Last of the Line

The 5,396th Dauntless rolled off the line last week in the sprawling El Segundo aircraft plant in Los Angeles County. No. 5,396 was the last of an honored breed: the Navy's dive-bombing SBD (for Scout Bomber, Douglas).

The SBD has been the backbone of the Navy's air war in the Pacific. For a few months it will still be at war. But a more modern dive bomber has begun to edge the Dauntless out: Curtiss Corp.'s Hell-diver (SB2C). Over the months SBDs will gradually disappear from battle, be put out to pasture as advanced training planes. At the passing of this gallant Pegasus, Navy airmen grew sentimental.

Born in 1939 of mixed strains (its perforated flaps are from a 1937 Northrop), the SBD was obsolescent by Pearl Harbor. But there was no plane ready to take its place. She had no bugs, no streaks of temperament ; she was a thoroughly honest aircraft. She could take a frightful beating and stagger home on wings that sometimes looked like nutmeg graters.

Through the rugged, uphill fighting after Pearl Harbor, SBDs did their share and more, from Guadalcanal to Casablanca. They won glory at the Coral Sea and at Midway, were still out in front when the fleet began its winning drive across the Pacific. This week they were still in action at Guam and wherever the fleet struck, and-they had just hung a new naval battle record on the wall: among the 95 U.S. planes lost in the battle of the Philippine Sea (TIME, July 3) there was not one Dauntless.

No one was much surprised. In SBD's long record at war it has piled up another that is even more impressive: its loss ratio is the lowest of all U.S. carrier aircraft in the Pacific. So, when the last SBD squadron commander gives the last takeoff order--"Pilots, man your clunks"--the time-honored crack will not be in scorn. It will be a hail and farewell.

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