Douglas TBD Devastator
The Douglas TBD Devastator was the U.S. Navy's first all-metal monoplane torpedo bomber, entering fleet service in 1937 as the most modern carrier aircraft of its day. By 1942 it was outclassed: its squadrons helped sink the light carrier Shōhō at the Coral Sea, but at Midway 35 of the 41 Devastators sent against the Japanese carriers were shot down and their torpedoes scored no hits. Withdrawn from front-line service and replaced by the Grumman TBF Avenger, the type was gone by the end of 1944, and no complete example survives.
Why It Mattered
The Devastator was a genuine leap forward when it reached the fleet in 1937: the U.S. Navy's first all-metal monoplane carrier aircraft, with an enclosed cockpit and hydraulically folding wings, developed to replace the biplane torpedo bombers then in service. Five years later, rapid wartime progress had left it slow and outclassed, yet it was still the Navy's most available torpedo bomber when the Pacific war began. Its squadrons fought the Navy's first carrier battles of that war, and at Midway their losses fixed the type's reputation. The aircraft deserves to be remembered for both: the advance it represented in 1937, and the cost of flying it in 1942.
Design Notes
The TBD was a low-wing monoplane of all-metal, semi-monocoque construction, designed from the outset to work both as a torpedo bomber and as a level bomber. Its wings folded hydraulically for stowage aboard carriers, a first for the Navy. Three men flew it — pilot, torpedo officer or navigator, and radioman-gunner — seated in tandem beneath a long glazed canopy the fleet called a "greenhouse". For level bombing, the bombardier lay prone under the pilot and aimed through a window in the fuselage floor using the Norden bombsight. The main armament was a single Mark 13 torpedo or a 1,000-pound bomb carried semi-recessed in the fuselage, backed by one fixed forward-firing machine gun and one flexible gun in the rear cockpit. The landing gear retracted only part-way, leaving the wheels protruding to limit damage in a wheels-up landing.
Operational History
The prototype XTBD-1 first flew on 15 April 1935, and production aircraft began reaching the fleet in 1937; the Bureau of Aeronautics bought 129 in all, and Devastators eventually equipped the torpedo squadrons of seven carriers. In the Pacific war's opening months the type flew some of the Navy's first offensive operations, bombing Japanese positions in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands in February 1942 and in New Guinea the following month, though defects in its Mark 13 torpedoes limited what the attacks achieved. Its clearest success came on 7 May 1942 at the Battle of the Coral Sea, where Devastators from Lexington and Yorktown helped to sink the Japanese light carrier Shōhō. At Midway on 4 June 1942, Enterprise, Yorktown and Hornet launched 41 Devastators against the Japanese carrier force. Torpedo Squadron Eight from Hornet lost all 15 of its aircraft, and only one of its men survived. In all, 35 of the 41 were shot down and their torpedoes scored no hits. The Navy withdrew the Devastator from front-line service soon after the battle; the survivors went to training duties in the United States, the Grumman TBF Avenger took over the torpedo role, and the last of the type was scrapped in November 1944.
Afterlife
No Devastator was kept back for preservation. Of the 129 built, none survives in a museum or private collection, and every known example rests on the ocean floor, among them seven found in 2018 beside the wreck of the carrier Lexington in the Coral Sea and two lying in Jaluit lagoon in the Marshall Islands. One of the Jaluit pair, Bureau Number 1515, ditched there on 1 February 1942 during the Marshall-Gilberts raids; its three crewmen survived and were prisoners of war until 1945. In January 2026 the Naval History and Heritage Command and its partners announced the Devastator Project, to recover that aircraft, conserve it in as-found condition, and exhibit it in the future National Museum of the United States Navy. If the recovery succeeds, it will be the first Devastator preserved in a museum. For now, the only one on public display is a full-size replica built for the 2019 film Midway, which the USS Midway Museum in San Diego acquired in 2019 and shows in its Battle of Midway exhibit.