Spitfire Dive Bombing schematic (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Shortways
- Start date
Not sure if any better ?
fubar57
General
I would just lob the bomb a 6000ft (A) and head back for a beer
Works for me. Likely just as accurate as whatever that release is called.
- Thread starter
- #5
MUCH BETTER ! Thanks very much.
Unfortunately for attackers, the closer you get, the more accurate the result.
You can tell the real 90 degree screamers, like the Ju87, they have dive brakes and a folding bomb crutch that swings out as the free-falling bomb accelerates away from the braked aircraft and the bomb is carried out far enough to miss the prop.
Dive bombing is tricky, even 5 degrees feels steep and 45 degrees almost feels vertical! The Spitfire would have trouble sighting the target under the nose, they would have to approach in a turn or, offset and judge the relative angles by the height and the position of the target relative to the wing leading edge or similar.
The inherent greater accuracy with dive-bombing did make-up for the often wildly flown aiming, the variables of speed, dive angle, release height and pre-calculated sight settings were
considerable.
Is the whole document available to see please?
Cheers
Eng
I got the pictures from the Internet.
My experience in actual bombing is all in jets, but 45 degrees was generally considered standard, and is quite comfortable once you get used to it. And while I'm sure you can get closer to the target in a prop (mainly because of speed effect on pullout radius), the error sensitivities for dive angle, airspeed, and release altitude are significant, and hitting the parameters associated with your sight setting is critical. Here's a diagram from Navy weapons training (beginners' course, introduced in advanced jet syllabus):
Figure 19: Curvilinear/Straight-Path Tracking
Note the lead angle to begin straight path tracking, initial pipper placement, and steepening dive angle compensated by a slightly shallow initial roll-in. The goal is to arrive at desired dive angle before starting the straight-path portion, and relaxing to achieve proper sight picture at release altitude on airspeed (and if you miss on any of the parameters, you adjust aim point to compensate).
Contrast with the Spitfire diagram where the pilot changes dive angle at the last 200' of the dive, to something in a 15 degree range, pulling to a preselected depression angle. It looks like a fighter guy's estimate of what a dive bomber is doing by watching it from the side.
Thanks for the interesting link to that Hawk weapon brief. The original Hawk that I flew only had an adjustable depression reticule sight, no HUD, so we were more like the old Spitfire. In fact, we were worse off with no adjustable range rings so all range estimation was by size comparison! Exciting days!
Cheers
Eng
I learned in the TA-4, with a similar depressed reticle, but couldn't find an online link. At least that one shows the transition from curvilinear to straight path tracking. We had adjustable range rings in the later models (A-4M), but only for air-to-air range estimation. But in any event, the physics and ballistics are constant, regardless of weapons platform.
It was fun, but all passe now, because practically everything is guided, and they just maneuver to get in the "basket"; I'm told by guys who've done it recently that the most they ever do is "dip" diving, starting down to give the weapon a downward vector, but recovering almost immediately in the 15-20K' range.
