PART I: THE DAY THE BEAST TOOK FLIGHT

August 1st, 1941.
Bethpage, Long Island, New York.

The runway shimmered in the late-summer heat as Chief Engineer Robert Hall eased the throttle forward. The engine answered with a deep, uneven roar that vibrated through the cockpit and into his chest. Ahead of him stretched concrete and doubt in equal measure.

The aircraft beneath him looked wrong.

It was too big.
Too thick.
Too heavy.

Its barrel-shaped fuselage bulged awkwardly between the wings, as if someone had taken a fighter aircraft and force-fed it steel, armor, wiring, and ambition until it could barely breathe. Navy observers stood along the flight line, arms crossed, faces set in expressions Hall had come to recognize over the last year.

Skepticism.

The designation stenciled on the side read XTBF-1, but the whispers had already given it other names.

The pregnant beast.
The turkey.

None of them were meant kindly.

Hall pushed the throttle to full power.

The Wright R-2600 radial engine strained, fourteen cylinders hammering out 1,700 horsepower as the aircraft began its takeoff roll. The acceleration was slow, ponderous, nothing like the crisp leap of the fighters Hall had flown earlier in his career. The runway markings slid past with agonizing reluctance.

More than one Navy officer shook his head.

It won’t fly, they thought.
It shouldn’t.

At rotation speed, Hall pulled gently on the yoke.

The ungainly machine lifted off.

The XTBF-1 clawed its way into the air, heavy but stable, climbing with stubborn determination. The massive wings flexed slightly under load, the control surfaces responding with a lag that demanded constant correction.

It flew like a truck.

But it flew.

In that moment—just wheels up, gear retracting, the aircraft proving itself airborne—none of the critics could have known what they were watching. None of them could have imagined that this awkward, overcomplicated machine would go on to sink more enemy warships than any other American aircraft in history.

Naval warfare was about to be rewritten.

Not by elegance.
Not by speed.
But by survivability and relentless effectiveness.

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The journey to that moment had begun more than two years earlier, in March 1939, when the United States Navy issued a requirement that bordered on fantasy.

The Douglas TBD Devastator—introduced in 1937—was already obsolete. Faster fighters, heavier anti-aircraft fire, and improved enemy tactics had turned it into a liability. The Navy needed a replacement immediately.

The requirements read like a wish list written by engineers who didn’t believe in limits:

Top speed of 300 mph

Range of 1,000 miles

Crew of three

All ordnance carried internally in a bomb bay

Armor protection for the crew

Self-sealing fuel tanks

And most ambitious of all: an electrically powered dorsal turret

That last requirement had defeated every prior attempt.

Hydraulic systems were too slow.
Manual turrets were exhausting and unreliable.
Battle damage rendered both useless.

And yet the Navy insisted.

Thirteen companies submitted proposals.

Most didn’t survive the first cut.

The competition narrowed quickly to two finalists.

Vought Aircraft proposed the XTBU-1, a sleek, graceful aircraft that looked every bit the modern torpedo bomber. Navy evaluators praised its lines and performance. It was, by every aesthetic and aerodynamic measure, the better-looking airplane.

Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation submitted the XTBF-1.

It looked like someone had taken their successful F4F Wildcat fighter and inflated it until it burst at the seams. Every requirement seemed to add another bulge, another fairing, another system layered on top of the last.

The Vought design won the initial contract.

Then reality intervened.

Vought was already drowning in orders for its new F4U Corsair fighter. Production capacity was stretched to the breaking point. There was no way they could deliver torpedo bombers on the Navy’s timeline.

The contract shifted to Grumman.

Leroy Grumman accepted it knowing exactly what it meant.

An impossible deadline.
An impossible aircraft.
And no margin for failure.

Robert Hall—the engineer in the trenches—stared at the requirements and understood the truth no one wanted to say out loud.

Every single Navy demand added weight.

Armor added weight.
Fuel capacity added weight.
Internal bomb bay added weight.
Redundant systems added weight.
The powered turret added complexity that multiplied everything else.

