Dive Bombing

[Smoke2much]

This isn't a CFS topic this is about real life.  I am interested in peoples thoughts about the relative value of dive bombing and level bombing during WW2.

The cause for this is I have recently downloaded a JU87 and it has an excellent siren and I have been practising in FS2k2......  

My interest is threefold.

1. How accurate can you be with a dive bomber
2. What about vulnerability to groundfire during the dive
3. Has anyone spoken too a pilot or flown a WW2 divebomber either for fun or in anger.

Will

[Polynomial]

funny enough i just started reading abook about a dauntless pilot.  Dive bombing is so much more accurate than level bombing but when you pull out of the dive you hardly have anyspeed and are vunerable to ground fire.

[Felix/FFDS]

I've forwarded this topic to a friend whose father flew SB2Cs in the Pacific.

Because of the various postings (on another mailing list) I've come to revisit the role of the last of the Helldivers.

A good pilot couild obtain reasonable accuracy (hitting a ship is a nice large target but if it's twisting, you hope it doesn't zag when you expected it to zig.)  However, the "1 bomb 1  ship" ideal was not easy (Rudel, I believe, did mangage to pop one down a stack of the "October Revolution".

Hitting a tank is also a combination of skill and luck.

Gunfire - obviously it depends on the number of guns shooting at you and the skill of the gunners.

[Hagar]

Very interesting subject. A good friend of mine is married to a German girl whose father was a Ju-87 Stuka pilot during WWII. She has flown with the Red Arrows. I'm not sure if her Dad is still around. I'll find out.

I remember a long discussion in the CFS1 forum some time ago on the subject of the Stuka. They used a special lob-bombing technique but I forget what it was called. I will also try to find more on this.

The Stuka was fitted with a special auto-pilot to control the aircraft if the pilot blacked out during recovery from a conventional dive-bombing attack. This was tested at great personal risk by the famous female test pilot Hanna Reitsch. She also test flew a piloted version of the V-1 "Doodlebug" to investigate problems with the automatic guidance system. A very brave & talented pilot despite her strong pro-nazi views.
http://afftc.edwards.af.mil/articles98/docs_html/splash/feb98/cover/reitsch.html

[Smoke2much]

It's that accuracy deal that I'm interested in.  I have seen photo's from the Battle for France in 1940 of crossroads with bomb craters right in the center.  These guys were amazingly accurate and I'd love to know how.

During the re-fight the ground attack typhoons were given radio instructions from FAO's on the ground and would aim their aircraft at the approximate area, come screamining in at low level and then use their rudder to "flick" the aircraft onto the right alignment at the last second when the target was sighted, thus releasing the rockets or bombs  on target.  This seems easier to me than flying over the target and then dropping like a stone onto it.  

Also consider the people trying to hit you.  Deflection shooting must be considerably easier against a dive bomber that is diving from 3000 feet than trying to hit a 'phoon or p-47 screaming 50 feet over head doing 250kts plus.

Maybe that's why they used the GA tactics rather than the dive bombing.

Will

[George_M._Walsh]

Thanks Felix for sending me this thread. My father flew Helldivers off the Ticonderoga and Hancock in 1944-45. He was credited with sinking a Japanese light cruiser in Manila Bay. Vulnerability in the dive was almost nil because the Japanese had very few high-angle anti-aircraft guns and fighter opposition was all but wiped out by the time he got to the Pacific. This is a small part of an essay he wrote on the effectiveness of U.S. Navy dive bombers, which employed different technology and tactics than the JU87 and Val. I'll split this post and include another piece later:

"The unique features engineered into the SBD and SB2C enabled the pilot to fly a controlled vertical flight from 10,000 feet or more to sea level, tracking a moving target ship as small as 40 feet wide which was taking evasive action. Of these features, the most important was the split wing trailing edge perforated dive flaps to slow down the dive. Wings were strengthened to withstand the high G forces at pull out. A yoke was designed to throw the bomb clear of the aircraft

[George_M._Walsh]

More of my father's essay:

"Neither the German Stuka nor the Val was designed for bombing with extremely high dive paths. They each had fixed landing gear and a dive brake that deployed vertically below the main wing spar. This meant that the aircraft in a dive would assume a vertical flight attitude but the flight path could not exceed 65 degrees."

And this fascinated me:

"The post war historians not only failed to examine the superior qualities of dive bombing as a weapon, they even displayed an ignorance of the technique. Their emphasis was on what happened, ignoring details of how and why the dive bombers succeeded. This attitude is reflected throughout the war even though the dive bomber was our Navy

[Hagar]

I think a lot of the successful dive-bombing attacks up to 1940 were against badly defended targets. The Stuka was withdrawn from service in the Western theatre during the BoB due to its high losses against superior opposition. All low-level attacks are dangerous as this is when an aircraft is at its most vulnerable. I read an account of the RAF Typhoon squadrons operations during & after D-Day. Their losses were as high as the worst experienced during WWI when the average life-expectancy of a pilot was something like 2 weeks.

