Why STUKA? Luftwaffe Dive-Bombing Explained

Why did Germany go with dive-bombers? While the Junkers Ju 87 is the quintessential "Stuka" from World War 2, what were the main motivations of the Luftwaffe to adopt a force of dive-bombers in the 1930s? Let me take you back in time and explore the discussions that resulted in the Luftwaffe of 1939.

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- Sources -

Boog, Horst, Die deutsche Luftwaffenführung 1935 – 1945 – Führungsprobleme, Spitzengliderung, Generalstabsausbildung, DVA 1982.

Corum, James, The Luftwaffe – Creating the Operational Air War 1918 – 1940, Lawrence 1997.

Diest, Wilhelm, "Die Aufrüstung der Wehrmacht" in Diest, Wilhelm et al. (Hrsg). Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg - Band 1, DVA 1979.

German Military Archive: Various (serious inquiries contact me).

Homze, Edward, Arming the Luftwaffe – The Reichs Air Ministry and the German Aircraft Industry, 1919-1939, Lincoln 1976.

Völker, Karl-Heinz, Die deutsche Luftwaffe 1933 – 1939 - Aufbau, Führung und Rüstung der Luftwaffe sowie die Entwicklung der deutschen Luftkriegstheorie, DVA Sttuttgart, 1967.

Wehner, Jens, Technik können Sie von der Taktik nicht trennen – Die Jagdflieger der Wehrmacht, Campus: 2022.

- Timecodes -
00:00 - Dive-Bombers
00:39 - Planning, Rearmament, Preparing For War
05:49 - Developing an Air War Plan
10:42 - Benefit of Hindsight

- Audio -
Music and Sfx from Epidemic Sound

[MildyHistorical]

The concept of dive bombing has a good bit of merit, but the idea of making your medium and heavy bombers capable of doing it is madness

[legoeasycompany]

I love how it basically boils down to "cost vs effect" like most other weapons. But I guess the propaganda bits later help in that too

[grizwoldphantasia]

I'll recommend that Stuka book. Lots of interesting aspects of how to attack, from what direction, altitude, and so on.

[MrDdaland]

I think you have to also consider the human factor- the major proponent of dive bombing was Ernst Udet- he was giving demonstrations on the technique in the early 30's. Whereas the strategic proponent at the time was Walther Wever- and he was never able to truly show what effect strategic bombing could achieve, being killed in a crash in 1936

[ulrichbehnke]

One of the most hazardous jobs you could have in this war.
Loss-rate was terrible.
The success of some aces make you oversee the fact that most pilots were young, inexperienced and soon dead.
They gave them drugs.

[stephenalexander]

In the Pacific the AAF had a hard time taking out several factories using the b29. The Navy started raids on the mainland using divebombers. In short order the divebombing destroyed several factories.

[bigtoad]

The USN and Japanese navy made good use of dive bombers. They played a huge role in the Pacific theater.

[wkelly]

A straightforward discussion on the rationale behind the dive bomber as influenced by the technical and material limitations of the time. How it figured into the whole Blitzkrieg concept seems to have been like rolling high stakes dice, as if betting on a band of sprinters to win an endurance race. If the knockout punch is not fully successful early on, you find yourself at a disadvantage quickly, at least in relative terms. Pardon my honest impressions, but I've never understood how either Germany or Japan, with their limited geographical size and resources, ever believed their war efforts would ultimately succeed. I'm glad it's history.

[jpk]

Chris, always informative and a great follow up to your book which I purchased.

[pandamilkshake]

Germany: "This! Behold our dive bomber, the Stuka!"
Japanese: "Oh that's neat! So here's ours, it's called the *Yokosuka MXY-7"*

[NoahsBox]

Hey, something I would love to hear about in future is the development and progression of avionics equipment during the war. It gets left out a lot but I think there's a lot of cool history there, and nobody talks about it.

[johannjohann]

The emphasis on bombers during WW II on both sides is a rather strange concept without the ability to place your bombs where you want or need to. Neither the allies nor Germany had very good bomb sites and the necessary amount of bombs needed to take out a single bridge was kinda crazy in those days, also causing a large amount of ancillary damage and deaths. There's just so many factors in trying to hit a target from a moving plane that having a single bomb from a Stuka that could hit its target was better than dozens of bombs from a large bomber aircraft hitting everything but your target. It really was a smart idea by the Germans to create the Stuka. Albeit a dangerous one for the pilot, it was effective. And scary.

