In Defense of the Worst Aircraft of World War II - TBD-1 Devastator

this episode was sponsored by patreon men's 1066 who chose this topic as part of his reward perk thank you very much for your support do you know this aircraft it's the American Douglas gbd1 devastated history has not been kind to this aeroplane it often features as one of the worst aircraft of world war ii in popular memory ridiculed and aligned today I want to put dad's reputation to the test now like last time when I did a similar video on the British Paul Bolton define this video leaps to the defense of the Devastator not by being contrarian and insisting that you should like it but by placing it into its proper historical context going beyond popular memory and explaining the design and history and also shedding some light on its overlooked achievements and once we've been through that good to bad and indeed the ugly it's up to you to decide on how to judge this aircraft so what was the TBD Devastator and why was it when it came out I've rather promising machine well for this we must go back into the early 1930s the biplane reigning supreme of in the Armed Forces around the world since the great war of 1914 to 1918 had been the paragon of the sky for over 20 years for single-engine machines the alternatives to be found were few but as technology Aeronautics and the capabilities of the fleet changed so too did it emerge that perhaps the Navy needs to do boldly step forward and enter a new age of carrier strike aircraft the scene was set for a user bar poised to top of the orthodoxy and supplant the biplane forever the monoplane true enough in 1945 the United States Navy was composed out of a conventional biplane force centered around scout bombers the tobita bomber was a novelty this might seem strange but before 1937 they were really a sideshow in the 5 years before the DVD was introduced the Navy only had one dedicated torpedo squadron flying TG tools and one auxilary of squadron flying all-purpose martin BMS you've gotta remember that naval strategy is essentially build strategy for casting the right force competition many years in advance is key to developing an effective Navy since can't exactly be churned out like aircraft or tanks this means that the 1920s and 1930s where our turbulent time for the Navy if you've ever heard of Billy Mitchell you know partly of what I'm alluding to suffice it to say that the Navy was divided in which force it wanted in the future should for example the focus be battleships or carriers I can't go into the whole thing right now read this book if you're interested it provides parts of the answer so of course linked in the description below as with all my sources in all my videos but the point that I'm making is that aviation became a lot more important and as such by 1943 as the budget was started to be shifted the Douglas Aircraft Company got wind via contact in Washington that soon there would be need for a new designed able to carry both bombs and a torpedo now this is important so do remember it for later on in any case it took another year until as the - 1 1 9 - 3 was released but the information was correct the Navy wanted a replacement for their Martin aircraft three competitors entered Great Lakes hole and Douglas but the competition was a force hole came up with a floatplane de futuristic looking yet impractically and impractically named XP TBH and was sent packing Great Lakes proposed a biplane the XT bg1 but that plane lost out against the XT BD in almost every regard thus Douglas won the competition without a fuss but this was a varmint at beyond the faylene competition because when they presented the XT bd1 in 1945 wow it was a big surprise it was something completely new indeed the only feature that a navy was used to was a crew layout freemen a pilot a bombardier who could act as a second pilot and a gunner beyond that it was a novelty and foreign as the observant could already see by the fact that it was a monoplane the canopy was enclosed to gear semi-retractable the torpedo was partially set in the fuselage the plane feature power-assisted folded wings having the space requirements and it was powered by an 800 horsepower pratt & whitney the airplane hit a blistering speed of 200 miles an hour that's fionna 25 kilometers an hour nearly doubled that of the older Martin torpedo bombers and range - with a torpedo was a hundred miles more it he was something to get excited about but of course as with all prototypes something is needed changing the engine needed a slight redesign the oil cooler had to be moved as well and the canopy was heightened and there were of course a few other concerns such as a rolling motion when the plane approached its stall point by 1936 however the issue Navy issued the first reduction order of 114 TB ones and they were delivered the summer of the following year the tranquility of peacetime production in any case the final 1947 text for food that the TBD one was found superior to the performance of any comparable horizontal or torpedo bomber in the Navy and it had excellent flying chorister exist and it had been entirely suitable for carrier operations or formula in a field it is not a surprise that the TBD represents more than just the next step in carrier plane design it was in fact the Devastator that secured a standing after torpedo strike aircraft in the Navy and that was no mean feat by the mid-1930s more and more we can observe a shift from the conventional single engine biplane over to low-wing monoplane designs around