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Eric "Winkle" Brown RN, a British test pilot and Commanding Officer of Captured Enemy Aircraft Flight section, tested the Ju 87 at RAE Farnborough. He said of the Stuka, "I had flown a lot of dive-bombers and it's the only one that you can dive truly vertically. Sometimes with the dive-bombers...maximum dive is usually in the order of 60 degrees.. When flying the Stuka, because it's all automatic, you are really flying vertically... The Stuka was in a class of its own."
I wouldn't think so. A 90 would have to pull out sooner meaning it would have to make its drop sooner. They're not easy to pull out of, either, going in at that breakneck speed. Don't forget, these pilots were momentarily blacking-out when they came out of their dives, and as such were trained to complete them just so (think of the importance of the follow-through in a golf swing). A 60 can get virtually right on top of its target and swing away a lot less stressed. A lot of the boys in the SBDs were scoring 5-for-5s in terms of hits in their training, once they got the knack of it.Is an aircraft that dives at 90 degrees inherently more accurate than one that dives at 60 degrees?
We know that isn't true as Ju-87 was designed for 90 degree dive right from the start. Makes me wonder what else the author got wrong.according to the frontispiece of Smith's book, "[The Vengeance] was the only dive-bomber designed from the outset for vertical attacks."
Surely this come down to pilot training rather than the abilities of the aircraft?