The appearance of the Stuka in the air threw people on the ground into a panic. But the Soviet fighters, seeing this dive bomber, rejoiced - easy prey!

Sergey Ivanov


The anti-tank modification of the "Stuka" Ju-87G was armed with containers with 37-mm guns instead of bombs. If necessary, they could be easily replaced with bomb racks.

Professor Hugo Junkers is a researcher, inventor and organizer of Junkers. His interests extended not only to aircraft, but also, for example, to water-heating boilers.


In aviation, Junkers was a tireless promoter of all-metal structures.


After the Nazis came to power, Junkers fell out of favor, was removed from business, and died in 1935. Ju-87 was created under the guidance of designer Herman Polman


In addition to 1000- or 500-kg bombs under the fuselage, the most advanced modifications of the Ju-87 could carry bombs under the wings - two 250 kg each or four 50 kg each

1939 year. The USSR and Germany have a short period of friendship - wary, but officially declared. Soviet specialists come to Germany, where they are shown the achievements of Reich engineers in all areas - tank building, artillery, aviation ... Interesting samples of German technology can be purchased for study and, possibly, copying. It was not without scandals. So, our tank designers were offended, believing that truly modern tanks were hiding from them. But in fact, what they considered obsolete models was the last word of the German tank industry - Hitler did not have anything like the T-34 and KV.

The aviation delegation also had similar doubts. But, having visited aircraft factories, they were convinced that Willy Messerschmitt and other aircraft designers showed them the latest technology. Accordingly, the harvest of "trophies" bought for the currency was rich. Literally all the planes that the Germans had - fighters, bombers, reconnaissance aircraft - fell into the hands of our testers. And not only serial, but also, for example, the experimental Heinkel-110 fighter. Three different training aircraft, as well as a special record-breaking Messerschmitt, were not ignored. The most interesting machines from the point of view of Soviet specialists were ordered in five copies, less interesting - in two or three. Motors and propellers, fuel injection systems and spark plugs, aircraft sights, bombs and electrical equipment were also purchased ...

The Soviet delegation did not want to spend money on only one airplane. Although the Germans assured that the Ju-87 dive bomber was being produced with might and main, our designers considered it a curious relic of the outgoing era of aviation. Why study yesterday? The Junkers, with its snail speed, fixed landing gear, monstrous aerodynamics and ugly appearance, was unanimously rejected. Who could have known then that this unsightly airplane had a very rich combat biography ahead of it! Including in the Soviet sky ...

Ju-87, also known as "Thing" (Stuka, short for the German Sturzkampfflugzeug - dive bomber) became the most controversial and paradoxical bomber of World War II. You can’t fight well with bad weapons - a law that has been confirmed many times. But the Junkers, for all its obvious technical backwardness, was a fantastically effective weapon ...

Why is pique useful?

Subsequently, the Soviet aircraft designer Yakovlev, who was part of the same delegation, in his memoirs, will call a condescending attitude towards the Ju-87 a big mistake. True, at the same time, he will refer to some "unfortunate tacticians" - it was they who, they say, did not want to buy the Junkers. Maybe it's just an attempt to shift the blame to someone else? Surely, after all, Yakovlev himself and his fellow designers stated that the Stuka is, to put it mildly, not the last word in aviation technology. However, the mention of "unfortunate tactics" by Yakovlev is not accidental. This is an echo of pre-war disputes about how aircraft should still attack ground targets - bombing in level flight, dropping bombs in a steep dive, or assault strike from a shallow dive. Soviet aviation tactical specialists did not recognize dive bombing, but their German colleagues, on the contrary, saw it as an excellent way to increase the effectiveness of attack aircraft - that's why the Ju-87 was born. There was a serious reason for the position of the Luftwaffe specialists. Judge for yourself! Let's say an airplane drops a bomb in level flight. The pilot leads him strictly in a straight line at a constant speed - and the navigator-scorer, looking into the sight, tries to catch the optimal moment for dropping bombs. But an aircraft flying at a constant height, at a constant speed and in a straight line is just an ideal target for anti-aircraft artillery! And you can’t carry out an anti-aircraft maneuver - any deviation of the aircraft from the combat course is fraught with a miss. It is practically impossible to hit compact, small-sized targets - the unpredictability of the behavior of bombs freely flying to the ground is too great.

Now imagine that a bomber dives from a height of several kilometers, falls directly on the target. The pilot can aim himself, and getting into such an aircraft from an anti-aircraft gun is possible only by accident, and the time spent on the combat course is much less (dived, dropped a bomb - and is free!). The bomb separated from the dive bomber has a velocity vector that practically coincides with the motion vector of the aircraft going to the target. And it will hit the right place with a much greater probability than a bomb rushing to the ground along a parabola, dropped from the hatches of a "horizontal" bomber.

That is why in pre-war Germany they paid increased attention to the creation of a workable attack aircraft design. First it was the Henschel-123 biplane, and then the Ju-87, which won a special competition from the Reich Ministry of Aviation against its competitors. The skepticism of the Soviet delegation was justified - the aircraft was born in 1934 and by 1939 looked archaic. The main thing that distinguished it from more modern designs was the fixed landing gear, which was widely abandoned. It was not difficult to organize cleaning of the landing gear, and it gave a significant improvement in flight performance. The creators of the "Things", however, preferred to remove the wheels of their offspring in the "pants" fairings, which were also equipped with struts for strength.

It is interesting that on the first prototype of the aircraft, which subsequently had to bomb the UK, there was an engine ... Rolls-Royce. In the future, engines developed by German designers were installed on the aircraft, more and more powerful. The crew consisted of two people - a pilot and a gunner who protected the rear hemisphere. The appearance of the "Thing" came out quite creepy, but not without a rough "combat" charm. Chopped shapes, a reverse gull wing, a characteristic “beard” of the radiator under the engine and the notorious non-retractable landing gear - it was impossible to confuse the “Thing” with some other aircraft. Diving on the target, the Junkers resembled a bird of prey, which, putting forward its paws, fell on prey. The “trousers” of the chassis fairings looked like paws, which, however, shortly after the launch of the “Things” were redone into a series, replacing them with drop-shaped “bast shoes”. It is because of them that on the Eastern Front the car will receive the nickname "lappet" - so, with a touch of contempt, Soviet pilots will call it.

