JU-87 Stuka, Hawker Typhoon, P-47 Fighter bombers

When discussing the Ju87 in particular it has to be remembered that this type was specifically set up to instill terror, being one of the few wartime aircraft fitted with sirens as a crude form of psy-ops, (The other was the HS126). Additionally the method of strafing caused a great deal of fear, possibly greater than the level of casualties would support, especially as newsreel of air attack in the Spanish War had already sensitised civilians to this form of warfare.

In its second configuration of a tank buster (mainly on the Eastern Front) with a 37mm cannon under each wing they seem to be very effective, however the JU87 and Hs129 both had to be properly supported as by 1943 they were incapable of either fighting or running away.

For the most part the Western alies did not bother with the classic dive bomber (there are some exceptions such as the Vultee Vengance). However the Navies had them and were succesful-and probably were superior to the JU87 which is unsurprising as both Baracuda and Hellcat were later, the Hellcat being an example of a Post WW2 survival. The Japanese Val and later development was for the most part similar but less rugged equivelant of the Ju87.

With regard to the allied use of fighter-bombers the use of the 3inch and 60lb rockets were a tactical trump card, it has been said previously that only 4% of rockets got anywhere near a hit, but that is not really a problem, the main tactical advantage was the denial of free movement during daylight. Combined with the lighter armed Mustangs causing interdiction disruption deep into Germany shows the flexibility of the Fighter-bomber concept.

When the proposal that lead to the A10 Ground attack aircraft was put forward, some wit proposed a P51 airframe with a turbo prop.

Final point RAF Tempest and Typhoon operating from airfields on the Continent were sometimes allowed to carry an overload of 16 60lb rockets.

Steve

 

I sm going to throw this into the "hat" as a late war "Multi role" aircraft, even though it didn't action in WW2, it was designed during the war and went on to serve for 20 odd years in the Navy and Air Force. It is a true beast and could almost carry it's own weight in Ordanance:

Douglas AD (A-1) Skyraider - bomber

 

Vet,

The P-47 had armor surpassing all WWII fighters and most dedicated dive bombers. It was extremely hard to kill even with 20mm canons and this was cited as a major strength in aerial combat as well, since its high energy tactics is very well complemented by better armor. Some Luftwaffe pilots surveyed said that the P-47 is their least favorite opponent because it was too hard to kill.

Wait a second. Basic equipment familitary comes before tactical training so simplyfing aircraft types would be far more efficient than specializing them in so far as training is concerned. And we are not even talking about maintenance or replacement of lost machines.

No, Soviet pilots had almost no tactical training to speak of. All they have got was basic flight.

 

The Stuka was a powerful weapon throughout most of the war and served in many campaigns. The typhoon and P-47 didn't even see service until later on in the war. Of course they were better aircraft, the stuka had fixed landing gear for cryin out loud. The Stuka is also famous for its dive siren which had a psychological effect on the enemy, but it was a sitting duck for fighters. Once the Luftwaffe lost air superiority the Stukas were toast.

 

Dude, you can't compare the Stuka to the other two. different planes, different purpose. You could compare the Fw190 - F/G tough...



Cheers...

 

The Stuka was under-rated at the beginning of the war - ask the Polish and French in 1939-1940. The Germans (specifically the Luftwaffe General and Goerings old war buddy Ernst Udet) borrowed the idea for dive bombing in the 1930's after seeing an american demonstration of the Curtis Hawk. Since pin-point accuracy was possible the concept of dive-bombing seemed like a war-winner, especially in the pre-war period when it had never been tried in combat before. and as used and practiced by the Germans, the Stuka could indeed achieve remarkable results in attacks on small but vital targets like enemy command centers, road junctions, merchant shipping and so on. The Stuka was the right airplane for the job in 1939-40 because it was rugged, carried an acceptably large payload (about one US ton),could dive very steeply without tearing the wings off (almost 90 degrees), and had clever refinements (including even an automatic mechanical dive-pullout device in case the pilot blacked out!). So in the early stages of the war the stuka was instrumental in Germany's success.

As the war went on the weaknesses of the stuka became more clear and while production of the stuka continued throughout the war, the stuka was employed less and less in its designed role. The stuka was slow (less than 300 mph unloaded), heavy, and not very manueverable and against any fighter opposition was meat on the table (all stukas were eventually pulled from the Battle of Britain in 1940 aftertaking very high losses to British fighter opposition). Also the enemy eventually realized the Stuka was very vulnerable to anti aircraft fire during its pullout from a dive and many were shot down this way.

The stuka probably should have ceased production by 1944 since it was obsolete by then. But the germans not only kept building them but famously, refitted many as tank killers. The famous pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel killed hundreds of tanks on the eastern front in his cannon-equipped stuka, was shot down many times but miraculously survived the war (and wrote a book about his experiences also Amazon.com: Stuka Pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel: (Schiffer Military History): Gunther Just, The life story of the highest decorated soldier of the Wehrmacht. Many photos of Rudels aircraft.: Books.

 

If Rudel did what he is said to have done, the man was probably worth an entire Tiger battalion.

 

Stuka was a diveBOMBER the others groundattackFIGHTERS the stuka is only at its best when there is a bad defence otherwise it is near useless...

