Curiosity re Stuka Landing Gear

From the "Discovery Wings" program two days ago. The Stuka landing gear struts carried small explosive charges at their attachment points in order to allow the detachment of the remaining strut if the other strut were shot off. Apparently, according to "Wings", an attempted landing with only one strut would be a disaster. More safe with no struts at all. Practical engineering.

Probably everyone knew this already but I thought I would mention.

Corvid: (addicted to History Channel, need twelve step program)

I didn't know this, thanks...

Peter

Nope, didn't know that, interesting info.

Will we get this modelled in IL-2?

I know that for the naval version of the ju 87 the one made for the german aircraft carrier, but not for standar ju87

According to my new book, the jettisonable landing gear was in the C carrier version and was suppose to be introduced in the D series. However, the explosive bolts never worked properly. Most Stuka pilots who had to belly land really "razed off" the struts utilizing trees or rocks
Stuka pilots were no cowards, apparently

Hum, is why it is so easy to blow the leg off the '87, one has hit the exposives.



[This message has been edited by KraziKanuK (edited 07-18-2002).]

In the book "Aces Against Germany: The American Aces Speak, Volume II" there's an account entitled "Seven Stukas" about a mission flown on October 9th, 1943 in the Italian theatre by P-38 pilot Major Bill Leverette.

In it, he describes a mauling, with himself bagging 7 Stukas and in turn being awarded the DSC. The only American to score more in a single mission was Cmdr. David McCampbell with 9 in the Pacific.

Another pilot in Leverette's formation was credited with 5 Stukas. Altogether the American pilots were credited with 16 Stukas and a Ju-88 that was trailing the dive bombers.

Anyway, back to the point...

An excerpt: "Before we could get within range of the Stukas, several of them made dive-bombing runs on the British warships. At least one hit was scored on a destroyer, which broke in two and sank immediately.

As we closed on the Stukas--it was about 1215-- I told Lieutenant Blue to hold up his flight momentarily in case there were more enemy aircraft, possibly fighters, following the Stukas. With my flight I immediately closed on the rear quarter of the Stuka formation. The obvious plan of attack was to get in close to the Stukas and clobber them with short, accurate bursts from our .50 caliber machine guns.

Before the Germans knew we were there, I attacked the nearest airplane ahead of me. I fired a short burst with the .50s from about 20 degrees. Smoke poured from the left side of the Stuka's engine.

The Stuka pilots who still had bombs jettisoned them as soon as the shooting started. Several of my pilots also reported later that a number of Stukas jettisoned their fixed landing gear as well."


[This message has been edited by DBond (edited 07-18-2002).]

There were probably very few pilots in any of the combatants air arms that would have been cowards. Some were probably crazy.. after a time.. with the knowledge that I would be fighting until wars end (how long?) or until I was killed... well, I figure that I would be a bit off kilter myself.

To borrow a line from "Band of Brothers"...

"Once you get the understanding that you're already dead you won't have any worry or fear."

Or it could be as simple as the statement from one of the first to fly the Merlyn P51 in combat (was it Don Gentile???)... "I seen my duty and I done it".

My hats off to all of them.

(this probably should have been posted in the "How a Fighter Pilot Feels" thread... but I guess all of the threads eventually come to the awful wonderment of it all.

Corvid

Corvid, of course you're right

But from what I read, Stuka pilots had a morale unheard of in other german units. Remember that they continued flying an aircraft which was allready seen as obsolete in 1940 right to the end of the war.
There were "Stuka experts" (not only Rudel, but also Kupfer, Dilley, Lang and serveral others) that had very much experience. These people continued to fly the Stuka for over 1000 missions each and came back every time (ok, sometimes on foot ). Surviving 1000 missions in a high performance combat aircraft is requires skill and luck allready, so how about 1000 missions in a Stuka?

I recall a talk with a veteran from a armoured recovery unit.
He talked to Stuka men on one occasion in Orel and told me " They had apparently no fear".
Not that this is followed word for word,
but if a vet of the eastern front tells it that way he must have been somehow
impressed...

Agreed. Howintheheck did Rudel fly over 2000 sorties? How? To me it is just amazing. Beyond the ken of human understanding.

Really, folks. To read his record is to know you are perusing the record of the greatest, most unusual and amazing combat pilot of all time. And he flew a STUKA? How did he do it?

------------------
Rick "Slick" Land

As I said, there were a couple of pilots who nearly approached Rudel's record of missions flown, but most changed to Fw 190F in 1943.
My personal favorite is Ernst Druschel, who flew Hs 123 biplanes until 1943 and changed to Fw 190F then. He was killed by german flak during Operation Bodenplatte.
Druschel not only flew a thousand sorties in an open Biplane, but also shot down six soviet fighters with it...

From the excerpt included above, I gather that the pilots intended to increase their speed by an early jettisoning of their landing gear. Would be a nice feature in IL-2 as long as the appropriate model of Stuka is used.

i have that same book.. Aces Against Germany.. and its great. lots of true action and excitement in it. thanks, Dbond for reminding me of it, i got it out and re-read it. good stuff.

beowolff

[QUOTE]Originally posted by beowolff29:
[B]i have that same book.. Aces Against Germany.. and its great. lots of true action and excitement in it. thanks, Dbond for reminding me of it, i got it out and re-read it. good stuff.


You re-read it in a day?

Hey HD, do you have the book? It's pretty good. If you do, then remember that it is in a series of like, chapters, covering guys as the war progressed. Lots of good stuff on Big Week and the uselessness of Fighter Sweeps in getting the Jerries to come up and fight.

