Did they really have any kind of it during War 2 ? Since a lot of developments and productions been carried out by the Brits-US of the Allies,significantly it was scarce for the Germans,there.Is it true ? Why they weren't successful in such a production from their Wunderwaffes ?
Well, there was the Heinkel He 177. Over a thousand of them were produced, but ultimately it didn't have much of an impact.
Design work started on the He 177 as early as 1937, but it was not introduced until 1942 and it still had major issues mainly with the DB 606 engines. The He 177 A-5 was the main production model. In the beginning they wanted to be a dive-bomber!
A-5 Griffon, as per its design/production however been in favor of a bomber/long range bomber, comparing to other Allied contemporary stragic bombers of its class. Its two DB 610 engines, overall length of 22 m, no special initiative been taken for its wings(ie, essential to perform in case of diving), weights 68345 lb, cruising @ 210-60 mph, rate of ascending wasn't good(190/60 secs), range @ 3420 miles etc. etc including good capacity(13230 lbs) to carry strategic ordnances. ATA/ATS missiles like Hs 293 or Fritz X been its part for its stragic mission, though I'm not sure. I think all these been a common like features suitable for a bomber, rather than a dive bomber! What I know, 177 A-1s along with Mk 101 been used for flak suppression, A5/R6s used as reconnaissance mission in the Atlantic. Right now I'm in a dilemma that how this 'size' could be suitable to perform a 'dive' mission!
As early as 1936 Rechsluftfahrtministeriums (RLM – German Air Ministry) had stated:- “In future, there will be no multi-engine bombers that cannot attack in a dive. The He 11 is the last horizontal bomber. Thanks to its accuracy on target, a medium-sized, twin-engine aircraft that delivers its 1,000 kg bomb-load on target in a dive has the same effect as a four-engine giant bird that carries 3,000 – 4,000 kg of bombs in horizontal flight but can only drop them inaccurately. We do not need the expensive machines that gobble up so much more material than a twin-engined dive-bomber. Junkers has the first twin-engined dive-bomber ready, the Ju 88. We can build two or three of this type with the same amount of material required for a four-engined job, and still achieve the same bombing effect.” The second prototype, V2 (CB+RQ / Wk-Nr00 0002), undertook diving trials in late 1939, during on of the tests the aircraft developed severe control cutter and broke-up in mid-air killing the test pilot. When dive trials restarted with the forth prototype, V4 (Wk-N00 0004)it failed to pull out of the dive and crashed into the Baltic. It seemed that a number of trials were carried out dive-bombing and even with later prototypes having specially strengthened airframes the He 177 could carry out this role. Luckily as Heinkel were identifying what was causing the aircraft to crash the new Lotfe Bombenvisier (tachometric bombsight) was about to enter service and this gave the promised accuracies in horizontal-bombing as were obtained in dive-bombing. So as a result, the dive-brakes were omitted from all aircraft after the initial pre-production order.
Why didn't Nazi Germany have a decent long-range heavy bomber? Two primary reasons, many secondary reasons: Hitler did not want one, and the leaders of the Luftwaffe were short-sighted former fighter pilots. The Luftwaffe was lead by Herman G. and his chief of production Udet. Udet was a good fellow who was not a competent administrator. And this eventually lead to his suicide.
It wasn't in the Luftwaffe's strategic aims for long range bombing missions , they could bomb the cr*p out of their enemies using medium two engined aircraft by supporting front line troops from grass airfields directly behind the front lines . the V weapons later did the work of strategic warfare .
