Dive Bombing improves accuracy how much?

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Jabberwocky said:
Ju-88s regularly dive bombed over Malta, with impressive accuracy.
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I read so too. Also, the production design as is was altogether so different from the original prototypes that removing the dive bomb equipment and reducing structural strength alone would not turn it back into a low-level fast-bomber that could realistically evade interception like a Mosquito.
 
None of this would have mattered if the 105 German Ju-88s had missed the target. Their bombing accuracy was superb. Something which cannot be said for most RAF and U.S.Army Air Corps strategic bombing missions.
 
Henschel Hs 127 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
What do we know of the Hs-127? Supposedly it was very fast.

Wikipedia says the Ju-88 won the competition because of a larger bomb load. However that doesn't sound right as the Ju-88A had the worst bomb bay arrangement of almost any medium bomber.



A side issue...
Why didn't Heinkel offer an improved version of the He-111? During the late 1930s the He-111 was probably the best medium bomber in the world with a large range/payload and a decent size bomb bay. Make it 30 mph faster by cleaning up aerodynamics and it is better then the Ju-88 in every way except it cannot dive bomb. It also cost a bit less to produce then the Ju-88.
 
davebender said:
None of this would have mattered if the 105 German Ju-88s had missed the target. Their bombing accuracy was superb. Something which cannot be said for most RAF and U.S.Army Air Corps strategic bombing missions.
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Err, the aiming point was the warehouses, not the ships....the bombs fell wide by more than a kilometre, on a fully illuminated target, with no fighter defences and and no effective flak. They hit the ships by accident, and missed by a far greater amount than anything thought acceptable in the Allied air forces. Compare this to the precision raids undertaken by the allies, like the dambusters, or the raids on Amiens ofr the Dutch Gestapo headquarters, and you will get a better comparison of the two skill levels that existed in the three airforces.
 
riacrato said:
Yes it's a sign of their utter incompetence they destroyed those 17 ships.
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It would be great if the ships were the targets, but they werent. Moreover it was not the Luftwaffe bombs that destroyed the ships, its was the ammunition in the ships that caused the damage. And the accuracy of the bombing was greatly assisted by the full illumination of the target, the total lack of fighter defences and the incapacitation of the flak.
 
I am far from an expert about that particular raid. But how do you know the ships were hit by accident exactly?

And besides, you take this as an example of the inferior skill of LW bomber crews how? By comparing it to two very accurate ones out of hundreds of allied bomber missions in Europe, which were by average not even nearly as effective. It's like saying clovers have four leaves by standard.
 

I know because I have an article that deals with this particular incident in detail "Baris dark Secret", by Edward Blandford, 1999.

Err, the Bari raid has been put forward as an example of German precision bombing, so why is it invalid to compare apples to apples and compare a stated example of a luftwaffe precision bombing raid to allied precision bombing raids. Sure, I chose some of the more well known examples, but these are just the better known examples out of hundreds that could have been chosen. If we want to compare apples to apples, and want to restrict the allies to non-precision raids, then we would need to compare that to non-precision German raids. That way we get four leaf clovers compared to four leaf clovers
 
"It would be great if the ships were the targets, but they werent. Moreover it was not the Luftwaffe bombs that destroyed the ships, its was the ammunition in the ships that caused the damage."

Bari's Dark Secret is a chapter in a book entitled "Fatal Decisions, Errors and Blunders in WWII" by Edmund Blandford. An interesting book but one that lacks citations to sources for the specific facts employed. I see no indication in the chapter that the intended target(s) excluded ships moored at port such that any bombs striking ships would have necessarily missed their intended target(s).

Also, according to the chapter you cited, bombs did destroy ships:

"Two ships loaded with ammunition were struck by bombs and blew up with the most tremendous blast that shattered every window within an eight mile radius." (p. 131)

Do you have any evidence that ships at dock were not among the intended targets? I ask because sinking moored ships, in addition to destroying port facilities, would appear be an excellent way for 96 Ju-88's in a bombing mission to inflict maximum damage on the port and keep it from operating.
 
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I will have to check my sources again. The ships that were initially hit were all moored alongside, and the first bombs dropped by the germans were directed to the dock storage areas, rather than the ships. However the second wave of thirty aircraft may have targetted the docked ships, which included the two ammunition ships that caused the majority of the damage. I will concede that I might be incorrect that the Germans were not targetting ships, since they were known to be using swedish turnip techniwues, suggesting that at least some of the attacking aircraft wee designated the ships as their primary targets.

The raid as a whole was a well executed attack, but to present it as somehow the textbook precision attack without taking into account the circumstances that led to that destruction, namely that it was the ships themselves that caused most of the damage, is distorting the reason for raising the raid in the overall debate in the first place.
 
