Nothing quite so nerve-rending, quite so demoralising, as the sight and sound of the Stuka

Theoretically, there is no target so easy to hit as a plane approaching directly head on; in practice, it never worked out that way. 

In the Arctic, the Mediterranean, the Pacific, the relative immunity of the torpedo-bombers, the high percentage of successful attacks carried out in the face of almost saturation fire, never failed to confound the experts. Tension, over-anxiety, fear—these were part of the trouble, at least; there are no half measures about a torpedo-bomber—you get him or he gets you. 

And there is nothing more nerve-racking—always, of course, with the outstanding exception of the screaming, near-vertical power-dive of the gullwinged Stuka dive-bomber—than to see a torpedo-bomber looming hugely, terrifyingly over the open sights of your gun and know that you have just five inexorable seconds to live… 

Any plane that hurtles down in undeviating dive on waiting gun emplacements has never a chance. Thus spoke the pundits, the instructors in the gunnery school of Whale Island, and proceeded to prove to their own satisfaction the evident truth of their statement, using A.A. guns and duplicating the situation which would arise insofar as it lay within their power. 

Unfortunately, they couldn‘t duplicate the Stuka. 

Unfortunately,“ because in actual battle, the Stuka was the only factor in the situation that really mattered. 

One had only to crouch behind a gun, to listen to the ear-piercing, screaming whistle of the Stuka in its near-vertical dive, to flinch from its hail of bullets as it loomed larger and larger in the sights, to know that nothing could now arrest the flight of that underslung bomb, to appreciate the truth of that. 

Hundreds of men alive today—the lucky ones who endured and survived a Stuka attack—will readily confirm that the war produced nothing quite so nerve-rending, quite so demoralising as the sight and sound of those Junkers with the strange dihedral of the wings in the last seconds before they pulled out of their dive.

**

I have recently finished reading (actually listening to the superb audiobook) of Alastair Maclean's HMS Ulysses. 

This was an absolutely superb war novel - Maclean's first, and written from personal experience - and (clearly) from the heart. 

The numerous characters are convincing and (mostly) empathic - including that rarest of types: a really good man; the situations are vividly and memorably described; the trajectory a stepwise (almost merciless!) cranking-up of power and horror. 

The above passages are vivid evidence of the unique ability of the Stuka, the best Axis dive-bomber - indeed the best "pure" dive bomber ever, in terms of accuracy; as a weapon in which the element of induced terror was so great as to lift its tactical effectiveness to another level beyond its mechanical capabilities.

Consequently; as an anti-shipping weapon; the Ju-87 destroyed more allied shipping than all other aircraft types put together.