The A-24 Banshee was a USAAF dive bomber very closely based on the Douglas SBD Dauntless, the main US Navy dive bomber during the crucial years of the Second World War in the Pacific. It was one of a number of aircraft ordered by the USAAF in the aftermath of the success of the Stuka during the German blitzkrieg in Poland and France in 1939-40, but was never intended to be a main frontline aircraft. It was to be used until more powerful aircraft, such as the Curtiss A-25 (also based on a Navy dive bomber, the SB2C Helldiver), arrived in sufficient numbers. It was also intended to use the A-24 as a dive bomber trainer.

The A-24 had a short service career. At the outbreak of war the basic A-24 was to equip the 27th Bombardment Group, based in the Philippines. The collapse of the American position on the Philippines saw the aircraft diverted to Australia, where it equipped the 91st and 8th Bombardment Groups. The 91st took its aircraft to the Dutch East Indies, the 8th operated from the north coast of Australia. After suffering heavy losses during the first half of 1942, the A-24 was withdrawn to the training role.

A large number of A-24s were produced for the army. The 168 A-24-DEs were followed by 170 A-24As, based on the SBD-4, which arrived in early 1943. The most numerous variant was the A-24B, based on the SBD-5, of which the army received 615 from the middle of 1943. By this time events had revealed that the dedicated dive bomber was dangerously vulnerable to enemy fighters unless given a dedicated fighter escort. While the Navy continued to use its dive bombers in just that manner, the USAAF (like the RAF) switched to the use of the fighter bomber. Aircraft like the Hawker Typhoon or P-47 Thunderbolt could fly the ground attack missions and hold their own against German or Japanese aircraft.

In 1940, Army planners saw the shape of the war to come in the form of the German blitzkrieg defeat of the western Allies and destruction of France in a six-week campaign. The use of the Stuka as "flying forward artillery" for the armored formations was not lost on George C. Marshall and his staff. How close American participation in the war was no one knew; whatever it was, it was not sufficient time to develop a distinct dive-bomber of their own. The Navy was now taking delivery of the new Douglas dive bomber, and it appeared to easily meet the known specifications for such an airplane. Accordingly, the Army Air Corps obtained a Dauntless and tested it, with the result being an order for 500 de-navalized Dauntlesses, to be known as the A-24A "Banshee."

While several bomb groups were equipped with the A-24 in the next two years, and the subsequent SBD-5 Dauntless was also ordered as the A-24B, the only known combat use of the A-24 occurred in the spring of 1942, when the 3rd Bomb Group arrived in Australia and was thrown into the battle to slow down the Japanese advance through the Dutch East Indies and New Guinea. Unfortunately, the Army fliers had never learned to use the aircraft correctly; the kind of strike they flew was more glide than dive-bombing, little different than what might have been achieved had they been flying P-40s. They were certainly incapable of the kind of close air support of ground troops Marine Corps Dauntless pilots routinely performed. Additionally, the A-24 - like almost all dive-bombers -required a modicum of local air superiority in the form of escorting fighters. By the time the Dauntless became immortal at Midway, its combat career with the Army was over.

There was the problem of what to do with all these dive-bombers coming out of the Douglas factory. They ended up as squadron hacks and target tugs at training fields around the country. This was still underutilization of a combat airplane.

Following the invasion of North Africa and the surrender of the Vichy French forces there, it was decided to re-equip the French Air Force for participation in the coming invasions. As anyone can tell looking at photographs of the American types provided the French prior to the arrival of the P-47 in the fall of 1944, the P-39s and P-40s that equipped French fighter groups was not exactly first-rate - it was a good way to get rid of airplanes that had been supplanted by better designs in the USAAF. The same was true for the Groupes Bombardement, many of which were equipped with the A-24B Banshee. For more than a year after receiving these airplanes, the French crews were able to devote themselves to training - unlike the American Army Air Forces, the French learned to use the little dive bomber correctly, in vertical dives that insured accuracy.

Following the invasion of Southern France in August 1944, the French Air Force returned to metropolitan France. While the Allies drove north up the Rhone Valley to connect up with the forces that broken out of Normandy and go on to confront the main German enemy, the French were left with the responsibility of driving the rest of the Germans out of France. This struggle - fought between September 1944 and the end of the war in May 1945, is little-known outside of France. The Germans were not pushovers and the French armed forces were not that well-equipped and supported. Hitler ordered the German forces holding the Atlantic ports that had been used as U-boat bases to hold their positions and turn them into fortress cities. These ports held out to the final surrender in May.

Among the French Air Force units supporting this struggle was Armee de l'Air d'Liberation Groupe de Chasse-Bombardement 1/18 "Vendee," equipped with 16 A-24Bs. The group provided effective close air support to the Maquis in the plateau region of southwestern France, and undertook bombing missions against the Germans at Bordeaux.

Eventually, in early 1945, the Groupes de Chasse-Bombardement were re-equipped with the P-47D Thunderbolt, capable of carrying a heavier load of bombs and guns than three A-24s combined. The surviving A-24s ended their days at places like Meknes, in Algeria, performing target towing and other utility missions.

