Seems to be a neglected subject.  It caught my eye after seeing Dive Bomber (1941) where it was the real star.

Saw the very last one at the Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola this summer, brought up from Lake Michigan after overrunning the flight deck of USS Sable or USS Wolverine.

Thanks for any comments!

Lyle

The Vindicator is one of my favorite airplanes. I have a set of plans drawn by Doc Keith and have been planning on building it someday. I have collected several books and have many photo's of the one Naval Aviation Museum.

Bill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u7fs5ulpJg

Interesting.

Hi Bill,

I've got the Doc Keith plans, too.  They look excellent.  I also have the Ginter book on the Vindicator, what a treasure trove of info.  

In Midway from 1976 there's a scene of the dive bombers finding the Japanese carriers...they're supposed to be Dauntlesses but it's a flight of SB2U-2s taken from some film made during WW2 and spliced in. I understand they were from Jacksonville NAS.  I'd love to find out from what film that footage came from.  Last Vindicator flew in 1943.

I too love this plane and was very fortunate to visit the National Museum of Naval Aviation several times.  I was also on a first-name basis with Mr. Goodhill the curator.  In addition to the Ginter books, which in themselves are a great repository of colored photos of the plane as well as the cockpit interiors, I too have a collection in b+w of this very same plane -both interiors as well as exterior.  Long story made short, I was given special permission to take extensive photographs of this plane and would say conservatively speaking, there must be at least 100 shots, including squared-on overall shots of four views, squared-on shots of many of the components such as landing gears, etc., extreme close ups of the pilot's controls and the rear occupant's cockpit that went far beyond Ginter's books.  So, no copyright issues here.

One thing that may have been overlooked is the radial engine.  It's exceedingly rare nowadays and I believe it's also the same type that powered Howard Hughes racer.  Correct me if I'm wrong here.

In anticipation of how and why I did this; again long story made short, I was (am) just another avid modeler (Nut? Junky?) that wanted to take detailed close ups of future modeling projects.  Just that this got carried away and I ended up taking tens of thousands of photos of hundreds of rare, popular, classics, biplanes, warbirds and jets over the pass 35 some-odd years.  This makes me celebrating my 41st birthday for the 29th time, I refuse to grown up.

 

Gary (Skye)