DIVE BOMBER DYNASTY: An Historical look at the Brief Reign of The Dive Bomber.

Good Evening to all once again....

This account will draw from sources of Dive Bomber pilots to tell the story of their brief but stormy rule as the arm of decision in World War Two.

Focus will be on the development of the Dive Bomber as a weapon, before exploding a couple of myths, and then moving on to the last actions of the Dive Bomber to change the course of World War Two.

So sit back, and enjoy, as we hear the pilots themselves, with a little narration, tell their own story.....


DIVE BOMBING: A BRIEF AND STORMY REIGN

No-one is quite sure who made the first dive bombing attack.....

However, there are candidates.....

Perhaps the best account of the early experiments is this one, from a 46 Squadron pilot from the First World War, ARTHUR GOULD-LEE, Royal Air Force, based at Izel-le-Hameau to the west of Arras, France.
On 30th November, 1917, flying an SE.5a and armed with four 20lb "Cooper" bombs, Gould-Lee was ordered to attack a specific house in the village of Bourlon.
Gould-Lee started his dive from 4,000 feet.....
We dived steeply and I let go at 200 feet. It must certainly have been an important target, for a devil of a lot of machine-gun fire came up at us. As I pulled out of the dive in a climbing turn, I glimpsed Dusgate, also climbimg, but then I lost him. I saw the smoke of our bombs bursting - mine was a miss, but Dusgate's were quite near....but the house had not been hit....I had to try again.
I honestly felt quite sick at the prospect. I felt I just hadn't the guts to dive down three more times into that nest of machine-guns, now all alert and waiting for me. I had to do it, but I told myself, "once, only once." And I did it, with a sort of numb indifference.
If they got me, they got me.......
I dived down to 100 feet and released all three bombs. Bullets were cracking around me. I swerved violently to the right, and skidded away at twenty feet, where they couldn't follow me......whether I hit the damned house, I don't know. I wasn't interested anymore...marvellously, they hadn't hit me, but one bullet had broken the handle of the throttle control, and another smashed the Very pistol cartridges, which ought to have exploded and set me alight, but they didn't.

Historian Peter C. Smith claims that the first actual dive bombing attack was carried out by 84 Squadron, also in France, and also using the SE.5a. The pilot selected for this historic mission was chosen....
"....because he was the lightest pilot in the squadron at the time."
With just a few days to practice before the mission actual, 2nd Lieutenant WILLIAM HARRY BROWN climbed into the cockpit of his "crate", fitted with...
"....a makeshift bomb rack that we had loaded four 20lb bombs to. My fellow officers had drawn a circle 100 feet in diameter near a field. I was told to fly at 1,000 feet and drop the bombs one at a time....with no mechanical devices and only the use of my eyes for a bombsight, I missed with all four bombs..."
The suggestion was made by a fellow officer, who put the question forward...
"We dive to strafe, so why not drop a bomb at the end of the dive?"

Why not, indeed?

Brown got the next four bombs all on target. His assigned mission target was one of "oppurtunity", that is, to take off and hit whatever he could find. On this first mission, he managed to sink a barge with one bomb of four dropped, splitting the craft in two with an explosion.

MODERN DIVE BOMBING WAS BORN......almost.

The inter-war period saw more experimentation, particularly by aircraft of the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm. We pick up the story in 1939....

The fleet Air Arm was re-equipping with a new type of aircraft, the Blackburn SKUA. It was the Navy's first monoplane, and was also considered as a dive bomber, and a fighter as well. This shows us the British attitude to dive bombing, another role in the aircraft's overall design, rather than a mission that purpose built aircraft conducted. Britain's "Air Ministry" spent most of the pre-World War two period convincing themselves that dive bombers were "useless" and that a "glide" attack from a much shallower angle was the preferred method of delivery. The Blackburn Skua was too heavy and unmaneuverable for a fighter role, but in it's capacity as a dive bomber, it was actually well designed and steady in a dive. Visibility for dive bombing and deck landing was good.
Major R.T Partridge, FAA 800 Squadron, was based at Worthy Down, and flying the Blackburn Skua.....
"There was a target in the middle of a grass airfield and quadrant positions on the perimeter. We used to do a good deal of practice, with small practice bombs which were also used when embarked to bomb a target towed by the carrier or an attendant destroyer.
The bomb for use in earnest which we have cause to remember was called the "Cooper". For all that it was worth it could well have originated from a marmalade factory in Dundee. Most of it's "puff" went upwards to the undoing, I believe, of Thurston and Griffiths, two Skua pilots of 803 Squadron who attacked a U-boat at Scapa Flow in early September 1939 and, damaged by their own bombs, force-landed in the sea.

