CURTISS AIRCRAFT SB2C HELLDIVER U.S. NAVY DIVE BOMBER INTRODUCTION FILM 23544
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 เม.ย. 2017
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Made during WWII by Curtiss, this film was created to introduce U.S. Navy pilots to their new SB2C Helldiver, a carrier-based dive bomber aircraft produced for the US Navy. Due to the advent of air-to-ground rockets, the SB2C was the last purpose-built dive bomber produced. The aircraft was one of the more maligned planes to be put into production, and developed a bad reputation in early service. While manufacturers produced many similar films during the war, one has to wonder whether this particular film was part of a concerted p.r. effort by Curtiss to save their reputation. The aircraft flew successfully through the last two years of the war, but the Helldiver's reputation coupled with a scandal involving defective aircraft engines produced in 1941-43 seriously crippled Curtiss.
The film begins with pilots watching as the aircraft is put through its paces and press the pilot for “the dope” on the Helldiver once he lands. At mark 01:50 we see the plane on the runway as the narrator explains how it it a multi-faceted machine that can develop torpedoes or depth bombs, and can be used on aircraft carriers or land-based squadrons. Engine specifics are discussed beginning at mark 02:04 and as the film continues we learn of its various design components from wheels to bomb bays. Start-up procedures are covered at mark 04:00 and we receive a detailed look of every switch and lever inside the cockpit, and every contingency involving fuel and oil pressure (mark 06:30). As the first US Navy dive bomber equipped with hydraulic folding wings, the film takes care in explaining their operation starting near mark 06:50. Pilots demonstrate proper take-off procedures starting near mark 08:00 with the camera carefully following gauges and levers are they are described. The pilots review proper procedures for aircraft carrier take offs, which vary slightly from land-based procedures (mark 13:45) before climbing away from the field at mark 15:50 as pilots are cautioned to keep an eye on their fuel mixture controls and cylinder head temperatures during lift off. Stall characteristics of the Helldiver are covered starting at mark 18:00 as a film crew in another aircraft captures maneuvers in the sky and the narrator provides additional detailed information. The film continues with a more details on handing the plane in a dive (mark 20:25), crucial information since the Helldiver is used on bombing missions. Emergency safety procedures are addressed at mark 24:40 before the aircraft finally comes in for a landing at mark 27:30.
The Curtiss SB2C Helldiver was a carrier-based dive bomber aircraft produced for the United States Navy during World War II. It replaced the Douglas SBD Dauntless in US Navy service. The SB2C was much faster than the SBD it replaced.
Crew nicknames for the aircraft included the Big-Tailed Beast (or just the derogatory Beast), Two-Cee and Son-of-a-Bitch 2nd Class (after its designation and partly because of its reputation for having difficult handling characteristics). Neither pilots nor aircraft carrier captains seemed to like it.
Delays marred its production-by the time the A-25 Shrike variant for the USAAF was deployed in late 1943, the Army Air Forces no longer had a need for a thoroughbred dive bomber. Poor handling of the aircraft was another factor that hampered its service introductions; both the British Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force cancelled substantial orders.
The Truman Committee investigated Helldiver production and turned in a scathing report, which eventually led to the beginning of the end for Curtiss. Problems with the Helldiver were eventually ironed out, and in spite of its early problems, the aircraft was flown through the last two years of the Pacific War with a fine combat record.
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Every motorcyclist owes a salute to this man and his company for the twist grip throttle
Twist grip throttle? What are you talking about?
@PDZ1122 The guy who founded the company that built this airplane, popularized the twist grip throttle used in pretty much all modern motorcycles. I'm really not sure why he brought it up on this video though.
