SBD Dauntless aerial victories

The Sgt. Maj. of the second squadron I served in started his Marine Corps career as a rear-gunner in SBDs at Midway. He used to say that though the SBD was not a fast aircraft, it was "quick" in it's response to pilot input for maneuvering, and in a good pilot's hands (when not in a bombing mode) could defend itself rather well.

 

"In April 1990, Donahue had a unique encounter with a former enemy when he flew a Douglas SBD Dauntless with 64-victory Zero ace Saburo Sakai in the observer’s pit. On August 7, 1942, Sakai had been severely wounded over Guadalcanal after mistaking a flight of SBD-3s for F4F-4s and flying right into the sights of their waiting gunners. The Japanese ace reportedly enjoyed the opportunity to relive that near-fatal incident from his opponents’ position."

Archie Donahue: WWII Ace Pilot » HistoryNet

 

WWII vet finds peace in Unionville

Rural Nevada town is far removed from the chaos of fighter planes

By Zack Thomas • Special to the Reno Gazette-Journal • November 9, 2008

On Aug. 8, 1942, high over Guadalcanal, Japanese pilot Saburo Sakai swooped in behind an American SBD Dauntless dive-bomber and opened up with his Zero fighter's 20-millimeter cannons and 7.7-millimeter machine guns.It was an inexplicable and near-fatal error. One of Japan's deadliest and most experienced fighter aces, Sakai already had shot down some 60 Allied aircraft, the first of them the day after Pearl Harbor. So he should never have mistaken the two-seat Dauntless for an F4F Wildcat, a single-seat fighter. But he did.
In the rear seat of the Dauntless, 21-year-old Harold L. "Lew" Jones, now of Unionville, Nev., returned fire with his twin .30-caliber machine guns, shattering the Zero's canopy and hitting Sakai in the head, permanently blinding his right eye and temporarily paralyzing the left side of his body.
Sakai lost consciousness as his Zero screamed toward the sea below, but the rush of air woke him before he crashed. Tears washed enough of the blood from his remaining eye that he could find the horizon and right his plane. Incredibly, over the next five hours, he flew nearly 650 miles back to his base in New Guinea, navigating with a blood-soaked chart while drifting in and out of consciousness.

'Lose speed and altitude and go for it'

Jones and his pilot, who was relatively new to combat, were in bad shape too. Their Dauntless was riddled with 232 bullet holes, and its engine had been hit. The two flyers, though, were unscathed except for a shrapnel wound to Jones's ear that bled profusely but did little other damage.
"The pilot was green enough so he couldn't tell whether his airframe could take it," said Jones's son, David, during a September conversation in the dining room of the family's bed and breakfast in the remote, almost-ghost town of Unionville in Pershing County.
Dusty, late-summer sunlight slanted through the windows of the 146-year-old house that Jones bought and restored in the early 1970s. A sheepdog dozed in a chair against the wall, and the plank floors creaked as Jones's wife, Mitzi, cleared away the breakfast dishes. It seemed a very long way from Guadalcanal, almost too far for a single life to span.
Jones sat quietly at the long table, nodding occasionally as his son spoke.
"The engine was acting up, smoking a lot, and he didn't think he could make it. But dad knew that powerplant, and he knew the airframe pretty well by then. He told the pilot all he had to do was lose speed and altitude and go for it. The pilot wanted to ditch in the ocean, but dad knew that was a death sentence in that area."
Hanging on the dining room wall was a grainy black-and-white photo believed to show Jones and his pilot climbing from their ruined plane after landing safely on U.S.S. Enterprise. Minutes after the photo was taken, the plane was pushed off the deck into the sea.