The defining characteristic of the Ju-87 was the strength provided by its all-metal construction. Indeed, at the moment of exit from the peak, the overload can reach five or more g - and the airframe of the aircraft had to withstand such a strength test in each sortie! On the other hand, a pilot was sitting in the cockpit, who, with such an overload, had to control the Stukka. And not just to bring it out of a dive, but to perform a wide variety of operations. The fact is that diving is an extreme flight mode, and the characteristics of the aircraft in it must change. For example, with a sharp increase in speed, it is necessary to close the radiator shutters to avoid hypothermia. And when, at the exit from the peak, the motor works at the limit of its capabilities, the curtains must be opened as quickly as possible - otherwise the engine will overheat. Further, at the exit from the dive, it is necessary to switch the pitch of the propeller. It is also necessary to change the position of the trimmers that act on the elevators and take on part of the pilot's efforts ... Well, of course, the pilot needs to work with the handle, pedals and the gas sector! In general, you need to make a lot of absolutely mandatory actions, despite the overload, enemy fire and the rapidly approaching ground.

Storm or dive?

Therefore, a dive pilot must be a highly qualified specialist in his field. Maybe that's why the Soviet "unfortunate tactics" did not like this type of aircraft. They were by no means fools, but rather realists. The training of flight personnel in the USSR was carried out, focusing on quantity, not quality. And a poorly trained dive pilot has too many chances to stick into the ground - and even in peacetime, in the most ordinary training. In the USSR, it was believed that the future belongs to the attack aircraft - an aircraft that attacks from a gentle dive and hits ground targets mainly with its cannons and machine guns. The IL-2, a product of this line of tactical thought, was the best aircraft in its class (we wrote about it in No. 3, 2004). But, for example, it was problematic to accurately drop a bomb from him. At the moment of dropping the bombs, the pilot did not see the target - it was covered by the long hood of the aircraft. He could aim only approximately, according to the risks marked on the hood.

And rockets, cannons and machine guns were effective only against vehicles and infantry - but not against tanks. Before the advent of special anti-tank bombs that hit a large area, the combat effectiveness of attack aircraft left much to be desired.

In Germany, pilots were trained very carefully. The training program even included a dive at an angle of 90 degrees, that is, sheer to the ground! Having learned to perform such a technique, the pilot easily swooped down on the target in combat conditions, when the angle of attack was sometimes 70-80 degrees. On the other hand, the creators of the "Thing" did everything to facilitate the work of the pilot. The aircraft was equipped with semi-automatic input and output devices from a dive - they performed all secondary functions for the pilot, giving him the opportunity to concentrate on controlling the aircraft.

Yes, compared to the IL-2, the "Stuka" was practically unarmored - but she didn't need it! Everything that had a barrel fired at the attack aircraft flying overhead from the ground - from anti-aircraft guns to parabellums. Another thing is a frightening dive-bomber that falls from a great height, quickly increases in size, seems to be heading straight at you ... Stukas have impellers on the landing gear that rotate air sirens, and the dive plane emits a chilling howl. Here, bombs are separated from him and with a terrible whistle (special whistles are fixed to increase the psychological impact on them!) Rush to the ground ... In such a situation, will the soldier cold-bloodedly shoot at the "Thing" from his rifle or rush aimlessly looking for cover? The answer is obvious. In addition, the frontal projection of the dive bomber is too small to be hit from the ground at the time of the attack.

Glory and decline of the "lappet"

Already during the capture of Poland, the effective attacks of the Stukas created an excellent reputation for the aircraft, and during the blitzkrieg in France, it only improved. Another dive Junkers, the twin-engine Ju-88, was more often used in the depths of the enemy defenses, and often as a horizontal bomber. The Ju-87, which had a shorter range, aimed at objects close to the front lines - and attacked targets in full view of its troops, drawing their enthusiastic approval. Unlike any other type of attack aircraft, a dive bomber could hit a point target - a tank, a locomotive, a bridge, a building, a firing point. Ships were the ideal target for dive bombers - it was not for nothing that the United States and Japan, competing in the Pacific Ocean, paid so much attention to the development of this class of aircraft. The aircraft carrier version of the "Stuka" was also made, but the Nazis, although they launched their only aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin, were never able to complete the construction. However, the pilots of the Laptezhniks acted against the English fleet and from coastal bases - and quite successfully. Our ships also got it ...

As the best pilot of the Stuka, Hans-Ulrich Rudel, testifies, it was he who managed to sink the Soviet battleship Marat with a 1000-kilogram bomb. In fact, it is impossible to unambiguously attribute success to Rudel - the basis for this is just his own memories "about the war and about the bombing, about the big battleship Marat"". Whose bomb hit the cellar with ammunition and caused a detonation, of course, is impossible to establish. But the fact remains - after the attack of Rudel and his colleagues on the Stukas, the Marat broke in half and sank ...

Paradoxically, the aerodynamic imperfection of the "lappet" helped the pilots. Fixed landing gear and air brakes made dive speeds relatively slow. The pilot had the opportunity to control the behavior of the aircraft in a dive - and, if necessary, turned to the target if it left the sight. But the pilots of the Soviet dive bomber Pe-2 did not have such an opportunity - it had more advanced aerodynamics and therefore, despite the brake bars, it fell like a stone.

The dive on the Ju-87 was so comfortable that the pilots determined the height of the exit from the dive visually, based on the size of ground objects. Because of this, funny things happened ... In England, a narrow-gauge railway line is still preserved, along which the train runs - the locomotive and wagons there are very similar to ordinary ones, only small. Naturally, the pilot of the Stuka that attacked the train did not know about this; the small locomotive in the sight misled him. He started to get out of the dive too late - and crashed into the ground! It turned out that the locomotive shot down the plane ... However, for the more prudent pilots of the Ju-87, a system was installed that alerted the pilot with a sound signal about reaching the height at which it was necessary to start exiting the dive.

The Ju-87 could hit targets perfectly. But the "Stuka" turned out to be a "clear sky aircraft" - it could only operate where the Luftwaffe had an advantage in the air. Shooting down the Ju-87 was as easy as shelling pears - that's why the Soviet fighters considered the "lappet" a second-rate aircraft.

