Improving the 'Graf Zeppelin' Aircraft Carrier - ship and class

yulzari

Zheng He said:
You are forgetting the Fairey Albacore in your assessment. It was designed with dive bombing capability and 821 and 826 Squadrons peformed the mission in a ground support role in the desert. This is the quote from Peter Smith's book - "Their accuracy in dive bombing was proverbial. Yet swamped by the numerically much greater effort put up by the RAF and ignored by the Admiralty, who were moved at one point to enquire to what extent they were being employed."
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and the Swordfish performed admirably in the dive bomber role supporting the Dunkirk perimeter defences.
 
marathag

marathag

Banned
Zheng He said:
Page 106 of Dive Bomber by Peter Smith talks about the dive bombing trials the RN did with the Swordfish:

https://books.google.com/books?id=KTmKAAAAQBAJ&q=swordfish#v=snippet&q=swordfish&f=false
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The big thing about any divebomber is to not past the VNE, the never exceed speed, so bits of the aircraft do not break off, to not overspeed the prop, the dive angle such that the bomb will not strike the prop, and the aircraft can pull out of the dive without:

Pilot Blackout from too many Gs
Wings or tail do not fail from stress
smacking into the surface

Stringbag has the advantage of even in a powerdive, has enough drag to keep the speed well under 300mph

One reason that the Vought Vindicator did so poorly was it didn't have real dive brakes, and needed to lower the landing gear for the drag. Too much Flap would blank the elevators, lessening their effectiveness to pulling out of the dive

Even with that, was easy to exceed VNE and the fabric covering would tear loose from the aft fuselage, si it was limited in practice to 40 degree dives
 
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