The SB2C, which Navy flyers claimed was an acronym for "Son-of-a-Bitch, 2nd-Class". My father flew frequently in these aircraft during WW-II from the carriers Yorktown, Hornet and Belleau Wood, including strikes against Truk, the Philippines and the Ryukyus, the Battle of the Philippine Sea and the sinking of the battleship Yamato. The bottom line was that, given the choice, he greatly preferred to fly in the Grumman Avenger. The Helldiver was both underpowered when fully loaded and had bad low-speed handling characteristics. As a result there were a lot of accidents during take-offs and landings, so that the plane developed a very bad reputation in the fleet. My father said that, while Grumman Avengers and Hellcats would climb away from the flight deck, on take-off, the Helldivers would drop off the end of the deck, and then be seen again struggling into the air, or sometimes they simply crashed into the sea. In fact, the performance of the Helldiver was so bad that the captain of the Yorktown recommended that they be replaced with the Dauntless diver bombers which the Helldivers had originally been intended to replace.
My dad as a freighter pilot F6F Hellcat. He hated The SB2C. And wouldn't fly one when asked to.
SB2C-4 was the one that had more reliable power advantage over the older ones, but by the time it came on the scene, it was bassically just a scouter, and if needed could make a long range strike. Otherwise the F4U-1A/D was on board quite a few carriers, and was accurately dive-lobbing 2000lb bombs! It just lacked the range of the beast, but otherwise was a superior strike aircraft! SBD still has a lot of glory to it, you can safely assume the Corsair replaced the SBD, not the helldiver!
I still like the helldiver though, it is a beast! Too bad the older biplane SBC helldiver was too under powered, that looked like a sleek little racer of a plane, ended up being a waste of tax dollars, because as soon as Lexy, Enterprise and other carriers got their SBCs, they were considered outmoded by the time WWII started! Same with Wasp and Ranger's Vindicators, a cool plane, but as soon as they rolled off the production line they were obsolete!
RIP Wasp, my favorite carrier of WWII!
My dad was a radio/gunner with VB-11 on the Hornet around the same time. I met the pilot who flies the only flyable plane now. He says he has to work hard to fly it.
Interesting. My uncle was an ARM1c, radio operator/rear gunner, in VB-9 flying those same missions from the Lexington and the Yorktown. Though he wasn't a pilot he has said that he didn't like the feel of the SB2C launching and recovering on deck. Otherwise he said it was like Cadillac to a coupe when compared to the SBD. The SBD was a tighter cockpit but the plane was simpler thus more robust when $hit hit the fan.
Dad trained and flew in the Helldiver. CAG 75 on the FDR CV42. He sat in the Rear Seat. Radioman/Gunner and later trained on Radar Operator.
While Ferrying SB2w5e 's to Guantanamo Bay Cuba they flew #7 off the end and into the sea. OFFICAL Report stated Catapult Failure.
Flying a WW2 Dive Bomber / Scout. Another job I would fail at miserably. Thanks, men who did it for us.
Wow, that's a ton of info to remember just to keep the engine operating properly!
This is a learning process. To fly "The Beast" as it was called you would have already flown the Dauntless and a dozen others on your way up.Not including 6 months of ground school classrooms and mockups of every system in the plane.Even then you wouldn't deploy to a carrier till you racked up 250 hrs of flight time.It takes awhile.This thing was like the B26 Marauder, It was a handful to fly.There were alot of accidents getting them ready for the fleet.
@@model-man7802 now I see why it's called "Big Tailed Beast or Son of a Bitch 2nd class"
the 3 dislikes are from the IJN Musashi, Yamato and Shokaku, they hate that aircraft.!
Richard Smeets the Pilots who flew these things hated it even more...
@@a.-.f_k You cannot fight prejudice.
or from Helldiver pilots.
20th like
Richard Smeets, Dislikes also from the Helldiver pilots who flew the trouble-prone early production -1, -2, and -3 variants!
Imagine remembering all that, plus your mission and navigation, then being shot at, and having to land on a rolling deck at twilight.
