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CURTISS SBC HELLDIVER
Operational History

The Navy took deliveries of the new aircraft in mid-1937 with the first batch of carrier-based aircraft going to U.S.S. Yorktown, but time and technology caught up to the advanced biplane. It was relegated to hack duties and service as an advanced trainer for training units in Florida. The last aircraft was struck from the Navy roster in October 1944.


A Curtiss SBC-4 Helldiver of U.S. Marine Corps observation squadron VMO-151 in 1941.
[Source: U.S. Navy]

Foreign interest for the concept of a dive bomber led to orders abroad. 174 SBC-4s were built including 50 SBC-4s that were delivered to the French Navy. Five of the French order were delivered to the British Royal Air Force who named them the Curtiss Cleveland Mk.I.

The SBC Helldiver was not destined to have a long U.S. service life, but its impact was felt as the type made a lasting contribution by serving as the key platform in developing dive bombing tactics and honing aircrew skills crucial to winning the war in the Pacific.

French SBC-4s
The 50 SBC-4s delivered to France were actually aircraft already in service with the United States Navy. On June 6, 1940, Naval reservists received orders to immediately fly 50 SBC-4s to the Curtiss factory at Buffalo, New York. At Buffalo, a Bureau of Aeronautics inspector informed the pilots their aircraft were to be flown to Halifax, Nova Scotia to be loaded aboard the French aircraft carrier Béarn. From Buffalo to Halifax, the reserve pilots were officially employees of Curtiss. Curtiss paid each pilot $250 plus return rail fare from Halifax to Buffalo. All navy insignia was removed from their uniforms or taped over. Upon return to Buffalo, the pilots went back on navy orders for return to their home bases.

Curtiss employees worked overtime to remove and replace all gear and instruments marked Buareo, Buships or Buord. The navy .30 in machine guns were replaced with .50 in guns and the aircraft were repainted in camouflage colors with the French tricolor on the rudders. The hasty conversion did not allow time for adequate checkout of replacement instruments. Weather deteriorated with rain and fog over most of the route from Buffalo to Halifax. The Bureau of Aeronautics inspector temporarily halted flights after one of the first pilots was killed in a crash between Buffalo and Albany.

When the weather improved, sections of three aircraft were dispatched from Buffalo to Burlington, Vermont, then over the White Mountains (New Hampshire) to Augusta, Maine, and then to Houlton, Maine. After landing at Houlton, the aircraft were towed down a road across the Canadian border for takeoff from a New Brunswick farm pasture to avoid legal implications of flying over the border. The surviving 49 aircraft flew over the Bay of Fundy and 44 of them were loaded aboard Béarn at Dartmouth, Nova Scotia together with 21 P-36 Hawk fighters and 25 Stinson 105s for the French Armée de l'Air and five Brewster Buffalos for Belgium. France surrendered while Béarn was crossing the Atlantic; she turned south to Martinique, where the SBC-4s corroded in the humid Caribbean climate while waiting on a hillside near Fort-de-France. The five SBC-4s remaining in Canada when France surrendered were taken over by the United Kingdom and were used as ground-instructional airframes.

Source(s):
Wikipedia
Bowers, Peter M. Curtiss Aircraft, 1907-1947. London: Putnam & Company, 1979.
Swanborough, Gordon and Peter M. Bowers. United States Navy Aircraft since 1911. London: Putnam, 1976.
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