The best US Navy planes of the second world war

The potency of the US Navy’s air power increased at a bewildering rate during the second world war.

From hair-raising early exploits against a superior opponent, ever more capable military aircraft types clawed supremacy away from the Japanese Navy’s aircraft and played a massive part in the eventual victory over Imperial Japan. It is striking both how few different types the US Navy operated during the war, particularly from carriers, and how nearly all of them were either totally brilliant or just awful. The following ten are the very best, and include at least one type that can be truly described as a war-winning weapon in its own right.

10: Martin PBM Mariner

Better than the famous Catalina in every regard (except, initially at least, reliability) the Mariner is fairly obscure. Despite being the second most numerous flying boat (a type of seaplane that can operate from water on its hull) ever, the PBM deserves more recognition for it was an excellent flying boat that enjoyed lengthy service.

One of several large aircraft to be tested by a piloted scale model (powered by two Chevrolet car engines), the first PBM flew with a flat tail but concerns led to the tail being given the same tilt upwards as the inner wing and resulted in the aircraft’s distinctive inward canted tailfins.

Entering service in September 1940 the Mariner, whilst generally successful, was considered somewhat underpowered and control in the event of an engine failure was marginal. A later switch to the R-2800 engine solved that issue but the change came about late in the war and the Wright R-2600s fitted to earlier aircraft were neither powerful nor reliable enough.

PBMs sank at least ten U-boats and were widely used in the Pacific. The aircraft was extremely well-armed, with nose, tail and dorsal turrets mounting two .50-cal machine guns apiece and a single hand-held weapon in each beam position. Later examples could carry 8000 lb (3636kg) of bombs or depth charges, double that of the PBY.

9: Lockheed PV-1 Ventura

Being essentially a medium bomber, the Ventura was able to carry depth charges, mines, a torpedo or regular bombs and could attack shore installations and land targets just as effectively as enemy shipping. It was also one of the first US aircraft to regularly carry radar and Venturas often acted as ‘lead-ships’ for non-radar equipped Liberator units.

The most surprising usage it was put to was as a night fighter. The US Marine Corps, always at the bottom of the chain when it came to aircraft procurement, was casting around for a suitable radar-equipped night fighter. The only remotely suitable aircraft available was the PV-1 and it went into action as the Marines’ first radar-equipped aircraft.

Despite being a naval offshoot of a bomber with relatively limited performance, the Ventura did surprisingly well, claiming its first victory, over a Mitsubishi G4M bomber, in the early hours of 13 November 1943. Subsequently, an improved variant with longer-range, the PV-2 Harpoon, was developed towards the end of the war.

The Ventura’s heroic actions included the destruction of German U-boats. It was directly involved in the destruction of at least eight submarines: I-I65, U-604, U-615, 2 x Midgets, U-174, U-761 and U-279. The US Navy still uses many long-range land-based patrol aircraft today in the form of the Orion and Poseidon, and the Ventura was the granddaddy of them all.

8. Curtiss SB2C Helldiver

The Helldiver was an aircraft that was unpopular, unpleasant and (initially at least) dangerous, yet delivered an outstanding service record. Widely criticised for its flying characteristics, the SB2C was nonetheless a spectacularly successful anti-shipping aircraft and (allegedly) accounted for a greater tonnage of enemy shipping sunk than any other US aircraft.

First flown in 1940, the SB2C was supposed to replace Douglas’s SBD Dauntless in the dive bomber role. Problems arose from the very beginning: the prototype exhibited structural weaknesses, poor handling, directional instability, and stall characteristics, pretty much all of which were derived from its limited dimensions, particularly its abbreviated fuselage length – dictated by the size of Essex class carrier deck lifts. The aircraft was simply too small for its weight, and its engines had problems.

