MOST UNDERRATED AIRCRAFT OF WWII?

Was it? You tell me. You seem to have all the answers.

General Electric was at the forefront of supercharger design in the US for at least 20 years due to the work of Sanford Moss who started working on turbo driven superchargers in WW I. Nobody else was doing much of anything with superchargers then. The NACA did some experiments with roots superchargers in the 1920s and that merely proved that roots superchargers weren't a good idea for aircraft. Since GE was building centrifugal compressors to go with the exhaust turbines they branched out and designed (and built) gear driven superchargers for Wright, P & W and Packard. By the late 30s people began to realize the GE compressor/superchargers weren't really that good. This had been masked by, on GE's end, the turbine providing an excess of power to the compressor, and on the users end (engine makers) the low boost allowed by available fuels. It didn't take a very good supercharger to provide all the boost 70-80 octane fuel would allow.

To show how interwoven everything was and how little actual knowledge in supercharger/compressor design (or number of designers) there were in the 30s Allison made supercharger/compressor parts under sub-contract to GE for use by Wright and P & W. It wasn't until the late 30s that Wright and P & W became dissatisfied with the GE superchargers/compressors and started to design their own.

In the 20s and early 30s engines that used turbo superchargers did NOT use an engine driven supercharger, they were one stage systems. This changed in the late 30s with better fuel that would allow higher boost pressures.

There is room for some confusion as to what constitutes a supercharger and what is a turbocharger as it is a PITA to type out the extra words/letters needed to identify each in every instance.

In WW II nobody used a a single stage turbocharger (at least on a production aircraft).

Thanks, SR! Fills in a few blanks for me, confirming some, and discrediting other "facts" that I've been told over the years. SR, you're really good at filling in the complex details in an understandable way for those of us less technically endowed.
Cheers,
Wes

wuzak said:

I still don't think it was underrated or underappreciated.

Saying that the Ju 87 needed to operate with effective fighter cover or in areas with little or no fighter opposition does not make it underrated.

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The thing is, I actually said almost the opposite of that.

Stukas were flying unescorted raids in Russia right up to Kursk. Intermittently they flew unescorted raids in the Med up to about mid -1942. That is actually pretty good.

Now it's true these were areas and during times with what I would call "Light or intermittent fighter opposition", but other types of bombers, for example the Russian SB or SU-2 bombers, the German Do 17, Ju 52 or He 111, or the British Blenheim, Hampden or Wellington were really not safe to operate in the same areas without fighter protection if there was any potential enemy fighter opposition. Even when escorts were provided, many early bomber types (particularly those listed above) still could not operate without prohibitive casualties. Stukas had fairly good surviveability by comparison - both against flak and enemy fighters, they weren't the only bombers that did, but they did pretty well.

What's more important, as I already mentioned a few times, Stukas had by far the best accuracy of any of the bombers in ant Air Force of the first half of the war (with the exception of the other dive bombers which were mostly use in Naval combat and mostly in the Pacific). So they did not need to be sent on dozens of sorties to have an effect on the battlefield, they were quite good at hitting enemy tanks, artillery, bridges, ships and so on. All of this contributes to a battlefield effectiveness which was unusually high. Relatively low casualty to sortie ratio and a relatively high damaged enemy target to sortie ratio.

The Stuka was slow and ultimately did need to be replaced for many missions by Jabos and faster bombers like the Ju 88, though it remained in use to the end of the war. My point was that it played an important role right up to the tipping point of the war and I believe the impact that this dive bomber had - particularly between the Battle of Britain and say Stalingrad or Torch, does tend to be underestimated.

I would say in it's own way the Stuka was the equivalent of the 88mm AA gun in terms of it's overall value, at least for the first 2 or 3 years.

S

..turbocharger, supercharger, turbo-supercharger...they're all forced air induction systems. Puh-Tay-Toe, Puh-Tah-Toe...

Schweik said:

The thing is, I actually said almost the opposite of that.

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I didn't say that you did.

It is what many people say about the Ju 87 - great plane when there is little or no threat from fighter opposition.

