Forgotten Plane From A Forgotten Campaign: Vultee A-31 Vengeance 

A aircraft mystery in Western Australia in 1944 involved a Vultee Vengeance A27-295 which crashed about 200 miles east of Perth. The aircraft was low on fuel in low cloud and the pilot told his gunner to bail out. He then bailed out too. The pilot walked to a farmhouse and was rescued. The gunner has never been found. The crash site was investigated and there was no sign of him. His parachute was gone and despite an intensive search, to this day, no trace has ever been found. It was confirmed by ground crew that he was in the aircraft when it took off.

My wife's uncle spent some of the late war in the back seat of an RAAF Vengeance for communications and training flights. He told me that he served no useful purpose that couldn't have been equally met by sand bag ballast. Apparently the unloaded Vengeance with an empty rear seat had a tendency to become unrecoverable in a steep dive due to the forward shift of the centre of gravity. That was never put to the test during his flights and, as he put it, the war ended before he had the opportunity to be shot at.

Props for name-checking Peter C Smith and his definitive book on the Vengeance!

The last intact and complete example of the Vengeance is in a private museum here in Australia. The type did some solid work for the Royal Australian Air Force during the war, garnering a reputation for high accuracy at dive bombing. Records in Australia show that It was ultimately pulled from combat at the insistence of U.S. commanders, who both thought it would require too many supporting aircraft to operate in heavier combat and preferred the use of medium and heavy bombers.

My dad was present at the attack on Pearl Harbor, by his own description: a dive bomber pilot waiting for his ship and without a plane to fight in, forced to be but a spectator and later, a blood donor. He described the SBD as "his plane" and described the SB2C Helldiver as one that was "okay" once the "brasshats" listened to the pilots and fixed it. He also flew in Korea, where he said that dive bombing had become almost obsolete and everybody but the "assholes" in Washington seemed t know it. :)

I gotta wonder how it would've been if the US hadn't stalled delivery to GB... Imagine the Brits having actual large-scale success with dive-bombing ships and other small targets early in the war. The whole conflict could've looked vastly different.

I remember back in the late 60s or early 70s that I believe the old AirClassics magazine had an article where 6 airframes had been found in Tennesee. Maybe these were around the old Vultee facility.

Unloved warbird?- As a Vultee, it can come get a hug from me, as Vultee made cool, slightly eccentric (like in having character) stuff ❤❤❤

There is a crashed Vaultee Vengence site in a fairly remote area in Western Australia. The occasional visitor can read the tragic story on the memorial to its crew.

One of my favorite aircraft. I built the Frog kit and the Guillow’s model.

Trainers may not be sexy, but they are loved: the Texan to which you refer, for example (although I know it as the Harvard). I happened to be there for the last flight of the South African Air Force Harvard trainers - 150 of them. There were all kinds of fans there, among them retired Harvard mechanics, pilots and collectors from all over the world. After landing the aircraft formed up on the apron, their radials thrumming, and switched off simultaneously. There wasn't a dry eye for miles.

The A-31 was later redesigned into the A-35, which did away with the zero incidence wing (and the resulting tail- low flying attitude) since it turned out that very little vertical dive bombing was being done anyway. The A-35 added a few more guns too. The Vengeance was actually a very good dive bomber, but dive bombers were going out of fashion by then. Many of the pilots who flew them in India and Burma liked them, they were rugged and flew well and were much faster than a Stuka.

When I was a kid, I used to have the Red Randall books. In one of them, Red Randall and his buddy, Jimmy Joyce, are asked with ferrying a Vultee airplane to the Philippines, IIRC. The book never said what type it was, but it was a two crew airplane; I remember that Red and Jimmy drew straws to determine who would fly it and who would sit in the aft cockpit. It was probably the A-31 that they had in mind, as it fits the description in the book I read long ago. It's nice to finally put a "face" to the airplane featured in the book. Thank you!

Thanks very much for covering the Vengeance! It’s one of my favorite planes of all time!❤

My aunt Maxie worked at the Vultee plant in Nashville Tennessee during WW2. As a parts runner she worked on skates due to the plant being so big.

