Let me add a short notice. Except of island bases, squadrons of SBDs flew only from three America's aircraft carriers: USS Enterprise, USS Hornet and USS Yorktown.  But what great job they made. It leads us to the thought about the really unique contruction of these aircrafts, I would say

And by the way, what a nice piece, Rob! 

The Dauntless was the standard ship borne dive-bomber of the US Navy from mid-1940 until November 1943 (when the first operational Curtiss SB2C Helldivers arrived to replace it).  In 1942-43,  at the Battle of the Coral Sea,  in the bitter Guadalcanal campaign and most of all in the crucial Battle of Midway, the Dauntless did more than any other aircraft to turn the tide of the Pacific War.  At Midway on 4 June 1942 it wrecked all four Japanese carriers, and later in the battle sank a heavy cruiser and severely damaged another.  From 1942 through to 1945,  in addition to its shipboard service,  the SBD saw intensive use with the US Marine Corps,  flying from island bases.

My Hasegawa SBD-3 model issued in 1998 had very clean moldings- no signs of mis-alignment, and no flash.  Trailing edges seem to be pretty fine, too.  The kit has good looking recessed panel lines- which I think is still the best feature of this kit. The only potential negative aspect of the Hasegawa SBD is the canopy it is molded in three pieces- windscreen, pilot's canopy, and a single piece with the last three sections molded as one in the closed position. I wanted to show the Dauntless with the rear canopy open so I went ahead and cut the rear two sections free, and only used the front three.  (I've seen combat pictures of actual SBDs with the rear canopies removed, rather than just open.) I used Mini World after-market .50 cal machine gun barrels and other rear gun platform photoetch details from Tom's Modelworks #306 WW2 U.S. Naval Aircraft set. The wing parts fit well, with a small amount of filler used at the joint with the fuselage. Which set things up for the painting process involving Tamiya mixes and the usual weathering and fading which would occur in the Pacific theater.