It is why some people may consider the Ju 87 underrated even though, IMO, it is not.

You say:

Schweik said:

Stukas were flying unescorted raids in Russia right up to Kursk. Intermittently they flew unescorted raids in the Med up to about mid -1942. That is actually pretty good.

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Then you say:

Schweik said:

Now it's true these were areas and during times with what I would call "Light or intermittent fighter opposition"

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Which isn't quite so good.

Schweik said:

but other types of bombers, for example the Russian SB or SU-2 bombers, the German Do 17, Ju 52 or He 111, or the British Blenheim, Hampden or Wellington were really not safe to operate in the same areas without fighter protection if there was any potential enemy fighter opposition. Even when escorts were provided, many early bomber types (particularly those listed above) still could not operate without prohibitive casualties.

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I'm not convinced that the other bombers listed could not operate in areas of "light or intermittent opposition".

Take the British bombers. They certainly suffered heavy losses due to strong fighter defences (not as strong as late 1943/1944, but strong for the period of the war). And, as a result, they were withdrawn from daylight operations.

Funnily enough, when the Ju 87 met with strong fighter opposition in the BoB it, too, suffered heavy losses and was withdrawn from the battle.

And the Russian bombers? Aren't the reason why so many experten racked up mammoth victory totals?

Schweik said:

Stukas had fairly good surviveability by comparison - both against flak and enemy fighters, they weren't the only bombers that did, but they did pretty well.

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Is there a way to quantify this?

Do you think that Ju 87s would have been able to persist in attacks against German held areas of France during 1941? I somehow doubt it could.

The already stipulated facts of the discussion give you everything you need to know. Bristol Benheim basically couldn't do daylight bombing operations on their own in North Africa without suffering heavy losses, and I believe some time in 1941 they even stopped flying escorted missions (or severely curtailed them anyway). The DAF shifted over toward fighter-bombers and their faster available bombers such as the A-20 Boston, the Martin 167 Maryland and the Martin 187 Baltimore (all American made bombers by the way). The Wellington and Beaufort were still in use but basically relegated to maritime operations.

Same for the SB and the Su-2 on the Russian Front. Despite the huge numbers of SB bombers available, the Soviets had to accept the fact that they couldn't survive the Tactical environment. The Russians shifted over to their fast dive bomber the Pe-2, (though it suffered heavy causualties too), the Lend Lease A-20 Boston, and their heavily armored ground attack aircraft the Il-2 though it suffered even worse, as well as also using fighter bombers (LaGG-3s, I-153s and I-16s).

The Stuka by contrast, as I pointed out,was still in use in the Med well into 1943 and a bit beyond. Increasingly by mid 1942 they were being escorted but at least they were still able to use them. For that matter, bomb laden Hurricanes had to be escorted too. In Russia, as I pointed out already, they were still flying unescorted missions right up to Kursk. After that they started taking casualties and definitely required escort as the Yak-9 and La 5 came into wider use (as well as Spitfire V's, P-39s and P-40s) but they were still wrecking tanks well into 1944.

So while yes I agree flying unescorted when only facing "limited or intermittent" fighter opposition doesn't seem like much of a challenge, in the actual war it did work out to be. Few if any bombers could fly unescorted missions against even that fairly weak level of air defense by say, 1941, though it depended on the capabilities of the fighters in the district. Ju-88's for example were able to bomb Malta for a while with relative impunity because the small number of Gladiators and clapped out Hurricanes available for defense couldn't catch them.

But really in the long run in that period from the BoB through Torch / Kursk, only Mosquitoes, early Mustang Fighter bombers, and the occasional Beaufighter had the chops to pull off daylight missions like that without escort, unless they were willing to accept very severe casualty rates.

And lets be clear about another thing, in terms of how dangerous of a tactical environment it was, there is a difference in flying missions during the Battle of Britain, flying strikes against Strategic and Operational targets facing very dense, very heavy fighter defenses coordinated by Radar and highly organized defense networks, vs. flying sorties against tactical targets over an area with sporadic air defense. As far as I know, not only could no bombers bomb Britain during the daylight un-escorted without suffering prohibitive casualties, no aircraft of any kind could do so escorted either without taking too many losses, except maybe high flying Ju-86p recon planes.


