The most successful Allied dive bomber was the SBD Dauntless. By most accounts, the Dauntless was responsible for sinking more Japanese tonnage than by any other aircraft or by the combined efforts of the US submarine force during WWII. That is a truly amazing statistic. Much of that can be attributed to the fact that when the SBD sank a ship, it was usually a large one, such as an aircraft carrier. Doesn't take to many of those to really rack up the tonnage!

Despite its obsolescence, it was still on active duty against the enemy as late as 1944 on Bougainville in the Solomans and in the Phillipines. Its replacement, the SB2C was faster, more complicated, and really not as good a dive bombing platform as the easily maintained Dauntless.

Superscale offers three of them on this particular decal sheet, one SBD-3 and two SBD-5s.

The first plane on the sheet is an SBD-5 from VMSB-231. This particular plane is in the mid-war tricolor paint scheme. and carries a considerable mission tally on the side of the fuselage.

Next is an SBD-5 from VMSB-114. This one is in the earlier scheme of medium blue-grey over light grey. This aircraft is named 'Push Push'. Haven't a clue as to the significance of that! Now the instructions give the FS number of these colors as 36118 and 36440 respectively. Not sure if I completely agree with those color call outs, especially the 36118 which is a true grey. I'd go with what some of the aftermarket paint makers have produced for this color.

The final aircraft is from VS-2. This SBD-3 is in the same colors as the one above and also has the very early markings for a pre-Midway plane with the red/white tail stripes and the red dot in the national insignia. My guess is that it is a plane that participated at Coral Sea.

As with the other new releases from Superscale, this one is in perfect register and crisply printed.  The image above has been darkened to show the white markings. 

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