Dive Bomber Comparison

[VG-33]

I don't think Udet's hobby had anything to do with the German decision to emphasize dive bombing.

Living in a dictatorship system, it's always "better" to agree with your chief's opinion, whatever you think.

HyperWar: The Battle of Britain--A German Perspective

Thanks for the link.
Anyway i have no doubt over the dive-bombing accuracy in general. But with some limits.

Bombing Accuracy. 50% of bombs fall within 50 meter circle under test conditions.

It's what they wish, not what they did. According to Alfred Price and Michel Benichou works "Stuka, the shock!", Fana de l'aviation n° 406-411, you can multiply by 10 at least that distance in real combat conditions, with no remorses...

Unlike the USA and Britain, the Luftwaffe conducted serious testing during the 1930s to determine bomber accuracy. Dive bombers were over 10 times as accurate as level bombers.

You mean they produced thousands of dive bombers without serious testing before? That's a scoop!
BTW, ten times what accuracy: aera, radius, cloud of points, Gauss curve, "sigma", mid geometric/harmonic distance from the target point etc...?

That's why the Ju-88 was developed into a dive bomber and why RLM initially wanted the larger Do-217 and He-177 to dive bomb also. This was cutting edge technology during the 1930s. Nobody knew what the maximum size was for a dive bomber so they had to experiment. Dive bomber requirements for the Do-217 and He-177 were dropped after engineers determined it could not be made to work.

It's not only strengh problem. I suppose that the Pe-2 was a more than enough stressed dive-bomber, and much lighter and smaller to the Ju-88. But considering it's streamlined shape, relativly small airbrakes and airframe drag, in result of high speed and weight, it had to launch bombs above 1800m. The IAS being 720 km/h, 70° angle, the plane was sliding 800-900 meter down before starting recovering from the dive. So just at 1100-1200m hight after both pilot and autopilot efforts!!!

Imagine for an heavier and faster plane, saying 15 000 kg and 800km/h speed...
It makes what, minimal 3500-4000 m bomb dropping altitude. What accuracy do you hope with that?


I have 900-1000 m launch hight and 560 TAS values for the Ju-87, from at step dive. Sliding height loss was smaller considering inertia laws...

So: there-is a practical height recovery limit, except on dive- bombing with an Zeppelin-Staaken slow bomber, i don't see any solution for heavy and big planes.

On practical, from spanish campaign even the soviets caught the dive-bomber obsession. The I-15 and R-Zet generally was used for the task, at the end of the war.
But as you see, they were small and light planes, with "rotten" aerodynamics. Good divers were condamned to remain so...

Regards

 

[VG-33]

??
The Ju-88A was a "true blue" dive bomber complete with dive brakes and proper dive bomber sight.

"True blue" means from the crush, Ju-88 was a modified fast bomber desigh.
Do you think just by filling dive brakes and proper bomber sight on a Boeing 747 would make a dive bomber of it?

 

[davebender]

you can multiply by 10 at least that distance in real combat conditions

That would mean placing 50% of the bombs within a 500 meter circile. I suspect the average dive bomber pilot could do better.

 

[gorizont]

Thanks for the link.
Anyway i have no doubt over the dive-bombing accuracy in general. But with some limits.

It's what they wish, not what they did. According to Alfred Price and Michel Benichou works "Stuka, the shock!", Fana de l'aviation n° 406-411, you can multiply by 10 at least that distance in real combat conditions, with no remorses...
Regards

So 50% CEP was 500 metres. Interesting opinion. Let"s explain two examples of Shtuka acting from that point of view:
1) Do you remember how many hits recieved Illustiuos at Malta?
2) And what about sinking HMS Kelly and Kashmire at Creet?

I can't. Do you?

 

[Juha]

Hello Gorizont
2 Gruppen of Stukas got 6 heavy hits on Illustrious and one light hit on Warspite, now that was IIRC best results they ever got against RN capital ships, IIRC in May 41 one Gruppe of Stukas got 1-2 heavy hits on Formitable and some near misses, they also damaged badly DD Numibian. But as I have wrote IMHO Ju 87 was a different animal than Ju 88, clearly more accurate.

