12/30/2023 0 Comments Dauntless dive bomber armamentIn dive bomber terms this was par for the course but the poor Skua was rather unfairly expected to act as a fighter as well and the results were predictable. In turn, though, the Skua would be close to hopeless against Luftwaffe land fighters with more powerful engines. Indeed, much of the best of the hateful work this aircraft type did would be visited on big warships. This was the very first sinking of a capital ship in war by dive bombers. In April 1940 Skuas sent the cruiser Königsberg to the bottom near Bergen, Norway. Art by Ed Ward.Ī wild admixture of potency and vulnerability marked the dive bomber’s life and saw early expression in the Royal Navy’s first all-metal monoplane, the Skua. L2925 was flown by Lt William Paulet Lucy who led the strike that sank the Königsberg. Some attempt was made to restart development of this aircraft after the war but the market was by then non-existent as the dive bomber was known worldwide mainly as a dangerous deathtrap flown by baddies. In 1940 the LN.401 took very high losses and achieved little. Reaching the end of its development cycle and entering service as the sitzkrieg concluded was a guarantee of punishing obscurity for this aircraft. Nonetheless, there were no guarantees, as we can see with the suspiciously Stuka-like LN.401. The dive bomber offered a terrifying accuracy. When the target is compact, like a warship, and also moves and might be firing back, it’s even harder. Hitting something as big as a city with aerial bombs wound up being tougher than martial theoreticians advocating such things really appreciated in the 1920s and 1930s. “The actual Hs 132 V1 prototype apparently looked like this when it was captured by Soviet forces.” Dan Sharp Nemesis: the violent, unstoppable, global military-industrial effort of the entire Allied nations. That is prototype, with its unlikely prone pilot position, is here at all. The only reason it made it onto our list is that it attempted to address the primary failing of the dive bomber: its inability to get away from fighters. The world is still waiting patiently for a jet dive-bomber to make an appearance. The Hs 132 was intended to be the world’s first jet-propelled dive bomber but it was never finished. Prior to the War, Henschel were a locomotive manufacturer who noted that Germany was going a teensy bit belligerent, and decided to cash in on this trend by building tanks and combat aircraft. What is up with the fascination for Nazi prototypes anyway? They were hastily assembled, with cheap plywood construction and short-lifespan turbojets clamped to all the wrong places? It’s like Scrapheap Challenge for racists with a uniform kink. These were sometimes impressive (like the Tiger tank) but often crap. Henschel rinsed the Third Reich for seven bazillion Reichsmarks-worth of weapons systems. “Not a photograph at all, rather a remarkably lifelike drawing by artist Gerd Heumann” – Dan Sharp As you can see it has been heavily retouched to make the aircraft look more finished than it actually is. Only one ‘photograph’ exists of the complete Hs 132 and this is it. Dive bomber pilots and their back-seaters had to be young and fit, and capable of ice-cold aggression. Ground-fire, fast enemy fighters and the rapidly approach ground itself savaged the unlucky. A diving attack had greater precision than a conventional approach, but it was also exceptionally dangerous. They needed to be strong, as diving at a steep (sometimes near vertical) angle and then abruptly pulling-up after weapons release puts great strain on the airframe –and the pilot. One is even a jet.ĭive bombers are rarely pretty, but what they lack in beauty they make up for with structural strength some of these airframes are among the strongest ever built. You knew we were going to do this some day and here we are. Take a deep breath and shove the control column forward as you plummet into the hellscape of the top ten dive bombers. Italy never developed a decent dive bomber but in 1939 Tullio Crali painted the best dive bombing picture: ‘Nose Dive on the City’.
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