A glide bomb or stand-off bomb is a standoff weapon with flight control surfaces to give it a flatter, gliding flight path than that of a conventional bomb without such surfaces. This allows it to be released at a distance from the target rather than right over it, allowing a successful attack without exposing the launching aircraft to anti-aircraft defenses near the target. Glide bombs can accurately deliver warheads in a manner comparable to cruise missiles at a fraction of the cost—sometimes by installing flight control kits on simple unguided bombs —and they are very difficult for surface-to-air missiles to intercept due to their tiny radar signatures and short flight times. The only effective countermeasure in most cases is to shoot down enemy aircraft before they approach within launching range, making glide bombs very potent weapons where wartime exigencies prevent this.
99-513: The GB-1 , also known as the "Grapefruit bomb" and as XM-108 , was a glide bomb produced by Aeronca Aircraft for the United States Army Air Forces during World War II . Intended to allow bombers to release bombs from outside the range of enemy defenses, over one thousand GB-1s were used in combat before the end of the war. The U.S. Army Air Corps – which would later become the U.S. Army Air Forces – initiated development of
198-592: A flare seeker (GB-13), and active radar homing (GB-14) were developed, however none progressed beyond the testing stage. A version for use in dispersing chemical agents, the GB-11 , was also trialled but cancelled due to the end of the war; the GT-1 torpedo-delivering glider was also derived from the GB-1. Production of the GB-1 was terminated in January 1945; following the end of the war,
297-437: A 12-foot (3.7 m) wing and twin-tail empennage of conventional small-aircraft design to a standard M34 2,000-pound (910 kg) bomb. A gyrostabilizer -based autopilot controlling azimuth was used, allowing the bomb to be set to a specific course following release at a specific altitude and target distance; gliding at a speed of 230 miles per hour (370 km/h), range from a release height of 15,000 feet (4,600 m)
396-421: A Hs 293 sank the troopship HMT Rohna from Mediterranean convoy KMF 26 . Several defensive measures were implemented right away. Ships capable of maneuvering at high speed were instructed to make tight turns across the weapon's flight path in order to complicate the missile operator's efforts. Attacking aircraft were interdicted with air patrols and heavy-caliber anti-aircraft weapons , disrupting either
495-652: A deliberate tactic. At the Battle of Cambrai on 20 November 1917, 320 Mark IV tanks and 300 aircraft, mostly Sopwith Camels and Airco DH 5s with 20 lb (9.1 kg) bombs, were used to suppress artillery and machine guns. The cost in pilots was very high, with casualties on some days reaching 30 percent. The initial impact at Cambrai was highly successful. The staff officer to the Royal Tank Corps Lieutenant-Colonel J. F. C. Fuller published findings which were later taken up by Heinz Guderian to form
594-419: A dive bomber and was used extensively in this role during World War Two. The British Air Ministry issued Specification 4/34 in 1934 for a ground attack aircraft with dive bombing capability. The Hawker Henley was a two-seat version of the Battle of Britain -winning Hawker Hurricane . It was fast, at almost 300 mph (480 km/h) at sea level and 450 mph (720 km/h) in a dive, but development
693-542: A dive bomber. It had dive brakes that doubled as flaps for carrier landings. The Hawker Henley had a top speed only 50 mph (80 km/h) slower than the Hawker Hurricane fighter from which it was derived. The American and Japanese navies and the Luftwaffe chose vertical dive bombers whose low speed had dire consequences when they encountered modern fighters. The Royal Naval Air Service developed dive bombing as
792-692: A few North American P-51 Mustangs from a British order but, as there were no funds to buy more fighters, they were modified as dive bombers with a new wing and with dive brakes. First flown in October 1942 as the North American A-36 Apache , they arrived in Morocco in April 1943 to assist with driving the Afrika Korps out of Africa. The aircraft was very fast at low altitude. It was also accident-prone, achieving
891-538: A glide bomb design in March 1941. Intended to allow bombers to stand off outside the range of enemy flak while releasing their bombload, while also potentially allowing for more precise targeting due to the shallow glide path the bomb would follow, the design resulted in three prototypes; one developed by Aeronca designated GB-1; a design by Bellanca designated GB-2 , and the Timm Aircraft -designed GB-3 . The GB-1 mated
990-413: A horizontal bomber veers offline while approaching the bomb release point, turning to the angle that would correct this also changes the speed of the aircraft over the ground (when there is a wind) and thereby changes the range as well. In the 1930s and early 1940s, dive bombing was the best method for attacking high-value compact targets, like bridges and ships , with accuracy. The forces generated when
1089-513: A limited number of aircraft available for attack, each with only a small bomb load. Targets were often likely to be small or fast-moving and the need for accuracy made dive bombers essential. Ernst Udet , a German First World War ace, persuaded Hermann Göring to buy two Curtiss Hawk IIs for the newly reformed Luftwaffe . Udet, then a stunt pilot, flew one in aerobatic displays during the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games . Due to his connections with