Juha

Addition: Checked the Formitable case, 2 heavy hits on flight deck and one very damaging near miss, Numibian had its after turrets inoperative and lost its rudder but made it for Alexandria and was repaired, again battle ready in Oct 41. According the official record the hit on Numibian was achieved by a Ju 87 making a low level attack from behind.

 

[gorizont]

Hello Gorizont
2 Gruppen of Stukas got 6 heavy hits on Illustrious and one light hit on Warspite, now that was IIRC best results they ever got against RN capital ships, IIRC in May 41 one Gruppe of Stukas got 1-2 heavy hits on Formitable and some near misses, they also damaged badly DD Numibian. But as I have wrote IMHO Ju 87 was a different animal than Ju 88, clearly more accurate.

Juha

Hello Juha
It's my fault. I guessed for unknown reason that the claim was for all dive-bombers accuracy.

 

[parsifal]

In the strike against Illustrious 10 Jan 1941 there were 43 Divebombers in the strike. These were all Ju-87s, the Ju88s did not participate in this strike. Not all the aircraft targetted the Illustrious, but contemporary account suggest about 30 attacked the carrier, with the remainder attacking mostly Warspite.

The Ju87s were carrying 250kg anti-personnel bombs and a single 1000lb SAP bomb. I think therefore that a total of either 86 or 129 bombs were dropped that day.

Of all the bombs dropped a total of 6 hit the Illustrious from this strike and a dud hit the Warspite. There were several additional hits from subsequent strikes.

The hit ratio of the Germans was therefore in the vicinity of 5-10%.

The Japanese 13 months later achieved bombing accuracies of around 80% with their Vals against the HMS Cornwall and Dorsetshire and the attacks against the Hermes.

Ju88s were not employed in the divebomber role on the 10 January. I believe also that as decent Italians torpedoes were obtained, Ju-88s tended to be used in the torpedo role, rather than the as divebombers. A good example of that are the attacks against the arctic convoys from April 1942 onward, where attacks by Ju-88s were almost exclusively with torpedoes.

 

[Juha]

Hello Gorizont
You have made no mistakes, there are few different discussions alive in this thread, on dive-bombing in general and on Ju 88 in particular for ex. And you are very knowable on both.

Juha

 

[gorizont]

In the strike against Illustrious 10 Jan 1941 there were 43 Divebombers in the strike. These were all Ju-87s, the Ju88s did not participate in this strike. Not all the aircraft targetted the Illustrious, but contemporary account suggest about 30 attacked the carrier, with the remainder attacking mostly Warspite.

The Ju87s were carrying 250kg anti-personnel bombs and a single 1000lb SAP bomb. I think therefore that a total of either 86 or 129 bombs were dropped that day.

Of all the bombs dropped a total of 6 hit the Illustrious from this strike and a dud hit the Warspite. There were several additional hits from subsequent strikes.

The hit ratio of the Germans was therefore in the vicinity of 5-10%.

Not much but are you sure in your estimations? I guess You made a mistake in calculations.
1) In the attack of Illustrious at Malta on 10-th January 1941 Shtukas were loaded one bomb each aircraft. They were Ju-87B and in the case (distance etc) this mod of Shtuka couldn't bring to Malta more than one bomb of such calibers.
2) the ship was attacked by 18 Shtukas(formation - three groups, each consisted of two flights) from 43, participated in the strike.
3) so 6 direct hits from 18 dropped bombs is 30%. If we take into account two near misses - about 45%.

If we take into account that the strike had an opposition of 4 Fulmars, AA defence of ships and AA defence of the base, which consisted of about 90 AA batteries...

The Japanese 13 months later achieved bombing accuracies of around 80% with their Vals against the HMS Cornwall and Dorsetshire and the attacks against the Hermes.

Ju88s were not employed in the divebomber role on the 10 January. I believe also that as decent Italians torpedoes were obtained, Ju-88s tended to be used in the torpedo role, rather than the as divebombers. A good example of that are the attacks against the arctic convoys from April 1942 onward, where attacks by Ju-88s were almost exclusively with torpedoes.

