Helldiver

Every winter the birds went south. One time a helldiver volunteered to stay for the winter to take care of two birds, an injured whooping crane and a wounded mallard duck, both of whom had broken wings.

At dawn on the first day of April 1870, Cora Paint stood near one of her spindly and failing apple trees a hundred feet from the river, watching the rednecked helldivers above the falls soar and plummet into the Big Sioux after carp or perch.

Most cultures have a flood myth, and the Paiutes are not exception. Instead of a dove, however, it is the little helldiver that finds land; and the land above the waters is not Mt. Ararat but Mt. Tom.

The Helldiver is another aircraft whose contribution to the final Allied victory is often underestimated.

The most numerous Allied dive-bomber of World War II, the Helldiver endured a prolonged gestation period to mature into one of the best aircraft of its type.

Pilots who flew the new Helldivers thought highly of the plane, but its reputation of being a poor handling airplane was already set in the minds of naval aviators.