Dive Bomber Comparison

[parsifal]

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.

The attack on Ventnor was carried out by the Luftwaffes specialist intruder group (I forget the name) These guys were handpicked, highly trained and irreplaceable. They inflicted damage out of all proportion to their numbers. In June 1941, an advanced unit of just 30 bombers, Ju-88s operating as level bombers, managed to disable airfields containing nearly 1000 aircraft.

If the Luftwaffe had been operating against an unprepred enemy, it might have been possible to knock out the radar stations by surprise attack. But against a forearned and prered defender specialist attacks are just going to get those highly trained specialists killed.

The same applies to the allies. They had specialist intruders, which were actually more accurate than the Ju-88, using blind bombing and specialised devices such as Oboe, they could, and did, knock out many German radar positions using pinpoint attacks. But the radar stations were difficiult targets, hard to locate and hard to hit. Same rules apply to the allies as were applicable to the Germans. Over-extension of the specialist resources will lead to their early loss.....and it takes years to replace these guys not months or days

 

[Milosh]

What board was this?

Here is the thread.
Why the USAAF gave up on the A-36 in favour of the P-47. - Luftwaffe and Allied Air Forces Discussion Forum

While you are there, look at the other threads by tcolvin.

 

[VG-33]

Any bomber needs air superiority for success. Unless you get lucky and the enemy are caught napping as happened at Pearl Harbor and Bari. However a low level attack improves the chances for achieving surprise.

Cruising across enemy airspace at 20,000+ feet practically guarantees the enemy will know you are coming.

Almost, not all.

Remember the SB-2 in spain, Do-17, DB-3 over china, Mossie in europe, B-29...

 

[VG-33]

I am tempted to make a comparison with the Mosquito, but this would be slightly unfair, since the Mossie was a slightly later and was more powerful than the Ju88. Perhaps a more reasonable comparison would be the LeO451. The French bomber had the following characteristics. It had a top speed of 317 mph, and a range with 1100 lbs of bombs of 1450 miles and a maximum bombload of 4500 lb, but usually it was 2200 lbs. The powerplant of the french bomber was 2 x 1140 hp radials

You can take either the Yak-4, or the Bloch MB 174 so, to remain in chronology respect.

Bloch MB.174 - Wikipédia

Yakovlev Yak-4 - Wikipédia

But it's still little unfair anyway. As the later Mossie, they are frankly smaller and lighter than the Ju-88. More faster two, this is not a surprise.

Regards

 

[Juha]

Hello Davebender and Parsifal
Ventnor was knocked out by an ordinary Ju 88 unit, KG 51, not by the specialist fighter bomber unit EprGr 210.

Dave, check for D-Day, British fighter bombers knocked out tens of German radar stations just before D-Day. And historical tidbits are not enough for analyze, there is a case when a lonely B-17 sunk a Japanese DD in one high level run, did that make B-17 excellent anti-shipping a/c? Also they damaged badly IJN heavy cruiser Maya in Philippines in 41/42 etc.

Don't take me wrong, Ju 88 was excellent in glidebombing when equipped with Stuvi 5 sight and was excellent night fighter and good level bomber etc, but even if it had dive brakes it wasn't excellent dive-bomber, just too heavy to very deep dives. IMHO Soviet Pe-2 might well have been better in dive-bombing than Ju 88 even if it could carry clearly less bombs. Ju 88s have some successes, for ex when Hajo Herrmann destroyed much of Pireus when he hit an ammo ship, and the case of HMS Trinidad. But IMHO all widely used bombers made successful and unsuccessful attacks, so individual cases has not much weight as an evidence.

Juha

 

[Juha]

IMHO there is too much fuss on heavy dive bombers. One can even argue that it was level bomber that made battleship obsolete. In 44 one didn't need a hundred carrier torpedo- and dive bombers to sink a modern battleship. If it out of sea, sent a sqn of Do-217s armed with a Fritz-X per plane, if it in harbour, sent a sqn of Lanc with Tallboys. There was no way to armour a reasonable sized BB against those heavy bombs, so only chances BB had were enough fighters, smokescreen or in case of Fritz-X, ECM. Without them against well trained and courageous crews in bombers the BB's changes were not good.

Juha

 

[Lucky13]

Hi Juha!

