SBD Dauntless

[stiknruda]

February 2005, on my wall calendar, has a nice pic of a 1940 SBD Dauntless flying over SoCal. This calendar was purchased in the States.

The shot shows both front and rear canopies locked open, the rear-seater has a twin barelled machine gun poking up over the coaming.

However, there is an aerial wire that runs from a mast for'ard of the canopy to an insulator on top of the fin. My question iswhat prevents the rear seater cutting the aerial wire when firing? Even if the mast was retracted into the fuselage behind the firewall, it appears that the antenna could still be hit.

What does this antenna do?

Thanks


Stik

[treadigraph]

Just looking at a pic - I assume that the gun has some form of "interrupter mechanism" so it can only be fired in certain arcs - otherwise an over enthusiastic rear seater could blow his own tail feathers off in the heat of the battle! Unfortunately my books don't go into any detail...

[Hudson]

Back in 1954 I was in a Lincoln operating from Momote airstrip on Manus Island in the Admiralty Islands north of New Guinea. It was once a US Naval base. We had been searching for a missing RAF Canberra which had gone down en-route to Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Momote had a maze of taxiways and revetments from the Pacific war and I saw around eight Douglas Dauntless's which had been left there as the US forces moved closer to Japan. They were in fairly good nick and I believe were later picked up by collectors from USA. I often wondered if any of those aircraft were restored.