The internal bomb bay alone was a nightmare.

It had to fit a 2,000-pound Mark 13 torpedo—22.4 inches in diameter—or four 500-pound bombs, or depth charges, or mines. The doors had to open and close flawlessly under salt spray, high-G maneuvers, and combat damage.

If the doors jammed, the aircraft would be useless.

The powered turret was worse.

Grumman bet the entire design on electricity—motors, wiring, generators—technology that had never been proven in carrier combat. If it failed, the rear gunner was dead weight.

Then came the wings.

The Avenger’s wingspan would be 54 feet, the largest of any Navy aircraft. To fit on carrier elevators and hangar decks, they had to fold.

Leroy Grumman solved the problem in the most Grumman way possible.

During a design meeting, he grabbed a pink eraser to represent the fuselage and paper clips for wings. He bent, twisted, experimented—until he found it.

A compound folding motion.

The wings would fold backward and upward at the same time, reducing the span to just 18 feet. The solution became known as the Stow Wing.

It was brilliant.

It was also heavy.

Hydraulics. Locking pins. Reinforced spars. Hundreds of pounds added to an aircraft that was already flirting with impossibility.

Power came from the Wright R-2600, the most powerful engine available. Even so, it struggled.

Empty weight: 10,080 pounds
Combat loaded: 15,905 pounds

The heaviest single-engine aircraft in the world.

Navy critics were merciless.

Too heavy to fight.
Too complicated to survive.
Too ambitious to work.

On December 30th, 1940—seven months before the prototype ever flew—the Navy ordered 286 aircraft anyway.

War was coming.

They needed torpedo bombers now.

The prototype’s first flight proved the critics half right.

It flew poorly.

Controls were mushy. Visibility was limited. The aircraft demanded constant correction and physical effort. Pilots accustomed to nimble fighters hated it.

But the systems worked.

Every complicated system.
Every backup.
Every redundancy.

Then, on November 28th, 1941, disaster struck.

During a test flight near Brentwood, New York, the prototype caught fire. Hall and test pilot Gordon Israel bailed out as flames consumed the aircraft. It crashed and burned.

Critics pounced.

Cancel it.
Too elaborate.
Too many failure points.

Grumman responded the only way it knew how.

By accelerating.

The second prototype was nearly ready. Testing continued. Problems were solved through brute-force engineering. On January 3rd, 1942—less than a month after Pearl Harbor—the first production TBF-1 Avenger rolled off the line.

By June 1942, over one hundred had been delivered.

Six were sent to Torpedo Squadron 8.

And fate sent them to Midway.

PART II: MIDWAY AND THE FIRE TEST

The six Avengers arrived too late.

That was the first cruelty.

They reached Pearl Harbor just hours after the American carriers had already sailed west, racing toward a tiny speck of land called Midway Atoll. The Devastators of Torpedo Squadron 8 were already aboard Hornet. The battle that would decide the fate of the Pacific was already unfolding without the Navy’s newest aircraft.

For a moment, it looked like the Avengers would miss the war entirely.

Then a call went out for volunteers.

Six crews raised their hands.

Some of them had never flown out of sight of land. None had seen combat. All six climbed into brand-new TBF Avengers that still smelled of fresh paint, unburned oil, and factory floors. They flew west, alone over open ocean, navigating by dead reckoning and hope.

Every aircraft reached Midway.

At dawn on June 4th, 1942, the island was already under attack. Japanese bombers roared overhead. Anti-aircraft guns hammered the sky. Smoke drifted across Henderson Field.

At 0710 hours, the six Avengers took off.

They were part of the first wave sent against the Japanese carrier fleet.

The aircraft had been in Navy service for exactly five months.

The crews had almost no combat experience.

They were flying the most complicated torpedo bomber ever built into the teeth of the most experienced carrier force in the world.

The Japanese combat air patrol descended on them like wolves.

