"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 28 Apr 2006 08:16:27 -0500, DeepSea
wrote:

Maybe not. I'm not a historian, I'm an engineer with an interest in
history. That being said, here's what I (think) I know.

Most - (significantly) more than half

Dive Bombing - technique that involves the release of bombs at high
speed/low altitude.

My comments are derived from a talk I attended last year while at the US
Army's General Staff College. The talk was given by a British Army
corporal who served as a courier in the early days of the Battle of
Britain. He was wounded (badly) in one of the attacks, and spent the
rest of the war recouperating and learning to walk again. He used the
terms "most" and "dive bombing" during his talk.

So you extrapolated from one man's experience the assumption that _most_
bombing of England(sic) was performed bt _Dive-bombers_?


OK, if you are an engineer, then you should start by considering that
a "corporal" courier who was wounded by a dive bomber is probably not
authoritative on what dive bombing is all about.

Now, take your engineering prowess and consider the geometry of level
versus high angle release of a bomb--by diving at the target (in the
simplest iteration) you reduce the aircraft's travel over the ground
and hence increase the accuracy.

If you wish to go to higher levels of math, you need to consider dive
angle, airspeed, bank, sight depression from flight path, wind drift
both before and after release (aircraft first then bomb),
accelerations (g-loads), aerodynamic drag of bomb and a few other
things to begin to get what dive bombing is about.

But, don't ask corporals--they may know something about their
particular field, but it may not be dive bombing.



Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org
www.thundertales.blogspot.com


I concur with Ed Rasimus's comments above...
It could be that the 'British Army Courier Corporal' - interesting that no
Regiment or Corps was cited - did actually experience situations where
_most_ of the _bombing_
was by dive-bombers. This was not the experience of the majority (=
significantly more than half) of the British population suffering from the
'Blitz' on cities. {Isn't there a saying about one swallow not making a
summer? Perhaps one Corporal's anecdotes do not a form a basis for a
deduction}.

The experiences endured by my mother and her neighbours {most of the menfolk
were on active service} is summarised on the Liverpool blitz web-site
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/nof/blitz/index.html

extract
The seven nights of the 1941 May Blitz (1st-7th May) were the heaviest
consecutive nights of bombing experienced by Liverpool during the whole of
the Second World War. In those few nights around 681 planes dropped 870
tonnes of high explosives and over 112,000 incendiaries (firebombs) on the
area, killing over 1,700 people and making around 76,000 homeless.

/extract

Not much mention of Dive Bombers there! The Luftwaffe _did_ have
Dive-Bombers, these were aircraft specifically designed for
Close-Air-Support of advancing troops and AIUI such aircraft were directed
by their pilots along a line-of-sight towards their target; the aircraft's
systems automagically performed a J-curve manoeuvre which had the effect of
taking the aircraft away and above the target while the ordnance continued
along the line-of-sight to impact. Such aircraft were tasked against known
targets, predominantly the Chain Home stations and airfields. AIUI, the
aircraft-weapon systems was a success but not many Teutonic aircrew made a
second sortie.

--



Brian