This month is the 50th anniversary of my first book.
Where oh where did the decades go?
Since then, I’ve published 43 others (10 fiction) plus 850 magazine articles and sold a screenplay. But the books track back to The Dauntless Dive Bomber of World War II, released in October 1976.
Naval SBDs (Scout Bomber by Douglas) Dauntlesses won essential victories in the year after Pearl Harbor: Coral Sea, Midway, and the sanguinary Guadalcanal campaign. Years later I wrote an SBD article titled “The Plane that Won the War.” It made the B-17 fanboys really cranky.
Nobody else was likely to write the Dauntless story, and no one else was better qualified.
How I came to be in that time and place needn’t diverge here—maybe another article—but in retrospect it was almost as if I were ordained to write Dauntless Dive Bomber. In the early 70s my father obtained the only airworthy example. The restoration had been a lengthy process, and I’d spent part of one summer almost standing on my head in the rear cockpit with a shop light in one hand and a rivet gun in the other. Eventually I got 6 or 8 hours in the gunner’s seat while Dad flew up front.
The book’s format was not original with me. When I grew up, many or most “airplane books” tended toward rivet-counter texts, heavily technical without much operational detail. But Edward Jablonski’s excellent Flying Fortress (1965) combined technical and historic aspects in a compelling volume. I was years upstream from those B-17 fanboys, but Jablonski’s combination resonated with me.
Path to Publication
Recognizing that books about tailhook aircraft were rare—the F4U Corsair was an exception—I realized that a potential market was going unfilled.
Enter Naval Institute Press. Which I barely knew existed.
After failed attempts with a few commercial houses, I took a chance and wrote to Preble Hall, 21402.
Darned if I didn’t hear back. The reply came from acquisitions editor Tom Epley, who encouraged me to send an outline and at least one sample chapter. Easily done. Then I received an author’s questionnaire to explain my qualifications (I stressed my Dauntless flight time) and experience.
Gladly done.
And one morning in May 1975 there was a contract in P.O. Box 135, 97813, signed by Commander R.T.E. Browler (Ret). It was a joyous discovery for a 26-year-old magazine writer with a few dozen articles to his credit.
In the mid 70s the internet did not exist, and I was a cyber luddite when it did emerge. I wrote my first six books and about 100 articles on a Royal Standard my father bought before I was born. Eventually I wore out most of the vowel keys while consuming packs of carbon paper.
Yes, carbon paper. I’m that old.
Research for what became my first book consumed about four years. My journalism diploma from 1971 was marginally useful, but I had enough contacts and colleagues to track down likely sources, and eventually I consulted 14 Dauntless pilots and aircrew, half of them retired admirals. Foremost was Harry Don Felt, a carrier-sinking air group commander and former CinCPac, who kindly wrote the foreword. Next senior was Lieutenant General Richard C. Mangrum who took the first SBD squadron to Guadalcanal.
I didn’t get to know the Douglas genius who created the SBD until working in San Diego in the 1980s, but Ed Heinemann became a valued friend and generous resource. I was oafishly proud when I could tell him something he didn’t know: each of the 318 holes in the Dauntless dive brakes was exactly the diameter of a tennis ball.
How that revelation came about also will have to wait.
Lacking email, I worked as I always had, via letters and phone calls. The sources represented nine squadrons on five aircraft carriers and Guadalcanal.
Chief among my archival patrons was Dr. Dean C. Allard of the navy’s operational archives. He was impressive—treated me as a colleague though I was literally fresh off an Oregon hay wagon. His staff provided me with about 300 pages of documents, some of which I still used 40 years later. Whatever I paid for them, it was worth it.
Along the way, NIP manuscript editor Louise Gerretson asked if I had been educated in Britain or Canada. That struck me as unfathomable. I had barely been to Canada—flying in a couple of British Columbia airshows—and at that time I’d never visited the U.K.
Louise said, “Well, your spelling sometimes indicates a British background.”
Then the light bulb flicked on. I had spent much of my youth reading history—published in Great Britain. Without “realising” it, I had absorbed much of Her Majesty’s spelling.
A pre-publication excerpt received the American Aviation Historical Society Journal’s outstanding contributor award for 1976.
While I was delighted to break into print with a book after 50-some articles, the cover was a disappointment. To understate things. The monochrome sepia-tone dust jacket and all lower-case letters seemed designed to fade into bookshelves.
Not to worry, however. When a later print run was published it was like sunrise. A glorious full-color painting of an SBD-5 cruising through clouds, rendered by my sometime colleague Captain Ted Wilbur. Nobody did clouds or aluminum as well as Ted. I was even happier when his work graced my NIP histories of the F6F Hellcat and F4U Corsair (both 1979) and F4F Wildcat (second edition 1990).
Institute secretary-treasurer-publisher Bowler (reputedly “Bud” but I near heard him called anything but “Commander Bowler’) put his thumb on the scale and inserted some artwork in the Corsair volume. He retired in 1984 and died the next year.
Then and Now
Reading my book half a century later, the text holds up well, though today I would be more wary of using “which” instead of the more literate “that” in restrictive and non-restrictive clauses.
While my prose stands scrutiny, some statements pale amid decades of later scholarship. A prime example: I accepted SBD pilots’ memories of Japanese flight decks ranged with planes awaiting launch in the Battle of Midway. The graphic descriptions of exploding Zeros, Kates and Vals made dramatic reading, but they lack accuracy. (See Parshall and Tully’s Shattered Sword, page 231.)
Another problem was my description of Hornet’s mission on the morning of 4 June. I wrote, “Hornet’s air staff had decided to launch the torpedo planes first so the dive bombers and fighters could link up with the slower TBDs en route to the target. As soon as (Commander John) Waldron’s squadron had departed, 35 Dauntlesses and ten Wildcats were ranged on the flight deck and launch soon commenced.” (Page 66.)
Now I do not find the source of that version. Neither the ship nor air group reports mention the subject.
Walter Lord’s Incredible Victory (1967) stated that the SBDs and F4Fs were taking off while Commander John Waldron’s crews manned aircraft.
But John B. Lundstrom’s encyclopedic The First Team (1984, pages 333-334) states that F4Fs launched first, then SBDs, then TBDs. Today I consider his work definitive.
Excepting the wartime comments, most of the few errors were corrected in the 2006 paperback edition, which remains the ultimate version. But the contemporary assessment of remaining Dauntlesses could stand updating.
The 1970s aircraft restoration time and effort provided long-term benefits. The flights with Dad provided not only rare background, but the basis for a novel and a short combat squadrons book from my British publisher. I even spelled UK style for the series—intentionally.
In 1992 my Bantam editor remarked that he’d never seen a 90,000-word text delivered in four months, but I explained that Dauntless: A Novel of Midway and Guadalcanal benefited from about 20 years of research and interviews for nonfiction volumes.
During the ensuing half century, I’ve enjoyed my Institute relations: seven books; three dozen articles in Proceedings and Naval History; and two writing awards.
And I look forward to contributing more.
Break-break
Here’s the full story courtesy of Naval History Magazine:
https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history/2026/october/dauntless-dive-bomber-50-years-later
(Ignore the caption on the SBD formation photo; I’ve sent a correction.)
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