the world you had a Dodge the 21 the Japanese k-27 that American p45 and of course the avant-garde Soviet i-16 the future was mono and it was indeed a TBD Devastator that shirt at the heart of this change and in many ways it was leading it adopted in 1947 that TBD was the first of many it was the first production low-wing monoplane to his service on a US carrier it was also the first all-metal single-engine strike aircraft of the US Navy and it was the first to feature a uie enclosed cockpit and the first to have power-assisted for the wings one might even say that for the time it was the most modern torpedo strike aircraft in the world yet across the Pacific another comparable machine or star starting to roll out the Japanese beef of an ominous foreshadowing but before we hit the war let's quickly have another look at the final production as you know one of the things I like to do is highlight certain characteristics about planes that you wouldn't usually find in other places with the TBD one since it was so widely ignored this isn't exactly hard so I've made a list of a couple of neat features first the folding wings for the US Navy this became standard in the carrier aircraft during World War two but the TBD started at all the span of the aircraft was reduced from 50 feet to 25 feet eight inches which greatly assisted storage in hangar space and potentially elevator capacity the following story will make it obvious how much of a novelty folding wings wear on carrier at back then during trials conducted on cv2 USS Lexington in 1947 one of the TBD pilots right after landing decided to fold up his wings the aircraft was instantly swarmed by the attentive firefighting crew who rushed in thinking that the plane was disintegrating I guess they had a good chuckle about it later on second the gear you remember that the gear was retractable which in the mid 1930s was still not a guarantee on planes of the TBD size it was also not fully enclosed which at first account seems like an admission this was apparently a conscious decision the idea was that if the aircraft were to belly-land the damage would be limited by the exposed year taking the brunt of the strike saving the actual fuselage now furred and this actually became somewhat of an obsession of mine during my research just asked Justin from the armored podcast the DVD one was part of the Navy's last drive to equip carrier aircraft with smoke laying devices I researched this to the extent that I could being physically removed from the archives in the US but the idea was floating around since the mid 1920s the aim was to give aircraft smoke lighting devices to avoid an Express solution in masking fleet movements or even to obscure Peter attack or to rob enemy planes visual of the friendly fleet in that sense it is very different to smoke laying in support of ground troops that we saw during World War two the idea was tested during fleet maneuvers and the official pilot manual of the TPD does mention smoke canisters just like it does about the SBD Dauntless it as far as I can tell the idea was never used in both - and the canisters were removed very early on now forth be it being of course a naval plan the aircraft was equipped with sizable flotation devices and these were also quite new and modern and provided buoyancy in case of a ditching so that the crew could evacuate in time v the TBD was also tested as a floatplane yet this project TBD 1a did not go past the prototype stage and then 6th the Navy did not experience any TBD losses to enemy fire until its very last grand fleet action at Midway and seventh the II TBD had a fire suppression system but no self-sealing fuel tanks and last but not least the TBD was equipped with a mark 15 but a mod 3 bomb site well nominally at rabida bomber the TBD was also used as a light level bomber for example at Wake Island or during the successful lay Salama arrayed in New Guinea 1942 check out our video on that the site was located in such a location that the bomb body actually had to squeeze himself in the space below the pilot laying prone and from there he would release the bomb let's go into the weapons carried by the DVD then it was armed with a single forward-facing fixed machine when Ivor afer decal or 50 Cal you can spot a modification to a 50 Cal by looking for a blister fairing on a starboard side to end this the pilot will use the mark 3 mod to kinda scopic gun sight defensively another single free decal was mounted when not in use this was stored inside the fuselage by the use of folding doors the exception years me t8 and perhaps VT 6 home in preparation for the Battle of Midway field modified this into a to build 30 Cal the turret had a good horizontal Traverse 180 degrees and 19 were tikal the seed rotate at 360 degrees the plane carried a maximum of 600 rounds for the turret in any case this weaponry was little more than for about self-defense moving on to the payload for its horizontal bombing role the official manual from 1957 is centered around two loadouts everfree 500-pound bombs or 12 100 pounders it mentions a secondary load out of to 500 pounds or one one thousand pounder but this is somewhat at the side this gives us an idea of what it four seven the Navy considered as the most likely strike loadout yet from 178 destroyer missions flown only forty-one had been as a bomber which is less than 25% and chose to focus the Navy had on the TBD as a torpedo bomber so let's talk then again about a grande fuel of any well torpedo bomber the actual torpedo never mind how