The Dreaded Stuka Dive Bombers during World War II

The most famous Sturzkampfflugzeug (dive bomber) was the one nicknamed Stuka. It was the most famous of all planes used by the Germans as a divebomber. The Stuka bomber was designed strictly as an army cooperation divebomber at the urging of General Ernst Udet. It is instantly recognisable with its inverted gull-wings, and fixed-undercarriage. The Ju 87 was ugly, sturdy, accurate, but very vulnerable to enemy fighters. The Germans learned in the Battle of Britain that its use demanded air superiority. It was too slow, unmanoeuverable and underarmed, but its effectiveness in destroying vehicles, fortifications or ships, or just scaring people, was undoubted. Its accuracy was high when in a full dive that was up to 80 degrees. Once the bomb was released it used an automatic pull-up system to ensure that the plane pulled out of the dive even if the pilot blacked out from the high g forces. The Germans fitted the wheel covers with sirens that were used once the planes went into a dive to shatter the morale of enemy troops and civilians. They also fitted whistles onto the fins of the bombs to ensure that the recipients knew just when the bombs were released and could track them on the way down. there are over 5700 Stukas were built.

If you are leaving during the time of World War II you will experience the scary bombings of these stuka bombers, that kills many civilians in Europe.

The Ju 87B-1 flew with a crew of 2, the pilot and a rear-gunner. The engine was an 880kW Junkers Jumo 211Da that could pull the aircraft up to 385km/h. It had an operational ceiling of 8000m and a range of only 600km. Its armament was three 7.9mm machine guns and either one 500kg bomb or four 50kg bombs fitted to racks either under the fuselage or under the inboard portion of the wings.

From 1942 on the Ju 87G-1 was a dedicated anti-tank aircraft on the eastern front. It was fitted with a 1400hp Junkers Jumo 211J engine. It had a maximum speed of 314km/h, a ceiling of 8000m and a very limited range of only 320km. The reduced speed and range was due to the armour plating installed to protect the pilot and gunner when flying low-level tank busting missions. It was armed with two 30mm cannons in pods under the wings and a 7.92mm machine gun in the back for the gunner.

Diver Bomber Facts

A dive bomber is a bomber aircraft that dives directly to its targets in order to provide greater accuracy and limit the exposure to and effectiveness of anti-aircraft fire, dive bombers frequently hit the target with 90 percent accuracy.

Diving (nearly) vertically at the target, in the same direction the bombs will take, the aircraft will release the bombs very close to the target at high speed. This allows a dive bomber to accurately place bombs on relatively small and/or moving targets with relative ease. Additionally, no complicated precision equipment like the American Norden bomb-sight is needed. Dive bombers were widely used to attack high value targets such as ships and bridges. This also had the advantage attacking ships at a weak spot; armour was the heaviest near the waterline and thin or nonexistent on the deck.

The first recorded use of dive bombing was an ad-hoc solution by RAF pilots during World War I. During 1917 and 1918 they practiced the technique at the Orford Ness Bombing Range, but the aircraft of the day were generally too frail to be able to withstand the acceleration generated when pulling out of the dive after releasing the bomb-load. Only a few years later, U.S. Marines nevertheless put the system to use in Haiti and Nicaragua.

As planes grew in strength and load capability, the technique became more valuable. By the early 1930s, the technique was clearly favored in tactical doctrine, notably against targets that would otherwise be too small to hit with level bombers. While the USAAC concentrated on mass attacks by very large bombers, the U.S. Navy ordered the first custom dive bomber aircraft, the Curtiss F8C Hell-Diver biplane (not to be confused with the single-winged Douglas SBD or later SB2C Helldiver).

In the early 1930s, Ernst Udet visited the U.S. and was able to purchase four F8C's and ship them to Germany. There they caused a minor revolution. The dive bombing technique would allow a much smaller Luftwaffe to operate effectively in the tactical role, and this was all they were interested in. Soon they had sent out contracts for their own dive bomber designs, resulting in the gull-winged Junkers Ju 87 Stuka (a contraction of Sturzkampfflugzeug, literally "diving fighter airplane").

For its day, the Stuka was the most advanced dive bomber in the world. Using it as "aerial artillery" solved a major problem in the concept of Blitzkrieg-how to attack dug-in defensive positions. Normally this would require slow-moving artillery to be used, making the fast moving armored forces wait for it to catch up.

This was proven to great effect during the invasion of Poland and the Low Countries. In one particular example, the BEF set up strong defensive positions on the west bank of the Oire River just front of the rapidly advancing German armor. Attacks by Stukas quickly broke the defense, and combat engineers were able to force a crossing long before the artillery arrived.

The Stuka soon grew outdated, and repeated efforts to replace it with a newer and more capable plane all failed. By the start of the Battle of Britain it was already hopelessly outclassed, and suffered stiffly at the hands of the RAF.

The Japanese also spent considerable effort on dive bombers, for the same reason as the U.S. Navy-to allow it to strike ships. They started the war with one of the best designs, the Aichi D3A, but this design also quickly became outdated. They later introduced the much better Yokosuka D4Y Suisei, but at a time when their industry was already unable to supply them in any numbers. In contrast, the U.S. fielded the Douglas SBD Dauntless which was similar to the D3A in performance, but later replaced it with the faster, more complex Curtiss SB2C Helldiver. Both were provided in large numbers.

The most famous example of successful naval dive-bombing attacks took place in the Battle of Midway in June 1942 when American Dauntless scored fatal hits on three separate first-line Japanese aircraft carriers within a six minute timespan.

Oddly the only major force not to deploy a dedicated dive bomber were the inventors, the British. The Royal Navy attempted to introduce their own on several occasions, but were never able to do so due to various reasons, not the least of which was political interference by the RAF. The only produced hybrid of dive bomber and fighter Blackburn Skua was used for a short time and in a small number.

After the war, the dive bomber class quickly disappeared. Anti-aircraft artillery had improved as had the speed and effectiveness of fighter aircraft against the vulnerable, slow-flying dive bombers. At the same time the quality of various computing bombsights allowed for much better accuracy from smaller dive angles, and could be fitted to almost any plane, especially fighter aircraft. See Ground attack aircraft. Although the aircraft still "dove" on their targets to some degree, these same aircraft were capable of many other missions as well and were no longer considered to be dive bombers.

Today, smart bombs have replaced most other bombing techniques in the United States and the UK. Bombs can be dropped many miles from the target at high altitudes, placing the aircraft at little risk. The bomb then guides itself onto the target through a number of means. These include laser designation, onboard GPSs, radar, infrared, television guidance, and inertial wind-correction. Bomb-sights continue to supply several "toss bombing" modes, a sort of reverse dive bombing when an aircraft releases its bomb while steeply pulling up from low level. Shallow, 45 degree or less dive bombing attacks are still used to deliver unguided iron and cluster bombs when they are employed.