I think of Bari as a textbook example of what well planned strategic bombing can achieve. Rather then sending 1,000 bombers to attack an entire city the Luftwaffe used 1/10th as many to attack a target with serious military value.

Bari was known to be the main supply port for Allied air forces in Italy. A high proportion of the cargo was expected to be aviation gasoline and aircraft bombs. A few hits have the potential to cause massive secondary explosions. Exactly what happened.

Anyway.....
I find it interesting the Ju-88s attacked at low level even though they were perfectly capable of dive bombing. He-111s could probably have achieved similiar results using the Swedish Turnip attack method.
 


Erprobungsgruppe 210 never operated the Bf 110 C-4/B variant. They flew Bf 110 C-6s, D-0/Bs, D-3s, C-7s and E-1s and E-2s. There is a lot of incorrect information around about the C-4/B.
 

It seems the Germans became obsessed with dive bombing before they tried it out fully even the He177 was required to have the capability. The quote below is from Wiki but I also read it in the instructions to the Airfix model so it must be true.

During the final inspection of the Projekt 1041 mock-up on November 5, 1937, Ernst Udet stated OKL's new divebombing requirement to Ernst Heinkel, who replied that the aircraft would never be capable of it.[4] The He 177 had to be strengthened to support the stresses imposed by the pull-out from a dive. Unfortunately, the dive bombing requirement was later increased to 60° attacks rather than the medium angle dives originally called for, resulting in further structural strengthening and an alarming increase in weight. Nevertheless, the requirement to dive bomb up to 60° was never satisfactorily solved, due to the constant increases in loaded weight. Despite the specially strengthened airframe, it was still possible to overstress the airframe during a dive attack maneuver. While the German bombsights of the 1930's were in fact quite lacking, the follow-on versions of the Lotfernrohr 7 proved to be arguably as accurate as the American Norden bombsight. With the introduction of the Lotfe 7, which offered an average error of 20 m to 30 m (65 ft to 98 ft) from a release altitude of 3,000 m to 4,000 m (9,842 ft to 13,123 ft), and Hermann Göring's rescindment of the dive attack requirement in September of 1942, the barred-gate type dive brakes were omitted from all He 177 built after the initial pre production batch.
 

I dont know if these averages are from training or operations, its stating the obvious to say the effectiveness depends on the opposition and how well you can see the target and what the target is. It surprised me how many aircraft carriers were not designed to withstand any attack themselves, sinking a carrier with an armoured deck was a completely different proposition to one that wasnt. Whereas a dive bomber could damage the outside of the Tirpitz, looking at the shells it took to sink the Bismark then dive bombers couldnt sink her easily.
 
Whereas a dive bomber could damage the outside of the Tirpitz, looking at the shells it took to sink the Bismark then dive bombers couldnt sink her easily.
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Perhaps true if we are talking about the IJN Val and USN SBD. The German Ju-87D could carry a 1,600kg AP bomb. That's like getting hit with an 18" battleship shell fired by IJN Yamato!
 
davebender said:
Perhaps true if we are talking about the IJN Val and USN SBD. The German Ju-87D could carry a 1,600kg AP bomb. That's like getting hit with an 18" battleship shell fired by IJN Yamato!
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But the Ju87D didnt appear until a long time later and that bomb load was in the short range overload condition , Ju87s were in general vulnerable with a load like that they would be sitting ducks.
 
The SBD was the primary U.S. dive bomber during 1942.
The Val was the primary Japanese dive bomber during 1942.
The Ju-87D was the primary German small dive bomber from mid 1942 onward.
The Ju-88A was the primary German large dive bomber from 1940 onward.

That's contemporary enough for me.
 


Dave I dont know what point you are making, the Tirpitz and Bismark were German ships and the Ju87D was a German land based bomber. When the Yamato was sunk it was hit by 8 bombs which damaged her and 11 torpedos which sunk her. The Bismark was hit by 300 to 400 shells of which approximately 80 were 12 to 14inch none of this sunk her she was sunk either by torpedos. I have no idea how far a JU87 could haul a 1.6ton bomb but I dont think it would be far and I dont know how a air dropped bomb compares to a shell. The Tirpitz was moored up in a Fjord and needed to be attacked by carrier based ac A bit like Germany attacking Scapa flow impossible with a stuka carrying a 1.6ton bomb

I was making the point about the target is important, few of the shells hitting the bismark penetrated her armour and none sunk her, the yamato was sunk by torpedos not bombs whearas aircraft carriers with unarmoured decks could be devastated by 1 hit.
 
 
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