At the time of exit from the dive (and not only) the plane was defenseless. Unlike other German bombers, the Stuka did not have a lower firing point. It was not on the IL-2 either, but the attack aircraft flew above the ground itself and it was almost impossible to get close to them from below. And the Ju-87 attacked from a height ...

The first serious losses of the Stuka were suffered in the Battle of England - the British Spitfires and Hurricanes significantly reduced their number. Goering was forced to withdraw the Stuka-armed units from the forces attacking Great Britain. On the Eastern Front, the Laptezhniks were good exactly until the Soviet aviation recovered from the losses of the first months of the war.

“Heavily armed Junkers kept cruising speed - about three hundred kilometers per hour. Suddenly falling on them from the direction of the sun, we pressed the triggers of the machine guns. In the crosshairs of my sight - the leader of the first group of Junkers. A short burst, another one… The bomber, as if cut in two, collapsed far from the Gremyachyevo crossing. My wingman Viktor Aleksandryuk set fire to the trailing aircraft. From the second group, a third dive bomber fell out like a burning firebrand. So you, pirates! This is how Ivan Vishnyakov, Hero of the Soviet Union, describes the attack on the "lappeters" - but episodes of this kind can be found in almost every book of memoirs of a Soviet fighter pilot. Of the 59 aircraft shot down by Alexander Pokryshkin, 23 Ju-87s, despite the fact that our famous ace took on the most difficult combat work, he preferred to fight with fighters.

For the German record-breaking fighters, who were chasing an increase in personal combat scores, escorting bombers was a low-profile combat mission. The most trained cadres of dive bombers were knocked out, and the newcomers could not act effectively. An attempt to convert the Ju-87 into an anti-tank attack aircraft, arming it with 37-mm guns, was unsuccessful. Pilots of Rudel's caliber could aim not just at the tank, but at its weak spots, such as the engine. But there were fewer and fewer such aces - and in 1944 the Stuka was discontinued. Parts of the dive bombers were re-equipped with FW-190 fighters, under which bombs were hung.

But dive bombers, which appeared back in the First World War, were just fighters with bombs! Everything is back to normal...

BOMB LOAD
To close targets, "Shtukas" could carry a formidable bomb load, reaching 1800 kg. This combat load is comparable to that carried by twin-engine aircraft of the Second World War, and slightly less than that of the American B-17 strategic four-engine bomber that bombed Germany.
The normal payload for the Stukas is a 1000 kg bomb under the fuselage or a 500 kg bomb under the fuselage and four 50 kg bombs under the wings.

Armed mechanics equip Ju-87 B-1

The experience of the combat use of the Ju-87 in Russia showed that hitting a tank with a heavy bomb is almost impossible, even for the Stukas. On the Eastern Front, the standard anti-tank weapon was a set of 4-kg SD-4-YH1 bombs with a shaped charge. Seventy-eight of these bombs were placed in a 500-kg cassette. Such a charge could hit the thin upper armor of any Allied tank - even the massive IS-2 tank used by the Red Army in 1945.
Less complex, but fraught with danger to aircraft crews, is one of the latest Ju-87G-1 models. Introduced in 1943, this modification was equipped with a pair of 37 mm cannons, the shells of which penetrated the upper armor of tanks, but the increased weight and aerodynamic drag reduced the effectiveness of this latest version of the Stukas.

Eastern front massive raid

The vulnerability of the Ju 87 dive bomber became clear in the Battle of Britain. At dawn in August 1940, Stukas attacked airfields in Kent, radars along the south coast and naval bases in Portsmouth. As soon as communication between the Ju-87 and the Bf-109 escort was broken, the bombers cut off the RAF fighters. Four groups of bombers attacked Gosport, Thorney Island, Ford and the radar at Polling on 18 August. Their escorts were dispersed after an attack by 152 Squadron Spitfires and 43 Squadron Hurricanes spotted them while flying back across the Channel. 30 aircraft were lost or seriously damaged - including . Stukas-verbande have been removed from the battlefield.

Ju 87 dive bomber. The Battle of Brittany will soon be a thing of the past.

In Poland, the picture was somewhat different. Nine bomber groups totaled 336 aircraft deployed against Poland. Losses during the campaign - only thirty-one aircraft - does this mean anything? The catastrophic shortage of effective fighters in Poland.

Combat use of the Ju 87 dive bomber in Russia.

After being struck by the Junkers

A limited number of these bombers took part in the campaigns in North Africa and Italy, but the Ju-87s delivered their main strikes in Russia. In 1941, the Luftwaffe inflicted enormous damage on the Soviet Air Force, and 290 bombers sent to the Eastern Front could attack without fear of retaliation. One of the conditions for the effective use of the JU-87 "SHTUKAS" is the conquest of complete air supremacy, which was done at the first stage of the war. But nevertheless, the first Ju-87 dive bomber was shot down on 22 at about 10 o'clock. Near the city of Grodno, Lt. Pachin rammed a Ju-87. The story of the commander of the assault group, Hauptmann Malke, who was shot down three times at the Junkers at the initial stage of the fighting, is indicative.

One of the downed Ju87 bombers

By the way, in films about the war, bombing is very rarely shown from a steep dive. But invariably the bombing is carried out by the Junkers, in fact, other aircraft were at the disposal of the Wehrmacht. The howl of a siren, which terrifies the enemy, was used to determine the degree of diving by ear.

The airfield where the Junkers are visible

Most of the bombers gave their pilots the sensation of a vertical dive, but only the Stuka dived precisely, as if on a plumb line, at an angle of 90 ° to the surface of the earth. The markings on the right side of the canopy, applied from 0 to 90 °, allowed the pilot to correctly assess the angle.

From the level flight mode at a speed of 410 km / h, the bomber accelerated to 540 km / h with a loss of about 1370 m of altitude during a dive. The maximum permitted speed of the aircraft was 600 km / h.

The bomber accelerated gradually, the speed was limited by non-retractable landing gear, which created additional resistance and worked like air brakes. Less angular dive bombers, such as the Douglas Dauntless, accelerated like a missile when dived with a full bomb load.

This feature of the Junkers "Stuka" gave her the ability to drop heavy bombs with great accuracy, inaccessible to other aircraft of that war.

