Technical Is this missing/broken off baffle important?

I drove it like this for years, and never had a problem. But it seems like they wouldn’t have just put it there for no reason. The pan was smashed, so I suspect the crankshaft was hitting it as the reason they busted it out of there. Seems like it woulda been easier to just unsmash the pan. It’s a 54 235 oilpan.


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Baffles like that get removed all the time. I took one out of my flathead Ford pan so I could fit a later model oil pump. They are installed originally to keep the oil from sloshing all the way to the back of the pan on hard acceleration.