Thanks for your acknowledgment of the vengeance. My grandfather was a vengeance pilot in the royal Australian Air Force. Unfortunately I never got to meet him however I read his log books and he mentions attacks against Japanese positions in PNG and strafing runs on Japanese supply barges.

Thanks for covering this aircraft. My interest was started by a Frog 1/72 model I made when I was about 9 or 10 !969/70 time.

I did enjoy the content. Thanks for showcasing this forgotten aircraft. It might have been interesting if it had been given to the US Marines in the beginning of the war.

P-51 was the Johnny came lately…for the Pacific-USAAF P-38.

I know more about the A-31/A-35 than I did before, but the unique wing shape of the A-31 made it unmistakable. The A-31 is one of my cards in a reproduction deck of WW2 aircraft recognition playing cards. The dive bomber came of age and went obsolete during the Thirties. At the time a fighter could only carry a small bomb load and not carry it far. Bive bomber speeds were competitive right up to 1940 with fighters--the US Navy SBD Dauntless had a third mission of intercepting enemy torpedo bombers (there were missions of scouting, dive bombing, and laying smoke screens). The level bomber lacked bombing accuracy. The dive bomber could hit small targets with precision, was able to hit moving targets, and carried a heavier bomb load than did the fighter. Light bombers, "attack aircraft" and medium bombers had more range and could carry a heavier bomb load but if you were trying to hit "the broad side of the barn" or even somewhere on the roof, level bombing conducted from above the altitude of anti-aircraft fire. Dive bombers proved effective due to their ability to put bombs where they were needed. Shortcomings of the dive bomber were a need for fighter escort and late-war fighter bombers had more range, carried a heavier bomb load, could self-escort on combat missions, and were almost as accurate as the dive bomber. The late-war AD-1 "attack bomber" combined torpedo bombing with level bombing and dive bombing to carrier platforms, but WW2 ended before the Skyraider was available in large numbers. Dive bombers were not liked when a medium bomber had longer legs, better defensive firepower, bigger bomb load, and could be configured for specialized anti-shipping missions and attacking enemy airfields -- think "B-25 Mitchell." Fighter-bombers replaced the land-based dive bomber. Aircraft carrier flight decks made a single engine bomb truck desirable. I imagine the War Department of 1942 as a 500-pound retarded gorilla gibbering "I want planes!" Seizing anything that had wings was a panic reaction. The US Army Air Force didn't really want dive bombers. Close air support (CAS) was just not the USAAF's thing. Interdiction missions behind the enemy's front line was. Skip bombing proved more effective than torpedo bombing in the Pacific due to flawed American torpedoes. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skip_bombing Anyway, the US War Department grabbed all the resources it could find--much like a ravenous wolf gulping down fresh sheep. If the B-29 was available in quantity, Hap Arnold would have equipped his USAAF with nothing but B-29 bombers and bombed from high altitude. It was only after the failed strategic bombing offensives of 1942 and 1943 that the USAAF figured out how poorly the self-protected bomber fared against enemy resistance. The Vultee Vengeance was not the only dive bomber the USAAF had--the A-24 Dauntless and A-25 Helldiver were taken into air force service if for no other reason than to deny the Navy and Marine Corps of dive bombers. I keep saying that politics is 90% of weapon procurement, 9% is logistics and only 1% or less is weapon performance. The Vengeance was taken into USAAF service for political and logistical reasons. The A-31 was available and the USAAF had to beef up its warplane numbers even when it wasn't the plane the Army wanted. Besides, keeping planes out of the hands of the REAL USAAF enemies (the Navy and Marines) was more important than winning the war. It wouldn't do to allow the Navy to have more planes than the USAAF.

Regarding your preamble, I’d say that the Stuka is THE iconic aircraft of WWII in that anyone who knows the slightest bit about aviation will instantly recognize it. When I was young I couldn’t tell a spitfire from a hurricane, but I sure knew what that bent wing bird with the spatted undercart was.

No one thinks of the P-51 Mustang in the Pacific. Mustangs in Europe. Wildcats and Corsairs in the Pacific.

evasive action? Run around in the cockpit! Better than the Brewster Buccaneer/Bermuda used for ASW/SAR in the West Indies. The biplane Helldiver was used by Marine observation squadron in Samoa, called Cleveland in British service. In Borneo the RAAF used the Vengeance pretty much perfectly - the "minor role" assigned by the US. My grandfather built airstrips there and in many other places from Timor to Singapore which are now international airports!