Sirens

The Junkers "Stuka" aircraft emitted an ominous howl when the aircraft dived at the target thanks to the "Jericho Trumpets" - sirens acting from the oncoming flow and attached to the main landing gear.

Junkers 87 diving mechanism

When diving, the pilot kept his eyes on the scale of the contact altimeter. The altimeter had an indicator that illuminated at the height of the beginning of a safe automatic exit from a dive. The bomber went into level flight with a sixfold overload, descending another 450 m during the exit from the dive.

The aircraft control stick had a safety mechanism that limited its deviation to 5 ° from the neutral position, preventing the pilot from bringing the aircraft to even greater overloads during dive recovery.

This mechanism could be disabled in emergency cases, a strong jerk of the control lever brought the aircraft out of a dive. The minimum height allowed to dive for a bomb attack was 800 m.

Dive bombing technique

Operations before diving:

1. Setting the flaps

to cruise position

2. Setting the elevator trim tabs to the cruise position

3. Setting the rudder to cruise

4. Propeller pitch set to cruise position

5. Contact altimeter included

6. Descent height is set in the contact altimeter

7. Loading mechanism included

8. Throttle open

9. Cooling shields covered

10. Air brakes open

Air brakes released

These devices automatically directed the aircraft into a dive. Red tags protruding from the upper surface of the wing served as a visual indicator for the pilot, at the same time the automatic system for transferring the aircraft into a dive was activated. The pilot's hand aimed the aircraft at the target using a simple machine gun-type sight. The maximum dive speed was about 600 km / h.

Bomb uncoupling

The indicator light on the contact altimeter lit up when the bombing point approached - usually at a minimum height of 450 m.

Dive exit mechanism

Automatically withstood an overload of 6 ji, returning the surfaces of the trim tabs of the elevators to their normal position. The mechanism could be overpowered by the pilot in an emergency. As soon as the hood of the aircraft went into the horizon, the aerodynamic brakes were retracted, the throttles were opened, and the propeller was set to climb.

Aircraft bomb load

To close targets, "Shtukas" could carry a formidable bomb load, reaching 1800 kg. This is a combat load comparable to that carried by twin-engine planes of the Second World War, and slightly less than that of the American strategic four-engine bomber that bombed Germany.

The experience of the combat use of the Ju-87 in Russia showed that hitting a tank with a heavy bomb is almost impossible, even for the Stukas. On the Eastern Front, the standard anti-tank weapon was a set of 4-kg SD-4-YH1 bombs with a shaped charge. Seventy-eight of these bombs were placed in a 500-kg cassette.

Such a charge could hit the thin upper armor of any Allied tank - even the massive IS-2 tank used by the Red Army in 1945.

Less complex, but fraught with danger to aircraft crews, is one of the latest JU-87G-1 models. Introduced in 1943, this modification was equipped with a pair of 37 mm cannons, the shells of which penetrated the upper armor of tanks, but the increased weight and aerodynamic drag reduced the effectiveness of this latest version of the Stuka.

The disdainful assessment of the Yu-87 dive bomber was in our literature as commonplace as the praise of the Il-2 attack aircraft. The obsolescence of the “lappet” (as the Yu-87 was called in the Red Army for the characteristic shape of the fairings of the non-retractable chassis), its low speed, weak defensive armament, insufficient armor were constantly emphasized ... This aircraft was claimed by domestic authors , “was good only in places poorly protected by anti-aircraft defense systems, and in the absence of fighters covering ground troops. On the Soviet-German front, Yu-87s suffered heavy losses.

Let us first dwell on the thesis about the "big losses" of the "lappeters". In 1943-1944, when the air defense of the Soviet ground forces increased significantly and the number of Soviet fighter aircraft increased sharply, there really were cases of the defeat of entire groups of Yu-87. So, in June 1943, according to German data, the Red Star fighters managed to shoot down or seriously damage exactly half of the 36 Stukas of the 2nd group of the 1st dive squadron that raided the Kursk railway station. However, it is impossible not to pay attention to the evidence of the opposite nature. So, recalling the sorties to bomb the bridge across the Tim River (east of Kursk) in April 1943, the former commander of the III group of the 1st dive squadron F. Lang emphasized that Yu-87 " almost every time they met strong anti-aircraft fire and fighters. The Russians had a well-organized advance warning service. Soon after the start, we heard a message in Russian in our headphones about our departure. However, despite all this, during these sorties we did not suffer any losses.". The usual exaggeration of a memoirist? But here is a source of a different kind - the reports of the service of the quartermaster general of the Luftwaffe, containing the most complete data on the losses of the 2nd and 77th dive squadrons during Operation Citadel - the offensive of the Wehrmacht on the Kursk Bulge in July 1943. The data of these reports completely overthrow our traditional ideas about the scale of the losses of the “lappets” on the Soviet-German front.

In fact, the air defense of the Voronezh Front, whose troops were attacked by both squadrons, cannot be called a weak battle. On July 1, the front had 761 anti-aircraft guns, which made it possible to cover over 60% of the area occupied by the combat formations of the troops - the main objects of the Yu-87 strikes - with multilayer anti-aircraft artillery fire. In the 2nd Air Army of the Voronezh Front, by the beginning of the Tsi-tadel, there were 597 Yak-1, Yak-7B and La-5 fighters. True, due to the lack of combat-ready pilots, only about 400 aircraft could be brought into battle, but the enemy had even fewer fighters in this direction - 153. At the same time, the "hawks" of the neighboring South Western, whose 17th Air Army had 255 Yak-1, Yak-7B and La-5 (including approximately 180 combat-ready). Nevertheless, on the first day of the operation, July 5, the 2nd and 77th dive squadrons, having made 1071 sorties, irretrievably lost only 4 "Pieces"! (For comparison: the assault air units of the 2nd Air Army, in just 220 sorties, irretrievably lost that day, according to Soviet data, 27 Il-2, i.e. one plane was lost in them already in 8 sorties, then as in German squadrons - in 268!)

