[Graham Boak]

John's decision to close the 262 Jabo thread (which I approve of) left me with unvoiced comments, after yet a third posting had disappeared due to being expelled from the site whilst typing. So I have opened this separate thread, repeating TColvin's last mailing to set the scene a little. Partly because there does seem to be a significant number of interesting points being discussed, but mainly just to get stuff of my chest, ok?

TColvin, mainly to me:

Your jaundiced view of the Vultee Vengeance would not survive a reading of Peter C Smith's book, would it? He persuaded me.
2. The fact is that the RAF was completely prejudiced against all dive bombers for a simple reason. They were specically designed for army support, and no self-respecting airman would accept that as part of his job description, which was to bomb German civilians until morale cracked. The army could then be despatched in soft-skin vehicles to occupy Germany. Anyone who talked to the Army about their needs was a traitor. Beaverbrook oredered the Vengeances, and the RAF ensured they were never used - except in the East where they became a raging success such that the RAF had to suppress the information and quickly scrap them before their embarrassment became public. That was the background to making the Vengeance tow targets.
3. And your statement that there was never any serious argument about the superiority of guns sounds to me like re-writing history. Apart from all the other evidence available that the RAF wanted RPs to succeed because they could strap them cheaply under Typhoons in the belief that speed rather than armour provided security over the battlefield, why would the Typhoon pilots have tried to sell Rudel on the benefits of RP, I wonder?

It may surprise you, but I have been reading and appreciating Peter Smith’s books since Destroyer Leader, many years ago. I would even recommend his book on the Vengeance as the best work on the aircraft (but note qualification). However, it did not convince me. Peter Smith never yet met a dive-bomber he didn’t like, and this bias has long influenced his judgement. It doesn’t take a lot of reading elsewhere to see what Smith fails to give due credit to, or even fails to mention at all.

There were a great many airmen who had other ideas about their job description: I could mention the Flying Boat Union, or the whole of Fighter Command. It is true that Army Co-operation (as it was called) was fairly low down the pecking order, but it was not ignored. The five years before the start of WW2 saw the Audax, the Hardy, the Hector and the Lysander enter service. Not perhaps the most inspiring collection but signs that someone somewhere was considering the matter, and funding was being made available. As for interest in dive-bombers in particular, the Skua was built when the RAF ran the Fleet Air Arm, and the Henley was on its way when WW2 appeared. It was the necessary concentration on fighter production, and Beaverbrook’s 1940 restriction of production to types already in service, that killed the Henley, and with it any prospect of a British dive bomber.

However, where Peter Smith sees the success of the Stuka, the RAF saw its vulnerability to flak and fighters demonstrated in the Battle of Britain. A dive-bomber is necessarily a single role machine, with a high call on training and resources. Without air superiority, it was heavily dependent upon fighter cover. The lessons of the war in the Middle East, where relations between the RAF and the Army were very different to your vituperative caricature, confirmed and hardened this opinion. The best solution available for air support of ground troops was a mix of medium bombers and fighter-bombers. Not necessarily ideal in all conditions, but flexible and good enough. This is the background to the rise of the fighter-bomber in allied operational planning.

You seem to be confusing an arguable case against the fighter-bomber with the Typhoon itself. (You also seem to be confusing the advantages of the dive-bomber and the armoured attack aircraft - not the same thing at all.) The Typhoon may not have been the finest interceptor, but it was rugged, a good load carrier, had excellent firepower and was arguably the finest performer at lower altitudes in the world. That seems like a pretty good set of requirements for a fighter-bomber to me. Yes the engine was temperamental and required excessive maintenance: it also provided more power than anything else in the inventory of any nation. Oh, and it was perfectly capable of operating away from hard airfields, as many photos of the Normandy and subsequent operations show.

It is hardly surprising that a front-line officer fresh from victory would believe that his piece of kit was better than the opponents: Rudel’s position is scarcely different. "This worked for me…. " Nonetheless, he carried out most of his final missions in an Fw 190. The Luftwaffe were not stupid enough to risk the Stuka over Western Europe in 1944. Either way, the opinions of a junior officer in the front line was not the deciding factor. The accuracy of the gun was well known to the designers and engineers in the industry, with the experienced pilots and fellow engineers in the test establishments, the "movers and shakers" whose analysis of the alternatives in trials would influence the decision makers in the Ministries. The rp was adopted because it was cheap, it required minimum training and could be carried with minimum effect on the performance of the platform. It was less accurate than a well placed bomb - which does not actually demand vertical delivery - and much less accurate than a gun, but it also kept the firing aircraft away from the "Landser with an MG42" and could be made available in huge numbers. It would also penetrate whatever thickness of armour it was presented with - unlike the only available gun.

The gun is more accurate than the bomb which is in turn more accurate than the unguided rocket. Not re-writing history, but a simple statement of physical principles. But accuracy is not the only requirement in war. The much-abused leaders had to consider Flexibility, Survivability, Purchase Cost, Availability, Serviceability, Operating Cost, Training need, Manpower drain, amongst many others.

I’m not sure what would be the criteria for a "raging" success, but it hardly describes the Vengeance’s single tours of duty in either India/Burma or New Guinea. Meritorious enough, yes, but not worth of repetition. That speaks for itself. Whatever, these operations were some years after the decisions that needed to be made for the Normandy landings. The dive bomber was vulnerable, expensive to build, operate and support, inflexible and soaked up fighter support required elsewhere. Had an aircraft of the quality of the Skyraider been available…but that was even more years away, and not even a gleam in its designer’s eye.

Speed superior to armour over the battlefield - oh yes indeed, as demonstrated ever since. The slow armoured attack aircraft can only survive given air superiority if not supremacy - as well illustrated by the massive losses suffered by the Il 2 on the Eastern front.