Talk:SBD/@comment-174.24.164.213-20161120084430

I always liked this little plane. And apparently so did the pilots, when the Navy started to force the SBD's retirement and replace it with the SB2C Helldiver, there was alot of grumbling from the pilots.

They said, sure the Helldiver could fly faster, further, and carry a bigger bomb load, but they preferred the SBD over the Helldiver cause it was, in their opinion, 'The better airplane'. Their reasoning was, the SBD was smaller, more manuverable, it's smaller profile made it easier to evade the furious defensive counter-fire and could hold it's own against enemy fighters to a degree.

This was something the Helldiver couldn't do as good as the SBD, and it's larger profile offered more opportunities for enemy fire to score hits. Then there's stories of SB2C's getting damaged by their own bombs, the released bombs would occasionally bounce back from the airflow shock and smack into the plane, tearing off pieces.

The SBD didn't suffer from those as much, for it had a mechanical catapult which threw the bomb clear of the propeller arc and had the secondary benefit of throwing the bomb away from the plane instead of letting it glide away.

Plus the Helldiver was buggy as heck, wasn't till the SB2C-4 version the Helldiver was least as reliable as the SBD, but by then the damage had been done.

Linked to a picture below, granted they're models but they're appropriately scaled, and gives you an idea of how big the Helldiver was compared to the SBD.

https://planedave.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/img_9544.jpg?w=640&h=480