Dauntless dive bomber at midway7/26/2023 ![]() Japan’s navy never regained the upper hand. In the space of eight minutes, Dauntless pilots dropped bombs that fatally damaged three of the four Japanese carriers. It was the dive-bombers coming in.” While Wildcats and Devastators had kept the Zeros busy, Dauntlesses from the Yorktown and Enterprise had gotten through. And then I saw a glint in the sun that looked like a beautiful silver waterfall. I was utterly convinced that we weren’t any of us coming back because there were still so many Zeros. In an oral history recorded years later, Wildcat pilot Jimmy Thach recalled trying, with five other pilots, to hold off the Zeros: “The air was just like a beehive. bomb or torpedo had hit a Japanese ship, despite eight separate attacks by a total of 94 airplanes. In the first three hours of the battle, not a single U.S. ![]() Many Thanks to the men and women who built, maintained, crewed and flew her. Scoring a major victory at Midway and all through the pacific campaign, the slow-but-deadly Dauntless saw distinguished career. Of 41 Devastators launched, four made it back to their ships. 5936 Dauntless dive bombers were built (946 as the A-24 Banshee for the army) prior to and during WWII. The Wildcats did what they could against Japanese Zeros, but they were outnumbered, and their opponents’ climb rate was three times greater. The Devastators were particularly easy prey, since they dropped their torpedoes while skimming as low as 100 feet over the water. Others got lost and had to return to the carrier without even sighting the enemy. Whole squadrons of Wildcats wasted most of their fuel waiting for the slower airplanes to take off. But timing the departures of these airplanes, with their different speeds and cruising altitudes, proved difficult. carriers, Grumman F4F Wildcats flew escort for the slower Douglas Devastator torpedo bombers and Douglas Dauntless dive-bombers, which would attack the Japanese ships. Not a single Devastator is on display today, though several have been located on the ocean floor, one off the coast of San Diego.įrom three U.S. After six months of combat, the Devastator was withdrawn from service. In the May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea, Devastators teamed up with Dauntless dive bombers to sink a Japanese carrier, but Devastators dropped their torpedoes at an altitude under 1,000 feet, and the slow bombers were vulnerable to Japanese fighters. ★ TBD Devastator ★ Torpedo bombers were built to sink ships, and the Douglas TBD Devastator sank a few in the early rounds of the Pacific war.
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