good the aircraft is it's D torpedo that makes the ultimate success during testing 47 the T body was cleared after only making two drops of mark eight torpedoes since both two standard electrical release and the back of manual release had been tested this would indicate that each release mechanism was tested once so I find that it works Navy moved on for what I'm operation the 21 inch 2,000 pound mark 13 torpedo was supposed to be used and this of course means that well gloom and tragedy on horizon but more on that later just keep it in mind and you might remember that early on in the video I told you that Douglas had been informed in advance of some of the requirements of the new torpedo capable strike aircraft one of these things that they had been tipped off on was that the Navy wanted to have a torpedo placed at 10 degrees from the central line half enclosed in the fuselage and it had hoped that this arrangement would help the entry into water upon release and also that the enclosure would reduce the drag and when designing the TBD doctors of course kept this in mind and this is why when you look at the Devastator you see that torpedo slightly off angle set within the central fuselage now let's turn over to performance next to the torpedo for which the Peabody was not a fault performance was the Achilles heel but during pre-war years it was positively outstanding it outperformed previous American strike aircraft in terms of speed and range it was modern flew well and was solidly constructed on all accounts it was a workhorse in the making the production TVD did get a little performance boost by using a new pratt & whitney but that was only accounting for an extra 50 horsepower following are the official performance characteristics from the three-seven handbook the engine was rated at 850 horsepower top speed at sea level was competitive for the time and endurance a top speed and cruising were of course the and on loadout however both were good and range a crucial element for the Navy of course was excellent for the 1940 standards it should be noted that the TV Dean was actually never used at a maximum of sixth end of its range during the war you might also notice that in these hard stats the Devastator does lose out against its direct competitor the only slightly younger Japanese b5n but again that is a story for another time but raw data is only one thing so let's put one of the early a v8 errs on the record well after a few hours in the TBD I was sure was the best plane and Navy had at the time it was faster than anything I had flown in I gotta tell you I was in love with the aircraft soon field care Atlanta practice took place and this was followed by carrier qualifications which was day and night one of the early lessons that the LSO stressed was don't ever let your aircraft get slow during final approach the carrier as the TBD didn't have as much power as needed to make a quick recovery now return to the ship with a torpedo or maximum bomb load it was wise to drop the ordnance forgetting slow in into the groove as they say just wasn't acceptable after observing an aircraft hit the ramp well this wise counsel certainly made a lasting impression on the pilot exciting piece of trivia that man was William esters and he started flying DVDs in 1948 and he was one of the few devastated pilots who actually survived the Battle of Midway and not a pilot noted the TBD one was very stable and easy to handle it broke from the deck at 70 knots and landed with full flaps at 60 even though the flaps didn't change its handling characteristics much now it had a good solid feel and was rock steady when coming aboard the maneuvers we did with it were very limited basically the TBD one was a straight and level airplane it would performed moderately sharp turns but I wouldn't roll or spin it its glide ratio is rather shortened although it was modern in 37 it was obsolete by 1942 and well we knew that was lieutenant Robert Lowe from the enterprise he too would survive the war and make it to Rear Admiral it should also be noted that especially because the TVD was so new and quite complex that getting used to this new aircraft wasn't the easy pilots did mentioned that a new long checklist was overwhelming and that the plethora of hydraulic and electrical system did take some getting used to trading losses were relatively low at only eight including a peculiar incident where the wings hadn't been locked down properly before takeoff but until 1941 d and although the flying qualities were rather good a fervor for the dvd's would be lost an accident a fairly high number but perhaps understandable considering that for most pilots it was unlike anything they had flown before the full production run of t biddies did not exceed 140 airframes delivered between august 30 7 and october 49 surprising perhaps dothe due to the limited number although actually for the time it is one of the larger orders and a long time it took for them to be built well you know that's peacetime for you but it's also the case that bombing still retained doctrinal supremacy over torpedo attacks in the Navy and this was only changing slowly I mean Ranger was built without a dedicated 4-pete of storage but remember that I did mention that torpedo bombers was a you know that novelty and it was not a staple in the Navy sure enough with the TVD the torpedo bomber did actually get off the bench and secured an official spot in the Navy's first team lineup but during peacetime the training focus remained on bombs rather than torpedoes