The Curtiss SB2C Helldiver— successor to the highly successful SBD Dauntless—never equaled the popularity or accomplishments of its predecessor. The SB2C did see extensive combat during the last year of the World War II in the Pacific and filled out carrier air groups immediately after the war.
Following a long line of Curtiss dive bombers, most with the company name Helldiver, the SB2C was the firm’s first monoplane. The prototype XSB2C-1 first flew on 18 December 1940 but later crashed. Large-scale production already had been ordered the previous month for both the U.S. Navy and Army (as A-25 Shrike, later Helldiver). Flight testing uncovered a large number of problems, especially a lack of stability. Numerous modifications were incorporated in the design before the first production aircraft flew on 30 June 1942. The aircraft’s fleet debut came finally on 21 October 1943, when the Bunker Hill (CV-17) departed Pearl Harbor with Bombing Squadron (VB) 17 flying the SB2C-1. The carrier sent 23 of these bombers against the Japanese island stronghold of Rabaul on 11 November.
In 1943 the Atlantic Fleet’s air commander advised that “due to continued malfunctioning, structural failures and other operational difficulties which affect use of armament and safety in flight, SB2C airplanes were considered entirely unsuitable for assignment to combatant carriers at this time.” The skipper of the Essex (CV-9) concurred, while the commanding officer of the Yorktown (CV-10) declared that the plane was unsuitable for carrier operations and recommended cancellation of the program. A young SB2C pilot, Donald Engen (later vice admiral), recalled that the plane “was predominant for running out of gas and landing in the water. ... It was called the Beast, because it tended to bite people. It had sharp metal edges, and your fingers would get caught in the cracks. . . .”
But SB2C production already was in high gear, and SBD deliveries were about to end. Many of the early problems were fixed in the later SB2C-3 and -4 models.
By the time of the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944—the last combat sorties by U.S. carrier-based SBDs—165 Helldivers were on five of the U.S. fast carriers (CV) compared to 57 Dauntlesses on the two other CVs. (The eight light carriers [CVL] that participated in the battle embarked only fighters and torpedo planes, not dive bombers.)
Because of the kamikaze threat that developed in late 1944, the carrier dive bomber squadrons were cut in half, reduced to some 15 SB2Cs with 15 TBF/TBM torpedo bombers also being embarked; the remaining 70-odd aircraft were fighters. Subsequently the Wasp (CV-18) embarked 90 F6F Hellcats, resulting in the complete removal of dive bombers, with 15 Avengers being retained. A total of 30 VB squadrons flying the SB2C went aboard 13 fast carriers in the Pacific at various times through August 1945.
The U.S. Marine Corps also flew large numbers of SB2C dive bombers from land bases. Although all-Marine air groups were formed late in the war to operate from escort carriers (CVE), those units consisted only of fighters and torpedo planes.
After the war, SB2Cs were assigned regularly to most of the surviving carrier groups. When the large carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt (CVB-42) operated in the Mediterranean from 8 August to 4 October 1946, she had a 123-plane “battle group.” It was comprised of a fighter squadron with 41 F4U-4 Corsairs and specialized F6F Hellcats, a fighter- bomber squadron with 32 F4U-4B Corsairs, a bomber squadron with 24 SB2C-5 Helldivers, and a torpedo squadron with another 24 Helldivers and two TBM-3E Avengers. The aircraft on this single carrier represented more striking power than the combined air forces of all Mediterranean nations at that time.
The Franklin D. Roosevelt’s F4U-4B Corsair was an effective attack plane and after the war largely replaced the SB2C Helldiver in carrier service. The last SB2C squadrons were retired from first- line service in 1949. The F4U carried on longer in the attack role and saw extensive Korean War service.
After World War II, the French Navy flew SB2Cs in combat in Indochina into the 1950s. Italy and Thailand flew them too. (Italy designated them S2C-5 instead of SB2C-5, because it was not allowed to have “bombers” after the war.)
Through 1945 Curtiss produced 5,516 SB2Cs, while the Canadian Car & Foundry in Ontario built another 860 designated SBW, and Fairchild-Montreal built 300 similar SBF variants. The Army Air Forces ordered 900 planes from Curtiss, but most of those were transferred to the Marine Corps, reflecting Army aviation’s disdain for dive bombing. The British took 26 of the Canadian-built aircraft under Lend- Lease, and Australia got ten of the Army A-25s.
The SB2C had a large fuselage with a large fin and rudder. The internal bomb bay could carry 1,000 pounds of bombs; an aerial torpedo could be carried under the fuselage, but the SB2C never deployed torpedoes in combat. Bombs and rockets could be carried under the wings. Early aircraft had four .50-caliber machine guns in the wings, which soon were replaced by twin 20-mm cannon. In the after cockpit was a flexible twin .50- caliber and later twin .30-caliber machine guns. The wings folded for carrier stowage, an advantage over the fixed- wing SBD. The single XSB2C-2 was fitted as a seaplane, the twin-float aircraft being completed in September 1942.
The SB2C-1 had a maximum speed of 281 miles per hour and a range of 1,165 miles when delivering a 1,000-pound bomb load to just more than half that distance.
While never as “good” as the Douglas SBD Dauntless, the SB2C was the only dive bomber available to the U.S. Navy during the last year of the war. Hell- divers from fleet carriers attacked and contributed to the sinking of the superbattleships Musashi and Yamato as well as aircraft for four carriers in 1944-1945, although Avenger-launched torpedoes inflicted most of the damage.
As Vice Admiral John T. (Chick) Hayward later recalled the SB2C in a letter: “This was a dog and was a very poor performer. It quickly became apparent to the operators that this was not the way to go.” Its successor as a carrier- based attack aircraft was the Douglas AD Skyraider, one of the most effective warplanes ever produced, thus “sandwiching” the SB2C Helldiver between two outstanding naval attack aircraft.