The Douglas A-24 Banshee was a WW2 USAAF dive bomber heavily based on the US Navy's Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber. When the Banshee was introduced operationally in 1940, it proved to have an unacceptable rate of attrition in action due to enemy fighters and had to be transferred to a training role in early 1942, it's dive bomber role being taken over by more suitable aircraft such as the P-47 Thunderbolt fighter bomber. A total of 5,936 Douglas A-24 Banshees were produced and it is of note that some remained operational with the Mexican air-force until 1959.

A handful of A-24 Banshees survived in the USAAF's inventory long enough to be taken over by the United States Air Force when that service became independent of the US Army in 1947. The USAF instituted a new designation system for its aircraft, eliminating the "A-for-Attack" category. Twin-engined "A" types were redesignated as bombers (another Douglas product, the A-26 Invader becoming the B-26) while single-engined "A" aircraft were identified as fighters. As a result, the Banshee became known as the F-24, although the type was retired shortly thereafter in 1950.

A total of 5,936 SBDs were produced in World War II. When the last SBD rolled off the assembly lines at Douglas Aircraft Company's El Segundo plant on 21 July 1944, it marked the final dive bomber which the Navy was to buy. The Navy placed emphasis on the heavier, faster and longer-range SB2C. From Pearl Harbor until April 1944, SBD's had flown 1,189,473 operational hours, with 25 percent of all operational hours flown off aircraft carriers being in Dauntless aircraft. Its battle record shows that besides the four Japanese carriers, 14 enemy cruisers have been sunk, six destroyers, 15 transports or cargo ships and scores of various lesser craft.

The Douglas A-24 was the Army's version of the Navy SBD carrier-based dive bomber. It was almost identical to its Navy counterpart, but the Army's A-24 never achieved the degree of success and immortality as did the SBD. Its relative lack of success in combat led to its early withdrawal from operational service and its relegation to training and other support roles.

The US Navy had been a pioneer in the development of dive-bombing techniques as a means of attack enemy shipping. In contrast, the US Army Air Corps had long been committed to strategic bombing, and had almost completely neglected dive bombing. However, the spectacular results obtained by German Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers during the offensives against Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland and France at the beginning of the Second World War sparked a renewed interest in dive bombing on the part of the USAAC. To explore the possibility of acquiring dive bombers for its own use, in July 1940, the Army borrowed a number of newly-issued Marine Corps SBD-1 Dauntless dive bombers, and had them evaluated by the 24th Bombardment Squadron.

The results of the evaluation were quite favorable, and on September 27, 1940 the War Department ordered 78 examples of the Dauntless under the designation A-24-DE. Although intended for the Army, the aircraft had to be ordered under Navy contracts since the Navy had jurisdiction over the Douglas El Segundo plant. Serials were 41-15746 through -15823.

The A-24 was essentially identical to the Navy SBD-3 but featured Army instrumentation and radio equipment and was fitted with a pneumatic tailwheel rather than the solid rubber tire of the naval version. Like the SBD-3, the A-24 was powered by a 1000 hp Wright R-1820-52 radial and was armed with two fixed forward-firing 0.50-inch machine guns in the engine cowling and a pair of 0.30-inch flexible machine guns on an installation operated by the rear gunner. A swinging bomb cradle with a maximum capacity of 1000 pounds was located underneath the fuselage, and a fixed rack for one 100-pound bomb was mounted underneath each outer wing section.

The first A-24 was delivered to the Army on June 17, 1941. The first operational A-24 unit was the 27th Bombardment Group. It was in the process of been shipped to the Philippines when the war broke out.

The Douglas “Dauntless” was the workhorse for the US Navy during the WWII. This “Slow but Deadly” dive-bomber was the only plane that had fight in every major Pacific conflicts. Although it had been considered obsolete in 1941 already, the Dauntless was used until 1944 and undertook the last major conflict in the Battle of Philippine Sea. A total of 5,936 SBDs were produced in WWII.

In 1940, after the amazing success of the German Stuka dive bombers in Poland, the U.S. Army Air Corps ordered 78 of the U.S. Navy’s Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber, designating it as the A-24. Fifty-four went to Australia, where in 1942 they had a less-than-glorious combat record flying against Japanese targets in Java and New Guinea. The A-24s were regarded as “too slow, too short-ranged, and too poorly armed.” They were relegated to non-combat missions after five of seven airplanes were lost and one was badly damaged on a mission over Buna, New Guinea.

The U.S. Army had its own version of the SBD, known as the A-24 Banshee, which lacked the tail hook used for carrier landings, and a pneumatic tire replaced the solid tail wheel. First assigned to the 27th Bombardment Group (Light) at Hunter Field, Ga., A-24s participated in the Louisiana maneuvers during September 1941. There were three versions of the Banshee (A-24, the A-24A and A-24B) used by the Army in the early stages of the war.[2] The USAAF used 948 of the 5,937 Dauntlesses built.