Why was the SBD such an effective aircraft?

[Greg Boeser]

Five SBDs were lost in the Marshalls Raid on 1 Feb 1942, three were shot down by A5Ms.

 

[michael rauls]

They built 5,936 Dauntless dive bombers, Not all went overseas and/or saw combat.

Some sources say the Dauntless scored 138 air to air victories, some give a bit different numbers.

Aside from bragging rights the number of air to air victories is too small to make any statistically valid conclusions from.

I seriously doubt any SBDs fought their way through a Japanese CAP while loaded with bombs. That is to say maneuvering and using the front guns. Perhaps they stayed in groups and used the rear guns to try to hold off attackers.

Yes it's hard to imagine a SBD toting a 1000lb bomb dogfighting a Zero and comming out on top to often. For whatever reason however they did have an amazing survivability rate. One of the other posters said the lowest loss rate of any USN type.
That would be something no matter what but considering it's mission and the years it was used most heavily that is really something. Maybe a combination of durability and stability( from which the rear gunner can more effectively shoot) on the way in(with bomb)and add the ability to manuver well on the way out(sons bomb).
Would be interesting to know exactly why it was so apparently dificult to shoot down.

 

[GrauGeist]

Saburo Sakai was nearly killed by an SBD's rear gunner and an SBD's rear gunner of VS-6 downed a zero at Pearl Harbor, making that the first aerial kill for the USN against Japan in WWII.

So aside from the SBD intercepting enemy aircraft in a CAP or Scout capacity, the SBD rear-gunner's twin .30 MGs did account for themselves.

 

[michael rauls]

Saburo Sakai was nearly killed by an SBD's rear gunner and an SBD's rear gunner of VS-6 downed a zero at Pearl Harbor, making that the first aerial kill for the USN against Japan in WWII.

So aside from the SBD intercepting enemy aircraft in a CAP or Scout capacity, the SBD rear-gunner's twin .30 MGs did account for themselves.

I'm assuming that SBD ( the one at Pearl) Harbor)was from the same flight as the one that shot up an A6m and then collided with it?
Seems the SBDs acquitted themselves fairly well right from the start.

 

[GrauGeist]

I'm assuming that SBD ( the one at Pearl) Harbor)was from the same flight as the one that shot up an A6m and then collided with it?
Seems the SBDs acquitted themselves fairly well right from the start.

No and I don't recall a collision being documented in the confusion as VS-6 (and some VB-6) approached Pearl that Sunday morning.
Three SBDs were shot down by A6Ms, several were damaged by USN/USAAC anti-aircraft fire, who either ditched or managed to set down in spite of the friendly AA, several SBDs engaged (either directly or by rear-defensive fire) IJN aircraft, either downing them or driving them off.

 

[Stig1207]

Verry cool info on the Pb4y, a plane which i had only seen mention of a couple times in my life. I've read several articles( at least 3 ) claiming the SBD was the only bomber type of the war to hold that honor.
The SBD having a positive exchange rate is still remarkable however and I think that it turns out another bomber type had an even better record doesn't diminish its achievement in any way. Yes I know a good chunk may have to be lopped off for overclaiming but that goes for all planes and I'm still not seeing a reason to discount the claims of SBD pilots more than others. There may be one, I'm just not seeing it if there is.
Also, I'm no expert but a few thoughts that occur to me about verifying claims with Japanese( or German) loss records. Certainly it's going to be more accurate than raw claims but it seems intuitive to me that it would swing to far, if just a bit( or possibly more than a bit) in the other direction. For example, what about Japanese aircraft that made it back but were so badly damaged they had to be written off later. Some of these might not be listed as a loss initially but upon digging into them further might be. No way to know what percentage of damaged aircraft this represents but surly it is a percentage albiet probably a small one. Then also the completeness of Japanese records available now. Yes I know this is something that it used by those wishing to inflate US kill ratios but just because some abuse this issue doesn't mean that there isn't some truth to it in some cases. Thirdly, even in cases where it would appear that we are compairing to all Japanese loss records there may have been planes in a particular area that we would never know about in the first place if the records do not exist today. If one of those planes were shot down we would go to the known Japanese units in the area, look at there loss records, and come to the conclusion that the loss did not indeed happen.
These are just a few issues that would seem to make the verification of claims with Axis loss records, although certainly more accurate than raw claims, swing at least a bit to far in the other direction.
These are just a few that occur to me off the top of my head. I'm sure there are probably a few other such factors as well. Each of these issues may be marginal when looked at individually but together, along with probably a few others I'm not thinking of, certainly make at least somewhat of an underestimation of claims when verifying with Axis records.

You sum up the difficulty equating claims with losses quite well and again, of cause it pertains to all planes, not just SBD's.

