The Blackburn Baffin appears before the discussion turns to carrier strike range. Introduced in 1932, the aircraft remained in service until 1941 and spent later years with the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Its Blackburn Ripon predecessor used a water-cooled Napier Lion inline engine. The Baffin instead carried an air-cooled Bristol Pegasus radial producing roughly 545 horsepower in the version discussed. The comparison illustrates how an established carrier-aircraft design could evolve through propulsion changes without becoming an entirely new operational concept.
Notable Point · 1:41:24-1:42:25
The Blackburn Baffin updated an older torpedo-bomber line
A brief aircraft comparison shows the Baffin replacing the Ripon's water-cooled Napier Lion with an air-cooled Bristol Pegasus radial while the basic torpedo-bomber lineage continued.