In my opinion, the vulnerability of the Ju 87 was a bit exaggerated because of the BoB. Air defense over England was so good during the BoB that it cannot be really compared to the tactical environment over a battlefield, which is one of the two main contexts the Ju 87 was intended for. Even their much faster and higher flying stablemate, the Ju 88, had a very tough time surviving over England. But both aircraft excelled in the Med and over the Russian Front, at least until the Spitfires, P-40s and the Yak 9s showed up.

I would call the Ju 87 "good" in terms of survivability, (mainly due to their good maneuverability and handling), and "very good" at hitting targets.

Is there really a doubt that the Ju-87 had a much higher rate of accuracy than level bombers? I am definitely interested to see solid numbers myself if there were any statistics available but I think the evidence of individual sortie after sortie and battle after battle does add up to a rather obvious bigger picture. Part of this of course is attributable to the aircraft itself and part to the Luftwaffe's pioneering of Forward Air Controllers and radio controlled spotting.

The other type of target of course was the second main context the Stuka was designed for - Maritime, i.e. destroying ships, which they continued to do in large numbers right to the end of the War. Half of the British Navy and Allied merchant fleet in the Med and off the Coast of Norway was sunk by Stukas, not to mention the Soviet ships in the Baltic.

There is no doubt that the sun did set on the Junkers design, by 1943 German pilots were much, much better off using slightly less accurate but much more survivable Fw 190F's for their ground attack sorties than Stukas, but as I've said before, just because a design didn't work forever does'nt make it a bad design. And after all, pretty much all the Focke Wulfes got shot down too just like the Stukas did.

S

Just for the hell of it, I tossed out some comparable bombers who had to operate in contested airspace - the Stuka is highlighted, of course.

None of these bombers could had a high survival rate without top-cover. None.
Even the fastest of the group, the Pe-8, could not have escaped an Axis fighter.

The survival rate of the Ju87 diminished directly in proportion to the Luftwaffe's ability to command the airspace it operated in.

Dornier Do17Z - 220mph (+/-)
Armstrong AW.38 - 225mph (+/-)
Vickers Wellington - 228mph (+/-)
Handley Page Hampden - 240mph (+/-)
Ilyusin Il-4 - 245mph (+/-)
Junkers Ju87D - 250mph (+/-)
Bristol Blenheim - 255mph (+/-)
PZL.37 - 255mph (+/-)
Mitsubishi G4M - 260mph (+/-)
Bristol Beaufort - 265mph (+/-)
Fiat BR.20 - 265mph (+/-)
Ilyushin DB-3 - 265mph (+/-)
North American B-25 - 265mph (+/-)
Tupolev SB - 275mph (+/-)
Martin B-26 - 275mph (+/-)
Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 - 275mph (+/-)
Martin 167 - 285mph (+/-)
LeO451 - 295mph (+/-)
Mitsubishi KI-21 - 295mph (+/-)
Dornier Do217K - 300mph (+/-)
Kawasaki KI-48 - 305mph (+/-)
Arkangelsky Ar-2 - 310mph (+/-)
Douglas A-20 - 310mph (+/-)
Junkers Ju88A - 320mph (+/-)
Tupolev Tu-2 - 320mph (+/-)
Douglas A-26 - 350mph (+/-)
Petlyakov Pe-2 - 352mph (+/-)

Nice list, some exotic examples in there. Arkhangelsky Ar-2 ... awesome. you left off the Mosquito (top speed, depending on the variant ~375 - 400 mph) the Douglas SBD / A-24 (250 mph), the Aichi D3A (267 mph), the Beaufighter (top speed, again depending on variant, 300- 330 mph) the Martin 187 (Baltimore) which was in wide use by the DAF. (Top speed 305 mph), and the North American A-36 Apache which was in fairly wide use in Italy (top speed 365 mph).

But speed is only one of the four factors that impacted survivability for a bomber, the other three were altitude, maneuverability and defensive guns. For the Stuka, the key factor was maneuverability - if they saw an enemy fighter coming, they could turn to avoid it. Read that nut Rudel.