How's tricks in my old neighbouring country of Finland? To be honest, I completely forgot about the Swedish Air Force's Hawker Hart bombers....

 

[VG-33]

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

And what dou you suggest? That we should rather trust your opinion based on supposals and fantasy than qualified authors with conclusions based on hundred's cases studies?

Previously, i wrote " in real combat conditions". That mean errors, AA and fighter opposition, bad weather, stress, unknown crosswinds and topography...

For instance over Sedan, a french antitank battery near Anthée wood was attacked three times by Stukas. At morning there were so much AA oppostions, planes, artillery explosions, smoke than Stuka formation gets disabled and missed the mission. Round 12 o'clock, the wood was successfully attacked, burned and destroyed, but it was the neighbour's one. At evening Ju-87 took the trees shadow on the hill for the forest's edge ant attacked it.
Moreover the militar forests border is always 5-25m inside it. In result, no losses: 47mm canons were not hitted again. Position was later lost, but not due to Stuka's actions.
This is an example of concrete case.

Polygone exercice conditions are always easier and optimised. So the 1946th (real story) VVS bomb contest was won by a Li-2 (soviet DC-2) crew placing all his factice bombs inside a football game (soccer for you) central circle. That makes 9,15 m radius from a 3000m height. Without Norden sight of course, but with good optics, calibrated instruments, all by abaccuses and logarithmic slipstick calculation...

How far was it from a normal case, i let you imagine...

 

[BombTaxi]

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.

Because Bomber Command and 8th AF were exclusively tasked with the strategic bombing campaign, and diverting heavies from city-busting would have been seen as an inexcusable waste of resources - possibly it would have been seen as overkill too, dropping massive bombloads on very fragile and easily-damaged targets. 2 Group, 9th AF and 2nd TAF were tasked with targets like German radar stations, and their mediums and fighter-bombers were involved in operations against that kind of target. Your question is disingenuous, as the issue at stake is strategic priorities and the tasking decisions made at very high command levels, NOT the actual capabilities of aircraft and crews

 

[davebender]

I agree. We need more historical examples of Ju-88s being used to attack pinpoint targets. Then we can average the results to establish overall bombing accuracy. If only the knowledgable members of this forum would volunteer such information.....

Personally I don't care whether the aircraft attack was conducted at 90 degrees (i.e. classical dive bombing) or at an angle like 60 degrees. The point is the aircraft attacked at a steep angle to significantly improve bombing accuracy.

BTW, does anyone know what attack angle was normally used by late war fighter-bombers like the Typhoon and Fw-190F? What sort of accuracy did they achieve using large bombs (at least 500 lbs)?

 

[Juha]

Hello Davebender
in fact 90 deg dives were not common, 70-80 deg were the normal dive-bomber angles.

In ETO for Spits the dive angle was quoted at 60 degrees for the lead aircraft, with lesser angles for successive aircraft in the formation, for Typhoons, 60 degrees was the norm.

In MTO during high level dive bombing, Spits "near vertical".

Juha

 

[Shortround6]

One might also want to check out where Ventnor was located, southeast east corner of the Isle of Wight.

Not much fighter cover.

I wonder what there were for AA defenses?

Dive bombing works pretty well against clearly defined targets (100 meter high tower?- 1/2 mile from the beach?) that are either undefended or poorly defended.

Some other thoughts on dive bombing.

