![]() However, dive bombing was ultimately a high-payoff, high-loss activity. The quickness of your dive also reduces your risk somewhat. Diving nearly vertically on a ship and releasing your bomb at low altitude is highly accurate. Of course, the closer you get to the enemy, the more likely he is to shoot you. Finally, SBDs during the first year of the war were painted blue/gray on their upper surfaces over light gray on the lower surfaces, not deep navy blue.ĭive bombing has a simple rationale: If you want to shoot someone, fire from close range. Instead, they had telescopic sights that tended to fog up in the Pacific. Neither the SBD-2 nor the SBD-3 had a reflector bombsight. 30-caliber machine guns and a single rear-facing machine gun. During the first, critical year of the war, the Navy flew SBD-2s and SBD-3s. The museum’s current SBD-5 is a loaner.Officially, SBD meant “scout/bomber from Douglas.” Air crews, however, often called it “Slow but Deadly.”.This probably saved the heavily damaged USS Enterprise. Moved to fighters, Vejtasa shot down seven aircraft at the Battle of Santa Cruz during the Solomon Islands Campaign. The next day, Stanley “Swede” Vejtasa shot down three Zeroes, adding to an earlier kill. John Leppla got four kills and his gunner, John Liska, three. During the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, pilot Lt. In air combat, SBDs had a kill ratio of 3.2 to 1.This was nearly 30 percent of the total tonnage of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s prewar fleet. In the critical first year of the war, SBDs sank or helped sink six carriers, one battleship, three cruisers, one submarine, and 14 transports. On bombing missions, a squadron of Dauntlesses conducted high-precision/high-risk dive-bombing attacks, plunging almost vertically and releasing bombs at low levels.If they found the enemy, they would radio a report and, if feasible, attack with 500-lb. On scouting missions, 18 SBDs flew in pairs, searching a 90-degree pie slice of the ocean.carriers were Dauntlesses in the first year of the war By Ray Panko | | Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum Key Points ![]()
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