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#17328695461211188-587: A name later reused by Curtiss for other dive bombers. The Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the Heinkel He 50 in 1931 as a floatplane and carrier-based dive bomber and embarked some on new carriers from 1935 in a developed form as the Heinkel He 66 , from which the Aichi D1A was further developed in Japan. The Luftwaffe confiscated a Chinese export shipment and ordered more. Navies increasingly operated carriers, which had
1287-552: A rack under each of the bomber's wings – and the accuracy of the GB-1 proving to be significantly worse than that of ordinary bombs. Despite this, by May 1944 the first releases of GB-1s were undertaken. On 28 May 1944, 42 of 113 glide bombs released hit Cologne , after being released 18 miles from the Eifeltor marshaling yard in the city at 195 miles per hour (314 km/h); many failed to hold an electrical charge in their batteries, causing their autopilots to fail. German gunners mistook
1386-788: A single day. Rudel co-wrote a post-war book about his experiences and consulted with the US Air Force. When Italy joined the war (10 June 1940) on the Axis side, the Regia Aeronautica shipped Breda Ba.65s to North Africa for use against the British but they also proved vulnerable. By February 1941 British fighters had shot down most of the Italian planes. In Morocco on 11 November 1942, American Curtiss P-40 Warhawks shot down 15 Ju 87Ds in one encounter. The United States Army Air Forces took delivery of
1485-424: A small liquid-fueled rocket fired to speed the weapon up and get it out in front of the releasing aircraft, which was flown to approach the target just off to one side. The bomb then dropped close to the water and glided in parallel to the launch aircraft, with the bomb aimer adjusting the flight left or right. As long as the bomb was dropped at roughly the right range so it did not run out of altitude while gliding in,
1584-521: A staff officer, and Basil Liddell-Hart (a military journalist) propounded the concept of mobile tank forces supported by ground-attack aircraft creating a breakthrough. These were eagerly studied by the German army officer Heinz Guderian , who created the combination of Panzers and dive bombers that later proved so potent in Poland and France. The Ju 87 Stuka could be used as aerial artillery moving far ahead of
1683-554: A steep angle, normally between 45 and 60 degrees or even up to a near vertical dive of 80 degrees with the Junkers Ju 87 , and thus requires an abrupt pull-up after dropping its bombs. This puts great strains on both the pilot and aircraft. It demands an aircraft of strong construction, with some means to slow its dive. This limited the class to light bomber designs with ordnance loads in the range of 1,000 lb (450 kg) although there were larger examples. The most famous examples are
1782-439: A straight line directly towards the defenders. At higher levels, this was less of a problem, as larger AA (anti-aircraft) shells were fused to explode at specific altitudes, which is impossible to determine while the plane is diving. In addition, most higher-altitude gunners and gunnery systems were designed to calculate the lateral movement of a target; while diving, the target appears almost stationary. Also, many AA mounts lacked
1881-423: A straight line of sight to the target. This was simplified as the aircraft was pointed directly at the target, making sighting over the nose much easier. Differences in the path of different bombs due to differing ballistics can be corrected by selecting a standardised bombing altitude and then adjusting the dive angle slightly for each case. As the bomber dives, the aim could be continually adjusted. In contrast, when
1980-616: A tactic against Zeppelin hangars and formed and trained a squadron at Manchester for this task. On 8 October 1914, a Sopwith Tabloid with two 50 lb (23 kg) bombs attacked a hangar at Düsseldorf after a dive to 600 ft (180 m). On 14 November 1914, four Avro 504s attacked the Zeppelin factory at Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance , diving from 1,200 ft (370 m) to 500 ft (150 m) to ensure hits. As Zeppelins were tethered close to stores of hydrogen, results were often spectacular. The first use of dive bombing by
2079-561: A tank-buster Stuka with 20mm cannon, he claimed over 100 Soviet tanks destroyed, mostly at the Battle of Kursk in July 1943. The Ju 87G Kanonenvogel , equipped with two 37mm BK 3,7 anti-tank guns, as suggested by Rudel, proved to be a lethal weapon in skilled hands. In the Soviet counter-offensive, Operation Kutuzov (July to August 1943), which concluded Kursk, the Luftwaffe claimed 35 tanks destroyed in
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#17328695461212178-447: A virtually straight line between release and impact, eliminating the need for complex calculations. The aircraft simply aims at the target and releases its bombs. The primary source of error is the effect of wind on the bomb's flight path after release. As bombs are streamlined and heavy, wind has only a slight effect on them and the bomb is likely to fall within its lethal radius of the target. Bomb sighting becomes trivial, requiring only
2277-405: Is a bomber aircraft that dives directly at its targets in order to provide greater accuracy for the bomb it drops. Diving towards the target simplifies the bomb's trajectory and allows the pilot to keep visual contact throughout the bomb run. This allows attacks on point targets and ships, which were difficult to attack with conventional level bombers , even en masse . After World War II ,
