Why did the World War II Luftwaffe, the German Air
Force, as one of the only Air Forces - not talking about the Navies only the Air Forces -develop
dive bombers? I will tell you and just to put the obvious out of the way, it has nothing to do
with close air support. To explain all of this, I'm going to take you back in time and then I'm
going to start, by the end of the video, putting all those threads together and give you a good
rundown of why dive bombers were a very German occupation during World War II. Welcome back to
Military Aviation History, my name is Chris and I talk about all things air power. New videos every
Thursday on MAHD, Military Aviation History Day, so let's jump right into it. Why dive bombers? We
need to go into the 1930s, in fact you could argue we need to go into 1920s, but we will go into the
1930s instead. 1933, the Nazis take power and 1935 they unveil the Luftwaffe. Now by this point
in time the Luftwaffe has already built up a sort of conception of what it wants to do and it
puts all of this into a cohesive document 1936, which is called the L.Dv. or Luftwaffendienst -
or Druckvorschrift, depending on how you actually want to say it 16 (Sechszehn) Luftkriegsführung
- that's their official Doctrine. What goes into this document well we have to look at the
situation that we have in Germany at this point in time. I 1933 when Germany decides to build up
at the Armed Force again, it has no Air Force. It needs to build up an Air Force very quickly and
specifically it needs to get the numbers of air frames it has up to the point where it can can
theoretically at least combat its neighbors. In order to do this, it starts a massive reinvestment
program into the aviation industry which at this point has been progressing very clandestinely
and very much focused on single engine machines and trying to have some developments here
and there, abroad for example in Sweden and a little bit of stuff happening also in the
Soviet Union interestingly enough. But there is no real Air Force to draw upon, there's
also no industrial capacity to draw upon, so while you're trying to build up a lot of
aircraft into your Force you don't actually have the industry that can support that sort of
buildup. There's a massive reinvestment program that's happening but the industrial constraints
become very obvious very quickly. In the mid 1930s the Germans already know that even though there
have for example these aspirations of building up a bomber Fleet of four engine bombers, the
technical standards of the time in Germany as well as the industrial capacities simply
don't allow it. Now the Germans at this point in time definitely say that the bomber is the
key tool of an Air Force because it's the bomber that strikes the targets on the ground, it is
a very bomber focused Force until 1944 in fact however because they know that they can build
up this Fleet very very quickly and they also have the Manpower constraints in order to you
know faciliate the crewing of big machines, they start to think about ways to get around
this. At the same time what you also have are technological constraints not just in terms of,
for example engine technology - Germany does catch up very quickly in that regard - but there are
still some severe limitations in many ways because they haven't been really developing engines for
at least a decade and they've lost time. Other technical or technological constraint is Bomb
sights, bomb sights by the mid 1930s are really really bad and though by the time that World War
II comes around we have the Lobte 7, this is the German bomb sight as well as the Norden bomb
sight... you know in practice sessions these work really really well and that's also where the
reputation for example for the Norden bomb sight comes from however, once you actually put that
into an operational environment and you have to throw... you know as people are shooting at you,
as there's cloud cover and so on and so forth, the accuracy that you get is really not that good
and the Germans look at sort of this technical trajectory and they say well, bomb sights are not
going to give us really the accuracy that we need in order to destroy certain targets on the ground.
Not all Targets but certain Targets on the ground, and on top of that there's also the geopolitical
situation for Germany. Germany in the 1930s knows that is basically surrounded by Nations that it
eventually wants to take territory away from, because it, you know, the Nazis considered certain
territory for example in Czechoslovakia or in Poland German, so they know that there is going to
be an armed confrontation with these countries and there's also going to be like an AR confrontation
with France and the one thing that Germany always wants to avoid is a two front War because a
two front war is very very bad for a country like Germany. Primary adversaries that Germany
foresees for the future is Poland, well first of all Czechoslovakia then Poland and then France.