Mitsubishi A6M Zeros—flown by veterans of Pearl Harbor, China, and the Dutch East Indies—pounced from above. The Avengers were slow. At torpedo attack speed, barely 130 miles per hour. The Zeros could exceed 300.

The Avenger’s defensive armament was modest:

One .50-caliber machine gun in the dorsal turret

One .30-caliber gun in the ventral position

It was not enough.

One by one, the Avengers were torn apart.

Lieutenant Ensign Albert K. Ernest’s aircraft was hit again and again. Twenty-millimeter cannon shells punched through wings, fuselage, tail. The turret gunner, Aviation Machinist’s Mate Third Class J. Daryl Manning, was killed instantly—one shell to the chest.

The radio operator, Harry Ferrier, just seventeen years old, was wounded in the head and wrist.

Hydraulics failed.
Electrical systems sparked and smoked.
Instruments shattered.
Blood sprayed across the cockpit.

But the aircraft did not explode.

The Wright radial engine—riddled with holes—kept running. The self-sealing fuel tanks prevented catastrophic fire. Armor plating behind the pilot’s seat absorbed cannon impacts that would have killed him instantly in any lighter aircraft.

Five Avengers were shot down.

Only Ernest’s remained airborne.

He crash-landed back at Midway with one crewman dead and two wounded.

Engineers later examined the aircraft.

It had absorbed at least nine 20mm cannon hits and sixty-four machine gun rounds.

Nearly every major system had been damaged.

Yet it had flown home.

The Battle of Midway became legend. Four Japanese fleet carriers destroyed. A decisive American victory. Dive bombers received the glory.

The torpedo squadrons paid the price.

Fifteen Devastators launched from Hornet.
None returned.
Twenty-nine men died.

From Torpedo Squadron 8, only three men survived the battle.

For the Avenger, Midway was not a triumph.

It was a revelation.

Critics demanded cancellation.

Too vulnerable.
Too slow.
Too elaborate.

Intelligence officers studying Ernest’s battered aircraft reached the opposite conclusion.

The Avenger was not too complicated.

It was too tough to kill.

Every intricate system had worked as designed—under the worst possible conditions. The electrical turret functioned until its gunner was killed. The bomb bay doors operated under fire. The wing-folding mechanism held despite structural damage. The engine ran for hours after being shot apart.

The Avenger had done exactly what Grumman built it to do.

Bring its crew home.

Production accelerated.

By August 1942, Avengers were reaching fleet squadrons in numbers. Torpedo Squadron 8 reformed with new aircraft and new crews. Ensign Ernest returned to combat, earning his second Navy Cross at Guadalcanal.

The Avenger would soon have its chance to fight on its own terms.

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LEARNING HOW TO KILL

The Battle of the Eastern Solomons on August 24th, 1942 marked the Avenger’s first real test with experienced crews.

Twenty-eight Avengers attacked the Japanese fleet.

This time, tactics had evolved.

Coordinated approaches.
Mutual defensive fire.
Better fighter cover.

They sank the light carrier Ryūjō.

Seven Avengers were lost—but the survivors learned something critical.

The aircraft could absorb damage and keep fighting.

The electrical turret tracked attackers faster than manual systems ever could. The internal bomb bay allowed rapid changes between torpedoes, bombs, and depth charges. The long range let Avengers strike targets previous aircraft could not reach.

By November 1942, the Avenger proved it could kill capital ships.

At the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, Navy and Marine Avengers hunted the crippled battleship Hiei. Torpedoes struck home. The massive ship—37,000 tons of steel—rolled and sank.

The complicated torpedo bomber had done what it was designed to do.

But its greatest contribution was still ahead—and it would come far from the headlines of the Pacific.

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THE ATLANTIC WAR

While the Pacific raged, the Atlantic bled.

German U-boats were winning the tonnage war, sinking Allied merchant ships faster than they could be replaced. Small escort carriers provided air coverage—but existing aircraft lacked the range, payload, and endurance for sustained anti-submarine warfare.

The Avenger was perfect.