2376-552: The 'Bat' and its earlier variant, the 'Pelican' . The longer-range Bat used an active radar seeker and was used in the Pacific on August 13, 1944, but could not distinguish between targets in a cluttered environment and could be easily spoofed by even simple radar countermeasures. Only four examples of an experimental glide bomb, the ' Pratt-Read LBE ', were produced. After the war, the increasing sophistication of electronics allowed these systems to be developed as practical devices; from
2475-478: The Battle of Britain (July to October 1940). Losses were such that the Luftwaffe rapidly withdrew Stukas from operations over the United Kingdom. A similar fate befell unescorted RAF Fairey Battles over France. The Stuka had 7.92mm machine guns or 20mm cannons mounted in the wings. Some were modified to destroy tanks with heavy calibre, 37mm Bordkanone BK 3,7 autocannons mounted in gun pods below
2574-519: The Battle of the Coral Sea , and fought in every US battle involving carrier aircraft. An alternative technique, glide-bombing, allowed the use of heavier aircraft, which faced far greater difficulties in recovering from near-vertical approaches, though it required greater use of sophisticated bombsights and aiming techniques, by a specialised member of aircrews, namely a bombardier/bomb aimer . The crews of multi-engined dive-bombers, such as variants of
2673-702: The Douglas A-20 Havoc , first flying in January 1939, for a similar role, although originally ordered by France. Many were also supplied to the Soviet Air Force, which also used the Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik ground-attack aircraft in huge numbers. None of these were dive bombers. No Allied air force operated a modern dive bomber at the outbreak of the Second World War, although both the Royal Navy and
2772-519: The European theater against these weapons. While early models proved inadequate, by the time the Allies were preparing for the invasion of France in 1944 more capable systems were deployed, and the success rate of guided weapons declined considerably. Even more important to the defeat of the weapons was Allied command of the airspace and the interception of incoming bombers by Allied fighter aircraft. The Hs 293
2871-554: The Fairey Swordfish from 1936 and Blackburn Skuas from November 1938. The Skua had a secondary function of intercepting attacks by unescorted long-range bombers. With four .303 Browning guns and another rear-facing gun, it was expected to defend against air attack with a top speed of 225 mph (362 km/h) at sea level, which was a low-altitude speed comparable with other navies' carrier borne fighters in 1938–39. The Royal Navy's dedicated, pre- and early-war, fleet fighter
2970-589: The Hs 293D models. The use was problematic – as the bomb approaches the target, even tiny amounts of control input would cause the target to jump around the TV display, so much of the difficulty was in developing control systems that would become progressively less sensitive as the pilot required. A wire-guided version was also developed, but this Hs 293B variant was never deployed. In 1939 Sir Dennistoun Burney and Nevil Shute Norway , worked together on an air-launched gliding torpedo,
3069-523: The Junkers Ju 87 Stuka , which was widely used during the opening stages of World War II , the Aichi D3A "Val" dive bomber, which sank more Allied warships during the war than any other Axis aircraft, and the Douglas SBD Dauntless , which sank more Japanese shipping than any other allied aircraft type. The SBD Dauntless helped win the Battle of Midway , was instrumental in the victory at
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3168-489: The Junkers Ju 88 and Petlyakov Pe-2 , frequently used this technique. The heaviest aircraft to have dive-bombing included in its design and development, the four-engined Heinkel He 177 , also utilised a glide-bombing approach; the requirement that the He 177 be able to dive/glide-bomb delayed its development and impaired its overall performance. Dive bombing was most widely used before and during World War II; its use declined during
3267-520: The Nazi party , he became the development director of the Ministry of Aviation , where he pushed for dive bomber development. Dive bombing would allow a low-cost Luftwaffe to operate effectively in the tactical role. Against small targets, a single-engine dive bomber could achieve four times the accuracy at one tenth of the cost of a four-engine heavy bomber, such as the projected Ural bomber , and it could reach
3366-571: The Oise River to block rapidly advancing German armour. Stukas quickly broke the defences, and the Wehrmacht forced a crossing long before German artillery arrived. On 12/13 May 1940, Stukas flew 300 sorties against strong French defensive positions at the Battle of Sedan . This enabled German forces to make a fast and unexpected breakthrough of the French lines, eventually leading to the German advance to
3465-579: The Royal Flying Corps (RFC) found its biplane two-seat bombers insufficiently accurate in operations on the Western Front . Commanders urged pilots to dive from their cruising altitude to under 500 ft (150 m) to have a better chance of hitting small targets, such as gun emplacements and trenches. As this exposed the aircraft and crew to destructive ground fire in their unprotected open cockpits, few followed this order. Some recorded altitude at
3564-459: The Royal Navy ships they were attacking. By 1941, accurate bombing was as difficult as ever, with the added problem of evading anti-aircraft fire. The German solution was the development of a number of glide bombs employing radio control guidance. One was created by fitting a control package on the rear of an otherwise standard bomb, starting with their 1400 kg armor-piercing bomb to create