"The Skua had a characteristic in a long steep dive that, as the speed built up, the aircraft tended to rotate around it's axis. This was easily controlled and was caused by the setting of it's ailerons being adjusted for normal flight conditions. One countered this by laying one's sighting to let a natural "creep" take place. The old girl also had a bomb throwing 'crutch' which took the main bomb on the belly clear of the propeller, an essential for a steep dive. As a fighter, it was sadly speed deficient, and it's rate of climb too, but as a divebomber it had large, strong flaps, and when these were down it could be put into a beautiful 65-70 degree controlled dive....a well trained pilot could bomb with great accuracy."

The Blackburn Skua, then, was the Royal Navy's principal aircraft type for the outbreak of war. The Army and Air force had no such machines, purpose built or not. The French, likewise, had not thought to equip any of their Air Services with any type of divebomber, thinking as the British did that this type of attack was strictly "for the birds."

The German Luftwaffe, however, had other ideas......

GERMANY..."DER ADLER"
The Luftwaffe magazine, "Der Adler", carried as many stories as Josef Goebbels could possibly think of centered around their divebombers and the crews that flew them. The Junkers Ju-87 "Stuka", in it's various marks and differing weapons "packs" that were fitted, became the principal type flown for divebombing. To most students of World War 2, these famous aircraft, or infamous depending on your outlook, need little introduction. It was instrumental in Poland, keeping the "Blitzkreig" well and truly moving forward, and in France. "Stukas" managed to shut down the English Channel to British shipping in daylight, a period of the battle of Britain called by the Germans the "Kanalkampfen". The early success was mainly due to absolute air superiority. The first period of the Battle of Britain, however, saw no less than 54 Ju-87s fall to British fighters, and therefore withdrawn from the Battle after a nine day period. Their handiness for pinpoint attacks never really disappeared, and as we shall see further down, Stuka attacks enabled Rommel to break free of the Gazala position, and further enabled the siege and capture of Tobruk. They operated best in areas of controlled airspace, and were solid machines. But before the war, their operational concept did receive a "shake-up"....

It happened in 1939.
Three Stafflen were to take part in a demonstration for assembled Luftwaffe leaders at the training grounds of Nuehammer....
"On this occasion apart from the Grazer Gruppe of Hauptman Sigel, I/StG2, "Immelman" also took part, in which I was flying as the left Kettenfleiger with Hauptman Hitschold.
We flew from Cottbus and the weather was cloudless. Our view was very good. Between Cottbus and Nuehammer the ground fog started and our group recognized it. The white fog cloud with a slightly wooly appearence was in beautiful sunshine right to the eastern horizon. In front of us, two to three kilometers to the right, was another Gruppe about 3,000 meters high.
On account of the ground fog I expected the Verbandfuhrung to call off the flight. When I looked around again, I saw to my horror, huge dark columns of smoke pouring from the target area. I knew straight away that something terrible had happened...."
The ill-fated Stukas had been instructed to approach the target from about 12,000ft, dive through the cloud layer, reported to have been identified between 2,500 and 6,000 feet, although there were doubts that this information was ever transmitted. Instructions were to realease their bombs at 1,000 feet. The official version is that the doomed Gruppe of StG76 failed to realize that the ground mist was that which they were diving into....and NOT the higher cloud layer present over the target area.
Consequently, the whole formation tore straight into the earth at full speed.
Only a few aircraft from the second flight realized their error and pulled up in time, and many of these failed to clear the surrounding trees.
In seconds, the testing ground at Neuhammer was littered with the exploding debris of 13 Stukas as they hurtled to their destruction.

Divebombing, then, required precise co-ordiantion between the various elements controlling the attack. This shake-up was insufficient to force the concept out of the tactical sphere, and the Luftwaffe built other types of aircraft for divebombing.
Undoubtedly the most advanced divebomber at the outbreak of the war was the JUNKERS 88, dubbed the "wunder bomben" by Herman Goering. Far in advance of it's rivals in both Germany and abroad, great things were expected of this machine. The "88" lived up to expectations not only as a divebomber "par excellence", but with an enormous number of spin-off variations from the basic air-frame (including an exotic night-fighter variant with an awesome punch of mixed 20mm AND 30mm cannon with 7.92mm MGs!). But it was as a divebomber that the Junkers 88 first made it's mark, and in this role, among others, it excelled.

