Naval Aviation in the Early Months of World War II
Just as the United States was approaching the brink of war, the Navy air arm owned only about a thousand airplanes of all types. The young Navy airmen who had perfected dive-bombing had seen their invention adopted by the Nazis and used with deadly effect in their march across Western Europe. In the year before Pearl Harbor the Navy had acquired only a few hundred new airplanes. We did have, however, a group of young men who had been living and breathing aviation for the past fifteen years. They knew what was needed in the way of new fighting planes and they knew how to train thousands of new naval aviators when the time came. But it took the tremendous sweeps of the Nazis in Europe and the shadow of Japan across the Pacific to unloose the flood of fighting planes which was to give the United States Navy the greatest aërial fighting force ever launched.
At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor we had seven carriers, including our first big ones, the Lexington and the Saratoga. The Grumman F4F Wildcat was our standard carrier-based fighter. We had a small number of TBD Devastator torpedo planes and SDB Dauntless dive-bombers. Our battleships and cruisers were equipped with Vought OS2U Kingfisher and Curtis SO3C Seagull observation scout planes launched from the ships’ catapults. The Navy was fairly well equipped with PBY Catalina long-range patrol bombers. But in the engineering offices of aircraft manufacturers, new and more powerful fighters, bombers, and patrol planes were being planned.
When Japan struck we had eleven aircraft carriers under construction, and two thousand new planes went into service for the Navy. Great training stations were being put into service to increase the Navy’s flying personnel to over 15,000 men.
A new patrol bomber, the long-range Martin PBM-1 Mariner, went into service for the Navy in 1941. It had a wingspan of 118 feet and a length of 77 feet 2 inches. It was powerfully armed and carried a heavy load of bombs. It was capable of long range and was able to carry out extensive over-ocean patrols without returning to its base. Ample living accommodations were provided for its eleven-man crew. In addition to its duties as an anti-submarine patrol and long-range bomber, the Mariner was used as a Navy transport.
The Vought F4U-1 Corsair fighters began to go into service in the Pacific soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Corsair was a single-place fighter of unusual design. Its wing had the shape of an inverted gull wing. This design allowed clearance for the Corsair’s 13-foot, 4-inch propeller. A straight wing would have needed a dangerously high landing gear to provide clearance for such a large propeller. Originally designed for carrier use, the 2,000-horsepower, 400-mile-an-hour Corsair was adopted for land-based operations by the United States Marine Corps. Marine Corps aviators used the Corsair with deadly effect against the Japs from Guadalcanal on. Navy pilots flew the Corsair as a night-fighter to put a stop to the Jap’s habit of bombing our Pacific airfields at night.
The Navy’s newest torpedo plane, the Grumman TBF Avenger, first appeared in the battle off Midway. The big Avenger had a speed of 270 miles per hour, a range of 1,400 miles, and carried a 2,000-pound bomb load or a full-sized torpedo concealed in its fuselage. The famous Torpedo Squadron 8, in fourteen weeks sank as many Jap warships including two aircraft carriers and one battleship; bombed one heavy cruiser, one light cruiser, and a number of smaller ships.
Avengers helped to pave the way for the establishment of bases in the Pacific. Corsairs, used as the Navy’s first night-fighters, broke up Japanese night bombings of the newly won island bases and allowed our hard-worked men to rest at night.