“What a great design with a gunner pod in the rear. Genius!”
Saburo Sakai nearly got killed by that rear turret near Guadalcanal. He eased up behind some Grummans he though were Wildcats and was not familiar with the new TBM.
That rear turret nailed him before he saw it, he got a .30 caliber bullet to the head, lost an eye, windscreen shattered.
By incredible skill he made an epic 500+ mile flight back to Rabaul and lived to fly again.
Very interesting plane that TBM. We all think of it as a lumbering torpedo plane.The 1944 movie “Wing and a prayer” has some good flying shots of it maneuvering, diving, etc. In that film it was very interesting to see how fast and graceful it could be compared to the common way we see it.
After seeing a program about “Midway”, something really caught my attention.
Those battles were more than furious. Of all the airmen who flew during the battle, most of them, Japanese, Americans and I think there were some Australians, most of them lost their lives.
The Japanese never recovered.
The Grumman Avenger was replacing the outdated Douglas Devastator at Midway(Dawn Like Thunder) is a good book about it among other things about the battle. Torpedo 8 from Yorktown was nearly all destroyed. Some of those pilots were sent to Guadalcanal and flew as part of the Cactus Air Force from there. According to what I’ve read the only thing the Devastator devastated was the people flying them. The Avenger was faster more maneuverable and a much better plane. GHWB lost his two flight crew off Chi Chi Jima before he was picked up. They were trying to destroy a Japanese military installation relaying info on our bombers going to the Japanese islands. (Fly Boys). GHWB was game pilot back then.
"TBM" - the "M" denotes the manufacturer - General Motors; whereas the "TBF" was made by Grumman.
Wildcat - F4F, Hellcat - F6F ... were made by Grumman.
Another example: PBY-5 ("Patrol Bomber" made by Consolidated, 5th version. The last ones made were PBY-6's).