While the Luftwaffe made good use of divebombing for Army co-operation, on the other side of the globe, The United States Navy and The Imperial Japanese Navy were experimenting with the divebomber as an anti-shipping weapon of deadly performance, the cutting edge of their Carrier fleet units.
Rear Admiral PAUL A. HOMBERG recalls........
"THE SBD DAUNTLESS (called "Slow But Deadly" by pilots) was a monoplane with trailing edge dive flaps (brakes) which limited the speed of the dive (vertically) to about 250 knots. The aircraft flying in this attitude was neutrally stable and controllable allowing the pilot to adjust his path of flight for wind variations and target ship motions. It was able to hit a 50 foot bulls-eye repeatedly. The initial training taught the pilot how to fly in the vertical dive, and to become accustomed to a "near zero" gravity force on the body while accelerating to terminal speed in the dive and the "six-times gravity" force in the pull-out.
During my training there were some instances where pilots crashed because of their inability to determine (until too late) when to commence their 'pull-out'. I observed that it was easy to become engrossed in, and transfixed by what one sees of the earth or sea as they are approaching in this manner. Those pilots whose practice bombing scores were best were most often the ones who were well co-ordinated physically (baseball players, golfers etc.) who could throw or strike a baseball with a bat...
Divebombing, then, was mostly an 'art'.

"Starting their attack dives from 15,000 feet, the Dauntless unbraked could pick up a speed of 425mph but the brakes held this to a norm of about 276mph in practice. The aircraft was stressed to take up to 4g but was rarely called upon to do so. In war, however, caution often went by the board. The normal angle of a dive was 70 degrees, although the standard quote from U.S flyers was...
"When we say down, we mean straight down.":tinysmile_classes_t


JAPANESE Naval planners placed much faith in the Aichi B7A "Ryusei" ("Shooting Star", codenamed "Grace" by the Allies). Their "Vals" and "Judys" were outmoded already. But, the "Ryusei" was no more than a distant project in 1939, so the Aichi Type 99 D3A "Val" became the divebomber the Imperial Navy went to war with. It's service life was extended by fitting a Kinsei 54 engine and larger fuel tanks. The non-appearance of the Yokosuka Type 2 D4Y "Susei" only confirmed the "Val" in it's stated role, tried and tested as it was. Divebombing, as practiced by the Imperial Navy was developed to a fine art. This was now the norm in most modern Naval arsenals, divebombing in an anti-shipping role...

Worldwide, Army "brass" devoted not much time or money to divebombing.

Every Army except one......

WARTIME IMPACT: TACTICS AND MYTHS
There is little doubting the role the "Stuka" played in paving the way for the swift victory in Poland. This was made possible due to the surprise nature ofthe air assault, concentrating as it did on the Polish Air force. That all of these opening attacks did not go as planned is a matter of record. What did go to plan were the movements of the German Army, made possible by Stuka missions. The divebomber opened the door, smashing fresh concentrations of troops before they got into serious action, gumming up communications routes of road and rail, and chiefly, supporting the Army in a direct manner that, experimental as it was, was highly dangerous to Polish forces, or any other force of this period.....
Stuka pilot HELMUT MAHLKE explains......
"Of course, targeting for close support attacks very near or immediately at the front of our own troops in order to break enemy resistance, the main problem was to make it EFFECTIVE. The means to solve this problem were pretty poor at the beginning of the war but steadily improved. First of all the aircraft staff co-operating with the Army staff in a battle were located as close together as possible at all times. Before a ground operation was begun, all Stukas available flew a massed attack, each unit against a specific target in a small area where the breakthrough was planned. Choice of target was sometimes based on photo-recon with EXACT timing, so that ground troops could actually launch their assault directly that the last aircraft turned for home. This aspect of the planning was rather simple."

Assaulting divebombers in Poland also aimed at shipping. Divebombing attacks sank no less than 10 ships of the Polish Navy, mainly in harbor.

This brings us to our first myth....

During one of the attacks on the Polish harbor at Hela.....

"A Ju-87 was returning to base minus it's WHEELS and the main undercarriage members. A photograph was produced which allegedly showed this aircraft on it's way back to base. The story went that this Stuka had dived too low in making attacks against Polish warships, and had hit the water at the end of it's dive, snapping off both wheels. Notwithstanding, the aircraft had "pulled up" and returned to base."

