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Old 26th July 2010, 02:39
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Juha Juha is offline
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Re: Why the USAAF gave up on the A-36 in favour of the P-47.

Checked a little more
Ju 88
wasn’t a dive bomber in same sense like Ju 87, Blackburn Skua or Douglas SBD Dauntless, A-4 was optimized for 60deg dive bombing, and it seems that earlier A-5 (in essence A-4 with earlier, less powerful engines) was optimized for 50 deg dives, which in fact means glide-bombing. In 43 Germans were modifying also A-4s for glide bombing, removing dive-brakes, calibrating automatic dive-bombing sight for shallower dive angles etc in order to use 88s as level bombers or glide-bomber which used 30 deg dives.

After dive brakes were removed Finns used 45 deg dives with their Ju 88A-4s.

Pe-2
Finns used some war-booty Pe-2s, but as fast recon planes, but they tested also its dive capabilities. Max dive angle used was 85 deg because the CSUs didn’t work properly at 90 deg dives. But one must remember that all FAF’s Pe-2s were early production types, so later version, which had different engines might not have suffered from that handicap.

Juha