having some balance troubles or is everybody cool with this?

[CAP1]

tbm's can sorta kinda be fun. in a weird way. you just gotta think outside the box, and make your own fun. presuming you survive long enough that is, lololol.

 my squad co tends to call our missions "death ride" when we're in 'em. it's funny as hell, 'cause every time he calls it that, we seem to mostly survive. we even got to give a few deck workers a tbm buzz cut. 

[Poppy]

From what I've read it was actually a planned doctrine before the war. They kind of threw it together at Coral Sea despite Vejtasa's success they considered it too costly. I couldn't find any other uses of it but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.  Vejtasa went on to be a fighter pilot. I'm not certain of the actual total but I have read the SBD's air to air kill tally for the whole war was in the 90s.

I was one of those B5Ns that got by the F4Fs protecting the Lexington last night. Our group got scattered by 1841 Sqn F4Fs. The ones of us they didn't get managed to creep away, luckily we could see the Lex burning in the distance. Another squaddie found me and we joined up we watched the activity around the Lexington for maybe a minute two at most. I saw tracers arcing high and some dots swirling above the CV. I told my squadmate I was going to try and sneak in he followed me. In practice we've had better luck launching our torps right around 150 MPH so we slowed our approach a bit. As neared the TF we lined up on the CA's bow using it as our lead to get torps on the CV. We spotted SBDs between us and the CV and they already had their fangs out coming our way. Over vox we heard we had a few more squadmates making another run on the TF. The first pass by Mace was coming into my front left quarter. I got a PW from him. We were just close enough to the TF to where if he was slow to reverse I might still get my torp off with a chance of getting a hit. So I continued to plow towards the TF. I was agonizingly close but just quite to far out to launch my torp when his bullets hit home on his second pass. Long story short...

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 I was witness to this attack, Carver and I watched the entire attack develop and honestly, we thought it was planned, it was a superb attack no matter what, and we immediately launched our rafts . . we knew we where sunk just because of the angles you guys dropped from, no matter if she turned or not she was taking it hard. We took that attack seriously when making Allied orders for frame 3, making plans to counter it if used again. I haven't found out yet how Lexington bought it but I am wondering if torp's got her. That attack was awesome shifty, yours an your wingman's sacrifice bought brought your squaddie's the time needed to wreck our boat. <S>

My squadmate also went down to one of the SBDs right on the heels of my death. However the other group of our B5Ns managed to get close enough to get their torps away before being shot down. One of these sunk the CV which had been damaged by the earlier Val strike.

I don't know how I did it but I posted in your comment somehow. I said:  I was witness to this attack, Carver and I watched the entire attack develop and honestly, we thought it was planned, it was a superb attack no matter what, and we immediately launched our rafts . . we knew we where sunk just because of the angles you guys dropped from, no matter if she turned or not she was taking it hard. We took that attack seriously when making Allied orders for frame 3, making plans to counter it if used again. I haven't found out yet how Lexington bought it but I am wondering if torp's got her. That attack was awesome shifty, yours an your wingman's sacrifices brought your squaddie's the time needed to wreck our boat. <S>

[Shifty]

I don't know how I did it but I posted in your comment somehow. I said:  I was witness to this attack, Carver and I watched the entire attack develop and honestly, we thought it was planned, it was a superb attack no matter what, and we immediately launched our rafts . . we knew we where sunk just because of the angles you guys dropped from, no matter if she turned or not she was taking it hard. We took that attack seriously when making Allied orders for frame 3, making plans to counter it if used again. I haven't found out yet how Lexington bought it but I am wondering if torp's got her. That attack was awesome shifty, yours an your wingman's sacrifices brought your squaddie's the time needed to wreck our boat. <S>

Thanks Poppy, Hightone was the guy that organized and led that mission.   The attack you guys made on the Zuikaku last night pretty much was the same type tactic with the same results. "Scratch One Flattop".