SBD-3 BuNo 4690, Lt(jg) Stanley W. ‘Swede’ Vejtasa and Chief Radioman 3rd Class Frank B. Wood, Scouting Five, USS Yorktown (CV5), May 8, 1942.
During the Battle of the Coral Sea on May 7, 1942, Swede and several other SBD pilots sank the Japanese aircraft carrier Shoho. The following day, while flying in defense of the U.S. Carrier task force, he incredibly managed to shoot down three A6M Zeros while flying his much slower SBD Dauntless, earning him his second Navy Cross for his actions.
Swede would go on to join VF-10 and fly F4Fs, and on October 26, 1942 at Santa Cruz he scored seven more aerial kills in a single morning. Vejtasa would finish the war officially credited with 10.25 victories.*
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Recommended books:
Seven at Santa Cruz: The Life of Fighter Ace Stanley “Swede” Vejtasa
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*Japanese loss records for May 7 claim only one A6M was lost, not the four claimed by the Yorktown’s pilots that day. Discrepancies between Japanese/German records and U.S. military records are common, and not definitive proof one way or another. Frank Olynyk, the leading researcher on U.S. military aerial victories, shows Vejtasa as having three kills on May 7 in his records, and the U.S. Navy officially credited Vejtasa with three as well. In my opinion, Vejtasa could easily have crippled the two A6Ms in question, forcing them to leave the combat area badly smoking, and they simply limped back to their base (still an incredible feat while flying the much slower Dauntless).