'That stupid war'

Today, the damage caused by an old brain tumor, discovered and removed in the late 1950s, has finally caught up with Jones. At 87, he's energetic and sociable, with craggy brows and a ruddy, pleasant face, but he doesn't communicate too well anymore. David and Mitzi understand him and help translate.
He's still haunted, though, by that encounter 66 years ago, "way down south there," as he says, in the deadly South Pacific skies. He remembers seeing Sakai's canopy shatter and his head snap back against the seat and the flames licking around the cockpit of the Zero as it rolled over and disappeared. For him, Guadalcanal might have been yesterday.
Sakai, who died in 2000, was haunted by the battle, too. After five months spent recovering from his injuries and another year of training young pilots, he did return to combat briefly, but after the war he became a Buddhist acolyte and an outspoken pacifist, openly critical of Emperor Hirohito's imperialistic Japan and of what he called "that stupid war."
Sakai visited the U.S. numerous times and tried for years to track down the gunner who had shot him. Finally, Henry Sakaida, a Japanese-American amateur historian and author fascinated by the war in the Pacific, brought Sakai and Jones together in 1983. Sakai gave Jones a piece of the blood-stained aviator's scarf he had worn on the fateful day.
"He was thankful to dad for keeping him out of the kamikaze ranks," David said. "He said that was the only reason he survived the war." Sakai apparently did lead one kamikaze mission in 1944 but failed to find the U.S. ships he was sent to attack and led his formation back to base against orders.

'In the middle of stuff'


"When you think about it," said David, nodding at the picture on the wall to indicate the encounter with Sakai and its aftermath, "this was maybe a couple hours, max, of dad's time in the South Pacific. He said there were just so many ways to die out there it was incredible."
The fact that he managed not to die during his two years in the Pacific is equally incredible. "He volunteered for anything," David said. "If there was a flying mission, any kind of operation, and he didn't get picked right away, he'd volunteer for it. He went out on everything. He didn't like to stay on board the ship; he liked to be in the middle of stuff."
And Jones was indeed in the middle of a lot of stuff. On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, unaware yet of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was part of a small formation launched from Enterprise, which was sailing some 215 miles west of Oahu. The formation was to search a sector of ocean for Japanese ships and then refuel at Pearl before returning. But shortly after Jones saw the smoke rising ahead, the formation was attacked by Zeroes. Jones's wingman and another friend were both shot down.
At the pivotal Battle of Midway in June 1942, Jones made three dive-bombing runs, most notably on the carrier Kaga, where his plane was also hit. "Dad turned his seat backward as they pulled out," David said, "and he said that the Kaga was exploding and burning from stem to stern. He said that if you looked down, all the planes were swirling around below with their red dive flaps and beneath them the whole ship was covered with Japanese planes ready to take off.
"And he knew -- everybody knew -- who those pilots were. They were the cream of the Japanese pilots. And they all died there at their controls with all their bombs and torpedoes baking off underneath them and huge pieces of deck cartwheeling through the air." Kaga sank minutes later, one of four Japanese carriers lost at Midway, which ultimately turned the tide of the war in the Pacific.

'That was how he flew'


Soon after Guadalcanal, Jones was sent back to the U.S. for flight training. Although he'd never flown solo -- only taken the controls while his pilots slept -- he was extremely knowledgeable about aircraft and carrier tactics. He did exceptionally well in flight school and, with his invaluable combat experience, was almost immediately made a flight instructor himself.
"Dad was the safest guy around," David said. "He checked everything, re-checked it, then checked it again. That was how he flew. There was nothing left to chance. That's why people liked to fly with him in later years. His officer buddies, if they had to go someplace, would ask him to fly them. Admirals wanted him to fly them."
When the Korean War broke out, Jones went back to sea as an officer, flying risky, low-altitude submarine detection missions from U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard and U.S.S. Lexington to prevent Soviet subs from surfacing to gather and transmit intelligence about the U.S. fleet.
After his brain tumor was diagnosed in the Philippines, Jones was flown back to the U.S. for surgery at Oak Knoll Veteran's Hospital in Oakland.
He retired from the Navy in 1958 and soon moved his family to Europe, where he ran the Rome office of Investor's Overseas Service. After four years in Europe, the family moved to Monterey, Calif., and Jones developed a passion for restoring and remodeling old houses.