Yes, I admit that I mistaked the claim. Ju-87 and Ju-88 are beasts of different sorts. I thought that VG-33 meant accuracy of all dive-bombers.

 

[Juha]

On attacks on Illustrious in Jan 41
On Jan10 , first attack, 43 Ju 87s à one heavy bomb, 10 bombed the 2 battleships, Valiant and Warspite, all RN ships manoeuvring at high speed, CAP Fulmars decoyed at low level or out of ammo, the 4 just scrambled still too low, one 250kg glancing hit on Warspite, which detonates only partially. The rest of 87s attacked on Illustrious and got 6 hits and 3 near misses, Illustrious max speed reduced to 17kts and the rudder inoperative. 2nd attack, 13 87s, no hits, 3rd attack, 14 87s, one hit on Illustrious and one near miss on Valiant,. From 13 Jan on up to Jan 23 Illustrious was repeatedly attacked by Ju 87s and 88s while on naval dockyard in Valetta Harbour but these produced only one or two direct hit(s) and 2 near misses.

Juha

 

[davebender]

How can we make that claim without historical Ju-88 dive bomber mission data for comparison purposes?

 

[Lucky13]

I know that us Swedes were early-ish out as well in the dive bombing field in 1931, how does the Northrop A-17, which we licensed as SAAB B-5 compare in this list? Tests were done at the airbase in my old hometown in Sweden.....

 

[Juha]

Hello davebender
We? Now I and Gorizont can produce an impressive list of major warships sunk or crippled by Ju 87s, can You produce a list of major warships sunk or crippled by Ju 88s? Other than RN light cruiser Trinidad, which had earlier torpedoed herself (extreme cold had put one of its torpedoes run a circle and hit her instead of a German DD) and hastily patched at Murmansk, was hit on home run by a 250/500kg bomb dropped by a Ju 88 and the fire the bomb had started got out of hand and the cruiser had to be scuttled, one near miss had also blown away the hastily put patch over the opening produced by the torpedo hit.

Juha

 

[Juha]

Hello Lucky
IIRC Swedes made also dive bombing tests with their Hawker Harts (B4?)

Juha

 

[davebender]

Found this historical tidbit. Looks like a successful mission to me.

12 August 1940
12 Ju-88s dive bombed the British radar station at Ventnor (Isle of Wight) putting it out of action for 11 days.

 

[BombTaxi]

Found this historical tidbit. Looks like a successful mission to me.

12 August 1940
12 Ju-88s dive bombed the British radar station at Ventnor (Isle of Wight) putting it out of action for 11 days.

Bear in mind Radar stations were not armoured or heavily revetted, and had large, fragile antenna projecting far above the ground. A few hits would put the station out of commission easily, and figher-bombers or level bomber could achieve exactly the same result. It's not the same as hitting a heavily armoured warship or a substantially-built steel bridge.

 

[davebender]

figher-bombers or level bomber could achieve exactly the same result

Then why didn't it happen?

12 bombers per radar station. 120 bombers for 10 radar stations. RAF Bomber Command and/or 8th U.S. Air Force could blow a massive hole in the German radar system using only a fraction of their total strength IF Lancasters and B-17s can bomb accurately enough to destroy a radar station using 12 aircraft.

 

[Milosh]

On another board a guy is claiming the A-36 could have single-handedly won the war for the Allies by knocking out the German electric power generating stations in 1943. So far he has failed to explain how power stations more than 300miles from their base were to be attacked. Oh yes, he thinks the A-36s would not need escorts by flying low under the German radar.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

On another board a guy is claiming the A-36 could have single-handedly won the war for the Allies by knocking out the German electric power generating stations in 1943. So far he has failed to explain how power stations more than 300miles from their base were to be attacked. Oh yes, he thinks the A-36s would not need escorts by flying low under the German radar.

What board was this?

 

[Freebird]

What board was this?

Seasame Street forum?