Obsolete when deployed to Samoa in April 1942 for anti-submarine patrol duty, the Curtiss SBC-4 was still the best aircraft available. The U.S. Navy, stretched thin in its efforts to counter Japanese advances in the Pacific in the weeks following Pearl Harbor, sent a Marine squadron of SBC-4’s to Tutuila Island while divebomber units serving with the fleet were receiving the new Douglas SBD Dauntless. VMO-151 held the line in the remote outpost for nearly a year before relief arrived.