Even if the SBD only actually shot down a half,, a third or even a quarter of those enemy aircraft that they claimed, that is still not bad at all for a dive bomber; but the SBD's most significant achievement is sinking those carriers at Midway.

 

[buffnut453]

People are posting a lot of anecdotes about individual encounters but, interesting as they are, they don't paint an overall picture of the SBD's combat record. How many missions of which types did it fly? In those missions, how many encounters with enemy aircraft (and what types of enemy aircraft)?

Put simply, a low loss rate could just be down to the fact that a particular aircraft type, either through smart tactical planning or sheer dumb luck, ended up not being intercepted very often (relative to other types).

I just don't know enough about the SBD in particular or, frankly, the wider Pacific Theatre campaign, to know whether the SBD and a rough or easy time of it going into combat.

 

[michael rauls]

You sum up the difficulty equating claims with losses quite well and again, of cause it pertains to all planes, not just SBD's.

Even if the SBD only actually shot down a half,, a third or even a quarter of those enemy aircraft that they claimed, that is still not bad at all for a dive bomber; but the SBD's most significant achievement is sinking those carriers at Midway.

I think your absolutely right about both. Seems it would be verry dificult...... no imposible to know exactly what percentage of initial claims were acurate.
Imho, to many people think if it doesn't show up on axis loss records it didn't happen. For all the reasons I enumerated( and I'm sure probably several more that those more knowledgeable than I could think of) while they certainly give us alot of aditional information are not going to be perfectly acurate either.
My guess would be somewhere between 1/2 to 2/3 of the way from claims to axis loss records in most cases would be the real number but I don't think there's anyway to ever know for sure.
Also agree that however many Japanese or German( not sure if thay claimed any German aircraft) aircraft SBDs shot down it's main job and accomplishment were the sinking of ships. It's just that being so survivable and doing realatively well in air combat all things considered almost certainly helped it be so effective at it's primary job.

 

[michael rauls]

No and I don't recall a collision being documented in the confusion as VS-6 (and some VB-6) approached Pearl that Sunday morning.
Three SBDs were shot down by A6Ms, several were damaged by USN/USAAC anti-aircraft fire, who either ditched or managed to set down in spite of the friendly AA, several SBDs engaged (either directly or by rear-defensive fire) IJN aircraft, either downing them or driving them off.

Hmmm......I'll have to go back and re read the opening chapter of "Dauntless" and make sure I'm not miss remembering that (always a possibility, the old memory bank isn't what it used to be)

 

[pinsog]

Read The First Team Volume 2 and you will get a good idea of what the SBD was capable of. If it wasn't a Zero, it was a target. SBD's shot down several 4 engine flying boats, so many it was making the Wildcat pilots mad. Also, read about the attack on Hornet and Enterprise where Hornet was lost. SBD's returning from a strike on the Japanese carriers jumped right into the defensive fight over the 2 carriers. I need to brush up on the battle, but as I recall most of their attacks were revenge attacks, jumping torpedo and dive bombers that had already dropped their weapons but they definitely contributed to the slaughter of the attacking Japanese force. The Japanese may have crippled Hornet, leading to her loss, and damaged Enterprise, but there weren't many Japanese aircrew left to brag about it.

 

[Shortround6]

Something to consider when judging the success of the Dauntless against Vals, Kates and even the Mavis is that this was the standard IJN defensive machine gun for the early part of the war.

for all practical purposes a WW I Lewis gun. Using identical ammo the British .303. It fired at about 600rpm (10rps) so the 97 round drum is good for just under 10 seconds.

I am not saying it was harmless, the British managed to shoot down a few 109s using the old Lewis mounted in Ansons and the like.

But the Dauntless used a belt feed AMN2 machine gun with double the rate of fire and from 1942 on mounted two of them ( the Marine planes at Midway had the single mounts?) so a Dauntless could put four times the bullets per second into the air (might have taken longer to reload?)

The Mavis was also one of the proverable flying gas tanks. with a possible max fuel capacity of 2950 Imp gallons. Even if the tanks are not full (or not all are in use) are they free of fumes?

 

[fastmongrel]

Having a target rich environment (ships) must have helped a lot I reckon that changing the planes wouldnt change the results massively. It was the pilots not the plane they were strapped to.

 

[Schweik]

One thing to keep in mind about the SBD kill claims at Coral Sea is that, if as someone reported, the estimate in "First Front" was that Japanese records indicate the loss of 1 x D3A Val and 5 x 5N Kates to the SBDs, some or all of these could definitely have been thought of as Zeroes to the American pilots. Enemy aircraft identification was never that good in combat, where the enemy aircraft was often little more than a distant and fast moving dot, and was not usually seen close up for more than a few seconds and under extreme stress.

The Japanese aircraft looked superficially similar, with similar paint schemes etc., so I suspect part of the "disconnect" in fighter claims may have been due to mis-identification.