WWII vet finds peace in Unionville | www.rgj.com | Reno Gazette-Journal

 

WWII vet finds peace in Unionville

Rural Nevada town is far removed from the chaos of fighter planes

By Zack Thomas • Special to the Reno Gazette-Journal • November 9, 2008

On Aug. 8, 1942, high over Guadalcanal, Japanese pilot Saburo Sakai swooped in behind an American SBD Dauntless dive-bomber and opened up with his Zero fighter's 20-millimeter cannons and 7.7-millimeter machine guns.It was an inexplicable and near-fatal error. One of Japan's deadliest and most experienced fighter aces, Sakai already had shot down some 60 Allied aircraft, the first of them the day after Pearl Harbor. So he should never have mistaken the two-seat Dauntless for an F4F Wildcat, a single-seat fighter. But he did.
In the rear seat of the Dauntless, 21-year-old Harold L. "Lew" Jones, now of Unionville, Nev., returned fire with his twin .30-caliber machine guns, shattering the Zero's canopy and hitting Sakai in the head, permanently blinding his right eye and temporarily paralyzing the left side of his body.
Sakai lost consciousness as his Zero screamed toward the sea below, but the rush of air woke him before he crashed. Tears washed enough of the blood from his remaining eye that he could find the horizon and right his plane. Incredibly, over the next five hours, he flew nearly 650 miles back to his base in New Guinea, navigating with a blood-soaked chart while drifting in and out of consciousness.

'Lose speed and altitude and go for it'

Jones and his pilot, who was relatively new to combat, were in bad shape too. Their Dauntless was riddled with 232 bullet holes, and its engine had been hit. The two flyers, though, were unscathed except for a shrapnel wound to Jones's ear that bled profusely but did little other damage.
"The pilot was green enough so he couldn't tell whether his airframe could take it," said Jones's son, David, during a September conversation in the dining room of the family's bed and breakfast in the remote, almost-ghost town of Unionville in Pershing County.
Dusty, late-summer sunlight slanted through the windows of the 146-year-old house that Jones bought and restored in the early 1970s. A sheepdog dozed in a chair against the wall, and the plank floors creaked as Jones's wife, Mitzi, cleared away the breakfast dishes. It seemed a very long way from Guadalcanal, almost too far for a single life to span.
Jones sat quietly at the long table, nodding occasionally as his son spoke.
"The engine was acting up, smoking a lot, and he didn't think he could make it. But dad knew that powerplant, and he knew the airframe pretty well by then. He told the pilot all he had to do was lose speed and altitude and go for it. The pilot wanted to ditch in the ocean, but dad knew that was a death sentence in that area."
Hanging on the dining room wall was a grainy black-and-white photo believed to show Jones and his pilot climbing from their ruined plane after landing safely on U.S.S. Enterprise. Minutes after the photo was taken, the plane was pushed off the deck into the sea.

'That stupid war'

Today, the damage caused by an old brain tumor, discovered and removed in the late 1950s, has finally caught up with Jones. At 87, he's energetic and sociable, with craggy brows and a ruddy, pleasant face, but he doesn't communicate too well anymore. David and Mitzi understand him and help translate.
He's still haunted, though, by that encounter 66 years ago, "way down south there," as he says, in the deadly South Pacific skies. He remembers seeing Sakai's canopy shatter and his head snap back against the seat and the flames licking around the cockpit of the Zero as it rolled over and disappeared. For him, Guadalcanal might have been yesterday.
Sakai, who died in 2000, was haunted by the battle, too. After five months spent recovering from his injuries and another year of training young pilots, he did return to combat briefly, but after the war he became a Buddhist acolyte and an outspoken pacifist, openly critical of Emperor Hirohito's imperialistic Japan and of what he called "that stupid war."
Sakai visited the U.S. numerous times and tried for years to track down the gunner who had shot him. Finally, Henry Sakaida, a Japanese-American amateur historian and author fascinated by the war in the Pacific, brought Sakai and Jones together in 1983. Sakai gave Jones a piece of the blood-stained aviator's scarf he had worn on the fateful day.
"He was thankful to dad for keeping him out of the kamikaze ranks," David said. "He said that was the only reason he survived the war." Sakai apparently did lead one kamikaze mission in 1944 but failed to find the U.S. ships he was sent to attack and led his formation back to base against orders.