Nice video especially the usage of readable maps. Cheers

I did enjoy the video, and I did learn something, so I liked it, and now, I'm commenting.

I had read about Madagascar but only in a travel book about, obviously, travel in Madagascar and it briefly mentioned wartime Madagascar.

A beautiful aircraft, as were many of the era.

The Australian RAAF used the Vengeance in New Guinea from the Nadzab airdrome in late 1943 and early 1944. US General Kenny did not think they were an efficient use of the limited airdrome parking space,

What about the Indians? Two squadrons of the Indian Air Force (IAF) (No. 7 and No. 8) saw combat.

Very interesting video. I had never heard of this aircraft, but I am not well versed in the Burma Campaign.

As always, super-interesting topic and great presentation! I also enjoyed the topical caricatures. Well done, I definitely learned a lot! PS: I actually like the T-6 and T-8, they did a very important job, albeit not being as sexy as your Mustangs or Spitfires, and if you are, like me, interested in RC models and would like a scale warbird without all the gun/bombs -baggage, but capable of aerobatics, a wartime trainer is a neat alternative!

My grandfather worked at Vultee in I believe Downey during WW2 and on the Vengence I was told and I have a couple of group photos of team he was with.

About 1970 I built a Paul K Guillow stick and tissue kit of a Vengeance! I taped a string to the wing and twirled it around in a 15 foot arc! The tape let go and it crashed into the fence perfectly shearing off the wings. I took the wings and designed and built my own stick and tissue model. NOPE that didn't work!!!

Good video, but I was waiting the whole time for a description of the Madagascar campaign.

Very noticeable and eye-catching is the modern feature of the square-tipped wings and empennage. Also, note-worthy is there was no necessity for a stand-off bomb-drop 'trapeze', a-la Ju87 Stuka.

Chemical weapon use for the Burma Campaign was to combat the Malaria carrying mosquitos -who as far as I'm aware were not a party to the chemical warfare treaties that officially banned chemical weapons and war gases. Whether the A 31 was the actual rype used in theatre for chemical spraying of Deet I don't know but I can tell you as my father served in theatre the Monsoon didn't curtail operation in 1944 - he having his 21st brithday in July 1944 standing in a slit trench almost chest deep in rain water.

There was a dive bomber version of the mustang used in the CBI theater called the A-36 Apache powered by an Allison engine and use quite successfully, but not many people remember it or even talk about it

Glad it finally got to show its stuff in Burma!!

TO THE NARRATOR: Nice piece, as usual. But PLEASE: It’s not “Vitch-ee” France, but VEE-SHEE, with almost equal stress on the two syllables. I know you’re not a linguist, as I am. But this is important, man!

I came to know of this plane’s existence only in 1962 by coming upon a real gem for the magazine collector I am : a May 1944 issue of the American 🇺🇸 « Flying » magazine. It was not even a picture but a tiny drawing in an ad for plane scale models ! I wondered for years why the Vengeance wasn’t mentioned anywhere else.

I really like that plane, honestly one of my favourite planes. It is visually pragmatic and I like that.

I've always thought the vengeance was a great looking airplane. I like the vultee fighter too.

Angle of incidence: TY for explaining that!! (btw, "Larmay duh lair" said quickly; my high school French still works...) Always had a soft spot for Vultee. OMG, the Toyota Destroyer!!!!

When you listed the 'pacific' aircraft - I never think P51! (more over europe) - but the F4U corsair... anyway, love the Vengeance, build the 1/48 dora model of one, wonderful.. my grandfather was in PNG and was based at a airfield that flew them (he was a base Dr)

Is this some kind of wildcat/ helldiver love child?? Never heard of it! Thanks for the video!

MadaGasCar being renamed do MadanEvCar sometime soon.

Great video! I gotta admit, I’ve never heard of the beast. I mean who could forget a wing like that?

Until seeing this, I'd only heard it described as the Vulture!

