RAF and dive-bombing.

[Juha]

Hello Tony
Dive-bombing wasn’t the answer to flak losses. Here during summer 44 Stukas of I./SG 3 of the Gef.Vb Kuhlmey flew at least 1.199 sorties, dropped appr. 540 tons of bombs and lost 17 planes plus 11 badly dam, when Fw 190Fs of 1./SG 5 the Gef.Vb Kuhlmey flew at least 507 sorties, dropped 232,7 tons of bombs and lost 8 planes and 1 badly dam. Targets were similar, almost all losses to flak. In fact because pilots of 1./SG 5, having operated before in Arctic region, were unused of the massive AA protection of a Soviet main offensive had to learn from bitter experience that repeated low-level attacks on same target were suicidal, their losses per sortie were lower than those of Ju-87s after they had adjusted their tactics to the environment. Ju-87s were better bridge-busters but both were capable of that and there was days when only fighter-bombers could do that because of cloud base. But as I wrote in the end Germans gave up their efforts to keep Tali bridges down and concentrated to attacks against troop concentrations near front line.

Il-2s did drop bridges, but they were not best tools for that because of light bomb-load they could carry. The armour had its pros and cons. As a tank-killer it had at least some successes against Germans but none of appr. 40 tanks and StuGs Finns lost during summer 44 was lost to VVS. Of course Il-2 was effective against soft transport vehicles and open-topped SPWs and SP-guns, which Finns didn't have but a few AA-tanks, none lost, but same is true to fighter-bombers.

On Douhetism, I can understand why RAF adopted it, it needed something to justify its independence during the lean years after WWI, and before the invention of radar there was justification to the say “bomber will always get through”. So, I can accept the adoption of Douhetism as a selling slogan, but IMHO the top RAF leadership should have seen clearer the need of specialised army support beyond Lysander sqns. In this we agree.

What else without too much help from hindsight, IMHO to make possible to some Typhoon sqns to be armed with 40mm “S” gun when engaged to A/T work. Possibly to mdify some Vengeances back to dive-bombers and train a couple sqns to use them as dive-bombers when in spring 44 it began to look like that the capacity of LW to challenge Allied air-superiority over Normandy would have been less than feared. I cannot see that that would have been made a big difference, maybe in V-2 hunt but German AAA over Holland was inentirely different category than Japanese over Burma.

Juha