Posted on 12/11/2020 11:04:43 AM PST by LibWhacker
He loved that plane and spoke highly of it.
Years later after I left home, my folks told me he had carried the national colors in a Memorial Day Parade for the VFW, sat down after finishing the parade route, and died of a heart attack.
Carried the colors ‘til he died... Heroes to the end.
My nine year-old is obsessed with Midway and WWII carrier warfare. He loves Battle 360 on the History Channel and the Midway movie. He’s getting a Lego USS Enterprise for Christmas.
He thinks Star Wars is a boring joke. Dad is pleased.
Our Bombing and Scouting squadrons equipped with the Dauntless Dive Bombers flown by some very brave men carried the day at Midway. Not to be overlooked, though, were the attacks by our obsolete and slow TBD Devastator torpedo bomber squadrons. Only four TBD’s survived the day, and none scored a hit on a Japanese ship, but they drew the Japanese fighter cover down to the deck, allowing the SBD’s to dive on the Japanese carriers without worrying about Zeros on their tail. A little known fact is that not a single TBD Devastator was lost in action before Midway, and they had a pretty good hit rate on Japanese ships, even with the defective torpedos they carried.
Outstanding post.
My nine year-old is obsessed with Midway and WWII carrier warfare. He loves Battle 360 on the History Channel and the Midway movie. He’s getting a Lego USS Enterprise for Christmas.
He thinks Star Wars is a boring joke. Dad is pleased.
_________________________________
You’ve got a smart young man there!
If you want to see the real thing NAS Pensacola has one of the Midway Douglas SDB’s in their air museum. It’s quite rare to have a military aircraft from a historic air battle in a museum.
My nine year-old is obsessed with Midway and WWII carrier warfare.
NAS Pensacola has the naval aviation museum. Incredible displays there. The USS Alabama battlewagon is floating nearby, too.
They would not have been nearly as successful had the torpedo planes not attacked first and taken the Japanese fighters down to the surface with them.
The Japanese had so many planes coming at them from different directions they didnt know which way to look.
They walked right into a hornets nest. And luck was not on their side that day.
5 minutes that changed the war in the Pacific.
Remarkable. Talking to friends over in the UK they marveled at what the USA did in that short of time. In 4 months and we bombed Japan. A month more and we stood them off at Coral Sea. Then, just 7 months after Pearl Harbor, we got them at Midway. They all said that in comparison, in a few months they had to get to hell out of mainland Europe and escaped with their lives.
Our nation is at Midway again, and the SCOTUS would be our 47 Dauntless dive bombers.
5 minutes that changed the world. Very similar today. We were losing until we weren’t. They just kept fighting.....
“lost 92 officers and 215 enlisted men”
Just a handful of the many we owe an apology to in the next life if we give up the republic now
The ideal dive angle was 70 degrees; a dive might take 30 or 40 seconds. During that time, the rear seat radioman/gunner – on his back, facing the sky – would be nearly weightless.
A former church member, who has passed on, was a radioman/gunner on 3 of these dive bombers during this battle.
Two were shot up so bad, after landing back on our carriers, they could not fly again. He ended with 2 different pilots, a different carrier, as one was damaged too bad to land our planes on.
He said that it was amazing how everyone could make all of those changes under those conditions.
The speedy 3 carried the day
Where did the Japanese Navy go after Pearl Harbor?
Another outstanding post.
Lol.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.