9/26/2023 0 Comments Sbc2 helldiver![]() Army bombers could be built with unlimited size and load-carrying ability. By the same token, the Marines believed that dive-bombing afforded the best available way to provide close air support without endangering their own ground troops.Īnother reason the dive-bombing technique held a greater appeal for the Navy than for the Army was the fundamental differences in the two services’ operational requirements. Naval aviators felt that pinpoint dive-bombing attacks, delivered simultaneously with coordinated low-level torpedo-plane attacks, would be the most effective method of dealing with an enemy fleet. The Navy believed that a relatively small moving target, like a warship taking evasive action, would be virtually impossible to hit by level bombing. Those targets, however, had been immobile. William ‘Billy’ Mitchell’s highly publicized bombing of captured German warships in June 1921. That belief seemed to be justified by Brig. Army Air Corps was convinced that it could hit any target from high altitude by means of level bombing, using precision optical bombsights. Dive-bombing was officially adopted by the Navy as a regular part of its operational repertoire in 1928. Marine fliers found that they could achieve a far greater degree of precision by releasing their bombs while aiming their planes directly at their targets in a steep dive of 70 degrees or more. Up until that time, aircraft had dropped their bombs from a level attitude. Sanderson, during operations in Haiti in 1919. That tactic was first used by a Marine aviator, Lieutenant (later Brig. Navy specifically for the role of dive-bombing. The Curtiss SB2C was the last of a line of aircraft developed for the U.S. It is also interesting to note that a Douglas SBD Dauntless, rather than an SB2C, has been preserved in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., to represent a World War II-era Navy dive-bomber. Clark, commanding officer of USS Yorktown-one of the first carriers on which the aircraft was deployed-recommended that it be withdrawn from service and production canceled. Indeed, so disappointing was the SB2C’s performance that Captain Joseph J. It is significant, however, that the Royal Navy rejected the Helldiver for combat service, even while it continued to use the antediluvian Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bomber until the end of the war. That opinion was shared by Britain’s Naval Air Arm, which operated numerous Grumman Wildcats, Hellcats and Avengers, as well as Vought Corsairs, from its carriers. Navy’s aircraft carriers after 1942 were markedly superior to their Japanese counterparts. Navy, the SB2C Helldiver.īy and large, the aircraft that operated from the U.S. One notable example was a dive bomber developed by Curtiss for the U.S. Some American weapons fell short of expectations, however. The legendary reputations of the jeep, Douglas C-47, M-1 Garand rifle and North American P-51 Mustang, for example, were all well-deserved. On the whole, American servicemen enjoyed an overwhelming superiority in the quality as well as the quantity of weaponry during World War II. Curtiss SB2C Helldiver: The Last Dive Bomber Close
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