Its large bomb bay carried depth charges, bombs, acoustic torpedoes, and the top-secret Mark 24 “FIDO” homing torpedo. The TBF-1D variant carried ASB surface-search radar capable of detecting submarines at night or in bad weather.

The tactics were brutally effective.

Avengers patrolled ahead of convoys, hunting surfaced U-boats. When contact was made, the Avenger attacked, forcing the submarine to dive. Once submerged, the U-boat slowed from 18 knots to 8.

The Avenger stayed overhead.

Sonobuoys tracked the target. Destroyers were called in. If the submarine surfaced, the Avenger struck again.

From May 1943 to May 1945, Avengers sank or assisted in sinking 35 German submarines in the Atlantic. Including Pacific operations, the total approached 30 submarines destroyed.

No other aircraft came close.

The torpedo bomber had become the most effective submarine hunter of the war.

---

By 1944, nearly 10,000 Avengers had been built.

Grumman turned production over to General Motors’ Eastern Aircraft Division. Leroy Grumman doubted they could manage it.

GM proved him wrong.

Using a demonstration aircraft nicknamed the “PK Avenger”, assembled with sheet-metal screws so it could be disassembled easily, GM re-engineered the aircraft for automotive-style mass production.

GM built 7,546 Avengers.

Grumman built 2,290.

The aircraft reached its peak just in time for the largest naval battles in history.

And the biggest ships ever built were about to find out what “too complicated” really meant.

PART III: THE DAY THE BATTLESHIP DIED

By mid-1944, the Grumman Avenger was no longer the awkward newcomer.

It was everywhere.

It flew from fleet carriers and escort carriers, from island airstrips hacked out of coral, from decks so short pilots swore they could see the ocean rushing up through the cockpit floor. It flew in heat that warped metal and storms that swallowed formations whole. It carried torpedoes, bombs, depth charges, rockets, radar sets, sonobuoys, mines, cameras, mail, wounded men, and sometimes nothing at all except fuel and nerve.

By then, nearly ten thousand had been built.

By then, the Navy no longer asked whether the Avenger could do the job.

They asked how many they could get into the air.

THE PHILIPPINE SEA

June 1944.
The Battle of the Philippine Sea.

History would remember it by a nickname—The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot—but that name obscured how much hung in the balance. Japan’s remaining carrier air power had been committed in a last attempt to stop the American advance across the Central Pacific. Hundreds of aircraft rose into the sky.

They never came back.

American fighters destroyed more than 250 Japanese aircraft in a single day. The skies belonged to the United States. But the real test came afterward, when Admiral Marc Mitscher learned that the surviving Japanese carriers were retreating—farther away than any strike force had ever dared pursue.

The range was extreme.
The daylight was fading.
The return would be in darkness.

Mitscher launched anyway.

More than 200 Avengers took part in the strike, flying into the edge of night. Crews knew the risks. Many would not have enough fuel to return. Some would miss the carriers entirely. Some would ditch.

From the carrier Belleau Wood, Avengers pressed through deteriorating weather and fading visibility and found their targets. Torpedoes slammed into the light carrier Hiyō. She burned, capsized, and sank, taking 247 Japanese sailors with her.

On the return flight, chaos ruled.

Fuel gauges hit zero. Aircraft splashed down in darkness. Others slammed onto carrier decks lit only by emergency lights. Mitscher ordered every ship in the fleet to turn on its lights, breaking blackout discipline entirely, to guide the aircraft home.

Eighty aircrew were lost that night.

The mission proved something critical.

The Avenger could operate at the very edge of what aviation allowed.

And it would soon be asked to do something even harder.

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LEYTE GULF

October 1944.

Leyte Gulf was not a single battle. It was four battles tangled together across hundreds of miles of ocean, involving more than 200,000 personnel and virtually every surviving major unit of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

It was the largest naval battle in history.

The Japanese plan was desperate and brilliant in equal measure. Sacrifice decoy carriers to lure American fast carriers north, then smash the vulnerable invasion fleet with battleships and cruisers charging through the San Bernardino Strait.

The plan almost worked.