If you don't, then get it. Really good. Anyway, it lends itself to just reading a chapter or two, and doesn't need to be read sequentially.

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Rick "Slick" Land

.

[This message has been edited by DBond (edited 09-07-2002).]

exactly, Slick... i read that chapter over that Dbond was referring to.. real good stuff. but since he (Dbond) reminded me of the book, i'm going to keep it out and go back over the whole thing.

also, i know this isn't IL2 related, but there is another book, "American Aces Against Japan" that I believe is from the same guy...oh yeah, its good too!

Beowolff

I must get reading again (a visit to Beer's Books, a used book shop here is a must for today).

I am getting curious (cuz we will have a flyable Stuka) about evasive tactics.. those I have seen offline (only place I fly) seem to have a very gutsy commitment to keeping formation, at least until the dive. Perhaps there is more information in the references above.. I will look for them.

One action in offline flying that amazed me (for it was outside my knowledge) was to see a flight of Ju 88s dive on a bridge. I had thought of it as only a level bomber. Was this a strategy developed due to circumstance or a consideration of the original design?

I guess more reading will determine.

Thanks for the references.

Corvid

The Ju 88 was designed as a dive bomber from the start. In some ways, it was a more effective Stuka than the Ju 87. It was more stable in a dive and much better protected. It also had automatic dive recovery, while in the Stuka the pilot had to pull out himself (the Stuka originally had automatic recovery, too, but the pilots overrode it so regularly it was finally left out).
In the first years, the Ju-88s attacked mostly in a dive. But unlike in Il2, it could not use its internal bomb bay while dive bombing.

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

Hello all,

For the chaps wanting the info on the Black Six Crash

- Ham.

S T U R M O V I K - T E C H N I K A

Hi Corvid,

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

"Black Six" is a Me 109G-2 owned by the British Gouvernment that was restored to airworthy status and flown in the airshow circuit for a few years.

On its last flight before being returned to static display, the pilot accidentally disabled the automatic radiator flap control, causing the engine to overheat during the airshow. When glycol steam poured out of the engine, he mistook it for smoke from oil and came in for a faster than usual landing as he expected the engine to seize. He overshot the runway, but had planned his approach so that he'd be able to lift off again, hop over the adjacent road at the runway end, and land on the meadow on the other side of the road. Unfortunately, the far end of the meadow had been ploughed, so his gear sunk in and he flipped over at low speed.

The pilot escaped OK (and, being trapped in the cockpit, actually signalled the firemen not to cut him free to save the aircraft.) The aircraft fuselage received some serious damage that would have made it a write-off in the 1940s, but being a rare museum exhibit, it was perfectly restored, though for static display only.

(I think the airframe would allow flight, but for static display they fitted it with authentic components like the original fuel tank that are not suited for flight anymore.)

The irony is that the original cowl flap control as fitted by Messerschmitt ("automatic - off - open - close") invited misoperation as the lever was off by some 30° compared to the labels indicating its status.

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

HoHun

Thanks for the info on that... I had no knowledge (redundant i know). A somewhat similar event, with results most dire, happened in Sacramento many years ago.

During an airshow at Executive airport, an F86 flamed on take off and slammed into an icecream shop. Many, many kids died.

In the years hence, an elaborate shopping center was erected, and heavily attended, on the site of the crash.

No problems until some major chain wanted to start an ice cream parlor in the shopping center.

Many petitions expressing outrage.. protests.

I never had realized that Sabre jets were drawn so to crash on ice cream parlors.

corvid

Yes, this is a little known fact about the F86.

I was looking the technical documentation for the B and D versions and there
are no one reference for that.
The only one time I heard and read in the past that it was plannned for naval
version.
And there are many photos of ditched Ju-87s where gear is still present.

Probably there really was some amount of C-version for naval operations that had such feature, but most - hadn't it.

There is known one German WWII time photo where Stuka has no gear in level flight, but the comment for the photo is that the plane lost them in a deep dive. Something like this.




[This message has been edited by Oleg Maddox (edited 07-22-2002).]

Stookie fliegers were neither brave nor fearless.. but just plain PSYCHOTIC! and their Gunners were ALCOHOLICS!! hhmm wait or is that the other way around? Pilot Alcoholics and Gunners Psychotic.. hhmm well you get the picture.. and RUDEL is a prime example GOTTA LOVE THAT NUT CASE! btw no one ever mentions the Air Kills that the STOOKIE Pilots got now do they

------------------
Oberst Karl von Hess
Mit Gott, Fur Konig und Vaterland
I/JG52


-Clausewitz

Hi Oleg,

>There is known one German WWII time photo where Stuka has no gear in level flight, but the comment for the photo is that the plane lost them in a deep dive. Something like this.

This photograph was published in the Luftwaffe propaganda magazine "Der Adler" with the following caption:

"One of the dive bombers came too close to the water when pulling out during an attack on coastal fortifications whereby it lost the whole undercarriage and the airscrew was slightly bent. In that condition the machine returned in formation to the base airdrome more than 120 km. off and landed smoothly on the underside of the fuselage."

(The photo had a German and an English caption since at that time "Der Adler" was still sold in the USA. I quoted the English caption.)

"Der Adler" isn't necessarily a reliable source since it was a propaganda instrument. It might be that they wanted to emphasize the toughness of German aircraft and faked a story.

On the other hand, they might have told the truth :-)

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)