5 Things You Never Knew About the Avenger Torpedo Bomber 

Why don't you cover the Spitfire or the Hurricane. I'm sure their's some fun stories involving those planes.

@@brokenbridge6316 on my list!

I was wondering what you used to create the videos . I dont think there is any specific game that has these graphics and plane content that you could have used to create you r videos

Feel free to email them to me :) would love to read them!

Email me too...or post then if they're not personal

Always enjoy hearing stories of zipper heads being shooted up by tailgunners. I say that because of the war crimes that we're committed against fellow Americans. Something this video did not speak about was that the people who were captured with George Bush was shot down or put on an island and some of them were eaten by the zip heads.

By that I mean the people that were captured when George Bushs plane was shot up. Not that he was captured.

@@TJ3 I'll photograph the few I can read and some articles with them. He was quite the writer, some contain upwards of 4 pages with writting on both sides. It's a lot. My favorite is he ends one letter with how the .45 caliber revolver can 'blow a mans head off at 600 yards' and at close range 'blow a hole so big you could fit your head inside.'

Crazy

That’s probably true. But not for the obvious reason. For being the US’s primary torpedo plane, by far most of their missions were not torpedo missions. The Avenger had an amazing payload and ordinance capacity when used as a level bomber for ground attack. It could get airborne with a full bay of bombs. plus two more bombs and six rockets on the wings. Or it could carry a dozen depth charges for sub hunting. Torpedoes were really just for the heavier Japanese warships. And they didn’t show up that often. We saw a similar evolution with Destroyers. By 1944 most US destroyers we’re having one of their 2 torpedo batteries removed and replaced by more AA guns. There just weren’t enough targets for torpedoes. And what targets there were, the subs were handling before the destroyers or Avengers got involved.

@@andrewtaylor940 Excellent summary of what happened. I came here to add essentially the same paragraph. Guys like us have to spread the facts about history less we lose it all.

My hat is off to your dad. They suffered greatly but were heroes with fortitude. A third of your group killed is a mental blow to the survivors. Surviving three torpedo attacks must be a feat. At Midway, just one was about impossible. Thanks for sharing your dad's real life experience. Too bad some zoomer had to play google professor.

G'day, Yay Team ! That sounds a lot like RAF Coastal Command, making Torpedo Attacks in Bristol Blenheims out of England onto German Convoys hugging the Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Belgian, French and Spanish Coasts.... The USAAC's 8th AF Bomber Command regarded 25 Missions as constituting a Tour. US Bomber Aircrew flew 1 Tour...& then Went Home... RAF, RAAF, RNZAF, RCAF, RSAAF Bomber Command Aircrews had to fly 2 Tours of 30 Missions, with a 3rd Tour of 20 - and 6 months Instructing after 1 month Leave following each Tour. Coastal Command Torpedo Attack Aircrew who came back from THREE Operational Torpedo Runs were Sent back down the Lines..., to Instruct for half a year Before going out to get closely Shot At, AGAIN... German FLiegerenAbwherKannonaden Was ALWAYS so Wonderfully Bloody ACCURATE... Y'see... Such is life, Have a good one... Stay safe. ;-p Ciao !

The isolationism of the 30’s resulted in many weapons systems being developed with minimal resources. The Torpedo was never tested with actual warheads due to cost constraints.

@@brookeshenfield7156 Not so much the isolationism as it was the Great Depression making budgets incredibly small, which meant testing was deemed financially unfeasible

On the other hand, those Brewster Buffalos and F4F Wildcats wouldn't have been much help against AA from the ships. And as the early dogfights with Zeroes proved, not much help against those either. It would take more experience for the Navy pilots to learn to go "gun to gun" against the Zeke, which allowed them to finally get ahead with the F4F and F6F 'cats.

The "Miracle of Midway" was that almost every error made by the Japanese cost them dearly while the American errors worked in their favor. The torpedo bombers arrived alone, and most were shot down. But they pulled the Japanese fighters down to wave top level just before the dive bombers arrived. Had the dive bombers, fighters, and torpedo bombers arrived simultaneously, the battle would have played out differently.

Something I have to point out about the Battle of Midway and anti-aircraft fire from the Japanese Navy, is how singularly ineffective it was. Only one SBD Dauntless was shot down that we know of by anti-aircraft fire during any of the attacks, although they might have gotten some of the other types and I haven't heard of it. But their Combat Air Patrols had been extremely effective. Also, the staggered attacks from both Midway and the carriers constantly prevented the Japanese Navy from being able to organize their second strike in addition to the IJN errors made. It really did all shake out in our favor.