I definitely learned something, actually a lot of things about the Vultee Vengeance. It seems like it was good for its type, but military wanted a different type.

Yes-the was an example,-in the old "Camden-Air-Museum"-in N.S.W.-Aust.-I used to sit in it as a kid,-in the 60's--the museums long gone,--but I hope it is in "private"hands"-as any "officials"-would soon scrap it,-as they do to anything else,-they can get their mits on !!

Yup. The name was the best thing about it. While the Dauntless was considered old at the onset of the war, it was the tool that defeated the Japanese navy at Midway. If the Vengeance had been the tool of choice, then our guys would've figured out a tactic to make it work. But I'm glad we had the Dauntless.

The P-51 Mustang was more the Europe than the Pacific. However, the fighters of note in said Pacific was the F6F Hellcat and the F4U Corsair for the US.

Nice1

Can’t wait to finish this vid

Neither the USAAF or RAF liked using dive bombers. Preferring two and four engine bombers. Whereas the US Navy and Royal Navy loved their dive bombers

Amazing video. Funny I watch lots of WW2 stuff. I never heard of this plane...well I do have CRS.. so ?

Australia, and other areas, were referred to as self governing dominions rather than Colonies in the British Empire of WWII. There was actually considerable disagreement between the Australian government and the British government over the allocation of high performance combat aircraft to the Pacific, especially before 1942, with the eventual supply of 400 Vengeance through Lend lease one of the compromises agreed.

The AT-6 Texan/Harvard is a _very_ well-known aircraft and can be found at any airshow with a warbird presence.

The programme title was Lend Lease/ Reverse Lend Lease. Every piece of USA manufactured equipment was paid for before leaving any US port. The payments were in currency, precious metals or land/base usage.

I see the outer wing panels were swept forward to correct a center of gravity issue. Messerschmitt swept the outer wings of the Me 262 back for a similar reason. As for the angle of incidence, in the Airframes and Powerplants classes I attended, the instructor taught, angle of attack changes but angle of incidence never does. Pointing out that the latter can change with the F8 Crusader it was pointed out that what's important is what the FAA says. But I do have a question. How did the A-31 measure up to the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver. I heard the British were offered that dive bomber and rejected it. I am partial to the SBD Dauntless, perhaps because it was designed by Ed Heinemann, who is also responsible for the A-4 Skyhawk, AKA Scooter which I worked on in the Navy. .

I saw a Vultees Vengeance aircraft still in WWII RAAF livery at a private museum located at Camden Airfield, outskirts of Sydney NSW in the early 70's. It was in an old WWII hangar full of many types of mostly RAAF & RAN aircraft and bits and pieces. The museum I believe is closed and has now moved to another location some place nearby. I'm sure that aircraft is still in existence with the other aircraft, including from memory a Fairy Gannet and a Bristol Beaufighter plus others.

Thanks! I had heard of the A-31/35, but didn't know its specs. Good video! My personal favorite of the lesser known planes is the A-20 Havoc. A great plane in most regards, yet not many people have heard of it.

Corsair, wild cat, hell cat, lighting, the big jug thunderbolt, spitfire, mosquito, me109, me262, they are so many and every one easy to make out I think the hardest to tell apart are the us navy plans. The hardest I think are the wildcat and the hellcat. The difference is many in the size but you can't see that in film and I have yet to see them side by side in any.

Question - did anyone try to make a fighter tailored to escort carriers? I know the Wildcat was developed with greater power and it’s undercarriage was well suited to CVE’s but I was wondering if anyone tried to use say the R2600 to make something lighter than the Hellcat and Corsair. (I assume the Bearcat would have been excellent as a CVE fighter but too late for WW2).

I grew up in Allentown Pa and in the 1980's I worked on Vultee Street named for that very plain. It was a taxi way for completed aircraft to Queen City airport in Allentown. The Vultee plant became part of Mack Truck after war. Note from what information I have, it took to long to build the plant, and unfortunately no aircraft flew out of it... A real boondoggle and waste of money which benefited none other than Mack Truck corporation later...

