Forgotten Plane From A Forgotten Campaign: Vultee A-31 Vengeance

In this video, we talk about the Vultee A-31 Vengeance, an American dive bomber design from World War 2 made almost exclusively to export to other allied countries. We first talk about the initial customer in France and how the fall of France to Nazi Germany led to Britain picking up the project. We then look at how the United States stepped in after Pearl Harbor, seizing it, to see how well it performed. We then look at why the US chose not to adopt it over a plane like the Douglas SBD Dauntless and instead, began exporting it.

We talk about the performance of the A-31 in the Royal Australian Air Force, serving in a limited role in Indonesia and the Pacific in general. We then look at the performance of the A-31 in the British Royal Air Force over in the Burma Campaign. We talk about why Britain elected to use the A-31 only in Burma and not in Europe. We then talk about how the British government hated the plane, an opinion not shared by pilots in Burma, and how they brought an end to the service of the A-31. We end by looking at the overall experience of the A-31 and why it has been lost to time.

[thisisnev]

Props for name-checking Peter C Smith and his definitive book on the Vengeance!

[IntrospectorGeneral]

My wife's uncle spent some of the late war in the back seat of an RAAF Vengeance for communications and training flights. He told me that he served no useful purpose that couldn't have been equally met by sand bag ballast. Apparently the unloaded Vengeance with an empty rear seat had a tendency to become unrecoverable in a steep dive due to the forward shift of the centre of gravity. That was never put to the test during his flights and, as he put it, the war ended before he had the opportunity to be shot at.

[nickdwyer]

A aircraft mystery in Western Australia in 1944 involved a Vultee Vengeance A27-295 which crashed about 200 miles east of Perth. The aircraft was low on fuel in low cloud and the pilot told his gunner to bail out. He then bailed out too. The pilot walked to a farmhouse and was rescued. The gunner has never been found. The crash site was investigated and there was no sign of him. His parachute was gone and despite an intensive search, to this day, no trace has ever been found. It was confirmed by ground crew that he was in the aircraft when it took off.

[rastarn]

The last intact and complete example of the Vengeance is in a private museum here in Australia. The type did some solid work for the Royal Australian Air Force during the war, garnering a reputation for high accuracy at dive bombing. Records in Australia show that It was ultimately pulled from combat at the insistence of U.S. commanders, who both thought it would require too many supporting aircraft to operate in heavier combat and preferred the use of medium and heavy bombers.

[ronfry]

I remember back in the late 60s or early 70s that I believe the old AirClassics magazine had an article where 6 airframes had been found in Tennesee. Maybe these were around the old Vultee facility.

[johnreep]

One of my favorite aircraft. I built the Frog kit and the Guillow’s model.

[fembotheather]

My dad was present at the attack on Pearl Harbor, by his own description: a dive bomber pilot waiting for his ship and without a plane to fight in, forced to be but a spectator and later, a blood donor. He described the SBD as "his plane" and described the SB2C Helldiver as one that was "okay" once the "brasshats" listened to the pilots and fixed it. He also flew in Korea, where he said that dive bombing had become almost obsolete and everybody but the "assholes" in Washington seemed t know it. :)

[sueneilson]

There is a crashed Vaultee Vengence site in a fairly remote area in Western Australia. The occasional visitor can read the tragic story on the memorial to its crew.

[kevinwilliams]

Thanks for covering this aircraft. My interest was started by a Frog 1/72 model I made when I was about 9 or 10 !969/70 time.

[zJoriz]

I gotta wonder how it would've been if the US hadn't stalled delivery to GB... Imagine the Brits having actual large-scale success with dive-bombing ships and other small targets early in the war. The whole conflict could've looked vastly different.

[Renshen]

P-51 was the Johnny came lately…for the Pacific-USAAF P-38.

[markymarknj]

When I was a kid, I used to have the Red Randall books. In one of them, Red Randall and his buddy, Jimmy Joyce, are asked with ferrying a Vultee airplane to the Philippines, IIRC. The book never said what type it was, but it was a two crew airplane; I remember that Red and Jimmy drew straws to determine who would fly it and who would sit in the aft cockpit. It was probably the A-31 that they had in mind, as it fits the description in the book I read long ago. It's nice to finally put a "face" to the airplane featured in the book. Thank you!