The Luftwaffe Stuka crews had developed dive-bombing into a fine art. Their attacks were usually highly accurate & devastating. I think it's generally regarded that they were the most effective of all dive bombers used during WWII. The problem was their vulnerability.

PS. I found this article describing a conventional Stuka dive-bombing technique. http://www.geocities.com/pentagon/2833/general/tactics/divebombing/divebombing.html
This is not the lob or toss-bombing variation I mentioned earler. Still looking.

PPS.

If ever there was to be an effective weapon that could be termed as being successful as well as deadly, it would have to be the Junkers Ju87, known to Germans as the Sturzkampfbomber, and better known to the English as a dive-bomber or better still a "Stuka". No other aircraft can make claim to the number of ships sunk and also it ranks second to the number of enemy tanks destroyed during times of warfare.

......... equipped with an automatic dive control.

This automatic dive control was was an apparatus that was initially set by the pilot, allowing him to choose the pull out height using a contact altimeter. The whole procedure became necessary for the pilot to go through about ten different actions with the apparatus before he opened up the dive brakes under the outer wings. This automatically commenced the dive action of the aircraft, the pilot adjusting the dive angle manually by indicator lines painted on the canopy of the aircraft. the correct line was achieved by aileron control which was usually at about 90 degrees, and the pilot visually seeing his target by the marker on the canopy. with the aircraft hurtling earthwards directly at the target, a signal light on the contact altimeter would then come on and the pilot would press the button on the top of his control column and the pull out would commence as the bombs left their cradles. The bombs would continue the same course as the aircraft had during its dive, towards the target while the pilot would be suffering some 6g as the aircraft levelled out ready for its climb skywards.

http://www.battleofbritain.net/0015.html

[ATI_7500]

the luftwaffe developed all it's dive-bombing techniques during the spanish civil war,so it had a significant advantage to the american airforce.as for the japanese: they could practice during the japanese-chinese war.

comparing the accuracy of dive- and level-bombing is like comparing dumb and smart bombs. one stuka could destroy a tank,whereas ten He111s would probably never hit it. same for bombs:
during the vietnam war,the US airforce tried to destroy the paul-dhoumer bridge. they tried it about 5 times with dumb bombs,then they used one single LGB and -boom- the bridge was destoyed.

[Felix/FFDS]

the luftwaffe developed all it's dive-bombing techniques during the spanish civil war,so it had a significant advantage to the american airforce.as for the japanese: they could practice during the japanese-chinese war.

As a side note - it was Udet's visit to the US and seeing the Marine Corps Curtiss fighter-dive-bombers that spurred him to purchase about three of the Curtiss fighters to show the dive-bombing techniques.  This was one of the factors that spurred German thinking into the fast striking force, instead of developing a strategic bombin force.

[Wing Nut]

Will, just out of curiosity, what Stuka were you using?  I've been looking for one for a while now...

[FLYING_TRUCKER]

Problems:

1-Aircraft was developed But delivery system or weapon not ready.

2-Weapon ready but needed a new delivery system, therefore extensive tests on different aircraft.

3-Delivery system developed, had to wait for modifications to weapon and aircraft.

This is what affected all nations in the past and is still a  stumbling gap to-day when nations try to perfect the most cost effective weapon and delivery system.

[ozzy72]

What an interesting little subject taht I've missed the first half of (hopefully).
Although I must admit, I don't know a terrible lot about dive bombing. Only the common sense stuff and what the History books and Docos have led us to believe.  ;D

Hagar wrote:

I read an account of the RAF Typhoon squadrons operations during & after D-Day. Their losses were as high as the worst experienced during WWI when the average life-expectancy of a pilot was something like 2 weeks.

I heard this very same figure on the Histiry Channel 'Thunderbolt' Film I was talking about a short time ago (the colour film made at the time of the Rhine assault as a USAAF project.

I couldn't understand why, at this stage of the war, when everyone was pretty much gearing to go home (or to the Pacific), they were losing so many pilots and planes.
I wonder how many more, had they not had the humungously tough plane they had!  :o

I know the Germans, pretty much up till the very end, had still very numerous and effective AAA batteries.  ;D

[ozzy72]

My great uncle was Stuka'd during the war and said it was terrifying (this from a guy who fought his way out of Arnhem with a knife and a pistol, with no bullets left!).
He said that once you'd been Stuka'd and survived, anything that sounded like their siren would make you shake, and therefore gunnery went to hell.

Ozzy

[ATI_7500]

I know the Germans, pretty much up till the very end, had still very numerous and effective AAA batteries.  ;D

yup,the multifunctional 88mm gun. this thing was just great as an AAA gun or a tank killer.