THE DIVE-BOMBER
Sta,—Your " News of the Week," usually so well informed, appears to have fallen into the popular trap regarding the merits of the dive-bomber. Invested by the lay Press and German propaganda with mystic qualities after its successes against little opposition, the dive-bomber has come to be regarded in the popular mind as something which has only to be " turned on " to win battles.
The truth is that the dive-bomber did well in special circumstances. Now it has had its day and is at least obsolescent. After all, the dive- bomber is only a specialised tactical method of launching a bomb which combines a fair, but exaggerated, degree of accuracy with much noise, thus producing a moral effect altogether out of proportion to its destruc- tive powers.
The dive-bomber has two advantages: (i) It does not require the elaborate training of air crews. (ii) It does not require elaborate and precision-made bomb-sights. However, the dive-bomber has five fundamental disadvantages which outweigh the advantages: (i) It presents a no-deflection shot to ground troops during the dive. • (ii) Even the newest dive-bomber is fundamentally inferior to quite elderly fighters. (iii) It is not sufficiently accurate to be deadly against fast-moving tanks. (iv) The dive-launched bomb has not enough penetration to sink the larger warships. (v) The losses in attacks on defended targets is out of proportion to the results gained (cf. Malta).
Doubtless many people will quote the example of the ' Hermes ' against Mrs, but I believe I am right in saying that the Japanese used not dive- bombers but bomb-carrying fighters for this success.
If not the dive-bomber, what then is the answer for close support work with the Army? The Russians seem to have provided an answer in the Stormovik ground-strafer which is equipped with rocket-propelled bombs. They appear to have been remarkably successful against German tanks, combining the weight of the bomb with some of the penetration of the cannon-shell. These rocket-propelled bombs are not launched in a dive but aimed at the objective from a low approach in the same manner as the cannon-fighter. In fact the Stormovik has often been described, quite wrongly, as a dive-bomber.
British forces still offer a tempting target for the dive-bomber because their anti-aircraft armament has not yet been brought up to the same weight as that of the Germans who, in evolving the dive-bomber also evolved the antidote to it in the form of light but concentrated gun-fire.
Against well-equipped troops the cannon-fighter followed by rocket-
bombers would seem the ideal weapon. The cannon-fighter shoots f a distance with a concentrated stream of high-penetration shells. compels the ground forces to keep their heads down and so pros the opportunity for the rocket-bomber behind it. As in all tact, operations team work of this sort guarantees the best results.—I
Bowling Green Lane, London, E.C. z.
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