On Jun 5, 10:39 pm, Pat Flannery wrote:
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.

Ahhh, obviously, that is the one I meant. Shoho - sorry. I got my
carriers mixed up - hence the (?) in my reply. I know that the Soryu
went down at Midway, I just momentarily got my "S"-carrier-names mixed
up.

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

They were never once sent in against an enemy fleet with an active
CAP. Different war. They WERE outmoded, by any stretch or WWII
standard. If they were sent in against the IJN carrier fleet under an
umbrella of Zeroes, they would have been, well, devastated.

We lost the Devastators due to the Japanese having their Zeros up and
flying at low altitude.

Yes. Going in to attack without any cover in a 100-mph straight and
level torpedo plane was suicide, with predictable results. Would the
attack have gone differently with Stringbags?

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.

Sheer unadulterated luck. And the plan didn't call for the TBDs to
all be sacrificed - it was a busted plan and an obsolete aircraft that
resulted in nearly 100% losses of the attacking force. The SBDs were
not, at that point, even a part of the same attack, so giving them
credit for 'keeping the Zeroes busy', makes it seem like that task was
part of their job. We got incredibly lucky that the SBDs arrived
overhead while the Japanese CAP was still busy hunting down the last
survivors.

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.

I completely agree. None of which makes the TBD anything other than a
meatgrinder for crews.

v/r Gordon