SBD's...

[Skelthos]

15 hours ago, wheelsup_cavu said:

Not trying to discount anything you may have read but in 2014 Planes of Fame had a Marine tail gunner that flew in SBD's during the World War II as a guest speaker at their monthly event and he stated he always flew facing the tail and manning the guns. Personally his assertion made sense to me on the grounds that you would not want to have to spend time turning around in your seat before you could engage a plane attacking you from behind.

It is entirely possible that it was unit-specific protocol or personal preference, something that could have easily happened both ways.

[Sea Serpent]

Found the answer:  For combat, the gunner faced the tail.  In training, forward.

Lots of good info here from Clay Fisher a guy that also pops up a lot in discussions of Hornet’s air group at Midway, which I also just made a thread about.  Here he describes attacking in an SBD:  http://midway42.org/RoundTable/ClayFisher_SBD.aspx

[Boom]

Good to see such interest in the SBD. It was the decisive combat aircraft of 1942. As was the F6F in 1943/4, an the B-29 in 1945.

A man who knows the SBD well is author, pilot and historian Barrett Tillman. His father and he were involved in restoring an A-24, the army version of the SBD. His first book was on the SBD.

Barrett also wrote a fictional book on the SBD, titled Dauntless. It's set in the period just after Coral Sea to the end of October '42, covering Midway and Guadalcanal. It is an excellent read, providing realistic details of flying the Dauntless, and life on board a CV. The lead character is a neophyte pilot, grappling with all the intricacies  of naval life. The support characters ring true, many based on the actual men involved in that period, of whom Barrett knew most.

Highly recommended.

[javelina]

[Trooper117]

What is interesting in that pic, is the several different applications of the wing markings...

[AngelicCypher]

7 minutes ago, Trooper117 said:

What is interesting in that pic, is the several different applications of the wing markings...

When I was researching a model build of the Hornet at Midway, I found that was an issue for not only the size of the roundels, but some planes did not even have uneven locations and there were a few that had not painted the red dot out yet either.  Even the formatting of the squadron identifiers on the aft fuselage were not uniform.  Maddening when I was trying to depict the launch the morning of Midway.

[Calos_01]

42 minutes ago, Trooper117 said:

What is interesting in that pic, is the several different applications of the wing markings...

Good point. Even on the same plane. Looks like they were ordered to change size when they moved from one wing to the other. 😃

[Sea Serpent]

1 hour ago, AngelicCypher said:

When I was researching a model build of the Hornet at Midway, I found that was an issue for not only the size of the roundels, but some planes did not even have uneven locations and there were a few that had not painted the red dot out yet either.  Even the formatting of the squadron identifiers on the aft fuselage were not uniform.  Maddening when I was trying to depict the launch the morning of Midway.

Didn’t know that some of the planes still might have had red dots in the middle at Midway.  If you completed your Hornet model, and it’s photo-worthy, would love to see pics of how you depicted the deck on that morning.

[IckyAtlas]

On 7/7/2024 at 7:53 PM, javelina said:

Kiss me baby 🙂 

[IckyAtlas]

On 7/20/2024 at 2:43 AM, javelina said:

About 65 million dollars worth of airplanes in todays collector money.

But back in 1944 then maybe only 580'000 US$.

 

[IckyAtlas]

On 3/31/2024 at 5:42 PM, javelina said:

This picture says it all. Now replicate this same picture, across the US for P47, P51, B17, Corsair, B29, P40, P39, B24, B25 and many other models and then do the same for shipyards that produced at high rate ships like destroyers, carriers ,cargo liberty ships, cruisers, battleships and then ground vehicle factories that spitted tanks, and ground vehicles of all kind. 

That's not all, because without motivated and trained personnel you do nothing, and there were many. The military had a very well organized training and rotation system, and above all a culture that values human life and limit casualties as much as possible, and whatever happens never abandon or let down its soldiers, pilots, seamen. This does not mean that it was always perfect but compared to the Soviet Union or Japan that had a culture totally opposite where the human life was valued at near zero. The US had the fantastic luck that with the technologies of the time it was too far from the various theaters of war to have been hit directly and so it became an invincible beast. 

[ZachariasX]

8 hours ago, IckyAtlas said:

but compared to the Soviet Union

…that was actually built by American industrialists, using American blueprints. Paid by Stalin with money given by selling the food of the population, starving millions on purpose.

Meet Saul Bron, born 1887 in Odessa

PhD from the University of Zurich, became the key figure in foreign trade of the USSR. The USA didn‘t recoginze the USSR back then, hence it couldn‘t negotiate directly. They needed private connections and a proxy:

The proxy was Amtorg Trading Corporation, formally an „American private entity“ but defacto a part of the Politbureau, with Saul Bron appointed as CEO by Joseph Stalin. A monopoly company controlling all Soviet-American trade.

Saul Bron found what he needed in the American industrial Architect Albert Kahn, see here them signing the contract.

The result was that American planning transformed an totally backward nation into an industrial one.

See here for instance the Stalingrad tractor plant.

All of the industry was built from American plans until the late thirties, when Stalin got comfortable enough kicking out all the foreigners and snuffing Saul Bron along with everyone else that hadn’t fled the country by 1938. Until that time, the Kahn Associates had over 100 American companies sourcing for and assisting construction.

Of course, having foreigners run the buildup of your nation can be seen as problematic, Stalin created the enormous architecure bureau to conceal the true state of affairs.

Many American companies participated, including McKee and Ford.

It is an interesting fact that while EVERY Soviet (and Russian, to this day) industry is dual use, the Americans were perfectly aware of that and they knew that only few „tractor plants“ would ever produce tractors. What did they do about it? They intentionally left bottleneck industries out of the deal. This includes refineries for high octane fuel up to not supplying anything needed to produce modern warships. The Soviets would have wanted a Navy, but the fact that they didn‘t really have one when WW2 broke out was due to them not being sold what was really required for it. This made up for a super expensive and super dysfunctional fleet that was ordered to stay in port during the war.

There is no bigger lie than the one of a Soviet „self-sufficient“ industry. It has never been and still isn‘t to this day. In simple terms, after WW2, it was Germany who followed up what the US had been doing until then.

 

As people generally have no understanding how production works, especially polititians that mainly come from the service industry, there is no understanding about what you really need in order to build an IL-2 or a Kh-101. And it‘s not chips that matter. Wheter it‘s ARM or Lays, they are easy to get anywhere. But tooling for a missile… Look at Siemens, Heidenhain etc. The industries that produce production are not that large.

The writing above is a considerably shortened version of an article by Kamil Galeevs, from where I could source the images.

Edited July 24 by ZachariasX

[javelina]

Pilot, man your plane...

[Calos_01]

The all-light-grey colour scheme is quite too early for our purposes, but I've always liked it. And these are some interesting photos - the same aircraft on the same flight, but different cameras and films

[Dauntless]

https://commemorativeairforce.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=35b9240eea62c41cd5b5d9184&id=d5b06e89ee&e=1658c7e2a7

 

Digital Dispatch issue 3 

Edited August 7 by Dauntless

[Trooper117]

That's a nice pic!... great head on view!

[javelina]

[Dauntless]