And aside from the bombers the Theater was a major factor. It was one thing to do a daylight raid over England, or over Germany or Occupied Europe. Quite another to fly a Tactical sortie over a shifting battlefield - especially one of the staggering scope of the Russian Front, and yet another entirely to fly a Maritime sortie over the Med, North Atlantic or Black Sea.

The real point is that regardless of what a given bomber should have been able to do safely based on any given factor, there is the issue of what they did. You really have to start with the latter and work your way back to your theory rather than the other way around.

So for example as I already pointed out, for a period of several weeks Ju 88's were able to fly raids over Malta without cover because the available fighters defending the Island, Gladiators and worn out Hurricanes, simply could not catch them. Fact. They even flew some unescorted raids against Spitfires later in 1942 (without getting slaughtered, though they did take casualties).

On the Russian Front, Ju 88s and Ju 87s both flew thousands of unescorted sorties. Do I need to start citing some specific examples?

Pe 2 and Tu 2 fast bombers also flew unescorted raids in Russia, as did A-20 Bostons notably in the Baltic, mainly becuase they were faster than the available fighter escorts. They did take pretty high casualties but that was the case across the board for the Soviets.

Same in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia - in 1941 and 1942 Ju-87s flew certainly hundreds of unescorted sorties, as did Ju-88s.. Without suffering catastrophic casualties. If you need me to I can start citing some examples.

For the rest of your list the results are uneven. B-25s and A-20s operated in the Med (usually with escorts) without suffering heavy losses, but in Russia they got shot down in large numbers and the B-25 was quickly relegated to night bombing. In part I think this is because they were being used against different types of targets. SM 79s were used successfully in the Med in Maritime raids (sinking a lot of ships) but also took high casualties including from flak. Blenheims, though not much slower than a B-25, were all but grounded by 1942. Martin 167 and 187 on the other hand were flying alone over the Med and with escorts over the Desert quite successfully (though their bombs didn't hit that often). Ki-21 and G4M in the Pacific, while fast and reasonably well armed, was extremely vulnerable without armor or self sealing tanks and not safe without fighter escort, usually taking heavy losses even with escorts.

Point being, again, there is more to it than just the speed.

S

There is a lot more to it than speed, and very few of those bombers were operating at max speed in any case.

However the target area/battle field makes a big difference. Malta being abou 17 miles long and 9 miles wide gave a rather restricted area for the Attackers to operate in.

It is about 1100 miles From St Petersburg/Leningrad to Odesa. Adjust front line length as you see fit but there was a lot of opportunity for a a short range unescorted raid to reach it's target without being intercepted on the Russian front at certain periods of the war.

What a great pilot could do with a plane is different than what an average pilot could do let alone pilots with 10-20 hours after flight school.
If you are doing extreme maneuvers you are no longer flying in formation and it is every pilot/plane for himself, which might work or more often, doesn't.
The good pilots may get away but the lesser pilots are going to be the ones attacking most of the attention.

Shortround6 said:

There is a lot more to it than speed, and very few of those bombers were operating at max speed in any case.

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I agree, and cruise speed also comes into play. For example when two bombers that have roughly the same top speed of ~260 mph, but one bomber has a normal cruise speed of ~ 100 mph and another is ~220 mph, the latter aircraft is better off. The cruising altitude also makes a difference. Cruise speed affects the speed when attacked, and how long it takes to get to combat speed in an emergency. Then there is another factor - speed with and without bombs. Aircraft carrying bombs internally suffer a lot less drag and therefore can manage a better cruise speed while loaded than planes carrying bombs externally.

Of course, needs and plans change, what they thought was a good (internal) bomb load in the design phase often had to be supplemented by carrying more external bombs on hard points (which kind of defeats the purpose of the internal bomb bay). But if they were in serious trouble, bomber pilots would often jettison the bombs anyway.

Faster speed in general means less time for the defending fighters (or flak) to intercept you. Higher altitude also. It limits the duration of the combat.

