I have a copy of the first edition English edition of Rudel's book and in that he describes two instances where he jettisoned his undercarrage. He does not make a big deal of it just says " ..then I jettisoned my wheels.." or words to that effect.

Last week was the first time I managed to get through the whole book with out giving up because of the translation - Not that my German is any good I found it a fascinating portrait of a totally focussed pilot and officer. No casual "Tally Ho chaps" attitude there!

Also injteresting is his statement that he was still flying Ju 87s right into the last months of the war - something I dod not previously realise.

Bat

[This message has been edited by Bateleur (edited 07-19-2002).]

Hey Bat.

Somewhere in there the Man became an ace in the FW-190. I could find only a couple of passing mentions of his flying the type, and no mentions of combat in it. He finished the war with 11 kills, I believe, some in the Stuka.

I would love to get the particulars on this, as I can find no literature on this, only that he flew it.

RE: Stuka pilots' bravery.

I read somewhere that in the formative years of the LW the ground attack pilots were the elite and most carefully selected. The LW was always designed as a tactical air force, with an emphasis on ground attack. So Galland and his buddies were considered 2nd rate by LW standards

ra

Ju-88 indeed was designed to be able to dive bomb from the prototype V-3 onwards. If you follow the Ju-88's from the outside view when they dive bomb you can see the dive breaks extending (in the lower surface of the wing, on the far side of the engines. And it can be said that Ju-88 was a better dive bomber than stuka, already on the basis of the payload (for example 2x1000kg bombs) and range, not to mention better survivability.

What comes to the automatic pull out feature, I think people have a bit wrong idea of it. First of all, both 87 and 88 had the excatly same system. In short, it works like this: Pilot presses the Sturtzflugautomatik (diving automatic) button which lowers the dive-breaks sets the trim and limits stick pull to 5'. When bomb is released everything is restored to what it was, causing the nose to rise into normal attitude (with the help of the pilot).


-jippo

From what I read, the system was used on the Ju-88. But on the Stuka however, pilots preferred to override it in order to release the bomb at lower altitude or in chase of strong flak, dive without dive brakes. Most Stukas actually had it removed in the field and later ones were delivered without it.

Actually bomb is released when pilot pushes the bomb release button. This then activates the "pull-out". You may be referring to the horn that sounded when the drop altitude was reached, and it may be that pilots disregarded the horn and dove lower to get more accurate hits. This doesn't take away the planes tendency to lift its nose when dive breaks are pulled up.

Ju-88 had in addition somekind of system that levelled the plane automatically, but that is different system to Sturzflugautomatik.


-jippo

Hi Corvid,

>Apparently, according to "Wings", an attempted landing with only one strut would be a disaster.

I think this might be a slight misunderstanding. A landing a single gear leg wouldn't usually have catastrophic results, but a forced landing on unprepared terrain would most likely flip the landing aircraft over on its back, with grave consequences.

(The Zero captured by US forces on the Aleutians had killed its pilot that way, else he'd certainly have set the plane on fire to destroy it. A more recent exmaple is the "Black 6" accident - in which the pilot fortunately wasn't harmed!)

Therefore, it was standard procedure with retractable-gear aircraft to leave the gear in when landing on any unprepared surface. The Stuka of course had a fixed gear so there was no way of conducting a safe landing under these conditions (except getting rid of the gear somehow).

I'm not sure when the jettison feature was introduced, but one explanation I read is that it was inspired by the projected carrier-capable Stuka variant, when water landings were examined.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

Ho Hun,

I am not familiar with the "Black Six" incident... what was?

Corvid

IIRC a 109 overshot the runway and flipped on its back at an airshow in the UK in 1997.

I believe it has been restored but is considered too valuable to be flown again

Anyone have a link? There was an earlier thread relating to this, but I can't find it.

------------------
"New Zealand troops may not salute you, but if you wave at them they'll wave back!" - NZ's general Freyberg to English officers in North Africa.

HardBall !
I think you refer to the "Black 6"'s enginefailure/forced landing. I think it's been rebuild to static display.
Happy Landings
Benny