However, the plane evolved. Later models massively improved handling and dive accuracy, especially after the introduction of the SB2C-3 which featured a more powerful Twin-Cyclone engine. During the last two years of the war Helldivers sunk over 300 Japanese ships (including, in concert with torpedo bombers, the giant battleships Yamato and Musashi) and attacked countless targets on shore.

Helldivers officially accounted for 44 Japanese fighters shot down and it cannot be denied that the Helldiver was tough: an abrupt pull out in a dive-bombing attack could lead to a 13G load on the airframe which the SB2C could, and did, absorb.

7: Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateer

The USN used many B-24 Liberators with great success for long-range patrol and anti-submarine warfare, designating them the PB4Y. The PB4Y-2 Privateer represented the ultimate Naval Liberator model: stretched, improved and optimised for maritime requirements.

The finest land-based long-range maritime aircraft of the war, the Privateer was instantly distinguishable from its Liberator ancestors by its truly enormous single tailfin in place of the much more modest twin tails of the earlier aircraft and greatly improved its handling.

The first units became operational during late 1944 and arrived in theatre only during early 1945. The Privateer possessed a versatile electronic suite (by 1940s standards anyway) that could be tailored to suit a variety of given missions. Thus Privateers acted as anti-shipping search and destroy units, airborne communication platforms, radar and radio-station hunter-killers, weather reconnaissance planes, or search and rescue aircraft to find downed airmen with their radio direction finders.

Privateers also managed to make history by becoming the first aircraft to take a fully automated guided missile into action in the form of the ASM-N-2 ‘Bat’ radar-guided glide bomb. Several ships were sunk by Privateers with this revolutionary weapon and several others put out of action, most notably the coastal defence ship Akugi.

6: Grumman F6F Hellcat

The Hellcat was the most competent carrier fighter of the war, equal or superior to virtually every enemy it faced and possessing none of the handling foibles of its great rival, the Corsair. On the other hand, although powered by the same engine, the Hellcat could never match the outright speed of the Vought aircraft.

The Hellcat was a decidedly large aircraft and no one would call it pretty but it  shot down more enemy aircraft than any other naval aircraft in history. Nonetheless, the F6F’s claimed victory-to-loss ratio of 19 to 1 (5156 kills against 270 losses), while definitely (and innocently) inflated, is undeniably impressive.

The Hellcats’ greatest moment was the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, the largest carrier battle in history, when US carrier aircraft destroyed around 750 Japanese aircraft for the loss of less than two dozen Hellcats.

The F6F was the sole US fighter type involved in this action, which destroyed 90% of the aircraft available to Japanese carrier air groups in just two days and effectively destroyed the Japanese Navy’s ability to operate aircraft at sea. The Hellcat was available in numbers exactly when it was needed and remains inextricably linked with the next aircraft on this list.

5. Chance Vought F4U Corsair

The first American single-engine fighter to exceed 400mph ended up becoming the last piston-engine fighter to score an air-to-air victory (in 1969) but had it not been for the exigencies of war, likely, the F4U would never have served from a carrier deck at all. It first flew in 1940 and, although possessed of excellent performance, the Navy wanted changes.

The early F4U passed its carrier trials but was tacitly admitted to be a handful.

It is often stated that the Corsair failed its carrier qualification tests and that it took the British Fleet Air Arm to develop landing techniques for it but this is a myth. Three USN units had carrier-qualified before the FAA even started to receive Corsairs.

Nonetheless, the fact that the F4U was acknowledged to be a difficult aircraft to land on a carrier, particularly when compared to the docile Hellcat, undoubtedly contributed to the decision, taken to simplify logistics of spare parts supply, to equip land-based Marine-corps units with Corsairs and operate Hellcats from carriers.

The Corsair’s official tally is 2140 aerial victories against 189 combat losses, a ratio of 11.3 to 1. This number was an overestimate but its record in air combat was astoundingly good. Although the Hellcat shot down more aircraft and was described by many pilots as a superior dogfighter, the Corsair rates a higher spot as it was replacing Hellcats by 1945.

