Which was the best 1942-era dive bomber?

Which was the best 1942-era dive bomber?

  • Aichi D3A Val

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Douglas SBD Dauntless

    Votes: 20 46.5%

  • Junkers Ju 87 Stuka

    Votes: 14 32.6%

  • Ilyushin IL-2 Sturmovik

    Votes: 7 16.3%

  • Blackburn Skua

    Votes: 2 4.7%
  • Total voters
    43

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Range doesn't matter much when you are bombing your neighbours! Whereas the ocean is a big place, a naval plane by definition needs good range to be effective. The Stuka gets my vote, as stated it was the definitive dive bomber for most of the war.
 
R Pope said:
Range doesn't matter much when you are bombing your neighbours! Whereas the ocean is a big place, a naval plane by definition needs good range to be effective. The Stuka gets my vote, as stated it was the definitive dive bomber for most of the war.
Click to expand...

Personally, I think that depends on where your head is at. I am far more interested in the PTO so to me the Stuka is interesting mainly as an example of a different (read foreign) expression of a particular aerial bombing technique. I am not for a minute questioning the Stuka's effectiveness or historic importance, just a personal level of interest. I find Dave' revelations about the Dora variant very interesting from a technological perspective but I have to say, while he's convinced me that it may have approached the endurance of the SBD, I'd be a bit surprised to find it had the same or better range with common payload as the SBD. That gear and those external tanks, along with the ordnance, have got to cost a fair amount of drag penalty. JMO.
 
January '42 is correct. I./St.G.2 was the first unit to use the "Dora" operationally. The Eastern Stukageschwader were withdrawn,in turn,to re-equip starting with St.G.2.

Development of the "Dora" was delayed as a plan to use the DB 603 engine was adopted,then the Jumo 213, before finally reverting to the originally planned Jumo 211 J when it became available in February 1941.

In June 1941,after successful testing of the prototypes early in the year,an order for 1,037 of the type was placed. These were to be produced at the Weser Bremen-Lemwerder plant over an eighteen month period up until December 1942.

Cheers

Steve
 
Even the early war Ju-87B normally carried 500 kg. Rudel makes that point in his book. During 1941 he had to wait for 1,000 kg AP bombs to arrive before attacking a Soviet battleship off Leningrad.
 
Just as there were many SBDs, there were many models of the Ju-87 and even in the "D" series there were different models that used different sized wings and different engines in addition to different guns and armor.

SBD performance can vary a lot because the Navy had a number of mission profiles. The was an "armed" reconnaissance mission which required a 500lb bomb as opposed to the strike mission or unarmed scout mission.
 
All the production D series Ju 87s used the Jumo 211 J engine. What Peter Smith describes as "the Stuka that never was",the F series was to have had the Jumo 213 A-1 engine.

I haven't been able to find the load out for the four hour flight quoted in some post above but the fuel capacity would have been the maximum of 780 litres internally and two 300 litre auxiliary tanks under the wings.

Steve
 
I was pretty sure I'd heard that SBD's exhibited up to 5 hours endurance on occassion and quite possibly up to 300 miles radius on armed search missions. The link below contains is a first person, USN SBD pilot, account that talks about such a mission during the Santa Cruz Battle, October 1942 and also mentions occasions when the SBD flew 5-hour missions without describing the load-out. In fact he mentions flying a 7 Hour, 700 mile ferry mission returning the a/c to the Enterpise from Henderson field without Ordnance. He evidently got lost enroute which accounts for the apparently slow rate of advance.

Collect Air | World War II Stories

I assume these were SBD-3s.

Other sources suggest an SBD-3 had a maximum misson radius of 276 statute miles for a 1,000 lb. load. I assume a land based mission would allow a somewhat larger radius. Evidently the drag differential between a 1,000 and 500 lb bomb wasn't all that great.
 
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Some sources say that the D-7 used the Jumo 211P engine. Could be wrong, but then the D-7s may have had the dive brakes removed too.

Point is that there are a lot different combinations of both planes with some rather different capabilities.
 
The poor ole Val doesn't get much attention, but was the single most successful enemy ship buster of the war; it was responsible for the destruction of more Allied warships than any other type, plus it's battle honours are impressive; Pearl Harbour, Coral Sea, Midway, Indian Ocean, but I picked the Dauntless because of its longevity, not to forget its very impressive battle honours.

The Aichi D3A had a higher speed than the Dauntless, D3A1 and SBD-3 compared, but the SBD could carry a bigger bomb load over a greater distance than the Japanese machine. Why not the Stuka? Because it diminished in importance as the war wore on, the Ju 87D was certainly an improvement over the earlier models, which made an immediate impact in the start of the war, but the Fw 190F variants were a better ground attack platform than the Ju 87D, if not a more accurate dive bomber. Although the Dauntless was replaced by the SB2C, it didn't completely disappear, largely because of the problems with the Son of a B***h Second Class, but in 1942, the Dauntless was just gettin' started.
 
radius would be an outbound leg, a small chunk of the circumference, and a return leg. thus pretty easy for the operations guys to plot something like a 90 deg search to the NW. 90* search area 15 planes= 6* side leg
with all due respect, weaving around over the featureless ocean on a search could be a career-ending idea without an on-board dedicated navigator. not impossible, just IMHO, improbable
 
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