The Brazilian Air Force received several of them from the USA, and they were used to patrol the Brazilian sea coast, flying mostly against German and Italian submarines

I could tell by how conventional the design looked that it was probably a pretty good airplane. Conventional is conventional for a reason. Sure drastically unconventional looking planes like the F-4U Corsair and P-38 come along and are game changers. but often, the new thing doesn’t work as well as thought, or a lot of pilots die figuring out it’s new quirks.

Where is the link to the book?

It took 6 months to take over Madagascar, thank you, these little operations are always ignored.

Very effective in Burma, e.g. 84 Squadron RAF.

The plane flying under the bridge is a Hawker Hurricane. Why show this?

16:08 Australia was NOT a colony , it was a dominion until 9th October 1942, when we became fully self governing , SOME of the states that made up the Commonwealth were former colonies, some were provinces… why does this matter same reason any US citizen would be offended by the US being called a Colony.

Who's job was it not to forget all this ?

It needs to be pointed out that there was a strong bias against air-cooled engines in England, they were thought to be inferior to water cooled engines. The FW190 was a rather rude awakening for the English in this regard.

So many of the lesser known aircraft did not get the upgrades and modifications needed by most planes to achieve the "great" status afforded to their contemporaries.

"an unloved performer" .. sounds like me .. :( .. everyone go "Awwwwww.." LOL Did I see a massive cannon in the wing of the A-31 with a tarp over the missing engine compartment ? Looked 30mm ?

The Vengeance was a fine looking aircraft, regardless of its usefulness.

Why p-51 and not the wildcat or hellcat for Pacific Or even the p-38

'Vee-She'

Some very upset people in this comment section. Overall, I give you 8 out of 10. And an extra point because I have never heard of this plane before.

Ironic names? The 1990's Mitsbishi 'Carisma' - the one thing it was completely & utterly devoid of!

The USAAF was opposed to dedicated ground attack aircraft. Thus no dive-bombers. The RAF was equally opposed ro tactical aircraft. Thus the use of interceptors in the tactical role.

TY-Lots of non-US battles in that region, likely why it's so obscure.

Hi Sandman

If the Japanese had used WMDs then the allies needed to be prepared to react in kind.

Why do you treat the A-31/35 as a potential competitor to the Dauntless? The "A" designation is USAAC/USAAF nomenclature, not USN. You also say nothing about carrier capability. Isn't it more likely that, rather than being surplus to the Dauntless and Helldiver, the Vengeance was the victim of USAAF's known coolness to dedicated dive bombers, having only ordered one, the A-36, in any numbers, and ultimately relying on fighter-bombers to perform the mission.

P51 was mostly a European theater plane, not a Pacific theater plane

When I think about the Pacific campaigns in WWII I think of the wildcats and hellcats of the US Navy.

Oh my, I didn't know the the Vultee was an American plane!

The T6 found a second life as a Japanese Zero stand in for may WW2 movies.

So even though hated- not one lost in combat?

A third of these produced served with the R.A.A.F.

Many “famous” battles of WW2 are due to the quirk or luck of a particular unit having a reporter attached or a general or admiral with a penchant of courting the press vs his peers just getting on with the job. Burma, the Russian eastern front, the Northern Pacific, the Slavic states, the Middle East / Persia, New Guinea, air strikes in Norway, etc are all examples of important battles which go unrecognised.

Just finished James Holland Burma ‘44. Mentions the Vengeance a bit and always in positive terms. As for it being considered on a par with the Battle!! What moron came to that conclusion? Would have been interesting if there had been a navalised version. The FAA could have done with it although Stringbags could dive bomb and were quite good at it.

or beer = liquid bread ))))

When I think of WWI. I think of the first true fighter aircraft, the Eindecker, along with the Camel, and the Spad.

If you want to talk about the Texan I will listen & observe.

It seems to me that the military brass who may or may not be in direct contact with the enemy rarely listen to the soldiers, airmen and sailors who are actually doing the fighting. Plus it often seems that the American top military brass were too arrogant to listen to advice from their allies who had been fighting the Axis powers for months if not years.

I always wondered, if the Invasion of Poland was the red line that caused Britain and France to declare war on Germany, why did they not declare war on the Soviet Union for also invading Poland?

I thought this video was about an airplane