One time, on their return to base, they came in for a landing and didn’t realize one of their wheels hadn’t dropped into position for landing. You’d look out the same side of the plane a moment later and there were be shrapnel holes all through your plane,” Martin said. You’d look out one side of your plane and everything would look all right. “We’d take a lot of flak and small arms fire on those runs. You’d try and get your dive bomber down just above the water so the enemy guns wouldn’t bear on you. “We called it running the gauntlet because when you came in to drop your bombs, there were enemy guns on both sides of the harbor shooting at you. Our worst missions were the ones flown against Japanese shipping in Simpson Harbor,” the former SBD gunner said. “The Japanese had seven air bases near Rabaul that we bombed a number of times. The Marine Corps used Dauntless dive bombers like this one to knock out high-value enemy artillery targets in the Pacific during World War II. He flew against Japan’s biggest air and naval base on New Britain Island in the Solomons. “Once in a while, an enemy fighter would break through, but they quickly learned not to attack us from the tail because of our twin machine guns.” “We ran into very few of them because Boyington and his squadron kept them away from us,” he said. Japanese fighter planes weren’t a big problem. “He was flying cover for us when he was shot down (and captured) on Jan. “Pappy Boyington’s ‘Black Sheep Squadron’ protected us in their Corsairs oftentimes,” Martin said. “You were apprehensive to begin with, but it was all over so quickly.”īecause their SBDs were poorly armed and slow, the dive bombers flew with fighter protection high above them. “When you were diving on a target from 10,000 feet, you didn’t have time to be scared,” he explained. Its main punch came from a 1,000-pound bomb hanging under the dive bomber’s fuselage and one 100-pound bomb on each wing. 30-caliber machine guns operated by the rear seat gunner. 50-caliber machine gun in each wing and twin. The SBD was the primary dive bomber used by the Navy and Marine Corps in the Second World War. We’d fly down the gun barrels to drop our bombs,” the 81-year-old Englewood, Fla. We mostly went after the Japanese big 5- and 8-inch guns with our dive bombers. “At the beginning, we were flying from Munda Island, attacking Bougainville. Martin summed Dixon up by saying, “He was a good pilot.” Dixon of Wichita, Kan., piloted the SBD Martin flew in during most of the war. He was a member of Marine Dive Bomber Squadron 234. was a back seat gunner in a Douglas Dauntless SBD single-engine dive bomber flying against Japanese fortifications on Bougainville in the New Georgia Islands in the Pacific during World War II. This was Robert Martin at 18 when he ws a member of Marine Dive Bomber Squadron 234, which fought in the Pacific during the Second World War.
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