the production run did provide enough aircraft for the carrier's Lexington Saratoga Enterprise Yorktown and Hornet wasp and Ranger also eventually received a small complement after the allocation and number 70 or so TVs were left over some making it to the United Kingdom stationed for example next to scapa flow the Devastator became the vanguard of a modernizing US Navy kick starting to drive together with the vote sb to you that would see eventually the Navy taking on aircraft like the Brewster f2a the Grumman f4f or indeed the SBD Dauntless so far it would seem that things don't look too badly for the TBD one but then the US was plunged into World War two with Pearl Harbor and the Devastator was already four years old by my estimation that he beat ease shortcoming is a mixture of three things performance torpedo and context let's look at these in turn the TV DS misfortune was that it came out as mid to early designed in 1955 and rolling off the production lines in 37 it came out just as massive jumps were realized across the world in aircraft design and performance for example the SBD Dauntless is a year younger but we can already see that grand leap forward with that aircraft and the TBD was instead stuck in that awkward space modern enough to be the herald of a new age but too old to be competitive in modern war and returning to robert loud from the enterprise here's what he had to say on the subject of the TV DS performance and the X DVD may have flown at 200 knots but I never flew an operational type it did better than 150 was downhill with all the right conditions you were doing well to make 120 knots in the TNT with a torpedo and since protruding fish didn't create a great deal of drag 130 knots clean was normal the TBD took all day to climb to altitude if you went to 15,000 feet in it you just about used up all your fuel 12,000 feet was maximum bombing altitude and because we never went higher we carried the oxygen although the aircraft was equipped to handle now I can't pinpoint the exact if discrepancy between the handbook stats from 1947 and here they are as a reminder again and loves works but I would assume that next potentially must remember in something that quote is from 1970 that's a strain of four years of service on airframes some infield modifications and the toils of war caused an explainable fall-off in performance over the years and next to that of course the clinical status you sometimes find in handbooks it must be taken with a little grain of salt turning to the torpedo I don't think it is an overstatement to say that the devastators record would have been a lot lot better had it not been for the mark 14 torpedo over after the 40 mph routine this fish's history is closely intertwined with that of the t be used to the point where we can't really separate a tomb early on this rapido was little more than a two thousand pound disaster with the mark 24 directors cite the torpedo could be sent with relatively certainly towards its intended target hit the mark 14 it it wasn't an art blogger with a volatile mind crews often complained that a 21 inch it would break up on impact fail to engage or veer off into the never and it's really hard to judge the exact impact that the failure rate had on the TV DS record but one thing is sure any shortcomings were made worse by the lack of success due to the 40 torpedoes now truth be told mechanical failures were part of the business but the mark routine crossed the line at Toulon gear one hit out of 22 drops that's 5% produced well rather lackluster results and at lai Salam our only three out of 13 torpedoes that 20% hit their mark both rates were relatively easy and at Lane solemn hour there was very limited enemy opposition and the conditions were perfect for that raid Navy had anticipated nine hits or 70% yes that is an optimistic number but 20% and lightly defended and near station in targets that's of optimal for comparison at Pearl Harbor the Japanese had a success rate of about 50% with their torpedoes not 90% that sometimes claim just read how Simms book but then that's them after the first surprise was overcome facing a whole battle fleet with every single Joe firing anything from a three inch gun all that corn 50 Cal down to their Springfield's and 1911's Friedman actually mentions that the Americans for their part after fixing the mod 14 way past the DVDs retirement got an estimated overall hit ratio of 40% for the war although there might be a couple of false positives in that number following is an approximate list of TBD missions with torpedoes remember that reports sometimes vary so there could be a little bit of a variance in the numbers but this should give you a good idea of difficulties the Aviators faced with their torpedo even if it is not a complete list in 1942 between koala Lane and Midway around 140 sorties were flown since not every plane back it's hard to say how many drops were made exactly especially at Midway but I'll use Tillman's estimate of 95 out of these only 12 hits were secured and actually seven of those were on the Japanese carrier show hole during the Coral Sea this would imply an overall success rate of the mark 14 torpedo with the TPB d of 12% since around 50 drops were made against Japanese carriers with only hits on shore made I wonder whether a working torpedo might not have changed the memory of this aircraft let's turn to the final category of context part of this of course is already given with performance and the torpedo the DBD was beyond its prime thanks to rapid