I’ve often thought of Japanese Kamikaze planes as the first smart bombs because they used human pilots as the disposable electronics to guide the big weapon. But the dive bomber was the earlier version that sent a relatively small diameter bomb toward the target. The German Ju 87 Stuka made dive bombing famous—or perhaps infamous. More neutrally one could say it “most successfully exemplified” the World War II dive bomber. Will larger drones supplant the legendary small and cheap First-Person View (FPV) suicide drones to become the new Stuka?
The dive bomber put its bombs on a fuselage capable of diving at high speed while allowing the pilot to aim the bomb at the target prior to releasing the bomb to continue in the direction the plane had been pointed. The plane would then pull up from the dive and make its escape. Hopefully it didn’t pay the price for this accuracy by being shot down by anti-aircraft weapons in its low level and straight approach.
I saw a post on this comparison a year and a half ago:
Dive bombers were the first precision strike system. That's an excellent point. I've long thought of kamikaze planes as the first precision weapon, using human pilots because computerized sensors and controls were not yet available. Dive bombers were the same thing except that the pilots were supposed to survive and fight again by releasing the projectile at the target. You could say something similar about the torpedo plane that actually had to get suicidally close to the target before releasing their self-propelled projectiles.
I’m glad I searched to give credit since I’d forgotten reading that article. Do read it all. I don’t believe I consciously made the link between smart bombs and dive bombers—as opposed to seeing Kamikaze planes like that—until that author pointed it out. And he traced the practice to the British in 1914.
The German Stuka was born when a top German pilot experienced the capabilities of the American Curtiss-Wright Helldiver in 1933 at the company’s test airfield. He purchased two to send to Germany. The accuracy versus vulnerablity was well recognized. But despite divided opinions, development of the Stuka went forward.
Germany’s intervention in the Spanish Civil gave Germany the chance to test its new airplanes and tactics with the Condor Legion. Just three Stukas were sent to support the Nationalist side, but along with more numerous (16) Hs 123 A-1 biplane dive bombers, they proved the tactic worked on the accuracy issue. The Stuka arrived late in the war, optimized for “a close support weapon which largely replaced artillery during an advance” and used for “breaching fortifications or against individual strong points[.]”
The Germans began World War II with 335 Stukas. In Poland during late 1939 the planes proved deadly accurate and faced little opposition in the air or from ground-based air defenses to exploit their vulnerability achieving that accuracy. The Stuka exploited the gap between its weakness and enemy ability to exploit the weakness.
The German advance through the Low Countries into France in early 1940 would be supported by 380 Stukas. German air attacks on enemy airfields quickly provided air superiority clearing the path for the Stukas. The “B class” mostly elderly reservist French troops on the Meuse River line had their still-incomplete fortifications pummeled; and their morale suffered under the bombardment and the whistling, accurate bombs that telegraphed their lethality. Anti-aircraft gunners had not yet learned to shoot back rather than dive for cover.
While the Stukas had to shift forward daily to keep up with the German armor that raced past the Meuse into France, they were more than able to provide fire support to the tips of the armored spear that did not face serious ground resistance, let alone adequate air defenses. The British air defense of the Dunkirk bridgehead from air fields in Britain first exposed the limits of German air power when effectively resisted. The Stukas suffered particularly heavy losses among the German aircraft.
The Stuka excelled in a war of movement with the range (barely, it was short-legged and had to shift to keep up at times) and accuracy to support fast-moving armored columns that had broken through enemy lines while outrunning artillery support; and where enemy anti-aircraft weapons would not be dense enough to thwart the vulnerable Stukas in their dives and recoveries.
The Stuka would have successes and setbacks in the next two years. But the plane was fast using up the advantage of the gap between its vulnerabilities and enemy defenses.
But of course, this was an anti-ship weapon, too. At the Battle of Midway, it was the American Dauntless dive bombers that smashed the core of Japan’s carrier fleet when the high-flying level bombing (massed area bombing), glide bombing (semi-precision, necessitated by lower pilot skill), and torpedo bombers (slow precision) failed.
The simple physics makes the dive bombing tactic viable even today. As the initial linked article notes:
IN THE AGE of smart glide bombs and missiles, air forces and navies still practice delivering old-fashioned “dumb” bombs in a steep dive, much like they did during the Second World War. Why is this? Because dive bombing remains the most accurate way to hit a moving or stationary target with an unguided bomb.
Eventually, the Stuka faded in that role as ground-based air defenses grew to cope with the known vulnerability of the plane diving to drop the bomb at low altitude over the enemy and then make its escape. I think cheap FPV drones will fade into one more part of the combined arms kit as counter-measures deny them the easy pickings they’ve enjoyed in the void of defenses. We could get to the point where no number of cheap drones can penetrate mature defenses that have not been degraded by other means in a combined arms effort. The small drones will need to get larger and more expensive to cope with expanding defenses in depth.
FPV suicide drones evolved in Ukraine from the first small drones that would hover and drop grenades into open hatches of Russian armored vehicles. That worked for a while. Could small suicide FPV drones see part of their role migrate to larger dive-bombing drones that use cheap dumb bombs just as their World War II brethren pioneered? Without human pilots they may be able to jink and evade in ways human pilots couldn’t manage prior to dropping the bomb. Being reusable would make up for the increased cost. And if lost to ground defenses? At least a pilot isn’t killed.
Further, unlike the small, cheap FPV suicide drones with short ranges (and which I think have an outsized role in part because of the ground stalemate rather than being the cause of ground stalemate), larger dive bomber drones would have the range to support armored forces that penetrate enemy defenses.
Who makes the first reusable dive bomber drone?
NOTE: I found the GIF on some Chinese news site that I forget now. And I relied on my discussion of the Stuka on Condor Legion and Luftwaffe from my large and well-worn collection of Ballantine’s Illustrated History of the Violent Century.
The thumbnail is by Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J16050 / CC-BY-SA, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7177210