1. Against "strategic" or fixed targets like factories. even barrage balloons are a useful part of the defense. The result in either higher release heights and lower accuracy or restrict approach or pull out areas.
2. Going back to you can't hit what you can't see, dive bombing at night isn't going to work very well.
2A. Smoke generators on the ground degrade the bombing accuracy of both types of bombers but they are going to degrade the dive bomber down to the level of the degraded level bombers. If the raid was planed on the basis of fewer planes needed because of the accuracy of the dive bombers the low density of the resulting attack pretty much guarantees failure.
3. Dive bombing isn't needed for "fire raids" and incendiary bombs are 'low density' bombs, they require more volume for a given weight and require either larger aircraft to house them or create more drag for a given weight of bombs if carried externally.
4. Sounds strange but dive bombers actually don't work well with armor piercing bombs. To pierce armor or concrete impact velocity is needed and the low release hight and restricted dive speed of the dive bomber combine to give lower impact velocities than than higher altitude releases do.
5. Dive bombing worked well against targets were the approach was in undefended or 'neutral' territory. The ocean doesn't care who is flying over it and doesn't shoot at anybody. Try using dive bombers (of any size) to attack targets in Bristol, Birmingham or Manchester by flying over England in daylight and see what the results are.
6. IF you KNOW your opponent is building, training and planning on using dive bombers as his primary means of bombing you can tailor the defense accordingly. Instead of large 3.7, 3.4 and 5.25in high altitude AA guns you can build more 3in AA guns and more 2pdr pom-poms and Bofors guns, plus use the previously mentioned barrage balloons and smoke generators.
7. If your opponent had concentrated on dive bombers, especially large multi engine ones, they will be less efficient at some other types of bombing. The hundreds of pounds of extra airframe weight needed for the dive bombing mission will restrict either bomb load or range or both compared to a level bomber using the same engines.

 

[Juha]

Hello Lucky
we are just recovering from a massive heat wave, back to normal 20+ deg C from 30+deg.

Juha

 

[JoeB]

Hello Davebender
in fact 90 deg dives were not common, 70-80 deg were the normal dive-bomber angles.

IJN doctrine at the beginning of WWII was dive angle of 65 deg, though Allied observers usually estimated the dive angle of Type 99 Carrier Bombers ('Vals') in combat as less than that. As mentioned above that a/c demonstrated the highest hit rates ever observed in large scale dive bombing attacks v ships, v. the British CA's Dorsetshire and Cornwall April 5 1942, then Hermes and escort, plus transport and escort April 9. Both sides perceived a large %, much more than 1/2, of the bombs to have scored direct hits, though all targets sank quickly and no truly accurate count was possible as in case of a damaged ship. But I know of no other case on that scale (as opposed to some lone divebomber which scored a hit, 100%, on one ship) that showed that kind of hit rate estimated by both sides, none by other than the Japanese anyway. In prewar exercises by operational IJN units v moving target a high % of practice drops were hits, that was the standard.

Of course even more than in case of fighter combat, comparisons of divebomber achievements are comparisons of divebomber pilots rather than divebombers. So, a whole 'nother aspect of comparison of level bombers to divebombers would also be how much total training did it require to produce a top notch lead bombardier (on whose release everyone else would release) compared to a whole formation of top notch divebomber pilots each to place his bomb accurately.

In any case, if we find a single or few real combat cases where CEP was similar to what's quoted for tests, it doesn't show us much about what *average* combat results were compared to tests. It stands to reason that a test result will not be replicated on average in combat, but not necessarily that it could *never* be matched in combat. Even the 1942 IJN missed on plenty of inidividual drops, though ships targeted by more than a few of their divebombers relatively seldom escaped being hit. No stats to offer, but anecdotally reading books on the MTO campaigns, Axis divebombers, even German and Italian Ju-87's, seemed to come away empty more often in 1941-42 attacks on ships than the Japanese did in 1942, though hit plenty of ships cumulatively. Apropo to Shortround's comment about approach over the ocean v land, Axis divebombers going after British ships holed up in Malta harbor, with shore AA adding to the defense, even when not effectively intercepted by fighters prior to their drops, seemed to have a quite low hit rate, though again they did some damage cumulatively over lots of strikes.

Joe

 

[davebender]

I'd rather not get into attacks on naval targets unless the ships were stationary.

German dive bombers were designed to attack land based targets like bridges, bunkers and artillery positions. Later a few were adapted for naval attack but that was not their main purpose and most crews were not trained for naval attack missions. Sticking with land targets also allows a direct comparison with level bomber accuracy on similiar targets.

 

[Juha]

Hello Davebender
first of all it is easier to get reliable info on ships, ships are clear cut cases, no problem what happened to them, on bridges there are at least some cases where it is not clear were they bought down by planes or by troops.

IMHO there was not principal difference between divebombers designed mainly to attack land or marine targets except perhaps range. And because GB was an important enemy of the Reich, after Dunkerque LW gave anti-shipping training its due attention. Fliegerkorps X, which came to Med in Jan 41 was an anti-shipping formation. And also level bombers attacked moving ships and among them were even less those specialized to anti-shipping work.

