Vought SB2U Vindicator

The SB2U was developed to meet the requirement of the United States Navy for a new carrier-based Scout bomber. The manufacturing company Vought submitted the XSB2U-1 for the monoplane specification with low wings and retractable conventional tailwheel undercarriage.

The SB2U-3 version can accommodate two crew members. It has an external length of 10.35 meters, an external height of 2.9 meters, and a fuselage width of 1.1 meters. The tail height is 4.34 meters when the tail is down and the propeller is vertical, and the wheelbase is 7.2 meters. It has a wingspan of 12.77 meters and a wing area of 28.36 square meters. The aircraft has an empty weight of 2,556 kg, a gross weight of 3,390 kg, and a maximum takeoff weight of 4,273 kg. The maximum payload is 680 kg and the internal fuel tank capacity is 370 US gal.

The aircraft is powered by a single Pratt and Whitney R-1535-02 Twin Wasp Jr engine. It is a fourteen-cylinder, two-row, supercharged, air-cooled radial engine with two overhead valves per cylinder, a single-speed centrifugal-type supercharger, two-barrel Stromberg carburetor fuel system, an air-cooling system, and an epicyclic reduction gear. It produces a take-off power of 825 hp and continuous power of 750 hp, and drives a two-bladed Hamilton Standard constant-speed propeller with a diameter of 3.35 meters.

The SB2U-3 has a maximum speed of 211 knots at 9,500 feet and a cruise speed of 132 knots. It has a standard range of 970 nautical miles with 450 kg of bombload and a ferry range of 2,130 nautical miles with maximum internal and external fuel. The aircraft can fly up to 23,600 feet and can climb at a rate of 1,070 feet per minute.

The aircraft could be loaded with various armaments such as a single forward-firing 12.7 mm M2 Browning machine gun in the starboard wing and a single 12.7 mm machine gun in a flexible mount in the rear cockpit. It is also armed with a single 450 kg or 230 kg bomb under the fuselage and two 45 kg and eight 14 kg bombs under the wings.