Britain does not compute for the Luftwaffe until about 1938 and even then it foresees you know that
an armed confrontation with Britain you know once that one that Germany is going to start is not
going to happen until the early 1940s So within that Continental War perspective what you need is
to knock out at least one adversary on either side of Germany as fast as possible so either you take
for example Poland out of the equation or you take France out of the equation because what they uh
Germany expected is that if there's a two- front War both sides would launch offensives at the same
time and Germany can only defend against one of them now that's not what happened but that's what
they assumed would happen we have all of that we have the need to build up an Air Force quickly
we have industrial and Manpower constraints we have the technological um technological
constraints of the time and then we have this uh need to knock out at least one adversary
quickly so the answer that Germany has is the doctrine F which I already talked about
in there you have three main elements you the luer wants to destroy the enemy Air Force
it wants to support the hair the Army on the ground its operations not in closed air support
mind you in interdiction missions and it wants to destroy the craft grillon or the sources of
power of the enemy country and in doing so it wants to have a decisive effect on the war a
kcks and Shin vong Like a war deciding effect which is interesting because at that point we're
already starting to see sort of this crystallis of air power a strategic effect uh which is very
different to the sort of this idea of just sending strategic bombers you want to have achieve effect
on the ground rather than Mount strategic raids if that makes sense now this Doctrine as you may
have already noticed is very Broad in fact there's for example historian chorum called it sort of
a compromise solution HS I believe said it is sort of a crystallization of all the different
theories that were out there and it's it's not really revolutionary it just says like well these
are the things that are out there and these are the things we can do and but however within Lu
F the Germans say we need to have a Shar point a center of gravity so the Shar point is going
to be the one where we focus our efforts at any given point in time in order to achieve strategic
effect now to achieve effect within thatare point and going back to the constraints that Germany
has you're seeing it's starting to come together here you have the discussion do you want to
have tonnage over Precision or do you want to have Precision over tonnage because at the time
that was basically your choice and Germany knows it can build enough bombers certainly not the big
ones it wants to but it can't just yet but at the same time it must ensure the rapid and a lasting
destruction of targets on the ground so how do you get as many bombs as closely as possible to the
Target to ensure that theu ction and how do you scale that to many targets and the answer to that
in of the Germans was well we're going to dive bomb in small formations and we're going to take
out specific Targets on the ground Point targets yeah pointa of deuts um and the area targets the
fle and sealer those are going to be the bombers but the dive bombers are going to do those pun
sealer the dive bomber in this sense is supposed to take out electric substations Bridges vital
parts of a factory you a specific building for example in a factory or it is supposed to take out
ships it is not supposed to take out tanks maybe large bunkers but even that's already a stretch
but it is really about having specific effect on a very small Target but which still has an area
that is not necessarily the size of a tank it has to be bigger than that okay h in fact in the
in the uh training regulations of the Jo 87 what we have is a target size that is being practiced
on and that is 50 by 50 m right so basically 100 ft by 100 ft which is quite big it's not a tank
size you can fit a lot of tanks in there so it's really about locating specific points on the
ground that you need to take out and within that the dive B is mainly meant to enhance the
capabilities of the bomber force is considered the sniper amongst the bombers the Sha shs un then
come fun and that tells you everything about how the Germans wanted to use them or conceptualized
the use of them and that is to get the most out of a small number of bombs delivered with high
Precision however Germany only builds about 350 ju 87s before the war starts uh 1949 when go into
Poland they have roughly 1,200 bombers and the bomber effort is their main effort and yes as
they you know fighting and as also to go into France and so on they start realizing well the
you know the dive bomber and the Precision it offers that always more and more closely ties it
into the operation of the army and eventually you go from this approach and the you know we're
in the 40s right now 42 43 we're going into this from this sort of strategic perspective
on the air War to the Tactical perspective of the air War however initially that was not the
case and it's really the initial period in 1930s that set out why the dive bombers were a thing and
there we go now the discussion you can have now is was this correct or was this wrong um you know
in hindsight it's it's very easy to uh to make judgment I would say that it's very interesting I
think that the Germans very early on put a strong emphasis on achieving strategic effect in their
theory of how they want to fight in the air war and I think this is overall speaking correct in
how air power is supposed to be used it has to be very dedicated targeted specifically employed
in order to support both operations on the ground or the war in its entirety and tactically
speaking or technologically speaking you can also see good reasons of why they went with this
approach however where Germany go wrong and this is you know the subject of another video entirely
where German goes wrong is that it is focusing too much in the end on delivering Precision in these
tactical missions and not enough or doesn't focus enough on providing these strategic conditions
where these actual operations that are then playing out on the Tactical level um can actually
uh play out in it becomes a re reactive defensive force that races from one flash point to the other
without ever creating the conditions to employ air power correctly um you know the air power matchup
is essentially lost in the West in you know late 1943 and in the East the LW hangs on depending on
how you want to qualify that statement maybe until late 1944 but that's a completely different beast
and a completely different video entirely so there we go that is why Germany goes with dive bombers
it has nothing to do with air support it has all everything to do with the initial conceptions of
how they're going to have to fight a war in the future with the restrictions that they had in
the 1930s and with this requirement to enhance the capabilities of the bomber Fleet by providing
a platform that can deliver within that time frame Precision strikes on dedicated fixed Target of a
small circumference if you want to know more about D bombers and you speak English you can uh by our
book on that Stuka the doctrine of the German dive bomber crowdfunded by all your Legends there of
in the military aviation history community and if you speak German you can also buy this from
our actually crowdfunded conference as well on the second world war there's five articles in
here about targets I mean tanks and one about close air support and the German uh development
of close air support during World War II written by your sincerely and uh yeah English German and
if you speak both you un luck thank you very much to all of you for listening and if you have any
questions or want to make any additions put them in the comments below big thank you to patrons
and channel members for sponsoring this Channel and as always I'll speak to you about air power
in the next one take care and see you let sky
