DIVE-BOMBER
This big dive-bomber was the one begun by Curtiss in 1939. Few planes in history had been so long in the development stage, but when the SB2C Helldiver did appear it was the biggest and fastest dive-bomber to go into service with the United States Navy. Powered with a 1,700-horsepower, 14-cylinder, Wright Cyclone radial engine, its top speed is in excess of 300 miles per hour. Carrying more than a ton of bombs, it has a range of over 1,200 miles. It is armed with either .50-caliber machine guns or 20-millimeter cannon. It is also equipped to carry rockets under its wings.
OUR FLYING NAVY
From Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, and Midway to Tokyo Bay Our Gallant Navy Men, Carriers, and Planes Led the Way to Victory and Have Added Many Heroic Chapters to the Glorious History of the United States Navy.
When the Japs struck at Pearl Harbor on Sunday morning December 7, 1941, United States naval aviation had just passed its thirtieth birthday. At no time in its history had the U. S. Navy been confronted with a greater task. Many of our great warships lay in the mud at Pearl Harbor. Many of our Navy planes had been destroyed, and Japan controlled the greater part of the western Pacific.
Though the future looked black, our Navy possessed one great asset, invisible to most of us. It was that small group of Navy airmen who had lived and breathed flying since our first carriers were launched. So thorough had been the schooling and the thinking of our pioneer flat-top men that, when war did come, they were ready. These naval aviators who had created and tested every form of air tactics were ready to put them into action. They also were able to pass on their lessons to the large group of young men who were to man the thousands of warplanes being built for the Navy.
As the new planes were rolling off the production lines and the new naval aviators were in training, the old-timers went to work on the Japs in the Pacific. That they did their job well is testified by the fact that the Japs did not get back to Pearl Harbor or attack our west coast. With only a few carriers to cover the vast Pacific area, and a pitifully small number of airplanes, our naval aviators carried the fight all the way down to the Solomons. They helped take and hold Guadalcanal. They stopped the great Japanese fleet at Midway and drove them out of the Aleutians. Navy flat-tops took “Jimmy” Doolittle and his Tokyo raiders almost to Japan’s front door. Wherever our naval aviators met the enemy they knocked him out of the air at the rate of five to one.
In spite of our favorable ratio of victories over the Japs in the air, they still outnumbered us ten to one in the Pacific. During 1942 many new Navy airplanes were delivered. Thousands of young naval aviators were trained at our naval air stations. A great naval air transport service was created to fly men and materials to distant Pacific islands. With only one carrier, the Enterprise, left in the Pacific, a great new carrier fleet was rushed into service.
By the Fall of 1943 a tremendous change was wrought in the Pacific. In September the first three new carriers, the Essex, the Yorktown, and the Independence, were battle-tested in the raid on Marcus Island. Avengers and Hellcats began to appear in great numbers to take the place of Wildcats on the decks of our big carriers. Raid followed raid. The Gilbert Island chain, Tarawa, Kwajalein, Truk, Palau, Saipan, and other islands fell before the blows of our new carrier-based air power.