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

design of four independently functioning engines and propellers. It was a
disaster, because the double engines kept catching fire and lots of planes
and their crews – as many as fifty – were lost in the process. That was fifty
good pilots who could not drop bombs on England. Eventually, it was
decided to go back to the four-prop model, but by then the entire project
had been irredeemably delayed.
And Jeschonnek and Udet had even insisted the new, upgraded Me 110
project, the Me 210, should also have dive-bombing performance. It was
partly this requirement that ensured the Me 210 project failed. The huge
amounts of time, money and resources wasted on these machines, for a
specification ill-suited to their original design, were quite astonishing.
What was more, their obsession with the advantages of dive-bombing
made them overlook its inherent disadvantage, which was that to enable
such a dive in the first place meant the aircraft was all but standing still the
moment it recovered from releasing its bombs. This did not matter when
cowing Poles with swords or rusty Norwegian troops or even intimidated
Frenchmen taking shelter in their bunkers, but it was a major problem when
there were efficient modern fighters above waiting for just that moment.
A further problem was that although it was extremely accurate when
compared with a high-altitude horizontal bomber, it was still not pinpoint
enough to hit moving ships or small – in terms of footage on the ground –
RDF masts and operating huts. The best – men like Paul Hozzel – could
regularly hit a ten-metre-wide circle, but less often when under enemy fire.
The War Illustrated weekly magazine ran an article in one of its August
editions entitled ‘Why the Bomber Often Misses the Convoy’. Undeniably
intended to give its British readers heart, it nonetheless gave an informative
and accurate explanation, pointing out that when attacking a 250-yard-long
ship lengthways, a bomb aimer would have a window of around 1.5
seconds in which to release his bomb, a decision which had to take into
account the speed of the moving ship as well as the path of the bomb, the
time for the bomb to fall, and wind speed. In a cross-ways attack, that
window would be a quarter of a second. In other words, it was very
difficult.
These two fundamental problems with the Stuka had first really reared
their heads during the air battle for Dunkirk, but such concerns, if voiced,
had been swept under the carpet. They had then become increasingly
apparent during the Kanalkampf, and since then the failings of the Stukas