On July 7, both squadrons completed 746 sorties - and only one aircraft had to be written off! On other days of the Citadel, the level of irretrievable losses of the Stuk was higher - for one such loss there were no longer 746 and not 268 sorties, but 132 (July 6, when after 793 sorties 6 cars were decommissioned), 116-117 (July 8 and 9, when respectively 701 and 699 sorties accounted for 6 decommissioned "Pieces"), about 100 (July 10, when about 300 sorties cost 3 decommissioned vehicles) and even 74-75 (July 11 6 "Pieces" were irretrievably lost in just 447 sorties). But on July 12, having completed 150 sorties, the dive-bombers of the 2nd and 77th squadrons did not lose a single aircraft at all, and in general, during the first week of the Battle of Kursk (July 5-12, 1943) one Yu-87 in these formations irretrievably lost only in about 153 sorties - while one Il-2 in the 2nd Air Army on July 5-10 - only 16-17! In other words, the level of losses of the IL-2 in the 2nd Air Force turned out to be an order of magnitude higher. And in the 9th mixed air corps of the 17th air corps - by two orders of magnitude! In his 305th assault air division, then only 2.2 sorties were accumulated for one irretrievable combat loss: in three days the division lost two-thirds of its vehicles - 61 Il-2 - in 137 sorties, and on July 8 was withdrawn to the rear on reformation. The 306th assault was also sent there with its 3.2 sorties for an irretrievable combat loss (in three days in 177 sorties it lost 56 Il-2s).

It is noteworthy that the operation "Citadel" turned out to be even more "safe" for the "lappeters" than the air battles that took place in the spring of the 43rd air battles in the Kuban. However, even there, attacking on April 17, 1943, the Soviet bridgehead near Myskhako near Novorossiysk (the famous "Malaya Zemlya"), Yu-87, despite the "dense", according to the pilots, anti-aircraft fire, lost in 494 sorties, only 7 aircraft. Thus, about 70 sorties accounted for one irretrievable combat loss, while the Il-2 in August 1942-May 1943 had an average of only 26.

Meanwhile, the Battle of Kursk continued; On July 12, Bryansky and the left wing of the Western Front—which the Central Front joined on July 15—launched the Oryol Offensive. By its beginning, in the 1st, 15th and 16th air armies of these fronts there were 1141 fighters, however, in the 6th air fleet of the Luftwaffe opposing them on July 12-16, 1943, one Yu-87 was lost only in 148 -149 sorties, July 19 - 23 - at 124 - 125, and July 31 - August 5 - at 216!

Surprisingly low is the level of losses of the “lappets” in the last year of the war. So, during the German-Romanian offensive near Iasi on May 30 - June 8, 1944, Yu-87, according to the Soviet VNOS posts, made 45% of all enemy aircraft sorties (and 9544 of them were noted), i.e. . completed at least 4,300 sorties (at least - since Soviet observers did not record all sorties; the Germans alone then made 10,498 sorties). “Air battles between a dive squad and a Soviet group of 15-30 R-39, La-5 or Yak-9,” H.U. "(October 18, 1943, dive squadrons were renamed assault squadrons) - were not uncommon, but commonplace. In them, Russian pilots demonstrated exceptional aggressiveness and showed much better qualities than before. Against the 584 fighters that were available by June 1 in the 5th Air Army of the 2nd Ukrainian Front, which was operating in the Yassky direction, the Germans and Romanians could put up only the 199th. And yet, in eight days of fighting, the Luftwaffe irrevocably lost only 7 “Pieces” (from the III group and the 10th (anti-tank) detachment of the 2nd assault squadron) ... However, at least four more, only 30 -On May 31, the 6th group of dive bombers of the Romanian Air Force was lost. But even if we assume that before June 8, the Romanians lost twenty Yu-87s, then even then one Stuka irretrievably lost by the enemy would have about 160 sorties. And if we refuse to average and take only German units and subunits, then this number will turn out to be much larger! Note that in the Soviet Air Force, for one irretrievable combat loss of the Il-2, even in 1945, there were no more than 90 sorties, and in 1944 - about 70.

Another thing is that the insignificant (by Soviet standards) losses suffered by Yu-87, for example, in 1943, were considered by the Germans themselves as unacceptably large. Here it is necessary to take into account, firstly, that by the beginning of the same operation "Citadel" "Stuks" on the entire Soviet-German front there were only about 425-435. And the Luftwaffe as a whole, apparently, never had more than 550 Yu-87s in combat units. And secondly, the Germans extremely highly valued their flight personnel! Only taking into account these two circumstances, it is possible to evaluate the well-known statement of the Luftwaffe ground attack aviation inspector E. Kupfer, which we cite as proof of the exorbitant losses of the Yu-87. " Junkers-87", - Lieutenant Colonel Kupfer said in September 1943, - can no longer be used in any theater, even in the East. For example, my squadron lost 89 crewmen in eight months. In terms of the year, this corresponds to a 100% renewal of the flight crew».

Only the non-German command could be guided by such logic! If the Soviet reasoned in the same way, then it would inevitably have come to the conclusion that it was impossible to use the Il-2 attack aircraft! Indeed, on average, the fleet of these aircraft in the army was updated by 100% every 7-8 months of the war. And for the year, the renewal percentage also in the 43rd and 44th reached 150-200! On January 1, 1943, the active army had about 1800-2000 Il-2s, and on January 1, 1944 - 2413. Their combat losses in 1943 amounted to about 3760 vehicles (3515 were lost by the Red Army Air Force and approximately 240 - Air Force of the Navy), and in 1944 - about 3660 (3344 army and about 320 naval) or - if we accept the data of V.I. Alekseenko. According to which the Red Army Air Force in 1944 lost 3722 Il -2 - about 4040. Crews, however, died less than aircraft (on average for the war - 1.35 times), but we can talk about a 100 percent renewal per year here.

But, as you know, the Soviet command did not consider losses - and did not raise the issue of the impossibility of further use of the Il-2 ... Kupfer believed that losing flight personnel at the same rate as the Soviet Air Force was absolutely unacceptable - and therefore demanded “immediately” begin replacing the Yu-87 with the FV-190. " Since July 5, 1943 he emphasized, I lost two squadron commanders, six squadron commanders and two group adjutants, each of whom made more than 600 sorties. Such an experience cannot be replaced ... We cannot afford to lose the few who remain».

Nevertheless, Yu-87 continued to be actively used even in 1944.

WAS IT EASY TO FIGHT WITH THE LAPTENS?