3663-455: The Ruhrstahl SD 1400 , commonly referred to as Fritz -X . This weapon was designed specifically to pierce the deck armor of heavy cruisers and battleships. The bomb aimer dropped the bomb from high altitude while the aircraft was still approaching the ship, and guided it to impact with the target by sending commands to spoilers attached to its rear. This proved to be difficult to do, because as
3762-506: The Wehrmacht 's lightly armed parachute and airborne troops. The invasion of Poland (September to October 1939) and the Battle of France (May to June 1940) saw the Stuka used to devastating effect. German blitzkrieg tactics used dive bombers in place of artillery to support highly mobile ground troops. The British Expeditionary Force had set up strong defensive positions on the west bank of
3861-505: The "Toraplane", and a gliding bomb, "Doravane". Despite much work and many trials the Toraplane could not be launched with repeatable accuracy and it was abandoned in 1942. The US Army Air Force started a wide-spanning development program of both glide bombs, known as "GB", and similar systems designed to fall more vertically, as "VG". Several models of both concepts were used in limited numbers during WWII. The first to be used operationally
3960-541: The 1960s air forces deployed a number of such systems, including the USAF's AGM-62 Walleye . Contrast seekers were also steadily improved, becoming very effective in the widely used AGM-65 Maverick missile. Both were standard systems until the 1980s when the development of laser guidance and GPS based systems made them unnecessary for all but the most accurate of roles. Various TV-based systems remain in limited service for super-accurate uses, but have otherwise been removed. In
4059-522: The 37 Salamanders produced before the end of October 1918, only two were delivered to France, and the war ended before those saw action. Whether the Salamander counts in more modern parlance as a fighter-bomber or as a dive bomber depends on the definition of "dive". It had armoured protection for the pilot and a fuel system to attack at low level, but lacked dive brakes for a vertical dive. Heavy casualties resulting from air-to-ground attack on trenches set
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4158-717: The Air Service United States Army , arranged tests with captured German and obsolete US ships in June and July 1921 and repeated over the next two years using Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5as as dive bombers and Handley Page O/400s and Martin NBS-1s as level bombers carrying bombs of different weights up to 2,000 lb (910 kg). The SMS Ostfriesland was sunk and so later were the USS Alabama , USS Virginia and USS New Jersey . Opposite conclusions were drawn by
4257-513: The C model with a conical warhead which was designed to hit the water short of the ship and then travel a short distance underwater to hit the ship below the waterline. The guidance system for the Hs 293 series was the same as the Fritz-X unpowered munition; it used a Funkgerät FuG 203 Kehl radio control transmitter with a single two-axis joystick in the deploying bomber, and an FuG 230 Straßburg receiver in
4356-555: The Channel and the cutting off of much of the Allied army. The skies over Sedan also showed the Stuka's weakness when met with fighter opposition; six French Curtiss H-75s attacked a formation of unescorted Ju 87s and shot down 11 out of 12 without loss. The Stuka was even more vulnerable to the Hawker Hurricane with its 100 mph (160 km/h) speed edge and eight machine guns, which it first met over France and then in larger numbers in
4455-516: The Luftwaffe. Udet was impressed with the Stuka's performance in Spain, so he ordered that the Junkers Ju 88 medium bomber should also be retrofitted as a dive bomber. He also insisted, against the advice of Ernst Heinkel , that the Heinkel He 177 bomber, ordered in November 1937, be able to dive bomb. Lack of a sufficiently powerful, reliable powerplant fatally compromised its utility, it never performed in
4554-493: The RAF and USAS, from two very different tests regarding the usefulness of dive bombers, with the RAF concluding that the cost in pilots was too high to justify the results and the USAS considering it as a potent anti-ship weapon. Both naval staffs opposed the view taken by the respective airmen. In 1919, United States Marine Corps (USMC) pilot Lt. L. H. Sanderson mounted a rifle in front of
4653-868: The RFC, which had been urging its pilots to drop bombs at heights below 500 ft (150 m) in order to hit within 150 ft (46 m) of the target since February 1915, was later that year. On 27 November 1915, Lieutenant Duncan Grinnell-Milne arrived in his Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2c over railway marshalling yards near Lys in Northern France, to find the target already crowded by other bombers. He dived from 10,000 ft (3,000 m) to 2,000 ft (610 m) before releasing his 20 lb (9.1 kg) bombs. A few weeks later, Lieutenant Arthur Gould dived to just 100 ft (30 m) to hit buildings near Arras. The Royal Flying Corps developed strafing with diving aircraft using both machine guns and small bombs as
4752-485: The Spanish Civil War. Several problems appeared, including the tendency of the fixed undercarriage to sink into soft ground and an inability to take-off with a full bomb load. Condor Legion 's experience in Spain demonstrated the value of dive bombers, especially on the morale of troops or civilians unprotected by air cover. The aircraft did not encounter opposing modern fighters, which concealed its vulnerability from
