The Fairey Swordfish was so flimsy an aircraft it was nick named “The Stringbag’’.
Perhaps if the Brits would have shared their torpedo technology with us, things might have turned out differently in the early years of the Pacific War. Their torpedos seem to work.
From Wikipedia:
“In service, it received the nickname Stringbag; this was not due to its biplane struts, spars, and braces, but a reference to the seemingly endless variety of stores and equipment that the type was cleared to carry. Crews likened the aircraft to a housewife’s string shopping bag, common at the time and which could accommodate contents of any shape, and that a Swordfish, like the shopping bag, could carry anything.”
Its ultimate payload was a torpedo delivered by flying in on the deck to its target at an attack speed of 105 m.p.h.
No Stringbags were lost in both attacks on the Bismarck; the movie depicted Swordfish aircraft being shot down just to add dramatic effect.
As noted, the biplanes were too slow for Bismarck’s AA to acquire & engage them.
Actually they were called “String Bags” because, like the traditional British shopping bag, they could carry anything. Torpedoes, bombs, depth charges, searchlights, ASV radar, tactical nukes. Well maybe not the nukes, but you get the idea. They were supposed to be replaced by the Fairey Albacore. In the event, the Albacore so monumentally bad that it was eventually taken out of service, and replaced by the . . . . Swordfish.