More than 400 Avengers took part across all phases of the battle. They flew from fleet carriers and escort carriers alike. Some were loaded for torpedo strikes. Others carried bombs and rockets for ground support. Few were prepared for what they were about to face.

At dawn on October 25th, the escort carriers of Task Unit 77.4.3—known forever as Taffy 3—found themselves staring at the impossible.

On the horizon rose the silhouettes of four Japanese battleships, including Yamato’s sister ships, six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, and eleven destroyers.

The Americans had six escort carriers.
Three destroyers.
Four destroyer escorts.

Their aircraft were Avengers and Wildcats—designed for ground support, not fleet combat.

Lieutenant Commander Edward “Eddie” Huxable, commanding officer of Composite Squadron 10 aboard Gambier Bay, did not hesitate.

“Launch everything,” he ordered.

Many Avengers had no torpedoes. Some carried only bombs. Some had already dropped their ordnance on earlier missions. A few launched with nothing at all.

They attacked anyway.

Avengers came in low, weaving through anti-aircraft fire so thick pilots described it as flying into steel rain. Some made dry runs—no weapons—simply to draw fire, to distract gunners, to buy minutes for the carriers to flee.

Destroyers charged battleships in suicidal torpedo attacks. Avengers coordinated with them, attacking from multiple directions, forcing Japanese gunners to split their fire.

Gambier Bay was hit repeatedly and sank, taking over one hundred men with her.

But something extraordinary happened.

The ferocity of the attack convinced Admiral Takeo Kurita that he faced full-sized fleet carriers, not escort carriers. Confusion mounted. Reports conflicted. Smoke obscured targets. Torpedo tracks appeared where no torpedoes should have been.

After sinking Gambier Bay and three destroyers, Kurita withdrew.

The Avengers of Taffy 3—without armor-piercing weapons, without preparation, without hope of victory—had helped turn away the most powerful surface fleet Japan would ever send to sea.

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MUSASHI

The day before Samar, October 24th, 1944, another Avenger moment sealed the fate of battleships forever.

The super-battleship Musashi, displacing over 72,000 tons and armored to withstand 18-inch shells, entered the Sibuyan Sea. Japanese designers had declared her unsinkable.

At 10:27 a.m., the attack began.

Six waves.
259 American aircraft.
Four carriers.

Avengers attacked from both port and starboard, delivering torpedoes with grim precision. Estimates vary—between 10 and 19 torpedo hits—but the effect was undeniable. Each carried 600 pounds of Torpex, far more powerful than TNT.

Dive bombers added seventeen bomb hits.

Flooding spread. Lists increased. Speed dropped.

At 7:30 p.m., Musashi capsized and sank.

Over 1,000 crewmen went down with her.

The largest battleship ever built had been destroyed by aircraft.

And the Avenger had delivered many of the killing blows.

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YAMATO

Five months later, the lesson was repeated.

April 7th, 1945.

Operation Ten-Go.

The super-battleship Yamato—Musashi’s sister—set out on a one-way mission to Okinawa with fuel only for the outbound leg. She was to beach herself and fight as a stationary battery.

American submarines spotted the task force.

Admiral Mitscher launched everything.

386 aircraft.
Nearly 150 Avengers.

At 12:37 p.m., the first wave attacked.

Avengers struck from the port side, overwhelming anti-aircraft fire. The second wave hit from starboard. The third found Yamato already listing heavily.

At least 11 torpedo hits tore open the hull below the waterline. Armor designed to defeat battleship shells meant nothing against flooding.

At 2:23 p.m., Yamato exploded in a massive mushroom cloud visible for sixty miles.

Casualties exceeded 2,500 men.

The era of the battleship ended in fire and water.

And again, Avengers were there.

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A DIFFERENT KIND OF WAR

Yet for all the dramatic torpedo attacks, most Avenger missions were quieter.

By late 1944, Japanese surface ships rarely left port. Torpedoes were risky—slow, straight attack runs exposed aircraft to intense fire. Avengers increasingly shifted roles.

