Stuka

Pride of the U. S. Army Air Corps is its secret bombsight, which is accurate for level-flight bombing at altitudes as high as 18,000 feet. Pride of the German Luftwaffe, apparently lacking an instrument of such uncanny accuracy, is a more primitive but certainly effective means of putting air projectiles down on the bull's-eye: dive bombing. Last week, from the Marne to the Scheldt, Nazi airmen in ungainly, single-motored Junkers Ju.87s were on the go from dawn to dusk, dropping out of the dazzling sun in near-vertical dives on docks, factories, ammunition dumps, railroad bridges--any target that could be knocked out with a hit from a heavy bomb. In news dispatches the word "Stuka" (Nazi elision for Sturzkampf-flugzeug--dive fighter) took on the connotation of "Cossack" in Tsarist days.

Some correspondents, recounting raids by machine gun and light bomb on roads crowded with refugees and military transport, charged them to Stuka squadrons because the name had grown pregnant with implications of Nazi frightfulness. These were, in most cases, raids by low-flying attack bombers which swept roads with machine-gun fire and bombs, depended on firepower, speed and whole sale demoralization for their getaway with a minimum of trouble from anti-aircraft fire.

A different kind of bird is the Stuka. Whereas attack bombers work on long targets over which they whisk at high speed--such as roads, crowded river fords, lines of marching men--dive bombers work on pinpoint objectives. Attack bombers rely on surprise and a paralyzing quick blow to cut down anti-aircraft resistance. Stuka pilots rely on their swift descent to avoid anti-aircraft shells, on quick pullouts and fast getaways to save their skins from machine-gun fire.

Germany's Stuka is an ugly, husky, single-motored monoplane with an upswept and backswept wing. Under its glass solarium are seats for pilot and gunner in tandem. On the wing's leading edge are two fixed machine guns, firing aft is another on a swivel mount, all primarily used for protection from enemy pursuit. The machine-gun sight in front of the pilot is also his bomb sight and, with no more complicated sighting equipment than that, he is able to make dive bombing as accurate as the U. S. Navy and its Curtis, O2C Hell Diver long ago (1928) proved it could be against seacraft. The only new aspect of Germany's dive bombing is that it is used to a large extent on land targets, supplementing and substituting for heavy artillery fire.

Each Stuka carries four 110-lb. or smaller bombs in racks on the wings, but its big wallop is packed under the fuselage: a 1,100-lb. or 550-lb. bomb on a rack that can be extended as the dive is begun. Reason for extension: bombs released in a dive pick up speed faster than the ship, have been known to poke their noses into the whirling prop and blow dive bomber and crew to bits. The extension guides the bomb out of the propeller's way.

No speedster, a Stuka pilot comes in over his target at a maximum of 242 miles per hour, rolls or turns into his dive. Riding a bellowing beast that can step up to 435 m.p.h. in a vertical dive if it gets its head, he has diving brakes (strips that can be extended perpendicular to the wing) to keep his speed down around 250 for accurate bombing and a comfortable pullout.

Dropping toward the target at an angle close to the vertical, he holds fire until he is at the optimum altitude--between 3,000 and 1,000 feet. As the bomb is released he pulls out, whisks off behind trees and hills, or zooms for altitude. Anti-aircraft men near the target have the best shot at him after he has flattened out and is going away. But when Stukas attack from flights or whole squadrons, coming in from half a dozen angles and dropping light and heavy bombs all around the target, an anti-aircraft man's job is tougher, a Stuka pilot's chances of getting away much better.

Correspondent William H. Stoneman of the Chicago Daily News saw a genuine Stuka attack on a French Channel port last fortnight, lived to tell the tale but not to forget its terrors:

"Days ago--we cannot say just when--two of us lived through the most terrifying experience of our lifetimes at the hands of the Luftwaffe. There was another night raid, this time by high-flying bombers, ending in a zooming* divebombing attack on the row of buildings in which we were living. As we stood on a little balcony trying to follow the droning planes overhead, the drone became a pounding roar, there was a shrill whistle of falling bombs, then three terrific detonations, 200 yards from us. The two of us just had time to see the blast of the shells, then we were blown back into the room by a hurricane of concussions."

* By "zooming" Correspondent Stoneman evidently refers to the sound of the diving planes. In air parlance a zoom is the opposite of a dive--a steep climb. Dive bombers do not zoom till after an attack, when they are leaving.

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