How can one explain the relatively small losses of the Yu-87 on the Soviet-German front even in 1943-1944? They look especially amazing if one adheres to the traditional Soviet idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe "obsolete" and "low performance" of this aircraft. However, we must not forget that by the 43rd "lappetzhnik" had undergone a significant modernization, which seriously improved, in particular, its speed characteristics. The production of Yu-87V aircraft - by whose maximum speed of 340 km / h it is customary for us to judge all "eighty-sevenths" - was discontinued in the fall of 1941. Since 1942, Yu-87Ds were already used on the Soviet-German front, on which instead of the Jumo211A engine, there was a Jumo211J, the takeoff power of which was 1410 hp. against the previous 1010l.s. This (as well as improving the aerodynamics of the car) brought the maximum speed of the "Stuka" to 410 km / h (note that for serial IL-2s produced in 1943-1944, it did not exceed 405 km / h). Of the 4881 Stukas produced by the Germans, 3564 (i.e. 73%) belonged to modifications of the D family; Thus, the absolute majority of the Yu-87 aircraft used during the war years on the Soviet-German front were not inferior in maximum speed to the two-seater Il-2 (which, note, no one criticizes for "low flight data ").

Of course, the Yu-87D could not get away from the fighters either (as, indeed, all Soviet bombers and attack aircraft of the period 1942-1945). However, by 1943, the defensive capabilities of the Stukka had also increased. Already on the D-1 modification, instead of one MG15 machine gun, the shooter received a pair of much faster-firing MG81s (it was designated as MG 81Z). Although the caliber of the machine guns remained the same, rifle caliber (7.92 mm), the Stuka's defenses at short distances improved significantly (and at long distances, the fire of Soviet fighters was ineffective). On the modification of the O-5 (and almost a quarter of all produced Yu-87s - 1178 vehicles belonged to them), instead of two 7.92-mm MG17 wing-mounted machine guns, two 20-mm MG 151/20 cannons were installed - so in front of the "lappeteer ”was now protected almost the same as the IL-2 with 23-mm VYa cannons, and better than the silt with 20-mm ShVAK cannons (which were inferior to the German gun in terms of projectile weight). In addition, the cabin and individual units of the propeller group were booked on the Yu-87D.

Finally, we take into account that the all-metal construction of the Stukka had excellent survivability. This was especially emphasized, in particular, by the famous H. W. Rudel, a pilot who made more sorties on the Yu-87 than anyone else. According to his memoirs, after one of the battles with the Air Cobras of the 5th Air Army of the 2nd Ukrainian Front in the Balta region in March 1944, when viewed at the airfield, it turned out that Rudel's Yu-87G withstood hits not only of 12 .7 mm bullets, but also eight 37 mm shells! This looks incredible, but a similar fact is also reported in Rudel's report on the battle he conducted against the fighters of the 5th Air Force on May 31, 1944 in the Yass region. After landing, it is indicated there, "the whole Junker looked like a sieve made by 20- and 37-mm shells."

But, as we have seen, the Il-2 attack aircraft did not save from heavy losses either even more powerful than the "Shtuka" armament, nor much more powerful armor. And the Romanian Yu-87s in the same operation perished (in terms of one sortie) by an order of magnitude more than the German ones. Therefore, in the first place among the reasons for the relatively small losses of the Yu-87 on the Soviet-German front should be put the "human factor" - and above all the high flying and tactical skills of the German "stuff pilots". A huge role here, in particular, was played by the colossal combat experience accumulated by a significant part of them. So, from the information provided in the list of German attack pilots - holders of the Knight's Cross - M.V. more than 400, 18 - more than 500, 13 - more than 600.12 - more than 700, 10 - more than 800, 3 - more than 900.2 - more than 1000, M. Otte from the 2nd dive (then - 2nd assault) squadron - 1179, and Kh.U. Ruded, who fought in the same unit, about 2500). For comparison: of the much more numerous Il-2 pilots, only 9 to 11 people crossed the bar of 400 sorties (including from 3 to 8 more than 400, from 2 to 5 - more than 500 and 1 - more than 700).

Great combat experience allowed the Yu-87 pilots “to accurately determine when Soviet fighters approached the effective fire distance, and to perform an evasive maneuver in a timely manner, “We are being attacked by more than 20 L a-5,” H.U. recalled. Rudel about the departure of the Stuk III group of the 2nd assault squadron to the Yampol region on March 21, 1944 - but we continue to fly forward. When another Russian fighter enters my tail from behind, I wait, and then at the last moment abruptly go down or to the side. The same situation is described by I.N. Kozhedub, talking about the battle of the La-5 of the 240th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 302nd Fighter Aviation Division of the 2nd Air Army of the Voronezh Front with a group of "laptezhniks" over the southern face of the Kursk Bulge on July 6, 1943 .:

« I'm trying to attack the "Junkers", go to his tail. He maneuvers. Gets out of sight...Under enemy fire, I again lead the plane into the attack. I go to the "Junkers" in the tail. I'm getting closer. I'm aiming. I think it's the right distance. I press the triggers. The guns worked. And the Junkers does not fall. I shoot again. The German bomber began to maneuver. I forget about everything that is going on around. I see only "jun-kere" and continue to shoot ...I am close to the enemy. "Junker" is still maneuvering ».

In the end, Junior Lieutenant Kozhe-Oak, according to him, shot down this "Thing" - but used up almost the entire ammunition load in several unsuccessful attacks ... Soviet fighters could not respond in a timely manner to sudden sharp turns of the "lappet" (radius a high-speed car always has more turn than a slow-moving car) and jumped forward, losing sight of the enemy. (The same picture was repeated as in the battles of the Me-109 with the Il-2.)

Note that in order to perform a steep turn, at which very large overloads were created, the pilot also required special training - provided only by significant flight practice. In June 1944, Major H.U. The maneuverability of this machine was much worse than that of a conventional "Stuka": two 37-mm cannons suspended under the wing caused a large spread of masses along the wing span. But Rudel already had 2000 sorties behind him!

