Douglas Dauntless

[ThomasHannover]

Here an another american aircraft , which came out of service when the Avenger came in :

Douglas Dauntless

 

 

DOUGLAS DAUNTLESS

U.S. Navy: SBD-1-5 U.S. Army: A-24 A & B

Two-seat Scout Bomber. First flown 1940. Chief Designer, E. H. Heinemann.

DEVELOPED from the BT-1 of 1923, the Dauntless dive bomber is fitted with special release gear for a single heavy bomb carried under the fuselage. Perforated flaps of large area keep the speed within safe limits during a diving attack.

The SBD series is fitted with deck arrester for operation from aircraft carriers. More than 5,000 have been built for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. A-24 is a slightly modified version, without deck-landing gear, in service with the U.S. Army Air Forces. They are also used by the Royal New Zealand Air Force.

Dauntless dive bombers have played a prominent and effective part in the naval battles of the Pacific, including the decisive battles of the Coral Sea and Midway Island. In a diving attack during the Coral Sea engagement a Dauntless pilot had the good fortune to sink a Japanese cruiser with a single well-placed bomb.

Carrier-borne Dauntless bombers have assisted U.S. forces invading North Africa, Sicily and Italy, and they co-operated in invasions of Japanese island bases in the South and Central Pacific by heavily pounding the defences before the landings. The U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics credited the Dauntless with having sunk during the first year of operations more combat tonnage of the enemy than all other branches of the services. The score included three Japanese aircraft carriers sunk and three put out of action, with full complement of planes. The disabled carriers were later sunk by other U.S. naval forces.

Production of this famous Scout Bomber was discontinued on July 21, 1944, after a total of 5,936 of the type had been built.

Power Unit: SBD-1, 2 & 3, A-24, 950 h.p. Wright Cyclone GR-1820-32-9-cy1inder air-cooled engine.

SBD-4 & 5, A-24 A & B, 1,000-1,200 h.p. Wright Cyclone.

Propeller: 3 bl. Hamilton Standard Hydromatic full-feathering.

Performance: 1,000-1,200 h.p. Cyclone. Top speed unofficially reported as 255 m.p.h. at 14,000 ft., cruising 185 m.p.h., initial climb 1,428 ft./min.; range, 456-773 miles; service ceiling, 25,200 ft.

Weight: Empty 5,535 lb., loaded 9,519 lb.

Armament: Two fixed forward firing .50 in. machine-guns in fuselage and two .30 in. in rear cockpit. One 1,000 lb. bomb carried under fuselage, additional racks under wings. Dimensions: Span, 41' 6"; length, 33' 0".

 

The Dauntless's service career, insofar as the US forces were concerned, had ended at war’s end, although a few were to soldier on in French service with the Aeronavale until 1949, and others were to remain on the inventory of the Mexican Air Force until the late fifties.

[Oldbaldguy]

Ed Heinemann, who was involved in the design of the Dauntless, held that it was the only dive bomber of the war that was capable of a truly vertical dive without breaking something.  Even the much vaunted Stuka could not do that.

[mustang1989]

I realize this is a dated thread but I simply HAVE to reply: The Cadillac of the sky as far as I'm concerned.

Edited October 28, 2020 by mustang1989

[vince14]

A thread resurrected after fifteen years. Wow, you're not wrong about it being dated. The OP hasn't even logged into LSP for over a decade!

Edited October 28, 2020 by vince14