However the target area/battle field makes a big difference. Malta being abou 17 miles long and 9 miles wide gave a rather restricted area for the Attackers to operate in.

It is about 1100 miles From St Petersburg/Leningrad to Odesa. Adjust front line length as you see fit but there was a lot of opportunity for a a short range unescorted raid to reach it's target without being intercepted on the Russian front at certain periods of the war.

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Agreed again, with the Western Desert falling somewhere in between in terms of scale and saturation of aircraft. In both cases, in general, there was a lot more opportunity for bombers to slip through initially, but gradually the defenders tightened up their systems (including for detection, coordination and communication as well as attack) life became much more perilous for bomber crews. On the Russian front, in the first year the Germans had intense momentum and the Soviets flew relatively few sorties and even fewer thawere effective. Later in 1941 the VVS gained some momentum and starting making much more effective use of their bombers like the Pe 2 (which was flying unescorted missions for a while) Tu -2 and the Il-2. The Germans adjusted pretty quickly though and got much better at catching them. By mid 1942 life was short for bomber crews though that did not stop the Soviets from sending them out (and they were still blowing up tanks).

What a great pilot could do with a plane is different than what an average pilot could do let alone pilots with 10-20 hours after flight school.
If you are doing extreme maneuvers you are no longer flying in formation and it is every pilot/plane for himself, which might work or more often, doesn't.
The good pilots may get away but the lesser pilots are going to be the ones attacking most of the attention.

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Also true. For a case in point, the Stuka and the B-25.

in the BoB, Stukas were used flying rigid formations and got slaughtered by Hurricanes. Hurricanes by the way, really did seem to be particularly good at shooting down bombers in general and Ju 87s in particular. The Stuka only had one defensive gun position on the dorsal position, which was fairly easy to avoid especially if they were flying in a static formation, for example by attacking from below. Their strength was definitely not defensive guns.

In Russia, and in the Med and North Africa, when Stukas were attacked by fighters, they often jettisoned their bombs and started twisting and turning, avoiding being shot down as best they could, while making their way back to their own lines. Though the less consistent air defense no doubt played a role (allowing them to find routes sometimes for example free of enemy fighters) this defensive Tactic undoubtedly saved a lot of Stuka crews. However, per your comment, I agree it did definitely take a better pilot to successfully take advantage of maneuverability whereas for novices flying in formation was probably the best strategy. It's just one that was better suited for some bombers than others.

But the net result was that if you look at the actual mission loss rates, fewer Ju 87s were lost in air combat than Bf 109s in the Med in some periods.

The B-25 had three different experiences in the Pacific, Russian Front and the Med. In the Pacific they were mainly used in Maritime strikes, usually in the newly developed tactic of low-level "mast-top" bombing and specifically skip-bombing. They were also used in low-level attacks against enemy airfields, harbors and other installations, and sometimes against enemy troops - often using daisy cutter or parafrag bombs, or later napalm. Consensus seems to be that the low-level attacks were possible largely due to the comparatively weak Japanese AAA*, they also relied on increased offensive firepower (some added in the field) to suppress flak on their way in. Defense against fighters was largely by flying in formations and relying on fairly heavy defensive firepower. Escorts were intermittent, but casualties remained pretty low. Japanese fighters had to be careful engaging them due to their limited armor etc. Ten B-25s shooting at an approaching Ki 43 was pretty daunting for the IJA pilot.

In Russia, they tried to use B-25s for Tactical air support, basically to kill tanks. The aircraft were armored & had self sealing tanks, and a lot of guns which were good for strafing and defense, but in practice the Germans were killing them both from the air and from AAA. The Russians quickly relegated them to longer range Operational bombing missions and night bombing.

In the Med they were mostly used as Medium bombers and sometimes to attack shipping. In the former role they typically flew at medium altitude in largeish formations (10-30 bombers) and usually escorted, as well as sometimes at mast-top in Maritime strikes via skip bombing etc. These were somewhat more formidable in terms of armament than the ones used early-on in the Pacific, some had proper tail guns. Usually escorted by P-40s. They suffered low casualties and did seem to destroy some planes on the Axis airfields almost with every raid. The purpose was basically to force the Luftwaffe to fight over their own bases and from a disadvantaged position, and it worked.

