Gordon wrote:

When dozens of attack aircraft all strike the same warship within a
few minutes, the TBD's performance wasn't an issue - they did make at
least one strike on Soryu (?), recorded in the famous set of photos
with a towering geyser forward. Practically everyone reported they
hit the tiny carrier.

Soryu wasn't tiny by any stretch of the imagination; she was around the
size of Enterprise or Hornet.
The hit shown is on Shoho, which along with Ryujo, were two of the
smaller early Japanese carriers.

Against modern fleet carriers, a motivated CAP,
and no fighter support, Midway was a scalding reminder of just how
unspectacular an aircraft the "Devastor" really was.


You know, the Fairey Swordfish made the Devastator look like superplane,
but at the attack on Taranto and against the Bismarck, they didn't
exactly suck.
We lost the Devastators due to the Japanese having their Zeros up and
flying at low altitude.
If they hadn't been busy attacking the Devastators, those Dauntlesses
coming in from above might have had a very tough time putting their
bombs down as accurately as they did.
Torpedo 6 and 8 didn't lose their lives in vain; by keeping the Zeros
low and the AA gunners firing at them rather than looking up, they
cleared the way for the SBD's to attack almost unopposed from above.
That whole battle was about the flukiest piece of luck that came down on
the U.S. side during the entire war.

Pat