The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

take his theoretical work seriously enough led to him being transferred to
reconnaissance instead and from there to Stukageschwader 162, which was
training to dive-bomb, albeit with Heinkel 51s and then Henschel 123
biplanes. Not until the end of 1938 was it given the new Ju 87s, purposebuilt
as dive-bombers. There was no Stuka school at that time, but a Stuka
Training Group had been formed in Pomerania, and it was there that I/Stuka
160, to which Paul now belonged as a Staffel commander, was sent.
First, however, the two-man crews needed to be formed. Paul chose his
back-seater carefully and was still with him nearly two years later – the two
trusted each other implicitly – but those not gelling were quickly separated.
Having fully familiarized themselves with flying the Ju 87, they began
diving training. There were various instruments and gadgets to help, such as
a reflector sight, which enabled the pilot to keep the whole plane centred on
the target and allowed for wind and velocity. A continuously adjustable red
arrow was also mounted on the altimeter, set to local altitude above sea
level, which enabled the bomb-releasing altitude to be set. When passing
that altitude, a warning horn signal told the pilot to press the bomb-release
button on the control column. The bomb release also automatically
activated the hydraulic recovery device, which helped the pilot, already
struggling from the effects of negative-g, to pull out of the dive.
Normally, bombs would be released at around 700 metres, but Paul
reckoned it was possible to go as low as 500 metres – but no less than that.
Too many trainee pilots had died through pulling out of a dive too late.
Bombing accuracy had also been practised hard. The Ju 87 had been
designed specifically for accurate bombing and pilots were expected to be
able to hit a ten-metre circle. ‘This was not achieved every time,’ Paul
admits. ‘It is one thing dropping bombs in a training time without fear of
being shot, and another doing this in war.’ And it was quite another, as
Oskar Dinort had discovered, hitting a moving ship.
By the time war began, Stuka 160 had been bedded into
Sturzkampfgeschwader 1, and all of its crews were highly trained, tactically
and operationally. But despite all this training on attacking pinpoint targets,
they had not once practised bombing moving vessels out at sea; no-one then
had thought that Stukas might be operating over open water.
Paul and the rest of Stuka 1 had gained some experience in this during
the Norwegian campaign, however, where they had attacked British ships at
Namsos and off the coast. The anti-aircraft fire from these naval vessels had