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Which is 1000kg.
Yes I agree with all you wrote, the point I was making was that the Dauntless was more survivable than the Stuka when challenged by fighters. When I wrote that the Dauntless may have been useful to the Fleet Air Arm early war I was thinking it would have been preferable only to the Blackburn Skua which had the additional role of fighter.Pattle, my Dad qualified in SBDs before he went off to F6Fs. The SBDs had firepower but that was principally to enable them to get the heck out of there, once they made their bomb run. They mixed it up with the fighters, some, and took care their share of those, too, but they knew better than to go looking for it, let me just put it that way.
I was just trying to state the obvious when you post that dive-bombers were rubbish when against fighters. The only ground target protection aircraft I remember were factory defense units in Occupied Europe during the war and the Me 163s of JG 400. Other than that, fighters were to protect bombers. And just to set things straight, bombers were actually developed to be a match against tri-engined recon planes.......
Oh. Then on just what you said, here, Pattle, the SBDs were at least designed to be "survivable." That's why they were armed with guns from head to toe.Yes I agree with all you wrote, the point I was making was that the Dauntless was more survivable than the Stuka when challenged by fighters. When I wrote that the Dauntless may have been useful to the Fleet Air Arm early war I was thinking it would have been preferable only to the Blackburn Skua which had the additional role of fighter.
Dave, I guarantee, you hit that carrier with just so much as a 500-pound bomb 1/3rd in from the bow and you open up that central elevator shaft and send that big boy out of there looking like a wet dog that got kicked out of the house for chewing on a shoe.In regards to Midway no SBD bomb penetrated past lower hanger deck. Consequently none of the four IJN CVs were in danger of sinking even though the hanger deck fires were impressive. Theoretically all four IJN CVs could have eventually started one or more engines and crept to port.
If you go by the manual, the later Ju-87D-5 could carry a single PD1400, SC1800 or PD1800 bomb, although I've never read a first hand account of their use. The actual weight of the two larger bombs varied a little due to some changes through the war, but were between about 1740 kg and 1820 kg.
From the second hand reports that I've read on forums and suchlike, there seems to be considerable doubt over whether the 1400-1800 kg bombs were ever used in combat.
I've seen opinions that the D-5 would have been required to delete the rear gunner and all his equipment, take out some of the armour protection and remove the forward firing guns to get the larger bombs off the ground.
against ground targets dive bombing was a fundamentally flawed concept .
Yes but it was also incredibly dangerous and that was it's fatal flaw.Dive Bombing was much more accurate than high altitude bombing, so it was more efficient against smaller targets such as ships, bridges, vehicle /or troop concentrations, etc.
Literally sh*tloads of SC 1800 were dropped by the Luftwaffe - those goes rather against "forum opinions". It would seem rather doubtful that only the Ju 87D, which was *the* pinpoint delivery tool, would be the exception of dropping them.
Risk vs reward.
Sacrifice a few inexpensive yet accurate dive bombers with two crew members each and the target gets destroyed. Or you could send hundreds of expensive yet inaccurate heavy bombers with 8 or more crew members each and they will probably fail to hit the target.
Yes but it was also incredibly dangerous and that was it's fatal flaw.