Few warplanes of any nation played as decisive a historic role in a single action as did the SBD Dauntless at the Battle of Midway.  During the morning of  4 June 1942, the naval airpower of the Imperial Japanese Navy was effectively crippled through the sinking of three aircraft carriers Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and later that afternoon, sinking of the carrier Hiryu. 

The Dauntless, one of the finest dive bombers ever designed, was first produced as the Northrop BT, later becoming the SBD when Northrop became a division of  the Douglas Company in 1938.   It was employed by the U.S. Navy in combat from Pearl Harbor onward, with carrier-borne service primarily in the Pacific.   In this painting, Lcdr. Richard Best in his SBD (off the USS Enterprise), gets the first and fatal hit on the Japanese carrier Akagi.