I have a copy of this photo, published in "Der Adler", the Luftwaffe magazine, as part of an article called "Nachtflug gegen England" which shows photos of different aircraft that have returned with damage. The caption to the photo in question reads..
"One of our divebombers came too close to the water when pulling out during an attack on coastal fortifications whereby, it lost the whole undercarriage and the airscrew was slightly bent. In that condition the machine returned to formation and to the base airdrome more than 120km off and landed smoothly on the underside of the fuselage...."

"In actual fact the aircraft had been slightly damaged by FLAK during it's attack and the pilot, anticipating a "splashdown" in Hela, had fired the explosive bolts built in for just that purpose to jettison the main undercarriage members for an emergency water landing. But after doing so, the aircraft was brought under control and back to base to make a belly landing. The photo was used by Goebbels to lend weight to a campaign upholding the structural integrity of the Stuka, but it was in fact, a fake. Hanfreid Schleiphake, a friend of author Peter C. Smith and former worker in the Propaganda Ministry confirmed this by producing the original photo, and the doctored fake....It should not be assumed that the Ju-87 series needed to have evidence faked in it's favour; acknowledged by friend and foe alike to be a tough, sturdy little aircraft...."

Stuka Pilot FREIDERICH LANG...
"The body of the Ju-87 was very tough. It was not rare that tree branches were on the wings after too low a target shooting in peacetime. In February 1942, one of the Ju-87s brought home a 1 & 1/2 meter long and 20cm thick beam, from an attack on a wooden bridge in Msta (north of Lake Ilmen, Russia). It was thrown up by a bomb from the aircraft in front of it and was embedded in the wing of the following aircraft."

Luftwaffe General ALBERT KESSELRING paid glowing tribute after inspecting returned Stukas from a raid on Warsaw in 1939. He thought it a miracle that some had come back at all....
"So riddled were they with holes - halves of wings were ripped off, bottom planes torn away, and fuselages disemboweled with their control organs hanging by the thinnest of threads."

British divebombing in World War 2 started auspiciously. Navy Skuas sank the German light cruiser "Konigsberg" in a brilliantly executed attack that turned her 'turtle'. But from there, the element of surprise was absent from further attacks. Nothing further was achieved....but, Kreigsmarine losses to other causes were so bad that the Navy seriously doubted it's capacity to support the upcoming campaign in France, let alone any future attempts at a "cross channel" operation....
Airpower was the only way the Allies could effectively strike back in this early phase of the war. Daylight raids over Germany brought whole flights and squadrons, sent in ones and twos, spinning down in flames.
"The Royal Navy had learnt the hard way that divebombing was effective if surprise, the right choice of target and determination were all combined in the right quantities."
The German Army had just demonstrated the efficiency of close support airpower, in the most direct way.

But one British Air Ministry Inquiry after another sought to cover the basic and incorrect British assumption, that Army support divebombing was a losing proposition.....

The story in France in the summer of 1940 was no different.
So, we come to another myth about divebombing, and about the Stuka in Poland and France in particular.

"SIRENS" were fitted to Stukas.
They produced a paralyzing sound, and were effective against unseasoned troops or those not trained or experienced in this aspect of air attack. It was a very personal form of assault.
Stuka pilot FREIDRICH LANG recalls....
"we started the war without sirens in our group, in April 1940 we were with Gruppe "Immelman" at the Cologne-Ostheim airfield. There we made from home made whistles our sirens, but they did not work well until small, special shaped wooden propellers was fitted....they turned in the wind of the dive and created a noise that became louder with speed.....the howling sound distracted and up-set not only the enemy but also our crews as well...it became better when you could turn it off."

Nicknamed the "Trumpets of Jericho" by Stuka crews, protests forced the abandonment of the infernal noise machine....propaganda played no part in this decision.

ZENITH: THE BRIEF DYNASTY OF THE DIVEBOMBER.
The 'state of the art' in air to groung attack passed the divebomber over in a relatively short space of time. However, during it's short and stormy reign, the German Army used it's superiority in this type of aircraft to thrust deep into Soviet territory. While the weather lasted, the divebombers had the skies to themselves in mid-late 1941. Equally in the Mediterranean, they dominated while the air superiority lasted. Big warships and Mediterranean shipping traffic were limited for two years to zones created by the Admiralty, referred to as "Stuka Sanctuaries". Greece and Crete had only driven home this lesson.

Already, though, cracks were beginning to appear....

