Its first combat mission was a massacre. Its torpedoes barely worked. And by the end of the war it was sinking the biggest battleships ever built.
On June 4, 1942, six brand-new Grumman TBF Avengers took off from Midway to attack the Japanese fleet. Five never came back. The one that did was so shot up its pilot flew it home on trim tabs and a wristwatch. Not a single torpedo hit anything. It was one of the worst combat debuts in American aviation history — and it belonged to an airplane that would go on to become the finest torpedo bomber of the war. The story of how it got from the first to the second is really the story of two problems: a plane that was easy to shoot down, and a torpedo that didn’t work.
Did You Know? Despite the legend, the Avenger wasn’t named to avenge Pearl Harbor — Grumman picked the name in October 1941, two months before the attack. The timing just made it feel prophetic.
The Biggest Little Bomber
The Avenger was, frankly, enormous. At nearly nine tons loaded it was the biggest and heaviest single-engine airplane any nation built in the war — a fat-bellied thing with a deep fuselage designed to swallow a 2,000-pound torpedo or bomb load inside an internal bay. Escort-carrier crews took one look at its ponderous handling next to the nimble Wildcat and nicknamed it the “Turkey.” A single Wright R-2600 radial of about 1,900 horsepower hauled it along; Grumman built 2,290 as the TBF, and General Motors built another 7,546 as the TBM — nearly 10,000 in all.
It flew with a crew of three. The pilot sat up front. Behind him, a gunner rode in a powered ball turret — one of the first electrically operated gun turrets on a U.S. Navy aircraft, with a single .50-caliber machine gun. And down in the belly, a third man served as radioman and bombardier and manned a rearward-firing .30-caliber “stinger” gun covering the blind spot beneath the tail. Three men, three jobs, in a plane built to carry one torpedo a very long way.
Did You Know? The Avenger’s electric ball turret was designed in-house by Grumman rather than bought from a specialist — one of the first power-operated turrets to fly on a U.S. Navy plane.
A Debut That Was a Massacre
The Avenger reached the fleet just in time for Midway — but only barely. Six of them, a detachment of Torpedo Squadron 8 flying from Midway itself, went out after the Japanese carriers on the morning of June 4, 1942, without fighter escort. Roughly thirty Zeros fell on them. Five were shot down. The two that managed to launch torpedoes aimed at the carrier Hiryu and a cruiser; both ships simply turned and let the torpedoes run past.
Only one Avenger came home, flown by Ensign Bert Earnest. His plane had taken more than sixty machine-gun rounds and nine cannon shells; his turret gunner was dead, his radioman knocked cold, his compass shot away, and his elevator controls severed. Earnest flew the roughly 200 miles back to Midway using only his trim tabs to hold the nose up and his wristwatch to navigate, and put it down on one wheel. He was awarded two Navy Crosses. But the lesson was brutal and clear: a torpedo bomber, sent in the way these were, was a flying coffin.
Why Torpedo Bombers Died
To understand the slaughter, you have to understand the attack. A torpedo isn’t a bomb you toss from a safe height — it’s a delicate machine that has to enter the water cleanly and then run straight and level to the target. To make that happen, the Avenger had to fly a long, low, slow, straight approach — down around a hundred feet off the water, throttled back, holding a dead-steady line right at a ship that was throwing up everything it had. No jinking, no diving away, no evasive anything. For the length of that run, the airplane was the most predictable target in the sky, wide open to both the ship’s anti-aircraft guns and any fighters overhead.
Do that without your own fighters to clear the way — as at Midway — and you simply died. The dive bomber could roll in from three miles up and be gone in seconds. The torpedo plane had to walk straight into the guns and stay there.
The Torpedo That Didn’t Work
And here’s the cruel part: after flying through all of that, the torpedo often failed anyway. The American Mark 13 aerial torpedo was, early in the war, close to useless. It ran too deep, passing harmlessly under its targets. It tended to veer left. Its propellers were so weak they could shatter on impact with the water if the plane was even slightly too fast or too high. And its exploder was so temperamental it sometimes armed in mid-air or simply refused to go off. That’s why the drop had to be so painfully low and slow — roughly 50 feet and 110 knots — to give the fragile thing any chance of surviving the plunge into the sea. The airplane’s greatest vulnerability existed to protect a weapon that frequently didn’t work.
How It Got Better
Then, over 1943 and 1944, they fixed both problems at once. Engineers — a lot of the work done by scientists at Caltech — rebuilt the Mark 13. They wrapped a plywood drag ring around the tail and a shroud around the nose so the torpedo entered the water straight and slowed gently instead of shattering, and they added a trip valve so it stopped firing in the air. The reliability climbed, and — crucially — the drop envelope exploded. A torpedo that once had to be released at 50 feet and 110 knots could now be pickled off at up to 2,400 feet and 410 knots. The Avenger no longer had to fly the suicidal low-and-slow run at all. It could come in higher and faster and still put the fish in the water.
