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The Dive Bomber Effective tactical air support also required technical innovation and thus, in order to develop a precise hitting arm within the Luftwaffe for supporting the army, the Luftwaffe turned to dive-bombing. Ernst Udet, World War I fighter pilot, Chief of Technical Office of the Luftwaffe in 1936 and Chief of Procurement and Supply until his suicide in 1941, in 1934 visited the United States and came away impressed by The United States Navy's Curtiss Helldiver dive-bomber. Germany shipped two back for the Luftwaffe, leading to Germany's first true ground support aircraft, the Hs-123, later replaced by the infamous Ju-87 Stuka dive-bomber.[4] |
The Globe At War |
Was The Luftwaffe Really Intended To Be Little More Than an Adjunct to the German Army? |
Junkers Ju-87 "Stuka" Dive Bomber - Picture Courtesy of the U.S. Navy |
In Germany, the tactical benefits provided from dive-bombing fit in well under considerable economic constraints.[5] Effective dive-bombing nevertheless required skilled, i.e. expensively trained, pilots.[6] The effort to perfect dive-bombing doctrine moved the Luftwaffe away from strategic aircraft, resulting in research and development moving further toward precision bombing. Precision dive - bombing however, created numerous technical challenges. In response to those challenges Germany developed a new suite of technologies such as specially designed bombsights and automatic contact altimeters - to pull the Stuka from its dive with minimal effort from the pilot.[7] The Spanish Civil War provided Germany the chance to experiment and test airpower applications; producing notable successes - including those involving close support aircraft.[8] The German effort to develop and test new dive bombing techniques consumed a tremendous amount of time and resources and perhaps, as a result, has attracted the bulk of the attention focused upon the Luftwaffe in the decades since. |