Underwater surveys, conducted by Project Recover from April 2018 through December 2019, covered close to 27 square miles (70 square kilometers) of the sea bottom in Truk Lagoon. "We were able to line up this piece of the puzzle with this other piece of the puzzle, in order to say, 'OK, let's focus our search around this ship.' And that was actually where we ended up finding this airplane," Colbourn said. (Image credit: United States Navy Museum of Naval Aviation) Navy Grumman Avengers torpedo bombers flying from the USS Intrepid in 1944. The historians quickly realized that pinpointing the location of that sunken ship could lead them to the wreckage of the lost bomber, Colbourn told Live Science. serviceman - an airplane gunner in Operation Hailstone - who mentioned in a memoir that he saw one of the Dauntless dive bombers struck just as he was firing at a Japanese transport ship, which also sank. One lucky piece of information came from a U.S. Researchers suspected that the planes sank in Truk Lagoon based on interviews with Chuuk islanders, official reports and memoirs from survivors of the battle, said Colin Colbourn, lead historian with Project Recover. Launched from the American aircraft carriers USS Enterprise and USS Intrepid during Operation Hailstone, two Dauntless dive bombers and one Avenger torpedo bomber were among the missing U.S. military craft and personnel, combining data from official records, eyewitness accounts and underwater search technologies such as sonar, thermal cameras and diving robots, according to the project's website. Since 2012, Project Recover has conducted underwater searches for missing U.S. Click here to read an interview with WWII SBD pilot Bill Wambach.The mission to find the planes was led by scientists and volunteers with Project Recover, a partnership between researchers at the University of Delaware Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego and the BentProp Project, a private organization of divers, aviators and historians dedicated to finding WWII service members missing in action in the South Pacific.
Dauntless dive bomber armament full#
Click here to read the full story of “Speedy-D”. Marine Corps continued to use the SBD, and in the 1950s, the French Air Force used SBDs in its war in Indo-China. It earned the nickname “Slow, But Deadly!” After the war, the U.S. Navy arsenal, the SBD sank over 300,000 tons of enemy ships, a greater tonnage of Japanese shipping than any other Allied aircraft during the war! Eighteen were warships, including five aircraft carriers sunk in the battle of the Coral Sea and Midway. Considered the most destructive air weapon in the U.S. Navy dive bomber to serve from the beginning of the World War II until the end. It may have been slow, but it was deadly, as that Japanese pilot found out that day. Though considered obsolete on that “Day of Infamy” in the skies over Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the SBD was the first American combat aircraft to shoot down a Japanese Zero fighter. Marine Corps Squadrons and many SBDs were retrofitted with Westinghouse ASB radar, the first to be used by the U.S. The “Dauntless” sunk four major aircraft carriers of the Japanese Navy, ceasing Japanese expansion in the Pacific. Over 5,000 aircraft were built and production of the carrier-based scout, dive and torpedo bomber ceased in July 1944.ĭespite accusations that the aircraft was under-powered, vulnerable, lacking in range and exhausting to fly for any length of time, the “Dauntless” helped turn the tide of World War II at the Battle of Midway on June 4, 1942. Douglas Aircraft purchased the SBD contract and the SBD-1 was first delivered in late 1940.
It was first flown in July 1935, but considered obsolete by December 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
The Northrop Corporation first developed the SBD before World War II. The “Dauntless” helped turn the tide of World War II at the Battle of Midway on June 4, 1942.
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