4851-599: The US Navy had shipboard dive bombers. On 10 April 1940, 16 British Royal Navy Blackburn Skuas flying at extreme range from the naval air station at Hatston in Orkney led by Lieutenant Commander William Lucy sank the German cruiser Königsberg in Bergen harbour, whilst trying to prevent the German invasion of Norway . On the German side Stukas augmented or replaced artillery support for
4950-405: The ability to fire directly up, so dive bombers were almost never exposed to fire from directly ahead. Dive brakes were employed on many designs to create drag which slowed the aircraft in its dive and increased accuracy. Air brakes on modern aircraft function in a similar manner in bleeding off excessive speed. It is difficult to establish how dive bombing originated. During World War I ,
5049-417: The aircraft can time the drop of its bombs at the instant when the target is lined up in the sight. This was only effective for "area bombing", however, since the path of the bomb is only roughly estimated. Large formations could drop bombs on an area hoping to hit a specific target, but there was no guarantee of success, and huge areas around the target would also be hit. The advantage to this approach, however,
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#17328695461215148-405: The aircraft levels out at the bottom of the dive are considerable. The drawback of modifying and strengthening an aircraft for near-vertical dives was the loss of performance. Aside from the greater strength requirements, during normal horizontal flight, aircraft are normally designed to return to fly straight and level, but when put into a dive the changes in forces affecting the aircraft now cause
5247-419: The aircraft to track across the target unless the pilot applies considerable force to keep the nose down, with a corresponding decrease in accuracy. To compensate, many dive bombers were designed to be trimmed out, either through the use of special dive flaps (such as Fairey Youngman flaps ) or through changes in tailplane trim that must be readjusted when the dive is completed. The Vultee Vengeance , which
5346-454: The airframe components to detach from the torpedo which would then enter the water and continue towards its target. Guidance signals were to be transmitted through a thin copper wire, and guide flares were to be carried to help control. Siemens-Schuckertwerke was already occupied with remote controlled boats (the FL-boats or Fernlenkboote ), and had some experience in this area. Flight testing
5445-516: The anti-ship role, direct attack from an aircraft even at long range became more dangerous due to the deployment of anti-aircraft missiles on ships. Weapons such as the Bat had ranges too short to keep the attacking aircraft out of range, especially in a force provided with air cover. This was addressed with the introduction of small jet engines that greatly extended the range, producing the anti-shipping missile class that remains widely used today. Similarly,
5544-482: The basis for the blitzkrieg tactics of using dive bombers with tanks employed by the Germans in 1939–40. Second Lieutenant William Henry Brown , a Canadian from British Columbia serving with the RFC and flying a Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5a , made the first attack on a vessel on 14 March 1918, destroying an ammunition barge on a canal at Bernot near St Quentin, diving to 500 ft (150 m) to release his bombs. He
5643-550: The battlefield well ahead of field artillery. Soon the Luftwaffe issued a contract for its own dive bomber design, resulting in the Junkers K 47 , which, following extensive trials, would in turn result in the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka (a contraction of Sturzkampfflugzeug , literally 'diving combat airplane'). Several early Junkers Ju 87 dive bombers, which first flew on 13 September 1935, were shipped secretly from Germany to Spain to assist General Francisco Franco 's Nationalist rebels in
5742-419: The bomb dropped toward the target it fell further behind the launch aircraft, eventually becoming difficult to see. This problem was solved by having the launch aircraft slow down and enter a climb to avoid overtaking the bomb as it fell. In addition it proved difficult to properly guide the bomb to impact as the angle of descent changed, and if the bomb was not aimed accurately so as to end up roughly right over
5841-430: The bomb to accelerate after it is dropped. The combination of these two forces, drag and gravity, results in a complex pseudo- parabolic trajectory . The distance that the bomb moves forward while it falls is known as its range. If the range for a given set of conditions is calculated, simple trigonometry can be used to find the angle between the aircraft and the target. By setting the bombsight to this "range angle",
5940-526: The bomb was taken out of service. Glide bomb World War II -era glide bombs like the German Fritz X and Henschel Hs 293 pioneered the use of remote control systems, allowing the controlling aircraft to direct the bomb to a pinpoint target as a pioneering form of precision-guided munition . Modern systems are generally self-guided or semi-automated, using GPS or laser designators to hit their target. The term " glide bombing " does not refer to
6039-545: The bombs for aircraft they were shooting down, claiming over 90 kills. Due to the inaccuracy the bombs demonstrated, the Eighth Air Force did not use the glide bombs again; however other units would go on to use over a thousand GB-1s before the end of the war. During the war, variants of the GB-1 using a contrast seeker for anti-shipping use (GB-5, GB-12), heat seeking (GB-6), semi-active radar homing (GB-7), radio command guidance (GB-8), television guidance (GB-10),
