Hobby Master Archive

The new Douglas SBD-1 Dauntless was found to be unacceptable by the USN because they didn’t have self-sealing fuel tanks, no crew armor protection, poor fuel capacity limiting its range. The SBD-1 was disposed of in the usual way, sent to the USMC. The SBD-1 was the first mono- plane in Marine Corps service with Marine VMB-2 “Red Devils” being the first unit to receive them in late 1940. In July 1941 VMB-2 became VMSB-232. SBD-1 BuNo. 1597 entered service in 1940 and was withdrawn from use on March 15, 1944.