'In the middle of stuff'


"When you think about it," said David, nodding at the picture on the wall to indicate the encounter with Sakai and its aftermath, "this was maybe a couple hours, max, of dad's time in the South Pacific. He said there were just so many ways to die out there it was incredible."
The fact that he managed not to die during his two years in the Pacific is equally incredible. "He volunteered for anything," David said. "If there was a flying mission, any kind of operation, and he didn't get picked right away, he'd volunteer for it. He went out on everything. He didn't like to stay on board the ship; he liked to be in the middle of stuff."
And Jones was indeed in the middle of a lot of stuff. On the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, unaware yet of the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was part of a small formation launched from Enterprise, which was sailing some 215 miles west of Oahu. The formation was to search a sector of ocean for Japanese ships and then refuel at Pearl before returning. But shortly after Jones saw the smoke rising ahead, the formation was attacked by Zeroes. Jones's wingman and another friend were both shot down.
At the pivotal Battle of Midway in June 1942, Jones made three dive-bombing runs, most notably on the carrier Kaga, where his plane was also hit. "Dad turned his seat backward as they pulled out," David said, "and he said that the Kaga was exploding and burning from stem to stern. He said that if you looked down, all the planes were swirling around below with their red dive flaps and beneath them the whole ship was covered with Japanese planes ready to take off.
"And he knew -- everybody knew -- who those pilots were. They were the cream of the Japanese pilots. And they all died there at their controls with all their bombs and torpedoes baking off underneath them and huge pieces of deck cartwheeling through the air." Kaga sank minutes later, one of four Japanese carriers lost at Midway, which ultimately turned the tide of the war in the Pacific.

'That was how he flew'


Soon after Guadalcanal, Jones was sent back to the U.S. for flight training. Although he'd never flown solo -- only taken the controls while his pilots slept -- he was extremely knowledgeable about aircraft and carrier tactics. He did exceptionally well in flight school and, with his invaluable combat experience, was almost immediately made a flight instructor himself.
"Dad was the safest guy around," David said. "He checked everything, re-checked it, then checked it again. That was how he flew. There was nothing left to chance. That's why people liked to fly with him in later years. His officer buddies, if they had to go someplace, would ask him to fly them. Admirals wanted him to fly them."
When the Korean War broke out, Jones went back to sea as an officer, flying risky, low-altitude submarine detection missions from U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard and U.S.S. Lexington to prevent Soviet subs from surfacing to gather and transmit intelligence about the U.S. fleet.
After his brain tumor was diagnosed in the Philippines, Jones was flown back to the U.S. for surgery at Oak Knoll Veteran's Hospital in Oakland.
He retired from the Navy in 1958 and soon moved his family to Europe, where he ran the Rome office of Investor's Overseas Service. After four years in Europe, the family moved to Monterey, Calif., and Jones developed a passion for restoring and remodeling old houses.

WWII vet finds peace in Unionville | www.rgj.com | Reno Gazette-Journal

 

Looks like the double posting is back LOL.

 

Reading on some other sites there are some heated discussions as to the accuracy of these confirmed victories by the SBDs.

 

I can believe the SBD claims, it is the TBD Devastator and
SB2U Vindicator claims I have a hard time believing. If the Japanese lost planes to these dogs, it would be due the the Japanese aircraft stalling out trying to go as slow as they flew.

 

Well there is something to be said that being slower makes for a more stable gun platform .