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#17328695461216138-460: The dive bomber role, and the requirement was eventually dropped. Some 23 Breda Ba 65s were flown by Italian pilots also in support of Nationalist forces. First flown in 1935, it was a single-seat dive bomber carrying the same bomb load as the Stuka with a 30 mph (48 km/h) speed advantage in level flight. As the Royal Navy again took control of the Fleet Air Arm , it began to receive
6237-602: The end of the war. Colonel, later general, Billy Mitchell arrived in France with the first US Army and Air Force units soon after 6 April 1917 and began to organise the US Army Air Force flying French Salmson 2s , a spotter plane. The later Salmson 4 was to be a ground attack and dive bomber, but production was cancelled at the end of the war. Mitchell became a strong advocate of dive bombers after witnessing British and French aerial attacks. Mitchell, by now assistant chief of
6336-428: The first operational glide bombs were developed by the Germans as an anti-shipping weapon. Ships are typically very difficult to attack: a direct hit or an extremely near miss is needed to do any serious damage, and hitting a target as small as a ship was difficult in this period. At first dive bombers were used with some success in this role, but their successes were countered by ever-increasing anti-aircraft defenses on
6435-459: The guidance package mounted to standard 500 kg bombs was tested in September 1940. It was found that the bomb was unable to penetrate a ship's armor, so changes were made to fit an armor-piercing warhead before the system finally entered service in 1943. The basic A-1 model was the only one to be produced in any number, but developments included the B model with a custom armor-piercing warhead, and
6534-759: The highest casualty-rate during training of any USAAF aircraft and was officially restricted to no more than a 70-degree dive. The Apache did not fly with the RAF, but served with US squadrons in Sicily, Italy and, by late summer of 1943, was based in India for use over Burma and China. It proved to be an excellent dive-bomber and a good fighter: one ace in Italy shot down five German fighters. The Royal Navy's Fairey Swordfish and Fairey Albacore torpedo-dive bombers and Blackburn Skua fighter-bombers were replaced by Fairey Barracuda torpedo-dive bombers, which made repeated diving attacks on
6633-544: The increased casualties from ground fire. Again, the angle of dive in these attacks was not recorded. Beginning on 18 June 1918, the Royal Air Force (RAF), successor to the RFC, ordered large numbers of the Sopwith TF.2 Salamander , a single-seat biplane. The "TF" stood for "Trench Fighter", and the aircraft was designed to attack enemy trenches both with Vickers .303 machine guns and with 25 lb (11 kg) bombs. Of
6732-474: The main forces with Panzers to smash enemy strong points without waiting for the horse-drawn artillery to catch up. It was central to the concept of Blitzkrieg , which required close co-ordination between aircraft and tanks by radio. The RAF had chosen the single-engined Fairey Battle and the twin-engined Bristol Blenheim as its tactical bombers. Both were level bombers with similar bomb-loads and entered service in 1937. The US Army Air Corps (USAAC) adopted
6831-604: The minds of senior officers in the newly formed RAF against dive bombing. So not until 1934 did the Air Ministry issue specifications for both land-based and aircraft carrier -based dive bombers. The RAF cancelled its requirement and relegated the Hawker Henley dive bomber to other roles, while the Fleet Air Arm's Blackburn Skua was expected to do double duty: as a fighter when out of reach of land-based fighter support, and as
6930-444: The munition. Following the capitulation of Italy in 1943, Germany damaged the Italian battleship Italia and sank the Roma with Fritz-X bombs. Attacks were also made on the USS Savannah , causing much damage and loss of life. HMS Warspite was hit by three Fritz-X, and although casualties were few, the ship had to be towed to Malta for repairs and was out of action for six months. The cruiser USS Philadelphia
7029-410: The need to attack well-defended targets such as airbases and military command posts led to the development of newer generations of glide bombs. European air forces use a glide package with a cluster bomb warhead for remotely attacking airbases. Laser and GPS guidance systems are used. [REDACTED] Media related to Glide bombs at Wikimedia Commons Glide bombing A dive bomber
7128-519: The problems of inaccuracy were amplified by the fact that the target could be moving, and could change its direction between the time that the bombs were released and the time that they arrived. Successful strikes on marine vessels by horizontal bombers were extremely rare. An example of this problem can be seen in the attempts to attack the Japanese carriers using B-17s at altitude in the Battle of Midway , with no hits scored. The German battleship Tirpitz
7227-517: The rise of precision-guided munitions and improved anti-aircraft defences —both fixed gunnery positions and fighter interception—led to a fundamental change in dive bombing. New weapons, such as rockets, allowed for better accuracy from smaller dive angles and from greater distances. They could be fitted to almost any aircraft, including fighters , improving their effectiveness without the inherent vulnerabilities of dive bombers, which needed air superiority to operate effectively. A dive bomber dives at