Two notable actors among the young aviators, the lighter-haired man is redhead Gene Lyons, most familiar tv-wise as the police commissioner on Ironsides, starring Raymond Burr. But it took me awhile to figure out the tall kid with the full head of black hair was young Steven Hill, the original lead in the tv series Mission Impossible who crowned his long career as DA Adam Schiff on the Law & Order series! Straight out of high school Hill served in the Naval Reserve from (1940-44) and re-enlisted '52-'54 before returning to acting.
I really enjoy these, and hold great respect for those who flew them.🙏💯
God, this stuff is great. Binging here. Great job. thanks for posting.
Do you guy realize that some soon to be flyboy back in the day woluld be watching this thinking “i”’ll have to master this in two weeks time”? It is amazing to have these videos available 75 years later!
So many steps for prop aircraft compared to early Jets !
The braking system of that plane was on my 1986 GMC 1 ton dually - an accumulator which work fantastic. That truck had 13X3" drum brakes all round and would stop. Those accumulators have NO power boost drums that run off vacuum. They should be on all vehicles. Never ever had a single problem with that system. Love the HB2C but a gas guzzler like most big radials. Thanks for posting this.
I'm in my sixties and met a few WWII Naval Aviators who flew this aircraft. All agreed they found it to be a nightmare in almost any metric. And that was after many redesigns. One guy said war is hell on earth. The hell diver was hell in the air, on the ground and even when I thought about flying it.
I love these old WW2 vids👍🇳🇿
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I'm sold! I'll fly it! I love these films. Wait, how do those power brakes work again?
I have this in FSX. Great airplane indeed.
Was it my imagination or when they did the takeoff checklist the narration said fuel selector switch on fuselage but the “Gucci “ rotating checklist said it should be “reserve”, I don’t think I am totally senile yet, checked it 2 or 3 times but independent conformation would be appreciated. The rotating checklist gizmo is a really good idea, saves on FRCs (Flight Reference Cards) getting in the way, although on modern aircraft you would need a big viewing window to cover everything and the number of checklists our could have would be limited and when your in a multi crewed aircraft it would be just as easy for the second pilot/bombardier/air gunner to read it, especially in an emergency (assuming they aren’t incapacitated in some way).
Thanks for sharing another excellent video of aviation from our recent history, very interesting and informative. 😀👍🇬🇧🏴
Watched the whole thing and I'm not even a dive bomber.
What's with your name? You know E. Hunter Harrison?
A tiny step closer though.
Huge cockpit.
Thank goodness Australia had the foresight to cancel their order for this aircraft. Dunno what they bought instead. Curious that C° was used for temperatures, but imperial measurements for all other instruments.
I wondered about Celsius, too. In a college psych class we listened to WW II American pilots cursing the controls that were confusing to use correctly in tough situations.
AFAIK, the Vultee Vengeance.
On receiving the first 10 aircraft from an order of 150 made early in the war the RAAF decided that dive bombing was an outmoded tactic. Vultee Vengeance dive bombers, which were already in service with the RAAF, were being replaced by light bombers. As a result, the order for the remaining 140 Shrikes was cancelled. And the ten aircraft returned to the USAAF in 1944.
Cool I'll add video to my channel. Thanks!
13:19 That’s a lot of steps to get to get this thing started , let alone fly.
Question: I don’t know if anyone knows this but since the wings are unfolded with hydraulic pressure was there a risk of the wings collapsing if the hydraulics were damaged? 🤷🏻♂️
Not 100% sure on this, but presumably the wings would mechanically lock into place once unfolded. I think just having only the hydraulics holding the wings in place would probably reduce the stress tolerances of the wings, something which would not be desirable for any plane.
Boy…she was one huge airframe ! Does anyone know why the huge cockpit canopy ?
Ol Big Tailed Beast!
Built for long scouting and bombing missions yet can’t be trimmed to fly hands off? Must have been tiring to fly....
It was. Helldiver pilots wanted their Dauntlesses back.
Was unstable to improve arobatics ability...
Oh, like to have one too
@@mikearakelian6368 No, it was just unstable. It was a terrible design.
Set the mixture control to automatic rich for most things. That's all I remember.
