Ed Rasimus wrote in
:

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.

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.

The discussion was not about "what dive bombing is all about", the
technicalities or merits of dive bombing, nor was the talk. Simply that
in his experience, he mostly saw dive bombing. This was important to my
point of view because his talk was my only exposure to primary source
material on the subject (at least until Brian posted the weblink).




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.

The question was never posed - to the corporal or this group (at least
by me). Again, my discussion with Ricardo had nothing to do with how
dive bombing was supposed to work, or even if it worked; only that it
did occur and in what relative proportion to other types of bombing
procedures used by the Germans during the Battle of Britain. I'm
reasonably certain that an expert's knowledge and experience was not
required to tell the difference between dive bombing and high altitude
"level" bombing, at least as practiced during the Battle of Britain. In
any event, your input of related information is noted and appreciated.

DS








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