7326-668: The system was easy to use, at least against slow-moving targets. The Hs 293 was first used operationally in the Bay of Biscay against RN and RCN destroyers, sloops and frigates. Its combat debut was made on August 25, 1943, when the sloop HMS Bideford was slightly damaged by a missile which failed to fully detonate, but killed one crewman. Another sloop, HMS Landguard , survived a near miss with slight damage. The Germans attacked again two days later, sinking HMS Egret on August 27, 1943; they also seriously damaged HMCS Athabaskan . Over one-thousand Allied soldiers died on 25 November 1943 when
7425-419: The target ship HMS Centurion . Tests against a stationary target showed an average error of 49 yd (45 m) from a release height of 1,300 ft (400 m) and a dive angle of 70 degrees. Tests against a manoeuvring target showed an average error of 44 yd (40 m) from a drop height of 1,800 ft (550 m) and a dive angle of 60 degrees. The Fairey Albacore was also designed to act as
7524-425: The target visible, but true dive bombers have not been a part of military forces since the start of the jet age. When released from an aircraft, a bomb carries with it the aircraft's trajectory. In the case of a bomber flying horizontally, the bomb will initially only be travelling forward. This forward motion is opposed by the drag of the air, so the forward motion decreases over time. Additionally, gravity causes
7623-458: The target, there was little that could be done at later stages to fix the problem. Nevertheless, the Fritz X proved useful with crews trained on its use. In test drops from 8,000 m (26,000 ft), experienced bomb aimers could place half the bombs within a 15 m (49 ft 3 in) radius and 90% within 30 m (98 ft 5 in). Design work started as early as 1939, and a version of
7722-456: The target; most "spun in and exploded 15 miles from the target... many of the batteries failed to hold [their] charge"). More advanced models in the GB series included the television guided GB-4 , GB-5 , GB-12 , and GB-13 , which used contrast-seekers for anti-ship use, and the command-guided GB-8 , ' Azon ', ' Razon ', as well as the infrared-guided 'Felix' . US Navy glide bombs included
7821-503: The top and bottom of their dive in log books and in squadron records, but not the steepness of the dive. It was certainly not near-vertical, as these early aircraft could not withstand the stresses of a sustained vertical dive. The Royal Naval Air Service was bombing the Zeppelin sheds in Germany and in occupied Belgium and found it worthwhile to dive onto these sheds to ensure a hit, despite
7920-470: The training of mechanics. The Japanese introduced the Aichi D3A Val monoplane as a successor to the biplane Aichi D1A in 1940, with trials aboard the carriers Kaga and Akagi . It was to prove a potent weapon against surface ships. Only the Wehrmacht learned from the Battle of Cambrai (1917) in using dive bombers in conjunction with tanks. The writings of Britain's Colonel J. F. C. Fuller ,
8019-465: The use of glide bombs, but a style of shallow-angle dive bombing . In October 1914, Wilhelm von Siemens suggested what became known as the Siemens torpedo glider , a wire-guided flying missile which would essentially have comprised a naval torpedo with an attached airframe. It was not intended to be flown into a target, but rather at a suitable altitude and position, a signal would be transmitted, causing
8118-582: The use of the Aldis gunsight , which had been invented in 1916 to aid pilots to calculate the deflection required to hit a traversing enemy aircraft. In principle, it obviated the need for a vertical dive. The results showed that a vertical dive into the wind sighting along the top of rather than through the sight was best. But they were not considered good enough to justify the expected casualties. The Royal Air Force, which took over both army and naval aviation in April 1918, retired its Sopwith Salamander dive bombers at
8217-471: The visual or radio links to the guided weapons. Smoke was used to hide ships at anchor. Allied aircraft also attacked the home bases of the special German units equipped with these weapons, primarily ( Gruppen II and III of Kampfgeschwader 100 and Gruppe II of Kampfgeschwader 40 ). American, British and Canadian scientists also developed sophisticated radio jammers to disrupt the guidance signal. Ultimately nine different jamming systems were deployed in
8316-407: The war, when its vulnerability to enemy fighters became apparent. In the post-war era, this role was replaced with a combination of improved and automated bombsights , larger weapons and even nuclear warheads that greatly reduced the need for accuracy, and finally by precision guided weapons as they became available in the 1960s. Most tactical aircraft today allow bombing in shallow dives to keep
8415-566: The windshield of his Curtiss JN-4 (a training aircraft) as an improvised bomb sight , loaded a bomb in a canvas bag attached to the aircraft's underside, and made a solo attack in support of USMC troops trapped by Haitians during the United States occupation of Haiti . Sanderson's bomb hit its target and the raids were repeated. During 1920, Sanderson familiarised aviators of USMC units on the Atlantic coast with dive bombing techniques. Dive bombing
8514-686: The wings. They were very successful in this role in the early days (1941) of Operation Barbarossa before the Red Army Air Force countered with modern fighters, such as the Yakovlev Yak-1 and later the Yakovlev Yak-3 . The most successful dive-bomber pilot, Hans-Ulrich Rudel , made 2,530 sorties. He contributed to the sinking of the Soviet battleship Marat at Kronstadt on 23 September 1941 using 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) bombs. Later, flying
