France had placed an order for a further 50 V-156-Fs in March 1940, with delivery planned from March 1941. Following the defeat of France, this order was taken over by the British government for use by the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm, who named the aircraft the Chesapeake.[14] The British required several modifications to the Chesapeake, including the additional fuel tank fitted to the SB2U-3,[14] additional armor and heavier forward firing armament, with four rifle caliber machine guns replacing the single forward-firing Darne machine gun of the French aircraft.[15] Fourteen Chesapeakes were used to equip a reformed 811 Naval Air Squadron on 14 July 1941 at RNAS Lee-on-Solent.[16] The squadron, whose crews referred to it as the "cheesecake", intended to use them for anti-submarine patrols, and they were earmarked for the escort carrier HMS Archer.
By the end of October that year, it had been decided that the Chesapeakes were underpowered for the planned duties and would not be able to lift a sensible payload from the small escort carriers. Accordingly, they were withdrawn from 811 Squadron in November 1941 for use as training aircraft and the unit was re-equipped with the biplane Fairey Swordfish.