They dropped conventional bombs.
They fired rockets.
They flew close air support for Marines clawing across islands.
They laid mines in harbors.
They flew reconnaissance.
They evacuated wounded.
They hunted submarines.

The same bomb bay that carried a torpedo could carry 2,000 pounds of bombs, or radar equipment, or extra fuel, or stretchers.

The aircraft did not care.

It did the job.

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A YOUNG PILOT NAMED BUSH

One Avenger pilot learned its value personally.

His name was George Herbert Walker Bush.

Born June 12, 1924, Bush enlisted in the Navy on his eighteenth birthday. He became the youngest commissioned naval aviator at the time. By 1943, he was flying TBM Avengers from the carrier USS San Jacinto.

He flew 58 combat missions.

On September 2nd, 1944, nineteen-year-old Bush attacked Japanese installations on Chichi Jima. His aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire. The engine caught fire.

He pressed the attack anyway.

Bombs hit the target.

Bush headed out to sea and ordered his crew to bail out. He parachuted into the ocean, hitting his head on the tail. His two crewmen did not survive.

For four hours, Bush floated while Japanese boats searched for him. American aircraft circled overhead.

The submarine USS Finback surfaced and pulled him aboard.

For completing his bomb run while on fire, Bush received the Distinguished Flying Cross.

He would later become the 41st President of the United States.

He flew the Avenger.

And it brought him home.

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By war’s end, the numbers told a story critics never anticipated.

Nearly 10,000 Avengers built.
Over 46,000 combat sorties flown.
729 aircraft lost.
A loss rate of 1.58% per sortie—among the lowest of any combat aircraft of the war.

Anti-aircraft fire caused most losses.
Aerial combat accounted for very few.

The aircraft that was “too heavy to fight” proved too tough to kill.

And the world had not yet seen everything it could do.

PART IV: THE AIRCRAFT THAT REFUSED TO LEAVE

When the war ended, the torpedo bomber should have ended with it.

The battleship was dead.
The aerial torpedo was fading.
Jets were coming.

By every reasonable metric, the Avenger should have been obsolete on V-J Day.

It wasn’t.

It simply changed clothes.

AFTER THE WAR, BEFORE OBSOLESCENCE

In August 1945, the U.S. Navy took inventory of a force unlike any it had ever possessed. Thousands of aircraft suddenly had no enemy to fight—but the world was not at peace. The Soviet Union was emerging as a new threat, and the oceans were about to become contested in quieter, colder ways.

Submarines did not disappear with Germany and Japan.

They multiplied.

And once again, the Avenger was exactly what the Navy needed.

Postwar variants of the TBM continued flying with front-line squadrons until 1954, an extraordinary service life for a World War II aircraft. The reason was simple: no other airplane combined range, payload, endurance, and adaptability so effectively.

The Avenger could stay airborne for eight hours.
It could carry radar, sonobuoys, acoustic torpedoes, bombs, rockets, mines.
It could operate from small carriers, land bases, and forward outposts.

And it could take damage and keep flying.

The aircraft’s complexity—once mocked—now made it irreplaceable.

THE RADAR IN THE SKY

One of the Avenger’s most important postwar roles never involved dropping a single weapon.

The TBM-3W variant pioneered airborne early warning.

Its massive AN/APS-20 radar sat in a ventral radome beneath the fuselage, turning the Avenger into a flying sensor platform. From altitude, it could detect incoming aircraft far beyond the range of shipboard radar, giving fleets precious minutes of warning.

This was revolutionary.

Modern airborne early warning aircraft—from the E-2 Hawkeye to the E-3 Sentry—trace their lineage directly back to this ungainly torpedo bomber carrying a bulbous radar dome under its belly.

The Avenger was not just fighting wars anymore.

It was shaping how wars would be detected.

THE SUBMARINE WAR CONTINUES

As the Cold War settled in, anti-submarine warfare became the Navy’s primary concern.

The Avenger evolved again.