Before Russia, there was TOBRUK.
The Australian garrison, and particularly the AA crews were in a unique position that no other body of troops at the time had noticed in such a wide and well recorded fashion. Tobruk's gunners suffered many attacks by Ju-87s and Ju-88s, the very best of Luftwaffe divebombing at the time. The Aussies gained first hand experience of just what did and did not work against these attacks. The very nature of the siege and the importance of Tobruk as a harbor to the Western Desert fighting was paramount. The Australians were in the "hot-seat", and what they learnt from these attacks of the period 11 April - 24 June, 1941, was passed on to other Allied units far and wide.
"No less than 46 different Stuka attacks were mounted against the Tobruk defenses. The number of aircraft in each varied considerably, 3 to 6 on some dates, as many as 40 to 50 on others, with a peak of 60 Ju-87s on the 29th of May AND the 2nd of June, 1941; a total of 959 dive bomber sorties during which the defenses claim to have destroyed no less than 54 aircraft. The AA gunners were becoming seasoned at standing up to dive bombing after such an ordeal, but more important, the divebomber was now being taken seriously by the British Army and special training was given so that fresh, untried gunners stood a good chance if they did not PANIC."

Ashore in Tobruk, the feeling was intense.
Lt. Col ALAN APSLEY, 29 June, 1941.....
"I really must protest against the constant advertisement given to the RAF by the BBC. It is doing immense harm among the troops out here where they are in a position to know that the claims are not true....because it makes them wonder whether other claims are slightly exaggerated.
Here, as I sit in the desert with an Me-110 circling overhead, the wireless broadcast of 0915hrs is telling us that the great feature of our recent operations here was that the RAF held COMPLETE mastery of the air by the simple procedure of preventing enemy aircraft leaving the ground. This is completely untrue. In this regiment alone we had 30 casualties from air attack alone..."

And in Russia, 1941, there was still a victory or two to be won by the divebomber.

HANS ULRICH RUDEL, the most widely known Stuka and/or divebomber pilot of them all, with over 1,500 sorties at the cockpit stick. By his own account, (from his book, "Stuka Pilot"), he claims 539 Russian tanks and two major warships.
One of them was the pre-revolutionary dreadnought, "MARAT", in Leningrad harbor. The powerful 12 inch guns of the 'Marat' and her sister ship 'Oktobrescaja Revolutia' commanded the coastline to a depth of sixteen miles inland. It was realised that normal divebomber payloads would be unable to pierce the armored decks, but it was hoped that repeated attacks would demolish their upperworks and make them untenable. Special deliveries of the new 2,200lb armor-piercing bombs were brought up in preparation. On the 16th of September an attack planted a 1,100lb bomb on target. On the 23rd she was spotted repairing this damage, but by that time the heavy bombs were ready.
Rudel's Stuka was approaching the 'Marat' from 9,000 feet through a storm of "Flak". The AA fire of Leningrad harbor was some of the most concentrated anti-aircraft fire in history. Every single available space for an AA gun was occupied, including concrete floats that linked the steel netting in the harbor itself.
Rudel followed Gruppe leader Stern down with no dive-brakes, and released his bomb below 3,000 feet despite warnings not to do so.
He describes this classic divebombing attack thus....
"My Ju-87 keeps perfectly steady as I dive. I have the feeling that to miss is now impossible. Then I see the 'Marat', large as life in front of me. Sailors are running across the deck, carrying ammunition. NOW I press the bomb release, switch on my stick, and pull with all my strength. Can I still manage to pull out? I doubt it, for I am diving without brakes and the height at which I released the bomb is not more than 900 feet. The skipper has said when briefing us that the 2,000 pounder must not be dropped lower than 3,000 feet as the fragmentation effect of this bomb reaches 3,000 feet and to drop it at lower altitude is to severely risk one's aircraft! But I have forgotten that! I am intent on hitting the 'Marat'. I tug back at my stick, without feeling, merely exerting all my strength. My acceleration is too great. I see nothing, my sight is blurred in a momentary blackout, a new experience for me. But if it can be managed at all I must pull out! My head has not yet cleared when I hear Scharnovski's voice...
"She is blowing up, sir!"
NOW I look out.....
We are skimming the water at the level of ten or twelve feet and I bank around a little.
Yonder lies the 'Marat' below a cloud of smoke rising to 1,200 feet. Apparently, the magazine exploded."

Rudel watched as the 'Marat' sank, in shallow water with her fore section almost torn away. Although later some of her guns were brought into action for a time, she was finished as a fighting unit.