[HypoceeYT]

This is a good and interesting video - I'd never thought about the prewar German analysis of the cost effectiveness of bombing, nor been aware that the Ju-87 wasn't originally, doctrinally intended for battlefield strike.

However, given the title, I was surprised *not* to see anything about the wider... seeming *obsession* with the tactic in other prewar and WWII German aircraft design. Sure, make the Ju-87! It's a great implementation of a great idea! But they stereotypically required that every bomber design, and some non-bombers, bolt on an ersatz "dive bombing" capability - which in practice delivered "practically level gentle glide bombing".

The Ju-88 is the star of this show.
Adding strength and equipment to the Heinkel 177 to pull out of a 60 degree dive, well, you could make the argument that given how badly they mismatched the strategic situation, anything that kept He-177s from getting built helped Germany overall.
Spending months adding useless racks and sights to the ME 262, at the time the purest interceptor in the world? Ultimately, A H be crazy - fortunately he was very bad at a lot of things and making aircraft development decisions is one of them.
But the Ju-88, which was conceived as defending itself through speed, but then got hacked up by the dive-bombing requirement into "only" a thoroughly decent bomber... I still recall a particular post :
alternatehistory dot communication
which ends with a pretty convincing argument that a Ju-88 which didn't have to pivot to dive-bombing would have been more capable and survivable, cheaper, started production much sooner, and been available in much greater numbers - a collection of changes that would, at minimum, have delivered an easy German victory in the Battle of Britain.

"Why did they try to make everything dive bomb?" might be a worthwhile future companion to this.

[DC.]

Excellent video, explaining the German military economic and technological constraints which lead it to their focus on dive bombing. Basically more accurate bangs for the buck. Interestingly the British MAP initially followed a similar strategy just look at the mad original specification for the Manchester and Halifax. Like the Heinkel 177 the Manchester was to dive bomb hence two engines and to be launched from a catapult, totally mad. Fortunately common sense took over, and they converted it to Lancaster with minimal impact on engineering machine tool requirements. I always wondered why Heinkel never did the same to get to the 277, quicker.

[Vtarngpb]

I think to build on your points from this video, OKW didn't fully expect the complete collapse of France in 1940, and were left with alot of aircraft that weren't operationally capable of achieving Seelowe (pretty sure this is somewhat proven, although it could always be argued). While maintaining operational success through the end of 1941, the lack of manpower in the east left the Luftwaffe trying to maintain local air superiority/local support to the Heer, and the increase in need for fighter cover in the West more or less left the Luftwaffe somewhat pidgeon-holed into continuing to maintain/develop these requirements, given the limited resources available(?). If any of you haven't subscribed to Christoph's Channel here, please do! He has been a great content producer over the years, and is a great person to follow!

[EdwardRLyons]

For a future video, perhaps you could do a comparison of the development of dive-bombing by the Americans, Japanese, and British.

[SNP-]

As was said above, dive bombing definitely had its merits, but the Luftwaffe high command took this basic rule to ridiculous heights when the four engine (two in tandem mounted engines) He 188 was expected to be used in this role ! The aircraft had enough teething problems without expecting such a large aircraft to complete near suicidal dive bombing on top !
The same story goes on with the Me 262 and many other Luftwaffe models being transformed into dive bombers somewhere along the way from planning to construction. It seems that nobody had the guts to point out to Hitler, Goering, Milch & Co. that the era of versatile bi- planes was over and that very few models could actually take the stress and strain of dive bombing, and attempting to strengthen unlikely aircraft to fit the Führer's mad wishes only prolongued production time in an arms race the Reich had already lost.

[teenybopper]

A very small correction - 50m x 50m is more like 150feet, not 100

[commandermudpie]

One of the last remaining Stukas is in the Chicago Museum of Science and Technology. I went there with my young German exchange student and said "Wow... that's a Stuka!"... and she didn't know what I was talking about... haha. I guess that is probably a good thing.

[romaliop]

I think if you consider that their strategic win condition was basically to have quick and decisive victories and avoid attrition wars, the dive bombers were a very important part of that equation. You cannot really execute the movement war doctrine if you cannot effectively disrupt enemy communications and movement.

It's just that once the nature of the war changed, the original concept behind the dive bombers was no longer relevant. The key point is, if they didn't have the dive bombers for the first part, would they ever even reach the point where the lack of heavy bombers becomes a key issue.