I admit that moving target always complicated comparison because the skilfulness of evasive manoeuvring varied but on the other hand there are easier access to reliable info and clear cut cases.

Juha

 

[parsifal]

There were some divebombers that anecdotally appear less accurate than the wst rate divebombers. For example I have read the French LN401 was not as good as the Ju87, because it was not as stable in its flight characteristics. It was never able to demonstrate its true capabilities but neither was it an aircraft that appeared to shine in its brief service. Another similar aircraft would have to be the Blackburn Skua, not a particulalry good example of a divebomber.

The Ju-87 has to rate as one of the best divebombers ever built. It was slow and stable, and while this made it vulnerable, it also meant that it could hit targets with pinpoint accuracy. If the Japanese had been equipped with Stukas instead of Vals, I dont think it would have made any difference to accuracy. So long as the platform met certain criteria, it was the pilot training and what they had been trained for that made the difference, not the aircraft. The Japanese were specialists in destroying ships, relatively few european Axis aircrew were so trained.

The Ju-88 was faster and more survivable, but it also had a shallower and faster divespeed, and this made it less potent i the role, at least at sea. And on land I still believe it was the Ju-87 that was viewed as the pinpoint attack weapon of choice

 

[davebender]

principal difference between divebombers designed mainly to attack land or marine targets

Aircrew training is the difference. The Luftwaffe did not assume responsibility for aerial maritime attacks until January 1942. Prior to then only a select few Ju-87 and Ju-88 aircrew were trained for naval attack. You cannot expect German aircrew to be good at sinking ships if they have not been trained for that mission. However I suspect they were real good at knocking out bridges, bunkers and artillery emplacements. They had to be as the early war Heer was short of both artillery and artillery ammunition, especially compared to next door France.

German Torpedo Bombers? What Were they?

In January 1942, the Luftwaffe's demands for the centralization and control of all German and Italian torpedo development were finally granted. Colonel Martin Harlinghausen was appointed as the head of all Luftwaffe torpedo development, supply, training and operational organizations, with the TorpedoTraining School established at Grosseto in Italy. During the early months of 1942, I/KG 26 underwent torpedo conversion-courses, lasting between three and four weeks. The Gruppe's He-111H-6's could carry two torpedoes slung on racks beneath the belly; the standard torpedoes used were the German LT F5 and LT F5W, both of 450-mm caliber, with the latter based on the Italian model made by Silurificio Whitehead di Fiume.

While I/KG 26 underwent conversion at Grosseto, its future and the bases from which it would operate had already been decided. Luftflotte V, based in Norway and Finland, needed additional bomber support to interdict Allied convoys on the Murmansk/Archangelsk route. In March, Göring ordered Luftflotte V to collaborate with the aerial reconnaissance units of the Kreigsmarine and to attack the convoys when they came into range, and also to shift bomber forces from the Finnish front to accomplish this task. Within I/KG 26, based at Banak and Bardufoss, there were 12 crews available for torpedo operations with the Heinkel He 111H-6 planes.

 

[Juha]

Hello Davebender
Quote:" The Luftwaffe did not assume responsibility for aerial maritime attacks until January 1942"

Well, who was responsible for aerial maritime attacks before that? Torpedo wasn't the only anti-shipping weapon. IIRC even if Ju 87s was fairly effective during Norwegian campaign and during Dunkerque evacuation it was decided to give more anti-shipping training to Stuka crews, and as I wrote X Fliegerkorps was LW's anti-shipping unit, had been since late 39 IIRC, firstly as 10. Fliegerdivision. Also IIRC there was also 9. Fliegerdivision/ IX Fliegerkorps. And it was Ju 87s and 88s of those units which carried out most of attacks against RN early in the war with He 111s of KG 26, also a unit belonging to X Fliegerkorps and of course Fw 200s of I/KG 40 which might well have been part of 9. Fliegerdivision/ IX Fliegerkorps.

Juha

 

[davebender]

who was responsible for aerial maritime attacks before that?

The German Navy. Unfortunately (for Germany) Admiral Raeder was not a fan of either aircraft or submarines. So German maritime attack aircraft programs received little funding until after the Luftwaffe assumed control during 1942. By then it was almost too late to matter as the Med and Altantic coastal regions were covered by swarms of British fighter aircraft.