BOMBING IN THE BEAST

Ben Case and the SB2C Helldiver

ROBERT F. DORR

“WE WERE LAUNCHED while our fleet was 180 to 200 miles northeast of Manila. My group was assigned to hit Japanese ships in Manila Harbor. As we approached our dive area at 10,000 feet, big, black puffs of smoke from anti-aircraft fire began popping all around us.” Leslie Bennett Case, known as Ben, is describing the first combat by Air Group Eighty aboard USS Ticonderoga (CV 14) on November 5, 1944. Case was a dive-bomber pilot flying Curtiss SB2C-3 Helldivers in Bombing Squadron Eighty, or VB-80. Case was the shortest guy in the squadron, a New Orleans boy who tipped the scales at 140 pounds, sat on a telephone book to fly, and understood too well why some said the SB2C designation meant “son of a bitch second class.” The…

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Flight Journal (Digital) - 1 Issue, September - October 2022

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