DIVE-BOMBERS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20143, 12 January 1940, Page 2

DIVE-BOMBERS

ATTACKS ON SHIPS NECESSARY WEAPON HARD TASK OF DEFENCE There has been considerable interest taken in the bombing attacks of warships by Nazi airmen which up to date have been driven off. A special correspondent, however, writing in the Glasgow Herald, thinks that the test is still to come. He states:— “A warship’s anti-aircraft guns are not cbnfined to the type used on land. They include guns which distribute an intense fire covering every angle of approach, and the pilot who made a visible and level approach and attempted to bomb by the normal highaltitude precision method would be I going fairly near to committing suicide.

“Needless to add, this has been fully realised by the designers of military aircraft, and the counterweapon has been produced. Known as the dive-bomber, this aircraft and its. crew, two, are well equipped for the task of bombing military objectives which are likely to be powerfully defended. The warship comes into that category. “The dive-bomber has been acceptea by all the Great Powers as a necessary weapon, but by none more enthusiastically than Germany. Large numbers of these aircraft, of whicn the Junkers Ju 87 is an excellent example, have been produced from the Nazi factories, and it stands to reason that if any serious attempt were to be made to attack the British Fleet these are the aircraft which would be used. “Offering an exceptionally accurate method of bombing, they also make possible an entirely new approach to tile bombing problem, especially when the target is heavily armed and stoutly defended. As their name implies, they are capable of diving at great speed, and their final aiming dive, in complete control, can vary between 60 and 90 degrees. A Rapid Dive

“Such an angle of approach, combined with a speed far in excess of 400 m.p.h., which could be attained in the dive, would render extremely difficult the measured use of antiaircraft guns, particularly if the gun crews had been trained (as most oi them have) in shooting at high and level flying aircraft. “A small machine dropping from the clouds without warning on its target at an angle near the vertical, and at a speed approximate to seven miles a minute, would present nothing very concrete to shoot at. If a large number of these aircraft carried out the attack simultaneously all converging from different points on their objective, the task of the defence would be correspondingly greater.

“Would the warship remain defiant? German propagandists claim that it would not, ;their argument being brought to a ‘mathematical' conclusion on the basis that, while the losses of aircraft might be great, they would be worth the prize, and could be repaired much more quickly than the warship. “We can only await the final test when a full-scale attack is carried out under the most suitable weather conditions by large numbers of properly equipped aircraft, and, if possible, against a defence confined to the warship’s own anti-aircraft batteries. “Such a test would prove conclusively whether the warship is capable of self-defence, or whether it must rely on protection from the air. That would almbsi certainly be true in the case of merchant vessels, and would demand that they follow routes regularly patrolled by. fighter aircraft.”