The Armstrong Whitworth Whitley
The Whitley was extremely slow and underpowered. It was also inadequately armed, but this is the plane my father loved. He said that if you wedged your feet against the side of the cockpit and heaved at the control column, it was possible to actually move the stick. Some minutes later the aircraft would start to react...
I think a lot of my Father's love for this aeroplane derived from the fact that, as they gently cruised up and down the Bay of Biscay, to his eternal relief they never actually spotted a U-Boat! He was convinced it would be suicide to attack one in a Whitley, as the aircraft was completely unmanoueverable, and the U-Boats at this stage of the war had been ordered to stay on the surface and fight it out in case of aerial attack. The U-Boats were provided with powerful anti-aircraft guns. Too many had been sunk by bombs and depth charges just after they had dived and were still at shallow depth. Later in the war, when the acoustic torpedo, which homed in on the noise of the U-Boat's propellers was introduced, diving in sight of an aircraft was suicide for the U-Boat.
Another memorable quote (not my Father's) about the Whitley - "If you flew through rain you got wet"! But not as wet as the poor sods below....(in this case they were all picked up by a Sunderland flying boat).
A Whitley from St Eval looking rather too closely for U-Boats!
Remarkably, Whitleys did manage to inflict some damage on the U-Boat fleet, for instance U-751
Crew : Five
Engines : Two 1,010 hp Rolls-Royce Merlin X
Span : 84'-0" (25.60 m)
Length : 72'-6" (22.10 m)
Height : 15'-0" (4.57 m)
Empty Weight : 19,330 lbs. (8,754 kg)
Loaded Weight : 28,200 lbs
Maximum Speed : 222 mph at 17,000 ft. (5,182 m)
Ceiling : 17,600 ft. (5,364 m)
Range : 1,650 miles (2655 km) with 3,000 lbs. (1,361 kg) of bombs.
Armament: Single 0.303" machine gun in nose turret, four 0.303" machine guns in rear turret. 7,000 lbs. (3,175 kg) maximum bomb load.
Bomber Command squadrons equipped with the Whitley: 7, 10, 51, 58, 77, 78, 97, 102, 166
More info at U-Boat.net
19 OTU - A good Operational Training unit site