![]() The pilot and radioman-gunner sat in tandem, the latter with a seat that could rotate to face in any direction. Ironically, Brewster may have been the only aircraft manufacturer with more factory-floor workmanship and corporate management problems than Curtiss.Īpart from having an internal bomb bay not found on the Dauntless, the SB2C was unremarkable in appearance: It had 49-foot, 9-inch wings that folded for carrier stowage, another feature not found on the Dauntless. The new SB2C was a tailwheel-equipped, low-wing monoplane similar in appearance to the Brewster SB2A Buccaneer, against which it competed successfully. ![]() The Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics ordered the SB2C on May 15, 1939, at a time when its fabric-covered, biplane predecessor, the SBC, also called the Helldiver, was still standard equipment in its carrier air groups. But once you’d ‘gotten’ it, the Helldiver would serve you well.” Klenk added, however, “Still, some of the guys never stopped calling it ‘The Beast.’” SB2C Helldiver pilot Bill Klenk shortly after receiving his ensign’s commission and naval aviator’s wings in June 1943. “It was not the most forgiving aircraft,” said Klenk. He believed the SB2C had overcome early technical troubles and achieved its design goal of being faster and more robust than the SBD Dauntless of Battle of Midway fame. Klenk was, by this point in the war, a seasoned pilot of the Helldiver. There were supposed to be six, but one squadron pilot had aborted with mechanical trouble. They belonged to Bombing Eighty, or Squadron VB-80, from the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga (CV 14). Klenk observed the elusiveness of the fast-moving destroyer: “A thin, narrow target that would have been hard to hit even if he wasn’t jinking from one direction to another,” Klenk said in an interview for this article.Īccompanying Klenk were four other deep-blue, cylinder-shaped Helldivers, each with a pilot and radioman-gunner aboard, jockeying into position to attack the destroyer. Down below him, the Japanese destroyer Hatakaze was maneuvering at high speed in the South China Sea. “Bill” Klenk, piloting a Curtiss SB2C-3 Helldiver, bristled at the “clawing, miserable weather,” with inverted pyramids of cloud hanging from a low ceiling and gray murk everywhere.
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