Thanks a ton!

That was a very good video. I saw one at an air show 30 years ago, they had stairs set up so you could peek into the cockpit.

The AD-1 Skyraider was as big or bigger, single-seat and carried a heavier bomb load than the B-17 heavy bomber.

Did you know that they made a COD (Carrier Onboard Delivery) version that carried seven passengers. (would make a great private own aircraft don't you think?)

@@PaulP999 I didn't know that, awesome! And yeah that would make a really cool privately owned aircraft!!

i did not know this

Two things, TJ... 1 Could you pin your important comments so they appear first in the comment section? 2 I don't think it's well known internationally that George Bush Sr. was an Avenger pilot. When I tell the story to people then they are always surprised that Bush Sr. was a pilot that fought and was shot down in WW2. Love your stuff, TJ

A lot of international channels will list both, they'll say 100mph/160kmh, etc.

Off of the USS Hornet

The refusal of the bureau of ordinance to acknowledge and fix the torpedos problems is one of the greatest tragedies of the war. So many thousands of unnecessary deaths due to faulty equipment. Even worse nobody even really got in trouble for it. I would have put the people responsible for the whole mess in the Frontline of the units storming the beaches of Okinawa for that.

There's a very important point about those Avengers that he omits and one he gets wrong. First off is what he got wrong, the Avengers flying from Midway Island, six, five of which were shot down, weren't from some separate unit that was formed on the island or sent there, they were actually planes and crews from Torpedo Squadron 8 from the Hornet and as such the one plane that survived the battle with two crewmen still alive means that Ensign George Gay was not the sole survivor of Torpedo Squadron 8, that's been a long standing WW2 myth started by John Ford when he made the film of them taking off from the Hornet with none to return and actually perpetrated throughout the years by George Gay himself by always claiming to be the sole survivor of Torpedo Squadron 8, which he really shouldn't have done out of respect for his two squadron mates and what they'd gone through, George Gay was simply the sole survivor of Torpedo Squadron 8 that took off from the Hornet, here's the actual story about what happened. When the Hornet left the east coast from Norfolk it'd just received 6 new Avengers that were assigned to Torpedo Squadron 8 but being brand new planes there were some maintenance issues that had to be addressed that meant they wouldn't be ready for a couple of days, so it was decided to leave them and their crews behind and that when they were ready they'd just fly straight from the west coast to Midway and at their first opportunity would fly to the Hornet when it's position was verified, don't forget the task force was operating under radio silence in an attempt to ambush the Japanese that was known to be heading for Midway, the 6 Avengers were escorted by at least one PBY that flew lead to Midway, the way things worked out they never had a chance to go to the Hornet before the Japanese task force was located so they simply launched their attack from Midway itself, five of the six were shot down in the battle and without any Devistators from the Hornet having survived the battle the surviving Avenger had no one to lead it back to the Hornet so it limped back to Midway Island, their plane was so shot up that Admiral Nimitz called their making it back to Midway "the greatest feat in the history of Naval aviation". I can't remember both of their names but one of the crewmen either the pilot or the bombardier had the last name of Fernier (I only remember that because there's a family lives up the road from me with the same last name, and here's one for you, they're relations to Alice Cooper whose real last name is Fernier and used to spend summers with them in my hometown in Pennsylvania when he was a kid, just an additional fun fact for you), anyways sometime in the 1950's when George Gay's book "Sole Survivor" was published about his experiences Fernier and the other survivor from his plane were sitting in the back of an auditorium where Gay gave a press conference for the books release, when it was over a reporter who was walking out saw Fernier and the other guy sitting there in the back and when he ask who they were one of them said "We're the other two sole survivor's".

@@dukecraig2402 Wow. Thanks very much for the real His-story of torpedo squadron 8. It makes sense because these were brand new planes just getting deployed during the first year of the Pacific war against Japan. I can imagine that the United states were absolutely scrambling to get whatever they could out to the front lines against the(at that time)seemingly powerful Japanese naval forces.

The only sole survivor from the Hornet TBD's was LT George Gay, who was shot down, but eventually rescued.

@@dukecraig2402 the six Avengers were tasked to USS Hornet and VT-8, they had nothing to do with VT-6 and USS Enterprise. Otherwise, I like your write-up on the situation.

@@Jamesbrown-xi5ih Yea after writing it I edited it to say Hornet instead of Enterprise but I didn't get all of them, it's hard to do on a phone since you can only see a little bit of what you've written instead of everything at once, scrolling through I missed a couple, if you notice I'd already changed some to Hornet.

Thank you!!

