Curtiss SB2C Helldiver wreckage found in Oregon's woods.

On Sun, 28 Mar 2010 18:49:27 -0700, wrote:

On Mar 28, 9:29Â*pm, Matt Wiser wrote:
On Mar 28, 7:54Â*am, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:





On Mar 27, 7:15 pm, Matt Wiser wrote:

On Mar 27, 2:12 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:

On Mar 27, 6:15 am, Diogenes wrote:

On Sat, 27 Mar 2010 00:47:36 -0700 (PDT), "Ken S. Tucker"

wrote:

This article is 'less than flattering' about the Helldiver,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SB2C_Helldiver

If anyone disputes the article please advise, it's a wiki. It
surprised me so many were also built in Canada. Ken

My father was a WWII fighter pilot but flew the Helldiver
several times on ferry missions. He said it was the
worst-handling aircraft he ever had the misfortune to fly.
Â* Â*Diogenes

Yeah, just looking at it superficially, aerodynamically it's a
dog. Things like a lot of curvature under the tail sucks the tail
down, then the main wing blanks the elevator, your father
deserves over time danger pay just to ferry it, "Helldiver" might
be an appropriate, name.
Ken

There was another name that pilots called the aircraft: "Son of a
Bitch, 2nd Class." The -1 version was the worst, but the -3 onward
handled very well.

Most a/c have 'idiosyncrasies' ((had to look up the spelin of that)),
if the pilot is knowledgeable of them, he'd know what 'not' to do. It
may be a case the Helldiver had a restricted flight envelope that
required more respect (less forgiving) than other aircraft, so a
properly trained pilot could handle the "beast". I've read that about
the F-104, horses and wives. Ken- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You're quite right, Keith. But the -1 was underpowered, and had a
three-bladed prop. The -3 and beyond had some more horses in the
engine, a four-blade prop, and the training regimen for SB2C pilots
made sure nugget pilots knew what to do in the plane, and what not to
do. VADM Marc Mitscher (ComTF-38/58) took some convincing, but when
VB-19 arrived on Lexington with the -3 in July of '44 and showed him
what the plane could do, he was convinced. He had reccommeded keeping
the SBD in Fleet Service, but Douglas had shut down the SBD line, so
the Navy had no choice.-

That'd what I've read....the -1 had lots of issues which were
fixed (mostly) in the -3, but by then the reputation was crappy.

It was still a crappy airplane. I've got the NACA report on its
Flying Qualities. Dismal comes pretty close to covering it.
To pull just one example - the friction in the control runs was
so high that it took 40 lbsf of pull force to move the elevators -
while standing still on the ground in no wind.
The SB2C was a prewar design. It took Curtiss nearly all the war
to beat it into marginally acceptable shape.
By that time, the view of attack airplanes had been changing radically.
Rather than the shipboard bombers becoming bigger versions of the
Dantless/Helldiver formula, they became single-seat load carriers like
the AD-1 and AM-1.

--
Pete Stickney
Failure is not an option
It comes bundled with the system