The high qualifications of the Yu-87 pilots also made it easier for them to maintain their place in the ranks of the group. But, as the same Rudel noted in the report on the actions of the Stuks, Paul Yassa-mi in May - June 1944, "the losses remained small only if the order was maintained"; "dive-bombers that broke away from the formation immediately went astray." In fact, while the Yu-87s were flying in close formation, their gunners (like the gunners of the Soviet Il-2) could organize fire interaction and mutually cover each other, concentrating the fire of several aircraft on the most dangerous fighter attacking the group at the moment. . In addition, an aircraft flying in close formation could only be attacked from a limited number of directions: from others, it was blocked by neighboring vehicles. But the Il-2 suffered huge losses due to the inability of poorly trained Soviet pilots to maintain formation when moving away from the target; the same thing happened with the Yu-87 of the Romanian Air Force.

In general, the rationality of the defensive tactics not only of single aircraft, but also of groups helped to avoid heavy losses in battles with fighters. So, they often used a “defensive circle”, where the tail of each Yu-87 was covered not only by the fire of its own shooter, but also by the fire of wing machine guns or cannons of the aircraft flying behind. Sometimes (for example, in the battles on the Right-bank Ukraine in early 1944), this “circle” pressed against the ground itself, so it was almost impossible to attack the “Stukas” from below, and from above it was dangerous: a fighter accelerated on a dive could, leaving the attack, crash into the ground ... Near Iasi in May - June 1944, the Yu-87s leaving after dropping bombs lined up in a “snake of links”: each link flew above or below the one in front and behind, and in the link itself the planes became tail to each other. This "snake-like compact mass" could (unlike the "circle") fly freely in the direction it needed; the density of the formation did not allow the fighters to go into the tail of any of the “lappets”, except for the end, and the spacing of neighboring links in height made it possible to protect at least half of the aircraft from attacks from below, against which the Yu-87s were defenseless. The goal of Yu-87 near Iasi was also approached by a “snake of links” (only each link went in the “wedge” formation), and sometimes in the formation of the bearing of the links or the front. In the last two cases, fighters attacking from behind found themselves under crossfire from several tail gunners at once. And near Narva in February 1944, units of the "Stuk" went to the target, lining up in a rhombus. As a result, V.F. Golubev, then commander of the 4th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 1st Guards Fighter Aviation Division of the Air Force of the Baltic Fleet, noted, “ their firepower was so strong that it was very difficult to overcome it with single or scattered attacks.».

The magnitude of the combat losses of the Yu-87 was, of course, also affected by the insufficient training of the majority of Soviet fighter pilots. According to a number of former Stuka pilots, in 1941 "Soviet fighters did not pose a serious threat to them" precisely because of their inept and not distinguished by persistence actions. “Having carried out a bombing strike, dive squadrons invariably managed to shake off Soviet aircraft after five minutes of maneuvering in a defensive circle and go home at low altitude.” Things were about the same throughout almost the entire 1942 of the year. “belly” of the “lappet” - for some reason, the Soviet pilots almost did not resort to it in the future (even if the “Junkers” were flying at a sufficient height for this). Instead, they preferred to fight their way through cannon and machine gun fire—or refuse to attack at all. According to H. W. Rudel, most Soviet fighter pilots still lacked aggressiveness even in 1944; "only a few select units were an exception to this rule."

As a result, according to the testimony of the same Rudel, his III group of the 2nd assault (until October 18, 1943 dive) squadron - fought in the 41st and in Belarus, and near Smolensk, and near Leningrad, which passed through Moscow and The battle of Stalingrad, the air battles in the Kuban, the battle of Kursk, the battle for the Dnieper, which reflected the “second Stalinist strike” on the Right-Bank Ukraine in early 1944, by the summer of 1944 “practically had no” losses from the Soviet Approximately the same, apparently, was the case in other units flying the Yu-87. So, the III group of the 1st assault (former dive) squadron back in January - March 1944, fighting in the Vitebsk region, she suffered all her losses from anti-aircraft fire; numerous fighters of the 1st and 3rd air armies of the Western and 1st Baltic fronts did not manage to shoot down a single "Thing".

As for anti-aircraft artillery - the main enemy of the Yu-87 on the Soviet-German front - it should be taken into account that to hit a dive, i.e. Continuously and quickly changing the flight altitude, the aircraft is very, very difficult for anti-aircraft gunners. And, "according to the crews of the Luftwaffe", Soviet anti-aircraft gunners "absolutely did not know how to fight diving aircraft."

But, perhaps, strong opposition from anti-aircraft artillery and fighters at least disrupted the performance of combat missions by the Stukas? The memoirs of Soviet fighter pilots are literally full of episodes in which the "lappeters" who sensed danger randomly drop bombs anywhere and refuse to try to break through to the target ... Of course, it happened like that. Here is just one example: as M.E. Morozov showed, it is the actions of the anti-aircraft gunners of the Baltic Fleet and the Leningrad Air Defense Army that can be considered the reason for the low effectiveness of the attacks of the Yu-87 Sh group of the 1st dive squadron and I and II groups - the 2nd dive squadron on the ships of the Baltic Fleet on the Neva in April 1942. Fearing to enter the zone of powerful anti-aircraft fire, the dive-bombers then bombed from too high altitudes, aimlessly (perhaps, however, another explanation: the command of the 1st air fleet of the Luftwaffe, which was sorely lacking planes to support ground troops in fierce battles near Pogostya, in the Luban “cauldron” and near Staraya Russa, and which undertook attacks on ships only at the insistence of Goering, recommended that the crews not take risks in these, in his opinion, sorties).

There are, however, many examples to the contrary. So, 349 anti-aircraft and universal guns of the Kronstadt naval base and the ships stationed in it could not prevent the Yu-87 from the 2nd dive squadron from sinking on September 21-23, 1941 the battleship Marat, leader "Minsk", destroyer "Steregushchiy", submarine M-74, minesweeper No. 31, hydrographic vessel, transports "Maria", "Bar-ta", "Levanevsky", tug KP-36, floating crane and several barges and damage the battleship "October Revolution", the cruiser "Kirov", the destroyers "Terrible", "Strong" and "Glorious", the gunboat "Pioneer" and several auxiliary ships. “The defense was simply deadly,” H.U., a participant in these raids, later emphasized. Rudel, “I didn’t see anything like it anywhere else during the war.” “Dozens, hundreds of blue-blue explosions dotted the sky,” confirms a Soviet eyewitness to the September 23 raid, the then commander of the Baltic Fleet V.F. from Yu-87 strikes. The often insufficient training of anti-aircraft gunners and the VNOS service affected. “As always (almost always) in this case, ground-based air defense, late until the enemy almost left the target, raised a terrible firing at the target,” he wrote in his diary after the raid three Yu-87s to the Tashlyk airfield (west of Kirovograd) in March 1944, the head of communications of the 4th Fighter Air Corps F.M. therefore, slowly, methodically shooting back, he went to the south / west "

The history of the confrontation between the Luftwaffe and the 1st Tank Corps of the 11th Guards Army of the Western Front during the Oryol operation in July 1943 is also indicative. that day, their effectiveness “still was insignificant due to the massive anti-aircraft fire, which disrupted the enemy’s ability to bomb accurately.” Then, on July 16, the "laptezhniks" fell on the anti-aircraft artillery regiment attached to the corps - and by the evening they left only four guns from it. After that, on July 17 and 18, Yu-87 and Hs 129 attack aircraft bombed and shot Soviet tanks from cannons already "with impunity" ..