As the war in Russia dragged on, more and more cracks became evident in the divebomber's rule at the top as the arm of decision. The limits of munitions carried, for instance.....
"One nasty surprise for the Germans was the size and number of Russian tanks which had been vastly underestimated on both counts before the war began. This was demonstrated early on, as was the difficulty of divebombers actually knocking out tanks with bombs. On the 26th of June, for example, the whole of StG2 had attacked a large concentration of Russian tanks to the south of Grodno, using bombs. But it was later found that only ONE tank had been completely knocked out, and that by machine-gun fire!
New measures would obviously have to be found to deal with this problem, for no matter how many tanks the divebombers destroyed, the Russians eventually began to replace them five-fold. At once, research began.
For the first six-months of the Russian campaign, the perfection of the Stuka/panzer air-superiority combination had reached it's peak."

A new generation of aircraft emerged....

DUAL ROLE FIGHTER-BOMBERS......

BUT IN THE PACIFIC, THE U.S. NAVY GAVE THE DIVEBOMBER ONE LAST LEASE OF LIFE AT THE TOP....

AN OPPURTUNITY TO TURN THE PACIFIC WAR.....

AROUND THE CENTRAL PACIFIC ISLAND OF MIDWAY....

Midway was about as decisive a naval action as the U.S. Navy ever fought, or anyone else for that matter.
But, as an arm of decisive action, it was the last time the divebomber intervened to tip the scales.
In this case, it meant FOUR Japanese carriers gone for good, and the Pacific War with it for the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Drawing the majority of American resources into the Pacific, something Japanese planners had always hoped would split the Allied alliance, became a forlorn hope. Now the Axis would be defeated in detail, and with Europe coming "FIRST".
It was Commander Wade McCluskey's SBD Dauntless divebombers that delivered the killing blow. Torpedo planes would not have done quite the same amount of damage in so short a space of time.
Bomb after bomb penetrated into wooden flight decks to ignite the aviation gasoline stored below........

RADIO TRANSMISSIONS FROM U.S. NAVY DIVEBOMBER PILOTS AT MIDWAY..........

"Entering dive, our objective is the rear ship....Step on it! Are we going to attack or not? :tinysmile_angry_t:

"THEY'RE ALL BURNING!" :tinysmile_fatgrin_t

"THAT scared the hell out of me! I thought we weren't going to pull out! :tinysmile_eyebrow_t

"Your bomb really hit them on the fantail! Boy, thats SWELL!" :tinysmile_fatgrin_t

"These Japs are as easy as shooting ducks in a rain barrel." :tinysmile_classes_t

"Gee, I wish I had just one more bomb!" :tinysmile_hmm_t:



Lt. ROBIN M. LINDSAY......Landing signals officer, USS ENTERPRISE....

"I knew the hornet planes were just about out of gas, and I coudn't see any reason for not landing them and taking a chance....I brought six more in before they screamed down and said "Thats all! Knock it OFF, brother!"
I disobeyed orders and continued landing planes even when no.2 elevator was down....I heard later that finally the air-officer just said,
"Leave the kid alone...he's hot!"


Finally, a U.S Navy man that the Battle of Midway just passed by....
The words of Admiral FRANK JACK FLETCHER, whilst being lowered by rope from the sinking U.S.S. LEXINGTON....
"I am too DAMNED OLD for this anymore...."


EPILOGUE

The divebomber had it's finest moment at Midway, along with Admiral Nimitz, the ice cool Admiral Ray Spruance....and Wade McCluskey....

THEY could argue over the "what ifs" for the rest of their days...specifically

WHAT IF McCluskey's divebombers had not spotted the Japanese Destroyer "Arashi", it's wake leading them straight to the carriers of the "Kudo Batai" at the precise moment the Japanese aircraft were ready to launch their own strike?
The "Arashi" had fallen back from the main fleet to investigate a submarine contact....when McCluskey spotted her, his divebombers were looking like they had to turn for home FOR LACK OF FUEL....not many more minutes and they would have. The "Arashi" lead them straight "on the money" in the nick of time. It had been a near run thing....

Oh yes....they could LAUGH about that one now! :tinysmile_twink_t2:

After 1945, and a brief revival in Korea and Vietnam, the last "official" divebomber attack was carried out by a Douglas "Skyraider".....

Only the written accounts remain, and the photos and film....these records that once more let the divebomber pilots SPEAK.....





So, there you have it....some remarkable first hand accounts.

Meanwhile....PONDER....UNTIL NEXT TIME WE MEET

MORO!
B5N2KATE....