 

Although tempting any comparinson between an allied weapon vs an axis one (like Stuka vs Typhoon or P-47, Spitfire vs Me-109) is rather a misleading practices. I will refer for example to 'reputation' of the Brewster Buffalo, the first monoplane fighter aircraft used by the US Navy. The worst came up in the hands of the american pilots of U.S. Marine Corps, suffering 15 losses out of 25 aircraft at the Battle of Midway; however, the main reasons for the losses included inexperience of USMC pilots, who attempted to enter into a World War I-style dogfight with experienced Japanese aviators, and the fact that the F2As were outnumbered and at a tactical disadvantage. The RAF, Royal Australian Air Force, and Royal New Zealand Air Force fighter squadrons in Singapore, Malaya and Burma operated Brewster Buffalo with a victory ratio of 1:1 against Japanese planes; however many loses were caused by poor supplies of spare parts, inadequate numbers of support staff, airfields that were difficult to defend against air attack, lack of a clear and coherent command structure, antagonism between RAF and RAAF squadrons and personnel, inexperienced pilots lacking appropriate training, and not to general characteristics of the plane. In Finland, however, the Brewster gained a reputation as one of the most successful combat aircraft ever flown by the Finnish Air Force. In service during 1941-1945, Brewsters of Lentolaivue 24 (Fighter Squadron 24) were credited with 477 Soviet aircraft destroyed, against the loss of 19 Brewsters: a victory ratio of 26:1. So any comparison or evaluation of a weapon, plane, ship is superficial if does not take account of the particularities of theater of operation where they operated.

I apologize for possible errors regarding grammar or spelling, however English is not my native language.

 

I have seen it posted by a fairly knowledgeable individual that the Buffalos actually got close to a 1:1 kill ratio if you look at Japanese bombers shot down or written off after the attack.

The Buffalo that the Finns flew was quite a bit different from the one in US service.

 

Its probably better to compare the AC-130 with the F-18

Truth is stranger than fiction.

Actually the fighter bomber or dive bomber proved more effective at this.

All those bridges in Normandy... fighter bombers did that.

Jack of all trades, master of none. Still true today. Go F-22.

I tried to add to your reputation for this but it wasn't working. Well said.



Trying to compare a bomb to a cannon round is hard to do. The Ju-87 flying slow, (it was a plus in this role) with its cannons could and did kill many tanks. The cannon fires in a direct (of sorts) line and is easier to aim. The bomb falls and is harder. The round uses momentum as well as explosion to cause damage. Result cannon is better than bomb here.

 

agreed.

 

A bit of clarification PLS

Which are you considering the truth? The Stuka pilot skills or that the professor said this?

Depends to some extent on the Bridge. A heavy bomber with a tall boy can be pretty effective.

 

The truth is that the plane and the pilots did what your teacher said.


Granted, that was a very nice bomb.

 

While Stukas may have hit moving tanks I have yet to see any evidence that the average pilot found them an easy target. Indeed USN dive bomber pilots were very well trained and weren't batting 500 vs ships which are substantially bigger and less maneuverable.

 

Don't really know if a tank moving at 30 Km/h along a road, or even slower off road, is a more difficult target than a warship doing 25+ knots and putting up a lot of AA fire. But had hitting moving tanks been that easy the cannon armed Ju87G would never have been built. Despite the post war improvements in bomb delivery systems when faced with the problem of stopping an armoured column the USAF came up with the A-10.

 

Indeed USAAF studies concluded that aircaft were not very effective at destroyng tanks in WWII (at least in Normandy). That being the case I'm not sure what was so different in Germany that the "average" LW pilot could do so "easily".

 

Define easy. Diver bombers using bombs were around 60 % accurate. This is phenomenal as compared to level bombers (medium and large). You are again comparing bombs to cannon rounds which are not equivalent in their delivery. Cannon is way better, for tanks. You could hit ships more often too with a cannon, but you have to hip the big ship in the right spot or enough times to sink it.

You USAF planes in Normandy were using a mix of rockets, bombs, and 50 cal MGs to take out tanks. Bombs have been discussed and rockets were not terribly accurate either and the 50 cal MGs were too small to hurt tanks. They did great against trains and trucks but not against tanks.

 

What do you mean 60% accurate? Certainly you are not claiming that they could hit a tank 60% of the time. Even a stationary one isn't that "easy" to hit.

A quick look and all I found was:
Stuka bomber answers please.? - Yahoo! Answers
which claimed

The implication is that is the CEP so 50% of thier bombs would be in a 30' circlue which would mean somewhat less would be hitting a tank and that's vs a stationary target with vetran pilots. I've also no idea just where that data came from or if it is correct.
http://books.google.com/books?id=vg...=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPA90,M1
mentions 25% accuarcy but not the size of the target on page 90.

It's also worth pointing out that Stukas made numberous attacks against the Bridge at Remagen and hit it only once from what I recall.

 

When looking at actual results in real life combat even 25% looks high, I don't have figures on tanks but against ships the average was way below 25%.
I don't have any hard figures to back this up but I think dive bombing was something like ten times nore accurate than level bombing, if not even better, a bit like the fixed armament of fighters that was was found to be a lot better than flexible weapons in WW1. I have no data about low level attacks by fighter-bombers using bombs but I think they are something in between.
An interesting question would be how much training rather than tactics and equipment had to do with precision, if we compare 617 squadron with the average bomber command unit we may have a case there, the "CEP" of some bomber command missions can be measured in tens of kilometers. IIRC 617 pilots used dive bombing to to mark targets for the tallboy that had to be dropped from high altitude to achieve penetration speed and this was done with planes that were not designed for dive bombing (IIRC a Lancaster was used at first !!!).