Hi! Why the opening of the canopies at dive and landing?
To speed exit time from the aircraft in case of a forced water landing.
also acted as a dive brake -- catch the air
good call
@@davidsavage5241 my dad did that off the FDR on her Maiden Voyage. He was in the rear seat. See it on UT.
This is sales video; the pilots liked the Douglas SBD, and the Navy had to 'sell' the pilots on the new Curtiss plane. The Navy eventually got buy-in, but it took a while.
There is one of these at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, OR. It is HUGE for a single-engined plane. And what was the guy in the back seat doing?
My Dad was a Rear Seater. Radio man and rear Gunner. Later was the Radar operator.
The guy in the back seat is reading at loud the 2,200 pages manual.
Interesting. They pull the prop through backwards. Every other radial I've seen pulled through forward .
Man…that must be some feeling going totally vertical towards the target/ground !
my best friends dad used to be a rear gunner on one of those planes
That's why I like Combat flight simulator, I just hit E.. And the engine starts up. No warm up needed. No blending. No mixing. Just go! go! go!
Surprise such a big Dive Bomber didn't get a 4-Bladed prop ?
Thanks
Ha ha I was thinking the same thing
The late War version did
why did they use Centigrade for temps when they are american built and flown?
The horizontal instability and inability to trim for no hands bit is every aircraft in flight simulator.
Why would you want to loop this beast unless doing a fancy bomb toss maneuver.
Called the "Beast" and "Son of a Bitch 2nd class" this ship was hated bye it's pilots...
Complicated! They must have run out of gas before they ever got to take off.
Admiral Jocko Clark kicked the Hell Divers off the new USS Hornet. He hated the Helldivers. "Get those things off my ship".
Son of a bitch, 2nd class. (SB2C)
Marine pilots hated this play.They said it was too temperamental
Tem esse avião no WarThunder e é muito bom principalmente pra torpedear
The pilot sounds like a used car salesman. :-)
You got it right, I was thinking kind of the same, does not sounds impartial
I have heard that the Douglas Dauntless was much more popular with the pilots.
Admiral King wanted to restrict the Helldiver to American forces. I think that is where much of the bad press came from. Being promoted as a problem aircraft, the Allies benefitted by not getting it. Britain was having problems with their Barracuda being underpowered early on and were looking for a substitute - but no, you don't want this plane.
How many pages had the checklist ? I bet one point was :
-- Make sure you've done your No.2 before spiral diving to the ground with locked open hood. ✔ 🤣
Sometimes called the Beast!! Curtiss screwed the pooch with this plane!!
Later versions had many improvements. But by then the war was almost over when the plane was actually fairly decent.
The also called it, the Son of a Bitch Second Class, SB2C .
Is it unusual to see a Hell Diver with a 3 blade prop rather than 4 blades?
Darcy Hildebrand Early model’s entered service with a tri blade propeller, SB2C-3,4,and 5 series would get the four blade.
SB2C stands for Son of a Bitch 2nd Class.
AKA Son Of A Bitch 2nd Class SB2C little Navy history trivia for ya!🦅🇺🇸
Refered to in the USN as the "Son of a B**** 2nd Class"
Just do push button start
raf would not have a bar of this thing.
Neither did the RAAF. Do you know what they used instead?
no electronics there, all analog switches, and dials
If those pilots been in colombo, they would have achieved a victory for the british and would have secured the indian ocean to help in the Pacific war
Dumping the SBD for this plane was an evil act.
Politics sell planes, good or bad ones.
“It’s a darn good plane” said no pilot at Midway😂
It did not have the range of the Dauntless which it replaced. Not a great plane. Only one flyable one exists.
It's only saving grace was it had twice the payload of the Dauntless
Wow, people did math so easily back then, unlike todays dept of education generations. Engineers where vastly superior back then as well, inspite of Curtis and Brewster have a tough time with a few of their designs.
Engineers weren't really better back then... why would they be?