accelerations and technology in aircraft design and it had a torpedo that didn't work but we have to explore the context for torpedo bombing in World War two a little bit more and once we've done that I am going to have a look at two battles the Battle of the Coral Sea and Midway to explain what caused the devastators to pop succeed and fail what should be mentioned is that tobita bombing is really an inherently risky business as well if they hadn't anticipated it before nearly all major powers found out during World War two the fact of coming in low puts you at the mercy of intervening fighter aircraft and you only really stand a chance against those if you have attentive escorts and you have to face the combined AAA firepower of every single ship in the target fleet and beyond that on your final stretch you have very little chance to do any kind of bucking and weaving because after all you need to pop that fish at the correct heading altitude and speed which makes you a very easy target a torpedo bomber is only ever as good as its speed oh and it is shackled by the drop parameters for the mark 13 that meant drops needed to be made at speeds of roughly a hundred and ten knots and not higher than 50 feet of course yes eventually this wasn't proof but not in time for the TBD this is very much different to dive bombers that drop simple bombs after coming in from high above thereby exposed to less intense AAA fire before the final dive and then they come in at angles that make them hard to hit even one concentrated defensive firepower as well as that after the dive even if the dive brakes employed the dive bombers have the advantage of speed once they have dropped their payload whereas torpedo bombers essentially remains low and slow a desperate Ruiz trying to find the nearest exit route in a sea full of enemy ships it doesn't matter if you are in the Mediterranean or the Pacific once going against a large enough fleet of enough guns or even fighter cover torpedo attacks suffered horribly just look at for example the Italian s m79 s or the Japanese g4m s but there are the arguments to be made for success tax torpedoes can be extremely effective against solitaire or lightly defended targets but even to capital ships but against a fleet they have to be used in conjunction with a coordinated dive bombing attack to be effective but even then the incoming aircraft have very little cover are vulnerable and don't stand much chance against determined opposition and if there's one person that is too retirement it is a sailor mining in a gun considering this it's no real surprise that after a short honeymoon the US Navy started to revalue torpedo bombing and shifting their tactics to at least alleviate the inherent vulnerability of this type of aircraft this include a tighter coordination with escort aircraft but also by shifting these planes into other roles such as for example bombing close air support search and rescue as well as anti-submarine warfare so when assessing the Devastator beyond the technical issues with the torpedoes beyond the lack of escorts and it's anemic performance in 1942 we do have to ask ourselves were part of the problem was about the concept and execution of torpedo attacks the Battle of the Coral Sea is perhaps the devastators claim to fame because in many ways it showed what the aircraft can do in the right conditions at the Coral Sea the Americans sent out one flight of TP ones from both the Lexington and the Yorktown of Lexington going out first they attacked a Japanese carrier sure already smoking after being hit by dauntless for once the Mach 14 played along and five hits were scored effectively dooming the carrier what made this attack special is that the devastators could actually anvil the show coming in from two sides and setting a torpedo spread that show had no chance of escaping a later attacked by your town we fielded another two hits and that was sure who done for for the war while Yorktown's dvds were involved in a scrap after the attack just like Lexington's known were lost together the squadrons had achieved the hit ratio of 37% this attack goes to show that what could be done on the perfect conditions the defensive a a fire had been weakened and split by the SPD's the Japanese fleet held no tight formation and perhaps crucially its fighters were busy chasing the American dive bombers and duking it out with the escort fighters for the TVD it was like striding through a saloon brawl only having to avoid a stray flying glass before or during their choice beverage at the bar this is why context matters because looking at this result of this battle alone you might think that heck now torpedo bombing work just fine I don't see what the fuss is all about in reality however the TBD worked at the Coral Sea because the Coral Sea worked for TBD which means of course that we have to turn to well the elephant in the room the Battle of Midway and the final nail in the coffin of the TBD one Devastator just like at the Coral Sea looking only at Midway might leave you with the wrong impression because many things went wrong at Midway that should not have gone wrong a TBD paid a price while at the same time making a sacrifice that gave it slow but deadly cousin the SBD Dauntless the break to score a couple of home runs the overall story of Midway is wildly no my body image we made a video on that battle but let's summarize the devastators involvement unlike the Coral Sea the DVDs did not come in without me causing a fuss in fact they were a magnet for trouble