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the Douglas SBD Dauntless
I fall with my holey sleeves
A dive bomber (I fall) with distinctive dive brakes on the trailing edges of the wings that look like perforations; see this picture.
Release the load then I heave
A bomber, so it released the bomb and then got itself out of there.
A five-year mission made me a crew of the war
Saw its major service life from 1940 to 1944 during WWII.
To boldly take action where no man has taken before
Served aboard the USS Enterprise CV-6 (hence the play on the tag line from Star Trek)
Addtional info from OP:
Here's another meaning that I had came up with, as this line was written:
To be precise, SBDs went into service on Yorktown-class aircraft carriers, including USS Enterprise (CV-6) and USS Yorktown (CV-5). It was the SBDs on USS Yorktown participated in the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first battle that only aircraft carriers engaged on each other.
That also fit the line "take action where no man has taken before".
When the dateline was almost torn up
not sure what is meant here; other answers have several good interpretations, one of which is surely on point
OP:
That's actually talking about the Battle of Midway, as the dateline is near from Midway Atoll.
The fire of revenge I had lit up
During the Battle of Midway in early June 1942, four squadrons of Navy SBD dive bombers attacked and sank or fatally damaged all four Japanese fleet carriers present—three of them in the span of just six minutes (Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū and, later in the day, Hiryū). This avenged the losses at Pearl Harbor.
The successor came quite early
The Curtiss SB2C Helldiver was a carrier-based dive bomber aircraft produced for the United States Navy during World War II. It replaced the Douglas SBD Dauntless in US Navy service. The SB2C was much faster than the SBD it replaced. First flight was 1940, and principle production from 1943-1945 -- practically on the heels of the SBD it was made to replace.
Yet my body still varied
The SBD went through many updates in a short timespan.
- The original model first entered service in mid-1939, and came in two models, designated the SBD-1 and SBD-2 (the latter had increased fuel capacity and different armament).
- The next version was the SBD-3, which began manufacture in early 1941. It had increased armor, self-sealing fuel tanks, and four machine guns.
- The SBD-4 doubled the voltage of the electrical system. Some of these became SBD-4P reconnaissance aircraft.
- The next (and most produced) version, the SBD-5, had a more powerful engine and an increased ammunition supply.
- The final version, the SBD-6, had more improvements, but its production ended during the summer of 1944.
It was not my intention to retain
As the reputation was hard to obtain
Aircraft design progression was fast and furious during WWII, so this model would quickly see an end to its usefulness. But it had earned its reputation: The SBD is best remembered as the bomber that delivered the fatal blows to the Japanese carriers at the Battle of Midway in June 1942.
OP:
These lines were actually talking about the evaluation between SB2Cs and SBDs:
Though SB2Cs are faster, and able to carry bombs up to 2,000 pounds (SBDs could only up to 1,200 pounds), the control in low speed is so terrible that pilots found it hard to land safely on an aircraft carrier, even to aim a target while diving. On the contrary, those easy-to-fly SBDs were even earned the nickname "Slow But Deadly". As for the SB2Cs, its codename became "Son-of-a-Bitch 2nd Class".
Hint 1:
The title was inspired from a Vietnam War movie quote, which made in 1991, based on a military novel that shared the same name. Though the answer itself didn't starred in it, the quote may help you to identify the thing behind puzzle in some way.
The movie was Flight of the Intruder and did indeed get me looking into aircraft.
OP: "Fighter pilots make movies, bomber pilots make... HISTORY!"
Hint 2:
What it does is tactical, not strategic, even though the results were crucial.
The SBDs were used tactically, not strategically
Hint 3:
Two names people used to called it: one came from navy, the other came from army.
The SBD ("Scout Bomber Douglas") was the United States Navy's main carrier-borne scout plane and dive bomber from mid-1940 through mid-1944.
One land-based variant of the SBD — in omitting the arrestor hook — was purpose-built for the U.S. Army Air Forces, as the A-24 Banshee.
Hint 4:
Its skill only came in handy through the 1940s, and it became old-fashioned after that era.
As already noted, it quickly became obsolete, and in any case its primary purpose was service in WWII