Buddy Ollie, Extreme oh yes they were. They had a lot more common sense back then and made good use of it. If you’ve ever have to work on aircraft of this era and current models you’ll know what I mean.
@@panzerlieb aircraft of this era are much more advanced.
That's very simple addition for determining the total gallons of gas that the plane can carry. Now, if he were differentiating under the integral sign...
@@panzerlieb . . . and they could think, instead of feel.
No, I think the three dislikes were from men unfortunate enough to fly this piece of junk.
I heard an interesting story of how dive bombers were first developed. They were plagued with wings being torn off when pulling out of a dive. The engineers tried everything, nothing worked. The janitor suggested drilling a string of holes along the root of the wings. The engineers had tried everything, might as well give this a try. They tried this, and the wings stayed on after pulling iut of a dive. They asked the janitor if he had a hidden aeronautical engineer degree. He told them "I've been a janitor for 20 years, and I've yet to see a roll of s### paper that ever tore along the perforations!"
Andy, I hope you are kidding with that story, because it's very incorrect. The perforations allowed split dive flaps to be more effective, and the flaps were not on the root, but the trailing edges. Nothing to do with the primary wing structure, though the drag they provided allowed those steep dives without overspeeding the airplane. The wings were stressed for pullout at a given range of speeds and G loadings, and early on in the development of dive bombing, I'm sure there were plenty of incidents of either not enough structural strength designed in, or a pilot exceeding the design G limits. Either might cause wings to fail. It is always possible to have a structural failure if you get an airplane outside its operating envelope - just having dive flaps did NOT mean you couldn't mishandle the airplane and wind up losing the wings (or the tail, possibly) by going past design limits on a hard pullout. By the time the SB2C got through its painful development process, it was probably an adequate weapon, but it was never considered to be as good an airplane as the SBD, and the "Beast" moniker followed it until retirement. I have read that the four bladed prop and added power on the later models made it a much better carrier airplane than the early Helldivers.
@@jimmahon3417 :
This is the story as I was told. Part of my job includes reloading s### paper dispensers at the job site. To this day, I've yet to see a roll of s### paper that reliably and consistantly tore on the perforations.
Jesus Loves You
A plane so bad that carrier skippers would order them pushed off the ship.
I think you're confusing the Helldiver with the Avenger, which British captains stupidly ordered pushed off their carrier decks at the end of the war for different, Lend-Lease related reasons.
@@mensch1066 No, when SB2Cs went missing Curtiss techs on board kept their mouths shut about the failer of the wing locks. When the fleet skippers found out about it they gave up on Curtiss and began using their Hellcats as scouts and bombers.
@@mensch1066 The British only pushed their Avengers overboard after the war when they didn't; want to pay for them and the Americans didn't want them back,
John White Avengers could carry bomb loads too I believe. Sad to see the SBD replaced with this.
@@frankeinstein7990 They had to either keep them (and pay for them) or push them over (and not pay for them).
My memory tells me that at Midway, none of the Hellcats were able to score one hit and nearly all sent out were lost, unfortunately.
I think that’s the TBD devastator you’re thinking of. The TBD’s were killed due to fighter cover
The Hellcat is a fighter that came later on
@@aramos3639 Midway was the F4F Wildcat.
Hellcats first action was September ‘43.
Garbage aircraft universally disliked. Killed Curtiss
...THAT'S WHY THE PILOTS REFERRED TO THIS AIRPLANE AS: "SON OF A B#TCH, SECOND CLASS"!!!
What an ugly aircraft that was . . . .
...dislikes from greek communists
This aircraft, together with Curtiss-Wright's many other failures during WWII, contributed to the loss of faith in this company by the US government, leading to Curtiss Wright's sharp decline as an aviation company post war. Curtiss-Wright was investigated by the Truman Committee during WWII for its many boondogles and poor engineering. Kind of a forerunner for what Boeing has become in the modern era - a once great aviation company taken over by greedy bean counters and losing sight of its original focus on great aviation engineering