Douglas A-20 Havoc
The Douglas A-20 Havoc is the American twin-engine attack bomber that France ordered before the U.S. Army did. Designed by Douglas as the Model 7B and first flown on 26 October 1938, it was ordered by France in February 1939 as the DB-7, while the Army Air Corps ordered its own A-20s that June. Britain named the bomber versions Boston and the night-fighter and intruder versions Havoc — the name the USAAF adopted for the family — and the American night-fighter conversion became the P-70. Production ended on 20 September 1944: Boeing's historical accounting counts 7,478 built, 7,098 of them by Douglas and 380 by Boeing at Seattle, while History of War counts 7,385. The Soviet Union was the biggest user, receiving 3,125 aircraft. Few survive; museums display several, and in 2025 the restored New Guinea wreck Hell'n Pelican II was returned to Papua New Guinea.
Why It Mattered
Few Second World War aircraft collected as many names as this one: France ordered it as a level bomber, Britain flew the bomber versions as the Boston and its night-fighter and intruder versions as the Havoc, and the U.S. Army Air Forces adopted both the aircraft, as the A-20, and the RAF's Havoc name. It had been designed as an attack aircraft for the U.S. Army Air Corps, yet its first order came from France in February 1939, before the Army ordered its own A-20s. The same airframe went on to work as a light and medium bomber, a ground-attack aircraft and a night fighter, fighting from the Pacific and North Africa to Italy, the Eastern Front and the skies over the D-Day landings. Its biggest user was the Soviet Union, which received 3,125 aircraft, 42 percent of total production on History of War's accounting.
Design Notes
Douglas began the design in 1936 as a private venture for a light attack and reconnaissance aircraft, drawn by a team headed by Donald Douglas, Jack Northrop and Ed Heinemann, and a series of major design changes made it larger and refocused it as a bomber. The resulting Model 7B, designed with interchangeable solid and glazed noses, made its maiden flight on 26 October 1938, by which time Northrop had left and Heinemann was the main designer. French requirements then produced the DB-7, with a taller but narrower fuselage than the 7B's, the wing lowered from the shoulder to a mid position, a crew of three, and a single glazed bombardier's nose in place of the interchangeable noses. The DB-7 made its own first flight on 17 August 1939. Later production aircraft were powered by Wright R-2600 radials — two R-2600-23s of 1,620 horsepower each in the A-20G — and the G, the most produced version, was optimized for low-altitude attack with six machine guns in its nose and parachute-equipped bombs called "parafrags."
Operational History
French DB-7s were the first of the family to see combat, in the Battle of France. After France fell, the RAF took the bomber into service as the Boston, and from 1941 the name Havoc was given to the RAF's night-fighter and intruder versions. Some Havocs were converted to Turbinlite aircraft, with a powerful searchlight in place of the nose position, so that an accompanying Hawker Hurricane could make the attack on the illuminated enemy aircraft. The Army Air Corps had ordered 63 A-20s in June 1939, but the A-20 was never used as a bomber: three became F-3 reconnaissance aircraft, one became the XP-70 prototype, and the remaining 59 became the first P-70 night fighters. USAAF A-20s saw combat in North Africa in 1942, and in New Guinea most A-20G sorties were flown at low altitude, where their crews could skip-bomb into the sides of Japanese transports and destroyers. The Soviet Union flew its A-20s in large numbers as ground-attack aircraft at Stalingrad and as torpedo bombers in the Black Sea and the Baltic. Australia, South Africa and the Netherlands also used the type during the war, and Brazil used it afterwards.
Afterlife
Production ended on 20 September 1944; the USAF retired the type in 1949, and Brazil, perhaps its last substantial user, retired its A-20s in the late 1950s. Survivors dwindled quickly — by the early 1960s only six complete A-20s existed worldwide — but the number has since grown slowly as crash sites have been found in the Pacific and Eastern Europe. Museums now hold the type: Pima Air & Space Museum's A-20G wears the markings of the 89th Bombardment Squadron, 3rd Bombardment Group, Fifth Air Force, at Nadzab, New Guinea, in 1944. One A-20G, 43-21709, restored by Aero Trader at Chino, California, took to the air in July 2015 for the first time in nearly a quarter-century. In 2025 the A-20G Hell'n Pelican II, which had crash-landed in Madang Province in April 1944 and lay in the jungle until its rediscovery in 1976, returned to Papua New Guinea after an Australian restoration, to a shelter built for it at the PNG National Museum and Art Gallery — the first fully restored American Second World War bomber repatriated to that country.