Sure. -87s were shown deficient absent fighter escort by autumn 1940 outside the 1941-42 usage on the Eastern Front.
That is a persistent myth. They were unsuitable for the Battle of Britain, and took heavy losses flying in big static formations, often without sufficient fighter cover, but the BoB was by no means the end of the Stuka story. They were absolutely lethal in the battles in North Africa - right up to Kasserine Pass, and even more so in Russia, arguably. In fact I would argue that they were key to probably most of the armored breakthroughs the Germans made from 1940 - late 42, and some in 43. They were also absolutely devastating in the convoy fights in the Med. It was not until the Allies began to seriously contest (and extend) air superiority after mid 1942 that the day of the Stuka came to it's twilight due to losses becoming unsustainable and their ability to drop bombs 'in peace' diminished to almost nothing.
What I find interesting is the learning curve each side had. The Allies seemed to understand early that pinpoint attacks weren't productive, while the Germans stuck with them in those areas where they still made hay. The Allies didn't waste much effort on land-attack dive-bombers outside the Vultees over Burma, shifting instead to jabos. The Germans seemed to like their Stukas too much and put good money in after bad.
I think it's a mistake to underestimate the impact, figuratively and literally, of the Stuka. There is something to be said for precision bombing, and the Stuka could achieve that. They were used to enable armored breakthroughs from the Battle of France right up to 2nd El Alamein, albeit with increasing casualties.
The Luftwaffe fighter units like JG.27 were initially (late 41 and very early 42) very dominant, but as the DAF approached parity, they really focused first and foremost on running up their scores (especially for the
experte). They had a pretty bad relationship with the Stuka and other bomber (Ju-88 mainly) units in North Africa, because they didn't like to linger to protect the bombers. Rather they would hit and run / BnZ attacks and try to pick off Allied fighters. Left to their own devices, JU 87 pilots would jettison their bombs (sometimes over their own troops), emit smoke, and corkscrew around in tight turns evading enemy fighters as best they could. This worked to a point to save their lives but also meant they were no longer hitting targets nearly as often. The German fighter groups in North Africa also didn't do very well against Allied bombers under escort after a certain point, for similar reasons. In Shores he has interview excerpts with several German pilots who talk about all this at some length. This all led to serious tensions between Luftwaffe and Wermacht in Theater. Not sure how it played out in Russia.
That's only for ETO/MTO, obvs. The RAF in Burma and USMC in the Solomons campaign got some mileage out of DBs. Faster and more defensible seemed to trump scary and sometimes useful.
It's a complex story, IMO. Most early dive bombers were quite slow and that made them vulnerable. On the other hand their precision was extremely valuable against critical targets like shipping. Survival rates between SBDs flown by US Navy pilots compared to the same plane flown by USMC or USAAF pilots were dramatically different, and the difference seems to be largely down to training.
Even some quite obsolete dive bombers were used effectively by the British in the North Sea area and around Norway several times through the war.
It seems that only the Germans (with the Ju 87) and the Soviets (with the the underrated and pretty fast Pe-2, and later the better and also pretty fast Tu-2) engaged in the wholesale front line battlefield use of dive bombers for the land war, with the partial exception as you note of the Vengeance in Burma and India - which I think is a bit underrated honestly, and the A-36 in Italy though that was in pretty small numbers.
Fighter bombers / Jabos were a pretty good substitute for a variety of reasons, P-40s, F4Us, Fw 190s, P-47s and P-38s, Typhoons and Tempests all proved pretty good at it, bombing accurately and carrying fairly heavy bomb loads. P-51s eventually as well though arguably a bit more vulnerable, though I think the A-36 (speaking of fast bombers) was really underrated for a while and had an important niche in the fighting in Italy. Older mark Bf 109s were used in this role too as were Hurricanes, Spitfires, Ki-43s, CR.42s, I-153s, Bf 110s, and Re 2000 series fighters, to varying degrees of success. Fighter-bombers, when doing 'shallow angle' dive bombing (45 degree etc.) could hit targets much more often than most level-bombers, and certainly had a better survival rate than SBDs / A-24s or Ju 87s by the mid-war (for land targets anyway).
And yet that extra bit of precision that came with true high-angle dive bombing really mattered, is my conclusion. It meant the difference for example from sending two or three strikes to take out that bridge vs a dozen, or taking out 60% of the enemy flak guns prior to the bigger bombing attack vs 10% of them. Or hitting warships rather than just unprotected merchant ships. Stuff like that.
But the upgrade path for dive bombers proved to be very troubled. Many design programs broke up on those rocks...
The few that came through intact and were really promising basically arrived far too late, like two years too late.
