First flown in 1937, the Fi 167 was a sound, usable biplane with modest speed beside contemporary naval aircraft. Its 175-knot top speed surpassed the Swordfish, but that comparison says little because the British aircraft was designed for range, night attack, reliability, and easy maintenance rather than speed. The Fi 167 later proved useful in Croatian service, confirming that the basic design could serve as a dependable workhorse. Only fourteen were built between 1938 and 1940, a scale better suited to a low-priority experiment than to forming, training, and sustaining a carrier torpedo-bomber force.
Chapter · 7:10-10:06
The capable Fi 167 remained a low-priority design
The Fi 167 emerges as a dependable but slow biplane whose tiny production run reveals how little priority Germany gave its carrier air group.