Ordering the Grumman TBF ‘off the drawing board’ was a risk, but — in spite of a number of not insignificant teething troubles — it paid off
DATABASE
TBF-1C Avengers of US Navy torpedo squadron VT-32, operating from the USS Langley (CVL 27), over the waters off Oahu on 16 January 1944. US NAVY
•Ordered straight off the drawing board
● Operations in the Pacific — and elsewhere
● „A gentleman’s aircraft” from the cockpit
DEVELOPMENT
A common misconception about the Grumman torpedo bomber known as the Avenger is that it was named as a response to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In fact, it received its name some two months before the strike on the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet base.
There is, however, no question of the aircraft’s vital role in turning the tide of the Pacific war from the shock reverses in 1941 to the eventual defeat of Japan. Furthermore, the Avenger was an important weapon in the pivotal Battle of the Atlantic, and continued to serve in new roles until well into the 1950s. The type’s beginnings were inauspicious, with a disastrous combat debut at the Battle of Midway.
Before long, however, it proved itself to be one of the most potent and effective carrier-borne aircraft of the Second World War.