So three different Theaters with three different casualty rates and overall level of effectiveness, for the same plane.

S


* similar tactics didn't work against German military units because they had so many more high quality AAA systems like automatic double or quad 20mm guns and so on.

I made the quick list of TWINs to contrast against the Ju87 in order to bring up a point. Otherwise, we can start a broad discussion about anything that carried bombs and what was more efficient or had a better camo scheme and so on.

All were supposed to be able to operate without escort as they were (at the time of concept) to be "fast" bombers. I added the Ar-2, because it was supposed to be an improvement on the Tupolev SB - note: improvement.

The Ju87 and Ju88 may have flow "thousands" of unescorted missions, but they paid the price (I can also cite examples).

The much exalted Mosquito was not impervious to interception and I can also "cite examples".

I can appreciate the emotion and enthusiasm for the Ju87 as it was a solid design for a 1930's dive-bombing platform for it's day. But with the rapid advance in technology and shift in doctrine, it was more of a useful anachronism by the later stages of the war.

GrauGeist said:

I made the quick list of TWINs to contrast against the Ju87 in order to bring up a point. Otherwise, we can start a broad discussion about anything that carried bombs and what was more efficient or had a better camo scheme and so on.

All were supposed to be able to operate without escort as they were (at the time of concept) to be "fast" bombers. I added the Ar-2, because it was supposed to be an improvement on the Tupolev SB - note: improvement.

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I see your point but I don't think anyone really thought of the Ju 87 as a "fast bomber" already by 1940, let alone say 1942.

To be clear, I was not being snarky about the Ar-2 - I think it's an interesting plane and I like the exotic ones up to the point that they still had some kind of military role (lose interest of most of the experimental designs that didn't except a few truly exceptional ones)

I think there were different strategies for bomber survival, which is one of my main points. Like I said, defensive guns, altitude, speed, and maneuverability all turned out to matter. For dive bombers - all dive bombers not just the Ju 87, maneuverability tended to be one of their greatest defensive strengths. The other key trait has to do with how the bombing was done of which more in a minute.

The Ju87 and Ju88 may have flow "thousands" of unescorted missions, but they paid the price (I can also cite examples).

The much exalted Mosquito was not impervious to interception and I can also "cite examples".

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Thousands of unescorted sorties, which would mean several hundreds of missions roughly. Maybe it is time to get down into the weeds. I'm not trying to make a bogus argument by bringing up outlier incidents. Yes they did suffer casualties but there was always a threshold of where the casualties got too high to continue using the plane in a particular Theater or for a particular mission - this is why certain planes abruptly got switched to night bombing or to some other mission or removed from the Theater for example. I'm saying that on the Russian Front and in the Med the Ju 87 was still quite effective well into 1943. In Russia they started making changes to the Ju 87 deployments after Kursk (even though they destroyed a lot of Russian armor in that battle, they took too many losses from the new Russian fighters).

Same for the Mosquito of course, to the end of the war. It was able to survive enough of it's missions at a high enough rate of success that it was kept in use. That is why it was so famous, few bombers indeed could fly unescorted missions into such a dangerous Tactical environment.

I can appreciate the emotion and enthusiasm for the Ju87 as it was a solid design for a 1930's dive-bombing platform for it's day. But with the rapid advance in technology and shift in doctrine, it was more of a useful anachronism by the later stages of the war.

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The issue with the Ju 87 was that it was a dive bomber. Dive bombing as a concept and dive bombers as a technology were a controversial new technology in the 1930's and in the early years of WW2. The utility of the Stuka was certainly recognized by the Germans themselves and by their enemies, resulting in numerous attempts to design or modify aircraft to perform this difficult mission. The last minute redesign of the Pe 2 for dive bombing was one good example, the requirements for dive bombing abilities for the Ju-88 and infamously, for the He 177 were also good examples.

