14. American dive bombers were plagued with electrical problems
The Douglas Dauntless arrived in the fleet with several problems related to their abilities to drop their bombs on a straight path to the target. One was the release mechanism, which had a tendency to only partially release the bomb, forcing the pilot to maneuver violently for the bomb to clear the aircraft. That problem was corrected by the time the fleet sailed for Midway. Another was a problem with the electrical arming switches, designed to allow the pilots to arm the fuses in the bombs while in flight. Nearly all of the Dauntless bombers had their electrical arming switches worked on in the weeks preceding the Midway operation. Some of them were reinstalled in the aircraft incorrectly.
When Lieutenant Commander Maxwell Leslie, who commanded Bombing Squadron 3 off USS Yorktown, ordered the 17 airplanes of his squadron to arm their bombs he flipped the arming switch and immediately felt the bomb release. He countermanded his order, but at least three other of the planes he commanded lost their bombs. Leslie attacked the Japanese carrier Soryu anyway, diving on the ship and strafing its flight deck, an action for which he was awarded the Navy Cross. Only 13 of the squadron’s 17 aircraft had bombs when it attacked, but all 17 dived on the Japanese ship. Soryu sank on the evening of June 4, gutted by explosions and fires.