The Dauntless Dive Bomber of World War Two by Barrett Tillman

Author:Barrett Tillman [Tillman, Barrett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612515434
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

As was fortuitously so often the case on Guadalcanal, more pilots and gunners arrived to take the place of those who were leaving. Six SBDs and four Avengers flew in from Espiritu Santo late on the twenty-eighth to help bring Geiger’s forces up to strength. Three of the Dauntlesses were late additions to Scouting Three and the rest were Scouting 71 planes, lately of the Wasp Air Group. Their leader, Lieutenant Commander John Eldridge, would join Turner Caldwell as one of the outstanding Navy pilots to fly from Henderson Field. Eight more of Eldridge’s planes joined him five days later, on 3 October.

One of the VS-71 pilots, Lieutenant (jg) R. H. Perritte, mysteriously disappeared during a patrol on 2 October. Then the mid-afternoon search the next day turned up more big news, predictably bad. Around 1530, a pair of scouts located the Japanese seaplane tender Nisshin escorted by six destroyers about two hundred miles northwest of Guadalcanal. Nisshin was carrying tanks and other heavy equipment destined for delivery late that night. The two SBDs were jumped by ten Zeros and barely succeeded in getting away. At 1600 in the western search sector three more destroyers were spotted en route to the island. It was a heavier than usual reinforcement, which meant the ships had to be dealt with immediately.

A strike force of eight SBDs and three TBFs was thrown together and departed 15 minutes after the second contact was radioed in, one Dauntless aborting with engine trouble. The remaining planes headed up The Slot to handle the Nisshin force, making contact a little before 1730. The attack was led by Lieutenant (jg) A. S. Frank of Scouting Three but stiff resistance in the form of thick AA fire and wild maneuvering prevented any hits from being made. The Tokyo Express continued on course, arriving at Cape Esperance some five hours later.

In a pot-luck type of mission which would become the norm at Henderson, four Dauntlesses representing four squadrons took off at 2230 with Lieutenant Commander Eldridge of VS-71 in the lead. The strike was almost defeated before it departed, however, as the ex-Wasp planes couldn’t receive or transmit on the same radio frequency as the other aircraft and Eldridge’s flight became separated in the dark. In the end, just Eldridge and his Scouting Three wingman found the vaguely defined shapes below on the dark water, dropped their bombs “by guess and by gosh,” and missed the target altogether. The Japanese continued their unloading operation and departed unharmed that night.

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