wrote:

The Grumman TBF/TBM seems to be a pretty big plane at 54 feet wingspan
and 40 foot length.
The SB2C is only 50 feet by 37. I haven't looked at all World War 2
carrier planes,
but the TBF is bigger than the F6F (and thus F4F by default) Heck,
even the F4U is
only 41 x 33.5 feet.

Was the name "Beast" in reference to horsepower or flying
characteristics?

Flying characteristics. See, for example, Eric Brown's "Duels in the Sky"
for a description of its flight characteristics. After describing them, he
summarized it thusly:

"The Helldiver was an airplane riddled with handling faults. It was a
mediocre dive-bomber and a poor deck-landing a/c with a performance that
barely bettered that of its predecessor. It was nicknamed 'The Beast', an
epithet it fully merited. In its main role as a dive-bomber it was
less-effective than the Dauntless it replaced." Another nickname for it,
based on the official designator SB2C, was "Son of a Bitch, 2nd Class". It
was not a popular a/c.

Guy