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.

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

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’s propeller when the bomb was dropped in a vertical dive.

Ideally, our dive bombing aircraft, in a vertical 90 degree attitude, plunged at a 70 degree flight path because of the remaining lift on the wings. The target, at 24 knots would travel 1,214 feet while a plane dived from a two-mile altitude. Wind was also a factor. The aircraft was literally flown down the dive path at constant speed, using ailerons and elevators to continually adjust the point of impact until pull out at about 1000 feet, two seconds from impact. The sudden change of direction imposed forces as high as 13 Gs on the aircraft and crew."

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.h...
This is not the lob or toss-bombing variation I mentioned earler. Still looking.

PPS. Quote:

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

Quote:


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.

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.

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