[jamesbugbee]

Unloved warbird?- As a Vultee, it can come get a hug from me, as Vultee made cool, slightly eccentric (like in having character) stuff ❤❤❤

[barryervin]

The A-31 was later redesigned into the A-35, which did away with the zero incidence wing (and the resulting tail- low flying attitude) since it turned out that very little vertical dive bombing was being done anyway. The A-35 added a few more guns too. The Vengeance was actually a very good dive bomber, but dive bombers were going out of fashion by then. Many of the pilots who flew them in India and Burma liked them, they were rugged and flew well and were much faster than a Stuka.

[alancranford]

I know more about the A-31/A-35 than I did before, but the unique wing shape of the A-31 made it unmistakable. The A-31 is one of my cards in a reproduction deck of WW2 aircraft recognition playing cards.

The dive bomber came of age and went obsolete during the Thirties. At the time a fighter could only carry a small bomb load and not carry it far. Bive bomber speeds were competitive right up to 1940 with fighters--the US Navy SBD Dauntless had a third mission of intercepting enemy torpedo bombers (there were missions of scouting, dive bombing, and laying smoke screens). The level bomber lacked bombing accuracy. The dive bomber could hit small targets with precision, was able to hit moving targets, and carried a heavier bomb load than did the fighter. Light bombers, "attack aircraft" and medium bombers had more range and could carry a heavier bomb load but if you were trying to hit "the broad side of the barn" or even somewhere on the roof, level bombing conducted from above the altitude of anti-aircraft fire.

Dive bombers proved effective due to their ability to put bombs where they were needed. Shortcomings of the dive bomber were a need for fighter escort and late-war fighter bombers had more range, carried a heavier bomb load, could self-escort on combat missions, and were almost as accurate as the dive bomber. The late-war AD-1 "attack bomber" combined torpedo bombing with level bombing and dive bombing to carrier platforms, but WW2 ended before the Skyraider was available in large numbers. Dive bombers were not liked when a medium bomber had longer legs, better defensive firepower, bigger bomb load, and could be configured for specialized anti-shipping missions and attacking enemy airfields -- think "B-25 Mitchell." Fighter-bombers replaced the land-based dive bomber. Aircraft carrier flight decks made a single engine bomb truck desirable.

I imagine the War Department of 1942 as a 500-pound retarded gorilla gibbering "I want planes!" Seizing anything that had wings was a panic reaction. The US Army Air Force didn't really want dive bombers. Close air support (CAS) was just not the USAAF's thing. Interdiction missions behind the enemy's front line was. Skip bombing proved more effective than torpedo bombing in the Pacific due to flawed American torpedoes.

Anyway, the US War Department grabbed all the resources it could find--much like a ravenous wolf gulping down fresh sheep. If the B-29 was available in quantity, Hap Arnold would have equipped his USAAF with nothing but B-29 bombers and bombed from high altitude. It was only after the failed strategic bombing offensives of 1942 and 1943 that the USAAF figured out how poorly the self-protected bomber fared against enemy resistance. The Vultee Vengeance was not the only dive bomber the USAAF had--the A-24 Dauntless and A-25 Helldiver were taken into air force service if for no other reason than to deny the Navy and Marine Corps of dive bombers.

I keep saying that politics is 90% of weapon procurement, 9% is logistics and only 1% or less is weapon performance. The Vengeance was taken into USAAF service for political and logistical reasons. The A-31 was available and the USAAF had to beef up its warplane numbers even when it wasn't the plane the Army wanted. Besides, keeping planes out of the hands of the REAL USAAF enemies (the Navy and Marines) was more important than winning the war. It wouldn't do to allow the Navy to have more planes than the USAAF.

[Dracsmolar]

My aunt Maxie worked at the Vultee plant in Nashville Tennessee during WW2. As a parts runner she worked on skates due to the plant being so big.

[hardkoreboy]

Trainers may not be sexy, but they are loved: the Texan to which you refer, for example (although I know it as the Harvard). I happened to be there for the last flight of the South African Air Force Harvard trainers - 150 of them. There were all kinds of fans there, among them retired Harvard mechanics, pilots and collectors from all over the world. After landing the aircraft formed up on the apron, their radials thrumming, and switched off simultaneously. There wasn't a dry eye for miles.

[pithicus]

Good video, but I was waiting the whole time for a description of the Madagascar campaign.

[arthurjennings]

I did enjoy the content. Thanks for showcasing this forgotten aircraft. It might have been interesting if it had been given to the US Marines in the beginning of the war.

[brucerussell]

Thanks for your acknowledgment of the vengeance. My grandfather was a vengeance pilot in the royal Australian Air Force. Unfortunately I never got to meet him however I read his log books and he mentions attacks against Japanese positions in PNG and strafing runs on Japanese supply barges.