1944 – a veteran US Navy dive bomber pilot walks into a bar, and meets a French pilot there.
He remembers what happened next.
“I flew Vought V-156F dive bombers early in the war, for the Navy. A mostly forgotten aircraft nowadays, it wasn't a thoroughbred for sure, and suffered against the Axis powers, although not as much as the Douglas Devastor, which squadrons ended devastated, rather than the Japanese.
Whatever, we had a lot of fun with its name. Its official name was SB2U (Scout, Bomber, 2nd one from Vought)
Vindicator, and when the British got some of them, it become
Chesapeake, like the river and bay. Ok ?
And there the siliness began.
When you think about it, SB2U could have led to nicknames as bad as the Helldiver SB2C "Son of a bitch, second class".
Things like "Son of a bitch, to you" - but nobody ever thought about it; perhaps because the Vindicator, unlike the Helldiver, didn't tried to kill his pilots on top of the Japanese.
Whatever, it was so slow we American pilots called it
wind indicator.
Then the British with their weird humor, turned Chesapeake into...
Cheese cake.
Later in the war I learned from a French pilot they had flown that aircraft, too. Just like Lexington and Saratoga, the French had turned an unfinished battleship into a carrier: called Béarn, you know, from the region where they make the
sauce béarnaise. It sounds so typically French calling an aircraft carrier after a food dish.
In May 1940 their Air Force unable to stop German tanks called the naval dive bombers to the rescue – three squadrons. They had to face the Luftwaffe and Flak, poor guys.
First squadron was crushed on the ground when their hangar was bombed on the first day of the war.
Second squadron flying out without fighter escort was jumped by Me-109s and wiped out.
Third squadron attacked a bridge and was wiped out by flak.
A terrible fate, but that pilot at least lived to tell his story and fought back along De Gaulle's Free French. I told him about the V-156F related jokes, and he had a good laugh.
Then I asked him if they had ever thought of a fun nickname for that poor dive bomber.
His answer was negative, but he added “
il n'est jamais trop tard pour bien faire” - “
It's never too late for a good deed.”
After a brief reflexion, he first told me that in France, “wind indicator” would translate as “biroute”; the French being the French,
biroute thanks to its peculiar shape, had become slang for “penis”.
I erupted in laughter, but he told me it wasn't over yet. He wondered what Chesapeake meant, and I told him it was a river bay on the East coast. And of course,
cheese cake, he was more familiar with, France being the land of cheese. So “
gateau au fromage” it would be, he told me laughing his arse off.
As for the original
Chesapeake, I noted the french pilot pronounced it in a peculiar way. And then he bursted in laughter and wrote on a napkin “Chaise à piques”, and I wondered what the hell did that mean.
His answer blew my mind and got beer spitting out of my nose.
It exactly translated as “
chair with spikes”, something you don't really want to seat in.
My answer was that the Spanish Inquisition would have been proud.
At the end of the day, that Vought dive bomber would have had such varied nicknames as "Son of a bitch, to you" "wind indicator" "penis" "cheesecake" and "chair with spikes".
Talk about an unfortunate aircraft...
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