Word: dauntlesses
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...morning we set out once more in the heat on the long road back. Chungking radio was telling of victories on Saipan, at Minsk, in Italy, in France. All we had to tell about was an obscure campaign in an unknown valley and the suffering of a sick, ragged, dauntless army...
Japan's lush and formidable South Seas base was suddenly fixed in hundreds of U.S. airmen's bombsights. Carrier planes -Avengers and Dauntless dive-bombers -hurtled across the green islands which lie within Truk's barrier coral reef, screamed down onto the shipping moored inside the 40-mile-wide lagoon. Snub-nosed Hellcats swirled into fights with Jap defenders, shot them from the air, caught plenty more ignominiously on the ground. After the first few hours there was no longer any doubt: the enemy had been caught napping...
...Dauntless (Douglas SBD). This is the Navy's one dive-bomber in wide service up to now. Outdated by later design as of Pearl Harbor, it was still all the Navy had, was still better than anything the enemy could show. Result: a spectacular record of destruction of enemy craft at Midway, the Coral Sea and in all the actions in the South Pacific...
HeSldiver (Curtiss SB2C). A later, and on paper a better plane than the Dauntless, the Helldiver has been a bitter production disappointment. Due to go into production about the time of Pearl Harbor it had so many "bugs" that it has only recently been put in service, has not yet seen action...
American airmen heard this pronouncement with the respect due the most thoroughly experienced air force in the world. But they did not agree. Dive-bombing, conceived and brought to its highest perfection by the U.S. Navy, is still thoroughly alive in the U.S. forces. In the Pacific, the Douglas Dauntless (SBD) is still the most effective aerial weapon in the fleet, has done more damage than torpedo planes. Result of its showing: the Army Air Forces is now gladly taking instruction from Navy airmen on dive-bombing technique, and has taken up the SBD, which the Air Forces call...