-air photograph of L2889’s starboard side; the band colours, the port-side markings and the under-wing roundels follow other photographs and records of the squadron rather than this aircraft); the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton displays the wreck of another Skua, L2940, recovered from a Norwegian lake in 1974.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as L2889 ‘A7G’, a Blackburn Skua Mk II of No. 803 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm, embarked in HMS Ark Royal in the summer of 1939: the Fleet Air Arm’s first operational monoplane, a two-seat carrier fighter and dive bomber with an 890 hp Bristol Perseus XII sleeve-valve radial driving a three-bladed propeller, a long glazed canopy over the pilot and the rear gunner, a low wing of 46 ft span with split flaps that doubled as dive brakes, four Browning machine guns in the wings and a crutch under the fuselage for a 500 lb bomb, shown standing tail-down on its main wheels and tail wheel with its wings spread: aluminium dope overall, a blue, red and blue band round the rear fuselage carrying the white code ‘A7G’, ‘L2889’ in black ahead of the fin, no fuselage roundels, and red, white and blue roundels above and below the wings (shape from the airwar.ru Skua Mk II three-view, cross-checked against the 1939 L’Aérophile drawing; markings matched to the 803 Squadron air-to-air photograph of L2889’s starboard side; the band colours, the port-side markings and the under-wing roundels follow other photographs and records of the squadron rather than this aircraft); the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton displays the wreck of another Skua, L2940, recovered from a Norwegian lake in 1974. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (886 KB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (II); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Skua Mk II, L2889 ‘A7G’ modelled here.

History

The Skua

Blackburn designed the Skua to Air Ministry specification O.27/34, which asked for a naval dive bomber whose first job would be to sink enemy aircraft carriers, with fighting as a secondary role. The prototype, K5178, first flew from Brough on 9 February 1937 with A. M. Blake at the controls. It was the Fleet Air Arm’s first operational monoplane and its first with a retractable undercarriage, flaps and a variable-pitch propeller: an all-metal, stressed-skin aircraft with a long glazed canopy over the pilot and the gunner, wings that folded back for stowage in a carrier’s hangar, and split flaps that doubled as dive brakes. Its four Browning machine guns in the wings were backed by a single Lewis or Vickers K gun in the rear cockpit, and a hinged crutch swung its 500 lb bomb clear of the propeller in a dive.

The Bristol Mercury intended for production was wanted for the Blenheim, so the 190 production Skua Mk IIs had the less powerful Perseus XII sleeve-valve radial instead, and the Skua was slow for a fighter, with a top speed of 225 mph. No. 800 Squadron received the first in November 1938, and Nos. 801 and 803 followed during 1939. On 26 September 1939 three Skuas of No. 803 Squadron from HMS Ark Royal shot down a Dornier Do 18 flying boat over the North Sea, one of the first German aircraft brought down by British aircraft in the war. Blackburn also built a turret-fighter version, the Roc.

The Skua’s finest day came on 10 April 1940. Sixteen Skuas of Nos. 800 and 803 Squadrons, led by Lieutenant Commander William Lucy, took off from RNAS Hatston in Orkney before dawn, flew some 330 miles across the North Sea and dive-bombed the German cruiser Königsberg alongside the quay at Bergen. She capsized and sank, for the loss of one Skua. The Skuas flew on through the Norwegian campaign and over Dunkirk, but losses mounted against modern German fighters, and in a raid on the battlecruiser Scharnhorst at Trondheim on 13 June 1940 eight of the fifteen Skuas from Ark Royal were lost. The type was withdrawn from front-line squadrons in 1941 and spent the rest of the war towing targets and training crews, the last being struck off charge in March 1945.

This airframe

Skua II L2889 ‘A7G’ of No. 803 Squadron

L2889The airframe modelled

L2889 flew with No. 803 Squadron in HMS Ark Royal, and is the nearest aircraft in a well-known air-to-air photograph of the squadron’s Skuas taken in the summer of 1939, just before the war. That photograph shows its starboard side and upper wing, and the model follows it: aluminium dope overall, a dark band round the rear fuselage behind the gunner’s canopy with the white code ‘A7G’, ‘L2889’ in black ahead of the fin, no fuselage roundel, and red, white and blue roundels above the wings. The blue, red and blue of the band are taken from published records of No. 803 Squadron’s colours; the port side mirrors the starboard, and the under-wing roundels follow photographs of another Skua of the period, L2933. The only Skua left is L2940 of No. 800 Squadron. On 27 April 1940, during the Norwegian campaign, Captain R. T. Partridge of the Royal Marines attacked a Heinkel He 111 near Åndalsnes, and return fire hit his engine; he put L2940 down on the frozen Breidalsvatnet near Grotli, and it sank when the ice thawed. Norwegian divers found it in 1974, a Royal Navy diving club recovered it, and it is shown in its recovered state at the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton. No photograph of L2940 in service has been found, so the model shows L2889 instead. The shape follows the airwar.ru Skua Mk II three-view, cross-checked against a 1939 drawing published in L’Aérophile.

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Skua in one UK collection.

Every airframe and serial All 264 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.