Douglas Campbell

BuNos! Curtiss SB2C Helldivers Douglas Campbell

Some 7,140 Curtiss SB2C Helldivers (and their Canadian versions) were built in World War II. While the U. S. Navy flew the majority of these aircraft from aircraft carriers in the Pacific Theater, countries such as Australia, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Thailand and the United Kingdom were also recipients of surplus planes and parts. A dedicated effort by MERS attempts to find any existing history of every Bureau Number (BuNo) associated with these Helldivers. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of aircraft from many nations rest on the bottom of our oceans from World War II alone. Among them, hundreds of SB2C Helldivers. While some are considered memorial gravesites, many Helldivers were lost at sea while their pilots and radio-gunners survived, and many of these aircraft were simply pushed over the sides of aircraft carriers for lack of space or even lost due to extreme weather. The author has undertaken a monumental effort to trace the history of every Helldiver and to look at how many were lost at sea or crashed and sank in smaller bodies of water such as the Great Lakes or Chesapeake Bay. This research has never been done before. While the exact history of what happened to every Helldiver may never be known, this is that research.