Dive bombers of course basically saved the American Navy in the early battles in the Pacific when American torpedoes turned out to be all but useless and American torpedo bombers less than stellar. Japanese got much better use out of their torpedoes and torpedo bombers but their D3A "Val" dive bombers certainly sunk a lot of Allied shipping. Compare to say, the Swordfish or the Albacore.

The value of dive bombing was obvious - the accuracy was vastly improved. But implementation turned out to be tricky.

Building an airframe that could dive at near 90 degrees, drop a bomb and then pull out at the maximum G load that the pilot could endure wasn't easy. The Ju 88 and Pe 2 were really only "sort of" dive bombers usually performing their dives at 45 degrees. More than that meant too much strain on engines and airframe. Same for the American A-36. Nevertheless, all three of these aircraft were considered unusually capable as bombers. That is to say unusually capable at destroying targets compared to level bombers.

The other challenge is how do you make an aircraft strong enough for the actual dive bombing role, and carrying dive brakes plus at least a 1000- 2000 lb payload, good range, and still be fast enough for the realities of WW2 air combat? Not an easy combination of traits.

What ultimately settled the argument was that fighters turned out to be pretty good at shallow angle dive-bombing. Kittyhawks, Hurricanes, P-47s, Corsairs, Typhoons, Tempests, Fw 190s and Bf 110s were all fairly good at delivering bombs on target and were better at surviving interception than most bombers. They also usually got to the target and back more quickly and easier for the escorts to support due to higher cruise speeds.

Rockets also played a role there but that is another big can of worms.

I should add though, there is another factor which I think contributed to the (true) Dive bombers successes in WW2, and that is the nature of dive bombing itself, flying almost straight down at the target and then pulling up abruptly and flying away seems to be harder to track and intercept than either droning by at medium or high altitude or screaming through at treetop level (the latter Tactic being better against some types of AAA especially with the suppressive fire added but it always left the bombers vulnerable to diving enemy fighters)

One of the worst missions of all of course from a survivability point of view was torpedo bombing, requiring to fly along low and relatively slow (how low and how slow depending on the quality of the torpedo, the American one being again particularly bad here) right at the target until within torpedo range which was usually also well within lethal AAA range and probably too late to turn away... often they would just fly over their target after releasing their 'fish'. So torpedo bombers got shot down at catastrophic rates almost regardless. They were still used because torpedos were so good at sinking ships*

This is what gave new life to the old SM 79 bomber, it proved capable of sinking a lot of Allied shipping in the Med in spite of being an old design and pretty slow. It took high losses but the impact of sinking a ship (and relatively high rate of success in hitting them) made it worth it to keep using them right up to 1943, long after it's career as a level bomber was over**.

That kind of re-emphasizes the issue of effectiveness vs. survivability - it's the combination of both that makes a good bomber, IMO.

I am not so much "enthusiastic" about the Ju 87 as I am respectfully acknowledging it's merits. Somewhat reluctantly I might add. I originally believed the Trope. I just noticed from reading all the accounts that the Ju 87s seemed to survive pretty well and continued to do a lot of damage for a long time past the BoB, whereas I was expecting to see huge casualties and little effect, the data seems to show the reverse.

So yes the sun did set on the Ju 87 design, I'm just saying it set a bit later than the Legend tells us. More like spring of 1943 than fall of 1940. Until then it was causing a lot of problems for the Allies, and that makes it an unusually good design in my opinion.

S

* Except American torpedoes...
** This was in part because Italian torpedoes were so good...

Schweik said:

in the BoB, Stukas were used flying rigid formations and got slaughtered by Hurricanes. Hurricanes by the way, really did seem to be particularly good at shooting down bombers in general and Ju 87s in particular. The Stuka only had one defensive gun position on the dorsal position, which was fairly easy to avoid especially if they were flying in a static formation, for example by attacking from below. Their strength was definitely not defensive guns.

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They used different formations in the BoB than in France or Poland?

And only Hurricanes slaughtered the Ju 87s?

wuzak said:

They used different formations in the BoB than in France or Poland?

And only Hurricanes slaughtered the Ju 87s?