8613-458: Was 20 miles (32 km). Selected for production over the competing GB-2 and GB-3 due to its simpler control system and its proving more practical for bomber carriage, production of the GB-1 began in May 1943; arriving in the combat zone in September, operational use was delayed due to the limited bombload the glider imposed – a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber could carry only two GB-1s on a mission, one on
8712-568: Was also used during the United States occupation of Nicaragua . As aircraft grew more powerful, dive bombing became a favoured tactic, particularly against small targets such as ships. The United States Navy overcame its hostility to Mitchell's findings and deployed the Curtiss F8C Falcon biplane from 1925 on carriers, while the Marine Corps operated them from land bases as the Helldiver,
8811-566: Was also used in August 1944 to attack bridges over the Sée and Sélune at the southern end of the Cherbourg peninsula in an attempt to break US general Patton 's advance, but this mission was unsuccessful. A similar mission against bridges on the river Oder , designed to slow the Soviet advance into Germany, was made in April 1945 but failed. The Germans also experimented with television guidance systems on
8910-789: Was awarded the Military Cross for this and other exploits. Brown's technique was emulated by other British squadrons. But the heavy casualties to unprotected pilots cast a pall over the results and influenced RAF thinking for 20 years. The Royal Flying Corps was initially impressed with the potential of the dive bomber, but was aware of its suicidal nature. It ran a series of tests at the Armament Experimental station at Orfordness in Suffolk. Sopwith Camels and Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5as were used in early 1918 to dive bomb targets from various heights, with different bombs and with and without
9009-544: Was delayed when Hurricane development took priority. Just 200 were built and it was relegated to target towing. The RAF ordered the US-built Vultee A-31 Vengeance in 1943, but it, too, was similarly relegated to target towing after a brief operation period in secondary theatres. The Curtiss SBC Helldiver was a biplane dive bomber that had been taken aboard the USS ; Yorktown (CV-5) in 1934, but it
9108-449: Was mostly used by the RAF and RAAF in Burma, was designed to be trimmed for diving, with no lift to distort the dive. The drawback was that it flew nose up in level flight, increasing drag. Failure to re-adjust trim made the aircraft difficult or impossible to pull out of a dive. A dive bomber was vulnerable to low-level ground fire as it dived towards its target, since it was often headed in
9207-526: Was performed under the supervision of an engineer called Dorner from January 1915 onwards, using airships as carriers and different types of biplane and monoplane glider airframes to which a torpedo was fitted. The last test flight was performed on February 8, 1918. It was planned to use the Siemens-Schuckert R.VIII bomber as a carrier craft, but the Armistice stopped the project. During World War II,
9306-457: Was slow, at 234 mph (377 km/h). Fifty ex-US Navy examples were flown to Halifax, Nova Scotia , by Curtiss pilots and embarked on the French aircraft carrier Béarn in a belated attempt to help France, which surrendered while they were mid-Atlantic. Five airframes left behind in Halifax later reached the RAF, which quickly relegated them to the status of ground instructional airframes for
9405-428: Was subjected to countless attacks, many while in dock and immobile, but was not sunk until the British brought in enormous 12,000 lb (5,400 kg) Tallboy bombs to ensure that even a near miss would be effective. An aircraft diving vertically minimises its horizontal velocity component. When the bomb is dropped, the force of gravity simply increases its speed along its nearly vertical trajectory. The bomb travels
9504-412: Was that it is easy to build such an aircraft and fly it at high altitude, keeping it out of range of ground-based defences. The horizontal bomber was thus ill-suited for tactical bombing, particularly in close support. Attempts at using high-altitude bombing in near-proximity to troops often ended in tragedy, with bombs both hitting their targets and friendly troops indiscriminately. In attacking shipping,
9603-542: Was the Aeronca GB-1 , essentially an autopilot attached to a small glider airframe carrying a bomb. It was intended to allow the 8th Air Force bombers to drop their payloads far from their targets and thus avoid having to overfly the most concentrated areas of anti-aircraft artillery fire. It was first used on 28 May 1944 against the Eifeltor marshalling yard in Cologne , but only 42 of 113 bombs released reached anywhere near
9702-631: Was the Gloster Sea Gladiator . The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) Mitsubishi A5M and USN Grumman F3F were nominally faster than the Skua but this speed was achieved at much higher altitudes; at low altitudes the Skua was quite comparable in speed and was also better armed. The Swordfish was also capable of operating as a dive-bomber and in 1939 HMS Glorious used her Swordfish for a series of dive-bombing trials, during which 439 practise bombs were dropped at dive angles of 60, 67 and 70 degrees, against
9801-548: Was very slightly damaged by several near misses from Fritz-X bombs. The light cruiser HMS Uganda was also hit and put out of action for thirteen months as a result. A more widely employed weapon was the Henschel Hs 293 , which included wings and a rocket motor to allow the bomb to glide some distance away from the launch aircraft. This weapon was designed for use against thinly armored but highly defended targets such as convoy merchantmen or their escorting warships. When launched,
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