The TBM-3S specialized in submarine hunting, carrying improved radar, sonobuoys, and acoustic homing torpedoes. These aircraft trained relentlessly over the Atlantic and Pacific, practicing detection and tracking of submarines that could carry nuclear weapons.

The aircraft that had hunted German U-boats was now preparing to hunt Soviet ones.

Other nations noticed.

A GLOBAL WORKHORSE

The Avenger did not retire when America moved on.

It spread.

Royal Canadian Navy: Operated Avengers until 1960, using them for North Atlantic anti-submarine patrols. The AS.3 variant featured a magnetic anomaly detection boom extending from the rear fuselage—technology far ahead of its time.
France: Flew Avengers from the carrier Arromanches during operations in Indochina.
Japan: Used Avengers for maritime patrol into the early 1960s.
Netherlands: Operated them from the carrier Karel Doorman.
Brazil, Uruguay, and others used Avengers for patrol, training, and coastal defense.

Many nations preferred the Avenger to newer aircraft.

It was easier to maintain.
It could fly farther.
It could do more jobs with fewer airframes.

The “too complicated” aircraft proved remarkably forgiving.

THE END OF THE TORPEDO BOMBER

Contrary to popular belief, the Avenger did not fly the last torpedo attack in history.

That honor went to its successor.

On May 1st, 1951, during the Korean War, eight Douglas AD-4 Skyraiders launched from the carrier Princeton to attack the Hwachon Dam in North Korea. The target controlled river flooding that trapped UN forces.

They carried Mark 13 torpedoes—the same weapon the Avenger had carried throughout World War II.

Eight torpedoes dropped.
Seven hit.
Six exploded.

The dam was crippled for the remainder of the war.

That mission closed the book on aerial torpedo attacks against surface targets.

The era the Avenger had defined was over.

THE NUMBERS THAT END THE ARGUMENT

Postwar analysts finally stopped arguing aesthetics and started reading statistics.

9,836 Avengers built
46,000+ combat sorties
729 aircraft lost
1.58% loss rate per sortie
Lowest loss rate of any Allied torpedo bomber
Highest ship-sink ratio of any American aircraft

Avengers sank or helped sink:

12 aircraft carriers
6 battleships (including Musashi and Yamato)
19 cruisers
25 destroyers
~30 submarines
Over 500 merchant ships
More than 1 million tons of enemy shipping

But numbers alone miss the point.

The true success of the Avenger was not destruction.

It was survival.

More crews came home.
More experience was preserved.
More pilots lived to train the next generation.

That mattered more than any tonnage sunk.

THE PHILOSOPHY THAT WON

Grumman’s engineers did not chase elegance.

They chased resilience.

Every decision—armor, redundancy, electrical systems, oversized structures—served one purpose: keep the crew alive and the mission going.

The Avenger succeeded because it was complex.

The bomb bay wasn’t just a weapon compartment—it was a modular mission space.
The turret wasn’t just defense—it was survivability.
The folding wings weren’t just convenience—they multiplied where the aircraft could operate.

This philosophy reshaped American naval aviation.

Multi-role capability.
Crew survivability.
Redundant systems.
Electronics integration.

Those principles echo through every modern carrier aircraft.

THE AVENGER TODAY

Approximately 60 Avengers survive worldwide.

Several are airworthy.

When one flies at an airshow, its deep radial engine note and unmistakable silhouette carry history with them. This is not a sleek fighter or a graceful bomber.

It is a machine built to endure.

To adapt.

To bring people home.

The Avenger that lifted off from Bethpage in August 1941—dismissed as ugly, overweight, and overengineered—proved every critic wrong in the most unforgiving test imaginable.

Combat.

It did not win through speed.
It did not win through beauty.
It won through relentless effectiveness.

The aircraft everyone got wrong became the deadliest ship killer in history, the most effective submarine hunter of its time, and one of the longest-serving combat aircraft ever built.

In the end, the Avenger kept its promise.

It flew the missions.
It absorbed the damage.
And more often than not—

It brought them home.

THE END