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In France and Poland they were going after Tactical targets, i.e. tanks, infantry, artillery. Targets at locations that changed every day as the battle changed. Both France and Poland also had inadequate air defense and were heavily outnumbered.

In England they were going after Strategic and Operational targets against an integrated air defense. Factories, airfields, radar stations and so on. Trying to destroy a country from the air is very different from fighting an army on a battlefield. I would have thought that was obvious. Battlefield air support - which is really what the Stuka was designed for, involves contending with a different level of air defense than bombing London or the Supermarine factory.

When attacking say, Coventry during the BoB, they were sending in much larger formations and these were remaining in formation while under attack for longer, as a defensive strategy. Conversely when attacking Tactical targets the number of aircraft would be fewer and the formations smaller. & they would typically face less opposition. I don't know for sure how it went in France or Poland but I do know that in the Med and Russia when these formations were attacked they would often scatter and begin to evade, as I already mentioned.

I never said "only" Hurricanes slaughtered the Ju 87. I said they seemed to be particularly effective at it.

S

I should also add that, from what I understand about the Bob, as a general strategy, and when it was possible, Spitfires were directed against enemy fighters while Hurricanes were sent to target enemy bombers.

Schweik said:

I should also add that, from what I understand about the Bob, as a general strategy, and when it was possible, Spitfires were directed against enemy fighters while Hurricanes were sent to target enemy bombers.

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That is an old tale and while it may have been attempted at times it was rare that it worked out in practice. The radar couldn't tell the difference in incoming aircraft for one thing and for another, squadrons were assigned to attack raids almost on a rotation basis. That was the difference between how most of the battle was fought by No 11 group and N0 12 group which tried to use "big wing" tactics, By the time they formed up 3 or more squadrons, especially of different aircraft (Hurricanes and Spitfires climb at different rates and cover different amounts of ground while doing so) the Germans had pretty much come and gone.
Park's strategy/tactic was to try to break up the German attacks to make them less effective, not to necessarily shoot down German aircraft.

Shortround6 said:

General Electric was at the forefront of supercharger design in the US for at least 20 years due to the work of Sanford Moss who started working on turbo driven superchargers in WW I. Nobody else was doing much of anything with superchargers then. The NACA did some experiments with roots superchargers in the 1920s and that merely proved that roots superchargers weren't a good idea for aircraft. Since GE was building centrifugal compressors to go with the exhaust turbines they branched out and designed (and built) gear driven superchargers for Wright, P & W and Packard. By the late 30s people began to realize the GE compressor/superchargers weren't really that good. This had been masked by, on GE's end, the turbine providing an excess of power to the compressor, and on the users end (engine makers) the low boost allowed by available fuels. It didn't take a very good supercharger to provide all the boost 70-80 octane fuel would allow.

To show how interwoven everything was and how little actual knowledge in supercharger/compressor design (or number of designers) there were in the 30s Allison made supercharger/compressor parts under sub-contract to GE for use by Wright and P & W. It wasn't until the late 30s that Wright and P & W became dissatisfied with the GE superchargers/compressors and started to design their own.

In the 20s and early 30s engines that used turbo superchargers did NOT use an engine driven supercharger, they were one stage systems. This changed in the late 30s with better fuel that would allow higher boost pressures.

There is room for some confusion as to what constitutes a supercharger and what is a turbocharger as it is a PITA to type out the extra words/letters needed to identify each in every instance.

In WW II nobody used a a single stage turbocharger (at least on a production aircraft).

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I always get an education when I read your post!

Schweik said:

..
I would say in it's own way the Stuka was the equivalent of the 88mm AA gun in terms of it's overall value, at least for the first 2 or 3 years.

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Ju-87 was vastly more important to the German war effort in 1939-42 than the 88mm AA gun. That was probably THE most over-rated weapon of ww2, if not on whole 20th century.

Well, I agree (I was trying to be "diplomatic") but the 88 definitely saved the day during some potential breakthroughs in a few important battles, wouldn't you say?

Of course armored breakthroughs were stopped that way (with artillery in direct fire mode, and AA guns) by many armies in many battles...

S