in this battle a 6mz rose pounced them way before they ever reached their drop positions the escorting Wildcats couldn't communicate with their groups and also became embroiled in trouble off their own so the DVDs were left offend of experienced and dedicated Japanese fighter pilots by themselves as well as data carriers maneuvered to give the DVDs an unfavorable run-up and the dive bombers could not arrive at the same time unlike at the coral scene meaty ate the first attack miss Gordon going for sure you was massacred the upcoming of the turret and the installation of an armored seed made very little difference now the single plane out of 15 made at home and only one drop had been made bTW 6 attack against cargo or similarly tragic 40 planes went out 6 drops were made for came back and that's for 0 hits one crew was fished out of the sea two weeks later following the same pattern was Vicky's freeze attack against to hear you as the TV DS went in where they were hounded by zeros and flag tress bitterly trying to get into a drop position but the carrier just kept on escaping 5 drops were made with no hits esters actually tried to lead the survivors out of the crucible and eventually two crews including esters were finally rescued after they had to ditch he was actually him recounting that story for zeroes that chased me I want to say 20 maybe 25 mile last one he flew alongside about ten feet off my wingtip now the pilot he raised his right hand see apparently executing a half salute what he intended to mean I may never know possibly good show well done or perhaps let me get some more ammunition now whatever it was he joined the other three and headed for their fleet now soon I was joined by machinist Harriet core with his gunner Lord childís and we had it for the Yorktown unfortunately we were both forced ditch and were later rescued while the tea biddies attacks resulted in the Japanese capping unable to attack the Dauntless as that security eventually u.s. victory at Midway 37 out of 41 devastators failed to return the existing squadrons have been decimated beyond recognition and VT 8 was gone but the body count was worse than a number as many of the crews lost have been amongst the most experienced Navy fliers three to four years under their belt that knowledge skill and experience beyond the human life had been lost and saving grace was perhaps that these attacks were flown with only two crewmen members instead of the usual free now the DVDs lack of performance and the outdated design is often considered at fault and yes absolutely it didn't help but one thing that isn't considered when judging the Devastator for its performance at Midway is that land-based TBF the Rangers also launched an attack by the way we actually do have a full inside out episode on the TPF check it out but the Avenger was a TBD is a replacement and vastly superior plane but out of 6 sent only one made it back the fact that it he BF was a superior aircraft well it didn't matter at Midway it suffered the same problems no a lack of air cover a slow run up an unpredictable torpedo no coordination with Wildcats or SPD's and poor tactical positioning and that was well the crux of the matter at Coral Sea everything that could go right went right at Midway the opposite was true for the torpedo squadrons had the escorts Manchester booty's maybe things would have been different maybe or perhaps if the dvds had been able to have a more favorable approach against the carriers instead of having you know to chase them that could have changed things perhaps in the end it's all philosophical with the Avenger at least a more powerful machine now appeared but the Navy still had to find its happy place when it came to dropping torpedoes the performance gap had been overcome but next to that tight coordination of escort fighters and dive bombers as well as better executed strikes tactic positioning and a more agreeable torpedo had to be developed - TBD however well it would see none of that and after all of that it is up to you to make up your mind what is your opinion on the TBD one devastate do you look at it differently now or do you want to add something let me know in the comments below please do support the channel on patreon which is really important since YouTube still doesn't exactly like my videos big thank you to all of those that already do it is really very much appreciated and don't forget to share this video it does help so much thank you very much to Justin for his help of some of the sources as usual my sources are linked below and also big THANK YOU to side-story for providing all the voice lines that were not my own and as always have a great day good hunting and see you in the sky

Channel: Military Aviation History

Views: 563,497

Rating: 4.9232149 out of 5

Keywords: Midway, Battle, Pacific, TBD-1, Devastator, Carrier, United States, Navy, Japanese, USN, IJN, WW2, Torpedo, Bomber, Lexington, Yorktown, Enterprise, History

Id: 8Q7RpyUJB10

Length: 33min 21sec (2001 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 13 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/MyOtherCarIsAFishbed]

Devastator was an outdated design from the 30's, but by no means the worst plane of the war. Blackburn made a variety of aircraft that set the standard in terms of dangerous flaws and impotent performance.

[u/DiscoLew]

Brewster Buffalo??? I’ve always thought that was the worst. The devastator was hurt by tactics and coordination as much as design flaws.

[u/StalkerRigo]

Have you heard of the defiant?