Tag Archives: TBD Devastator

Groups launch The Devastator Project to rescue and preserve a TBD-1

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TBD-1 Devastator of VT-5 pictured in flight over Southern California 5-T-& Bu 0031 Yorktown Nov 1939. The TBD-1 Devastator ranks among the most significant aircraft in U.S. naval aviation history. It was the Navy’s first all-metal, low-wing, semi-monocoque plane and played a critical role during the opening months of the Pacific campaign.. Photo/description from the Naval Aviation Museum

Most military and naval history buffs remember the much-maligned Douglas TBD-1 Devastator “torpecker” for its Ride of the Valkyries style use against the Japanese carriers at Midway, in which  41 Devastators launched, carrying their unreliable Bliss-Leavitt Mark 13 aerial torpedoes, and only six returned to their carriers, without making a single effective torpedo hit.

Torpedo Squadron 2 (VT-2) in the “old days” before WWII, back when they flew Douglas TBD Devastators, and were the first squadron in the Navy to start doing so, in Oct. 1937

Insignia: Torpedo Squadron Five (VT-5) Emblem adopted during the later 1930s, when VT-5 served on board USS Yorktown (CV-5). This reproduction features a stylized representation of a TBD Devastator torpedo plane and an explanation of the insignia’s design. Courtesy of John S. Howland, 1975. U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph.color Catalog #: NH 82628-KN

Those 41 were almost fully a third of the type that existed, with just 129 production airframes delivered to the Navy between 1937 and 1939.

Forgotten is their more effective performance in raids on the Marshall and Gilbert Islands, Wake and Marcus Islands, just after Pearl Harbor, and in sinking the Japanese Zuiho-class light carrier Shoho during the Battle of the Coral Sea.

A lone Devastator over Wake Island in late Feb 1942

Torpecker success! Japanese aircraft carrier Shoho under attack by U.S. Navy carrier aircraft in the late morning of 7 May 1942. Photographed from a USS Yorktown (CV 5) torpedo plane. Official U.S. Navy photograph 80-G-17027.

Withdrawn from the Pacific after Midway and replaced with the TBM Avenger, the surviving Devastators in VT-4 and VT-7 remained in service briefly in the Atlantic and in training squadrons until 1944, when they were all scrapped by the end of the year.

That left those scattered around the bottom of the Pacific as the sole remaining TBDs in existence.

And that brings us to The Devastator Project.

The project brings together the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, Texas A&M University’s Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation, the Republic of the Marshall Islands Cultural and Historic Preservation Office, Jaluit Atoll local government officials and traditional leaders, and the Naval History and Heritage Command. The team aims to recover Bureau Number 1515, a TBD-1 Devastator (5-T-7 of VT-5) that has remained submerged off Jaluit Atoll for more than 80 years.

BuNo 1515 launched from USS Yorktown (CV-5) and ditched in the Jaluit lagoon on Feb. 1, 1942, during the U.S. Navy’s first offensive operation in the Pacific. All three naval aviators ( Ens Herbert R Hein, Jr, AOM 3c Joseph D. Strahl, and S1c Marshall E. “Windy” Windham) survived the emergency landing and later endured captivity as Japanese prisoners of war until their liberation in 1945.

Bureau Number 1515, a Douglas TBD-1 Devastator submerged off Jaluit Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The aircraft went down Feb. 1, 1942. Air and Sea Heritage Foundation photo

The project seeks to recover the Jaluit Devastator and preserve it as-is.

So I watched Midway…

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To be clear, the current Midway movie is at least the third film– counting John Ford’s WWII-era propaganda short and the verbose 1976 Henry Fonda flick– to be centered around the pivotal battle of the Pacific War.

What I liked:

Great effort overall.

Lots of little known stories were highlighted such as efforts of Station Hypo and the vastly unsung work of CDR Joseph J. Rochefort and his busy swarm of ex-musicians from the stricken battleships USS California and West Virginia.

Also, as 15 submarines were present at Midway, and the straggling Japanese destroyer Arashi— detailed to sink USS Nautilus without luck– led the U.S. planes to the unexpecting Japanese carrier task force, it was nice to see SS-168 detailed a bit. This included filming scenes in the torpedo room and control tower aboard the ex-USS Bowfin (SS-287), which was a nice period touch.