From previous close analysis of such records involving other aircraft types, heavily damaged (written off) and missing aircraft are sometimes not counted as victories when they probably should have been. It does also happen that a batch of records turns up that had not originally been known about, for example Christopher Shores not having the Italian records when he wrote 'Fighters over Tunisia' he made it look like the Allied pilots were overclaiming much more than it now turns out they actually were. It's always risky to assume that we know everything about a given battle or incident.

Aside from Coral Sea and Midway SBD's saw quite a bit of action around Guadalcanal. I found this book to be a good read which seemed to portray a pretty balanced view of the experiences of the pilots and crew. It covers a lot of issues I didn't know about like the fogging up of bomb-sights and that the earlier torpedoes actually worked, in contrast to the second batch that became available.

Amazon product ASIN B00SI025T8

By the way the H6K Mavis had a 20mm cannon in a tail turret position. The larger H8K "Emily" which replaced it had 5 x 20mm cannon.

A lot of the float-planes shot down by the SBD's around Guadalcanal were actually the smaller FM1 and E13 etc. types though, launched from cruisers and battleships. I think they did also get a couple of the bigger multi-engine ones.


I would not call the PB4Y aircraft a bomber, it was really a maritime patrol plane. It wasn't having to force it's way through CAP to attack ships, that is a different type of mission. Very similar B-24s were used to attack ships quite a bit in the Pacific but they rarely seemed to ever hit anything. Generally speaking though, earlier war Japanese fighters had a hard time dealing with such heavily armed and armored bombers.

The PB4Y's had some interesting encounters with other large multi-engined seaplanes.

This is an H6K shot down by a PB4Y

There was a detailed account somewhere of a long air battle on October 1943 between a PB4Y1 and a BV 222, in which the latter shot down the former. I tried to find it just now but my google-fu failed me. I do remember the PB4Y was lacking protective armor or self-sealing tanks. Not sure if they all had that removed though it would make sense for the mission profile.

S

 

[Schweik]

I meant to add, that the fact that PB4Y and B-24s didn't seem to be able to do much damage to ships meant that their priority as a target for Japanese fighters was certainly much lower than a torpedo bomber or a skip-bomber like an A-20 or B-25, let alone a dive bomber with a proven track record of sinking carriers.

So the IJA and IJN fighters may have had good reason to 'find other pressing business', like perhaps to go attack a more Operationally significant target.

 

[MIflyer]

Here are a couple of really neat wartime shots of SBD's. Note the one with the dented cowling. You just know that kind of fender bender had to happen all the time.

 

[Schweik]

That first one is one I'd never seen before, it's fantastic. Evokes the exotic beauty and electric aquamarine waters of the Tropical seas they were fighting over, something we tend to forget about with all the black and white photos. Reminds me of the artwork of Romain Huigault.

The beauty of that area - at least from certain vantage points- makes the whole Pacific war that much more surreal.

 

[Shortround6]

E13 Jake

Most had no forward firing guns, most (all?) of the ones that did came later and mounted a pair of 20mm guns at a downward angle in the belly for boat strafing.

FM1 Pete

It did have a pair of 7.7mm guns in the cowl and was pretty zippy for a biplane (230mph?) Some accounts say it was used as a fighter on occasion.

Schweik is correct in that the Mavis did have a 20mm gun in the tail. It was drum fed and hand aimed. I don't know what the traverse and elevation limits were.

There were four other gun positions with the type 92 7.7mm gun, on most planes the bow and dorsal positions were open, that is to say they were closed by a removable or sliding hatch and the gun could stowed inside the plane. When needed the gunner opened the hatch and mounted the gun into position and then operated it with head shoulders (or more ) exposed to the windstream. The waist guns were in blisters.

 

[Schweik]

If you are implying that they confused a F1M or E13 for a Zero, I was not suggesting that. I was suggesting that they may have easily confused a B5N or a D3A for A6M.

E13 and F1M were fairly easy pickings. H6K maybe not as much, certainly the 20mm can pack a punch in a chase, although the H6K wasn't fast and didn't climb that well so it may have been relatively easy to avoid. Still not a sitting duck.

 

[pinsog]

Is that the biplane float fighter that the Wildcats had so much trouble with? They couldn't hardly get a shot at them because they were so maneuverable, like swatting flies with a hammer. One shot down a Wildcat with its front guns.

The FM1 Pete wasn't easy pickings, the Wildcats had trouble with them due to maneuverability

 

[Schweik]

I don't know about a biplane, the F1M was a recon plane, though it did have two light machine guns in the nose and may have fought some in the Aleutians. Top speed is listed as 230 mph / 370 kph and that is probably a bit generous.

Maybe you are thinking of the A6M2-N, Nakajima float plane version of the Zero?

If there was an actual biplane floatplane fighter in the war I'd like to know about it.