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To: jboot; rlmorel

Source?

...and what type of kills?

I know a few things about the Stuka, and particularly the anti-shipping variant.

The anti-shipping version of the Stuka was a long range version, the Ju-87R. It had the Ju-37B airframe with an additional oil tank and fuel lines to wing stations for two 300L drop tanks. This increased fuel capacity to 1,080 litres (500L in main fuel tank of which 480L where usable + 600L in the drop tanks). To prevent overloads, bomb carrying ability was often restricted to a single 250 kg (550 lb) bomb if the aircraft was fully loaded with fuel.

Many times, less fuel was loaded and a single 500kg bomb was carried if larger targets were expected.

There was also a modification in the fuselage which enabled that additional oil tank. This was installed to feed the engine due to the increase in range.

A modified version later strengthened the airframe to ensure it could withstand dives of 600 km/h. In addition, a new, more powerful engine, the Jumo 211D in-line engine was installed. The Ju-87R had a decreased speed (by about 30km/h) and a decreased ceiling from other Stukas. But it had an increased range of 360 km.

The total JU-87R production was 972 aircraft.

In the 1939 Poland Campaign, naval stike Stujas sank the 1540-ton destroyer ORP Wicher and the minelayer, ORP Gryf of the Polish Navy, both moored in harbour when attacked and sunk.

In Norway in 1940, Stukas caught the 735 ton Norwegian destroyer Æger off Stavanger and hit her in the engine room and she was run aground and scuttled. HMS Bittern was sunk on 30 April. The French large destroyer Bison was sunk along with HMS Afridi May 3, 1940, during the evacuation from Namsos. Bison’s forward magazine was hit, killing 108 of the crew. Afridi, which attempted to rescue Bison’s survivors, was sunk with the loss of 63 more sailors.

During the Battle of Dunkirk, quite a few Allied ships were lost to Ju-87R attacks. The French destroyer Adroit was sunk on 21 May 1940, followed by the paddle steamer Crested Eagle on 28 May. The British destroyer HMS Grenade was sunk on 29 May and several other vessels damaged by Stuka attack. By 29 May, the Allies had lost 31 vessels sunk and 11 damaged. The Royal Navy lost 29 of its 40 destroyers (8 sunk, 23 damaged). In total, 89 merchantmen (126,518 tons) were lost as well. This was where the vast majority of Stuka success against shipping ocurred.

In the Mediterannean, on 10 January 1941, Stukas delivered six hits with 500kg bombs to the HMS Illustrious aircraft carrier and three damaging near-misses but the ship was not sunk and made it to Malta and safety.

In the battle for Crete, the Stukas had their other significant success of the war. On 21 May, the destroyer HMS Juno was sunk and the next day the battleship HMS Warspite was damaged. That same day the cruiser HMS Gloucester was sunk, with the loss of 45 officers and 648 sailors. The Stukas also crippled the cruiser HMS Fiji, while sinking the destroyer HMS Greyhound. As the Battle of Crete drew to a close, the Allies began to withdraw. On 23 May, the Royal Navy lost the destroyers HMS Kashmir and Kelly, followed by HMS Hereward on 26 May; Orion and Dido were also severely damaged.

These were all of the major engagements credited to the Stukas. There may be more singel attacks and the like...but this amounts to:

Merchantmen sunk = 90
Minlelayers sunk = 1
Destroyers sunk = 19
Destroyers damaged = 25
Cruisers sunk = 1
Cruisers damaged = 1
Batttleships sunk = 0
Battleships Damaged = 1
Aircraft Carriers damaged = 1
Aircraft carriers sunk = 0

The US Navy Fast Carriers sank a lot of Japanese carriers, battleships, cruisers, detroyers and merchant vessels. I have not done the research on them...but if you think of all the engagements, it was one heck of a lot of ships that were sunk in the open sea , close in to shore, and in port.

As you saw, not too many Stukas attacks even occurred on capital ships of cruiser size or larger and of these, one cruiser was sunk, one damaged, one battleship damaged, and one carrier damaged.

I am willing to bet that those Stuka numbers do not come close to either the total number of ships or tonnage sunk by US carrier aircraft.

The Japanese sank and damaged a LOT of US and British ships too... particularly in the first two years of the war. I would be surprized if those above numbers for the Stukas were more than the Japanese numbers, either in total numbers or tonnage too.

I may do the specific research to show it...but my guess is that the tonnage and total numbers will be hugely larger for US SBD Dauntless or SB2C Helldiver aircraft.

And probably a good bit largher for the VALs.

And this all makes since. The European war was principally a large land war. The Pacific war was a huge naval war where the principle means of stopping either side was to stop its ships which were carrying troops to every major engagement.


57 posted on 06/20/2012 9:29:58 PM PDT by Jeff Head (Freedom is not free, never has been, never will be (www.dragonsfuryseries.com))
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To: Jeff Head
Hi Jeff. I appreciate your analysis. The notion that the Stuka was the most successful naval dive-bomber came from a book in my collection and is not on the web (to my knowledge). I'd give a cite to the book, but I have several thousand titles and I cannot recall for the life of me which one it was in. I don't recall that it was backed up with any statistics in the original text. I can say that:

All marks of the JU-87 were in view, not just the JU-87R.

All kinds of watercraft targets were in view and no particular distinctions were made. It is likely that small craft and riverine craft were included. I don't know.

Anyway, feel free to disregard. I suspect that the supposition, even if true in some context or another, is not proveable.

61 posted on 06/21/2012 5:44:22 AM PDT by jboot (Galt by default.)
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