The Marines and Midway-based air groups are given a few minutes of camera time. Many forget they were part of the battle as well. More on the Marines of Midway, here.

Obsolete fabric-covered SB2U-3 dive bombers of Marine Scout Bombing Squadron 241 taking off to attack the Japanese fleet striking force on the morning of 4 June 1942, during the Battle of Midway. Part of Marine Aircraft Group 22 (MAG-22), they would earn a Presidental Unit Citation for their role in the epic naval clash.

As there are exactly zero functional TBD Devastator torpedo bombers that made it out of WWII, it was amazing to see them digitally recreated and flying in squadron order, Ride of the Valkyries-style, to their doom.

Wreck of the Lexington showing TBD Tare-3 flown by Ensign N. A. Sterrie USNR who claimed a hit on the carrier Shoho during the second attack at the Coral Sea. Tare-4 flown by Lt. R. F. Farrington USN who claimed a hit during the first attack. This is amazing as there are only four known TBDs in existence anywhere in the world– all crashed. Only 130 were made and 35 lost at Midway alone (Photo via RV Petrel)

Likewise, in many scenes, the Chicago Piano, the quad 1.1-inch AAA gun mounted across the U.S. fleet in the early part of WWII, was shown in action although most examples are at the bottom of the Pacific at this point.

These…(RV Petrel)

Unlike the 1976 film, which tried to tell the story of the battle through the eyes of a fictional third party staff officer, much like Alexandr Solzhenitsyn’s August 1914, the new version is told through a focus on Dick Best, the legendary leader of Enterprise’s VB-6; and LCDR Edwin T. Layton, Nimitz’s intel boss.

In another departure from the 1976 film, rather than fill the ranks of the IJN with Hawaiian nisei actors and a token Toshiro Mifune (whose lines were dubbed in English!), the current production used a number of high-profile Japanese actors including Etsushi Toyokawa and Tadanobu Asano (you will recognize him from all of the Thor movies as well as 47 Ronin).

What I didn’t like

A lot of this is nitpicky from a nerd who built SBD, F4F and TBD models as a kid in the 1980s while dog-eared copies of Infamy and At Dawn We Slept sat on the desk, so take it with a grain of salt.

While the movie spends the first 45~ minutes or so delving into the six months of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway, this seems like too much of a setup, one that could have been condensed to spend more time on the actual battle itself. For instance, of the aforementioned amount, a good 10-15 mins are spent on the Doolittle Raid (with Aaron Eckhart lending his magnificent chin to portray Doolittle himself). While those “30 Seconds over Tokyo” were important to the war effort, they had little to do with Midway.

While the story of SBD gunner AMM1c Bruno Gaido is told– and deservedly so– his execution at sea was botched in the film. Gaido and his pilot, Ensign Frank O’Flaherty, were picked up by the destroyer Makigumo and tortured for over a week then tied to weighted gas cans and thrown overboard on/about 15 June. The movie implies they were killed soon after rescue during the battle and that O’Flaherty may have given actionable intelligence that was used to sink Yorktown. This is shameful.

Speaking of Yorktown, there were three U.S. flattops at Midway but Yorktown is only glimpsed a couple times and Hornet barely even gets a mention, leaving the otherwise uninformed viewer to think Enterprise pulled off the whole thing on her own. Sure, the seagoing action is largely from Dick Best’s point of view, but still…

As for the Japanese fleet, the bushido code of RADM Tamon Yamaguchi– a Princeton alumnus who clashed with Nagumo and was the commander of the Japanese Carrier Striking Force’s Carrier Division Two– is retold and he is shown going down with his stricken flagship, IJN Hiryu, on the predawn of 5 June. However, the movie has him only meeting this fate accompanied by Hiryu’s commander when in fact he had 20-30 men of his staff all resolutely remain behind to ride her to “enjoy the moon together.”

Carrier flagship Hiryu: Last Moments of Admiral Yamaguchi at the Battle of Midway. oil painting by Renzo Kita, 1943.

Even with the above complaints lodged, the movie is still a much better effort than I hoped for. Of course, it is very CGI/greenscreen heavy, but this is the nature of the cinema these days.

All-in-all, it could be used as an educational tool in high school history classes, in my humble opinion.

For those interested in delving more into Midway, check out Shattered Sword.