4: Grumman TBF Avenger

A myth surrounds the name ‘Avenger’ in which the name is said to have been chosen because the TBF was going to avenge Pearl Harbor. In reality, the name had already been picked two months before the attack but the TBF was the first new American aircraft to enter service after the US entry into the war.

Despite looking about as sleek as a washing machine and being the heaviest single-engine aircraft of the entire war, and being saddled with the nickname ‘Turkey’, the chunky TBF was surprisingly sprightly in the air (though could never be described as agile) and proved extremely effective.

Its combat record speaks for itself, kicking off with the destruction of the battleship Hiei in November 1942 and following it up with numerous other vessels culminating in the shared destruction, in concert with the Helldiver, of the super-battleships Yamato and Musashi.

Its most impressive victim with this weapon was the Japanese cargo submarine I-52, which was carrying, amongst other things, over two tons of gold and three tons of opium to Germany and intending to return with various high-value items such as bombsights, aircraft components, and, worryingly, 800kg of uranium oxide.

3: Grumman F4F Wildcat

Despite losing out to the Brewster F2A Buffalo to be the US Navy’s first carrier-borne monoplane fighter, the pugnacious Wildcat became the finest carrier fighter of its generation and essentially won the air war over the Pacific whereas the poor old Buffalo was consigned to obscurity and inclusion in many ‘world’s worst aircraft’ books and articles.  

Never particularly fast, the F4F was manoeuvrable (though not in the same league as the A6M Zero, its primary opponent), well-armed, immensely strong and a profoundly good deck landing aircraft and this, as it turned out, was what the Allies desperately required.

The F4F provided a fighter presence throughout all the Navy actions for the first year and a half of the conflict when the truly decisive battles of the Pacific war (Midway, Guadalcanal, Santa Cruz etc) were fought when the Imperial Japanese Navy was at the peak of its power and that the ultimate outcome of the conflict was less certain.

Against the Zero the Wildcat was at a distinct disadvantage, on paper at least, being slower, less manoeuvrable and (to some extent) outgunned by the Japanese aircraft. It more than made up for these deficiencies with the superior tactics employed by the US aviators, aided massively by their reliable radio equipment, and its incredible toughness.

2: Consolidated PBY Catalina

The ‘big fat PBY’ was a sight that meant the difference between life and death for thousands of downed aircrew and shipwrecked sailors. It is therefore one of very few combat aircraft that may have directly saved more people during the war than it killed, though it’s impossible to know for sure.

And that’s even before you take into account its many years of firefighting service postwar. It was, by virtually any standard you care to apply (apart from maximum speed), the most successful flying boat of the Second World War and arguably in all aviation history. 

As well as being the foremost Allied air-sea rescue aircraft of the conflict (in which role it was invariably referred to as ‘Dumbo’). It was second only to the Liberator (coincidentally designed by the same man: Isaac M Laddon), and tied with the Avenger, as a submarine-destroying aircraft and thus demonstrably helped keep the critical merchant convoys sailing to the UK.

Its endurance made it an outstanding maritime patrol platform, convoy escort and long-range reconnaissance asset. It performed spectacular and highly effective low-level nocturnal interdiction, resulting in the sinking of thousands of tons of Japanese shipping. One of the most important aircraft of the war, the Catalina was built in greater numbers than any other flying boat in history.

1: Douglas SBD Dauntless

A good contender for the single most genuinely decisive combat aircraft type in history, the Dauntless delivered the killer blow at the Battle of Midway, a blow from which the Imperial Japanese Navy never recovered and which marked the turning point of the Pacific War.

Designed by the brilliant Ed Heinemann, the SBD was originally a Northrop aircraft, being an improved version of Northrop’s BT-1, by the time an improved version appeared Northrop had become the El-Segundo division of Douglas so the BT became the SBD, standing for Scout Bomber Douglas, though crews would joke it stood for Slow But Deadly.