Pair that with the tactics the Navy had learned — always send the torpedo planes in with dive bombers to split the defenders, always bring fighter escort — and the Turkey turned lethal. By the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944, Avengers were helping sink the largest warships ever built: torpedoes from Avengers helped put down the superbattleship Musashi in 1944, and her sister Yamato in 1945. The plane whose torpedoes once ran under cruisers was now gutting 70,000-ton battleships.
Did You Know? Early on, a Mark 13 had to be dropped from about 50 feet at 110 knots or it would break apart. The rebuilt version could be released from 2,400 feet at 410 knots — so the Avenger no longer had to fly straight into the guns.
More Than a Torpedo Plane
By then the Avenger was doing far more than dropping torpedoes. That big internal bay and long range made it a superb submarine hunter: flying from escort carriers in the Atlantic with radar, depth charges, rockets, and even an early acoustic homing torpedo, Avengers became one of the deadliest U-boat killers of the war. They glide-bombed, they flew close air support, they hauled cargo and wounded.
One young Avenger pilot is worth remembering. Lieutenant (j.g.) George H. W. Bush — among the youngest naval aviators in the Navy — flew a TBM from the light carrier USS San Jacinto. On September 2, 1944, over the island of Chichi Jima, his Avenger was hit by anti-aircraft fire. He finished his bombing run before bailing out over the ocean, and was plucked from the water by the submarine USS Finback. His two crewmen did not survive — a loss the future president said stayed with him for the rest of his life.
FAQ: The TBF Avenger
Why were torpedo bombers like the Avenger shot down so easily?
A torpedo run demanded a long, low, slow, straight-and-level approach — about 100 feet off the water with no evasive maneuvering — right into a warship’s anti-aircraft fire and any fighters overhead. Without fighter escort of their own, as at Midway, torpedo bombers were nearly defenseless during the attack.
Why weren’t the torpedoes effective early in the war?
The U.S. Mark 13 aerial torpedo was badly flawed at first — it ran too deep, veered off course, had propellers that could shatter on water entry, and an unreliable exploder. It also had to be dropped very low and slow (around 50 feet and 110 knots) to survive the plunge, which is exactly what made the airplane so vulnerable.
Did the Avenger and its torpedoes get better as the war went on?
Dramatically. A redesigned Mark 13 with a drag ring and shroud could be dropped from up to 2,400 feet at 410 knots and worked far more reliably, so the plane no longer had to fly the deadly low-slow run. Combined with fighter escort and coordinated tactics, Avengers went on to help sink the battleships Musashi and Yamato.
How big was the Avenger’s crew?
Three: a pilot, a gunner in a powered ball turret with a .50-caliber gun, and a radioman/bombardier who also fired a .30-caliber “stinger” gun from a ventral position under the tail.
Did George H. W. Bush fly the Avenger?
Yes. As a young lieutenant junior grade, the future president flew a TBM Avenger from USS San Jacinto and was shot down over Chichi Jima on September 2, 1944, then rescued at sea by the submarine USS Finback; his two crewmen were killed.
What does “TBF” stand for, and why is it also called “TBM”?
“TB” is the Navy’s code for Torpedo Bomber and “F” was the manufacturer letter for Grumman. When General Motors built the same plane under license, it was designated TBM. Most were TBMs. Crews nicknamed it the “Turkey.”
From the Shop: Wear the Nose Art
The same hand-painted swagger that rode into battle on bomber noses — our WWII nose-art tees, drawn by a pilot. Free shipping from our little studio in St. Augustine.
The Bottom Line
The Avenger’s story is the most human one in the whole Navy lineup, because it’s a story about getting better. It arrived slow and ungainly, flew a first mission that killed almost everyone who went, and carried a torpedo that couldn’t be trusted to work. None of that was the airplane’s fault, and none of it was permanent. Fix the weapon, fix the tactics, give it an escort, and the same fat, homely “Turkey” became the plane that sank the Yamato. Sometimes the legend isn’t the machine that was great from day one — it’s the one that was terrible, and refused to stay that way.
Keep Reading
- SBD Dauntless: the dive bomber that broke the Japanese fleet at Midway
- PBY Catalina: the flying boat that found the fleet at Midway
- F4U Corsair: why they called the bent-wing bird “Whistling Death”
- F6F Hellcat: the Zero-killer that wasn’t copied from the Zero
- F-14 Tomcat: how the Navy’s swing-wing legend really worked
More from the shopBrowse the full WWII aviation & nose art collection — tees, prints, glassware and gifts, all original designs.
Ben & Nicole Mathews
We’re based in St. Augustine, Florida, sharing the places we’ve actually been — from our home turf to corners of the U.S. and abroad. Ben is an attorney and a retired Air Force JAG (22 years), and a private pilot, which is why aviation and military history shows up here too.