That was the Mark 14 submarine torpedo you are talking about. It was sometime in late 1942 that the Government assigned Cal Tech to help improve the Mark 13 air launched torpedo. Cal Tech did many studies to determine the dynamics of how a torpedo reacted when entering the water. They launched dummy torpedoes off a dam in California with very clear water and used high speed cameras to film how the torpedoes interacted with surface of the water. Wikipedia has a whole page about it here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_13_torpedo

Thanks a ton!

Wow! That is very cool! Thanks for sharing :)

Mine too

I actually heard that it was worse than that. Though it could be embellished. I had heard in one story that on top of removing some organs, the Japanese commander had surgeons amputate limbs one at a time, but keep them alive so that they could remove more to eat later. They did this one at a time in front of all the other prisoners. The prisoners knew what was going on, but there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Wow, now know why Dad hated gooks so bad his entire life, was a radio man in newly formed night squadron of Avengers on Enterprise in late 44, ... bomb was dropped on his birthday while we geared up to invade Japan far as I know.

@@macmcgee5116 time to revolt.

@@erichvonmanstein6876 it's been a long time since I have heard the full details, so I could be wrong. The prisoners couldn't escape, and they were kept in a beaten/starved state. Too weak to really fight back.. So instead they tried taunting the guards, doing things to try and make the guards kill them instead of being eaten slowly.

I thought the outdated TBMs were pulled from service after Midway? Did you mean TBFs?

@@ggsmith48906 the TBD-1 Devastator was pulled from service after Midway, the TBF was designed and built by Grumman, but due to the demand for as many F6F Hellcats as could be built, they were instead often built by General Motors as the TBM. It's the same aircraft just built by a different company at a different Factory. Side note, the TBD Devastator gets a lot of bad press for its performance at Midway, but that's unfair considering its performance at the Battle of Coral Sea. And also to note that the Avenger didn't fare any better without fighter cover. It's just that the TBDs had the bad luck.

It's a wonderful day when I get comments like this! Thanks :)

@@TJ3 anytime ;)

My father was a TBM pilot on the USS Enterprise and a member of the first squadron to fly low level attack missions from an aircraft carrier. He was in Night Torpedo Squadron 90 and flew a rare daylight mission on Chichi Jima and destroyed a Kamikaze plane on the ground with bombs there and damaged a ship with rockets anchored in the harbor.

@@MrSuzuki1187 It's good to hear from someone whose pappy fought in WWII, especially in the Navy, especially as a pilot, especially flying a Grumman-designed plane. My pappy was Company Commander of B Co, 164th Engineer Combat Battalion. He fought in the European Theater. His two key engagements were the Bulge and Remagen. I was a Marine in the early-mid '60s. No combat, but lots of grunt training, many ships (all sunk for target practice, sunk for reefs, sold for scrap or given to foreign countries).

I'd definitely like to!

Yes please🙏

The Mark 14 of airplanes.

Agreed

turf war with the bean counters of the Navy. specifically the Bureau of Naval Ordinance. they knew better than the grunts. so well they didn't even want to spend the money to test their theories

fwiw, if I remember correctly the planes were made by two different manufacturers. There were variants that had a gun sticking out the rear underneath. And, yes, it had room for a 4th person. Sorry, memory not so good on it

Actually its pretty common knowledge

I've got some really really good Hellcat stuff coming in a few weeks

Yes

I could be wrong but, I believe that the frequency of some stories being repeated is because there are now so many RU-vid channels out there and stories keep getting rehashed. I have noticed several war stories being repeated over short periods of time lately. I also noticed this with reaction channels,. I enjoy watching movie and reaction channels from time to time and I often notice that the same songs and movies are done by different RU-vidrs all around the same times. I think it is just one of those things where a story/song/movie is out there.. someone finds it and uses it.. this brings its attention to others and they also use it. It dies down after a while and will probably do it all again in a few years.

@@macmcgee5116 Sounds reasonable to me. Although I am an old guy(81), I am fairly new to u-tube, having only retiring 2 years ago. The sheer size of it is staggering, and, of course, there would be duplications of topics. Thank you for your input. Have a good day.

@@williamromine5715 another thing is the fact that RU-vid tracks what you watch. If you watch videos about WWII aircraft, RU-vid will suggest other channels that have WWII aircraft videos and some of them will obviously have overlapping content.

@@macmcgee5116 I hadn't thought of that. I have such a variety of interests, it's no wonder I get so many suggested channels. The good thing is that once in a while, I find a really good gem to subscribe to. I'm an old fart(81), and only started looking at U-TUBE very recently. I'm not very computer literate, so I welcome the suggestions.