True, in both of the examples we have cited, the targets of the Stuk strikes were too weakly covered by fighter aircraft. But by the first day of Operation Citadel, the Voronezh Front had, as already noted, not only powerful anti-aircraft weapons, but also a mass of fighters. Nevertheless, the battle formations of his troops were nevertheless subjected to massive attacks by the 2nd and 77th dive squadrons. Let us cite only the testimony of N.K. Popel, who personally observed on the morning of July 5, 1943, how the “lappeteers” were processing the positions of units of the 6th Guards Army and the 538th and 1008th anti-tank artillery regiments of the 1st Tank Army (of which he was a member of the Military Council then Popel).

« The regiment has been fighting for less than an hour, and a third of the guns have already been put out of action. Thin out the calculations. Losses are not so much from tanks, but from aviation. The sky is in the undivided power of German dive bombers. They either fly one after another along a closed ring, or they stretch out in a string. Then they spin in a round dance again, dropping bombs in turn. Dozens of such round dances are circling in the sky. And from below, columns of smoke and flame rise up to them, pieces of carriages fly, logs ...».

According to both German and Soviet documents, it was the strikes of the Laptezhniks that broke the resistance of the 52nd Guards Rifle Division that day - one of the three, in the areas of which the Germans broke through the first line of defense of the Voronezh Front troops.

And here is what happened in the Voronezh Front on July 10, 1943 - when his 2nd Air Army had already been reinforced by an entire fighter division. “We followed with admiration the actions of dive bombers, who continuously attacked Russian tanks,” this day was recorded in the combat log of the reconnaissance detachment of the Grossdeutchland motorized infantry division, which gnawed through the defenses of the 1st tank army in the Oboyan direction. “One after another, squadrons of dive bombers appeared and dropped their deadly cargo on Russian vehicles. A blinding flash showed that another enemy tank was "ready". It happened over and over." On the same day, the "Stukas" of the 2nd and 77th squadrons ensured the success of the SS motorized infantry division "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" in the Prokhorovka direction. .. On July 12, they stopped the advance of the 29th Tank Corps of the 5th Guards Tank Army, which was pushing the Leibstandarte near Prokhorovka.

The Yu-87s, operating on the northern face of the Kursk Bulge, also broke through to their targets against the troops of the Central Front. " In the first days of the offensive, the floor of Kursk,- recalled F. Lang, who then commanded the III group of the 1st dive squadron, - we carried out an average of 5-6 sorties daily, attacking various targets [...]. Often we had to engage in battle with Soviet fighters.". Only combat-ready "hawks" in the 16th air army of the Central Front had 386 (despite the fact that the enemy in this direction had only 186 fighters); there were more anti-aircraft weapons per kilometer of the German breakthrough section than that of. Voronezh Front (only anti-aircraft guns of the Central Front by July 1 had 1131). And yet, later reported the senior officer of the General Staff at the Central Front, Colonel V.T. Fomin, on July 5 " enemy bomber and assault aircraft [...] carried out bombardment and shelling of our combat formations to the entire tactical depth [...]» As can be seen from the reports of the front commander K.K. Rokossovsky to I.V. Stalin, the same picture was on July 6-9. It was the massed strike of the Stuk that forced the 132nd Rifle Division of the 70th Army to withdraw on July 5, and on July 7 Yu-87 and Yu-88 forced the 17th Guards Rifle Corps of the 13th Army to retreat 2-4 km .

Here the mediocre use of numerous Soviet fighters, which we characterized in Chapter II, has already affected. “The service of observation, warning along the line of the Air Force was not organized,” and the headquarters of the formations of the ground forces had no direct connection either with the headquarters of the fighter air divisions or with the command post of the headquarters of the 2nd Air Army - and only fighters could call through the headquarters of the front! While the request and the response order were going through all the intermediate instances, the “laptezhniki” had already managed to fly away ... The same was in the beginning of July 17, 1943. Miusskaya operation of the Southern Front. Here, for example, are the memoirs of the former regimental artilleryman from the 87th Guards Rifle Division of the 2nd Guards Army I.G. Kobylyansky.

« One approach, another, a third, and nine dive-bombers line up on the way back. And at this time, the second nine "Junkers" were already approaching us, repeating the same maneuvers and three times bombing, followed by the third without a break, and this hell has no end. We don’t have anti-aircraft guns, we can’t see aviation, and the fire from small arms to the “musicians” [so the Soviet front-line soldiers called the Yu-87 because of the siren they switched on when diving] is not terrible».

As you can see, contrary to popular belief among us, the Yu-87 aircraft could successfully carry out their tasks even in the middle of 1943, when the Soviet Air Force already had a huge number of modern fighters.

And not only in the 43rd. As early as May 5, 1944, as many as five La-5 squadrons from the 3rd and 4th Guards Fighter Aviation Regiments of the 1st Guards Fighter Aviation Division of the Air Force of the Baltic Fleet (i.e., about 50 fighters!) Could not stop a large group Yu-87, breaking through (under cover, however, FV-190) to Soviet ships in Narva Bay. “The massive anti-aircraft fire from the shore and ships did not stop him either,” the former commander of the 4th Guards V.F. Golubev later admitted. True, he adds, only “small groups” of “bast shoes” managed to break through to the target and drop bombs - but they also inflicted serious damage: they sank two minesweepers and damaged a gunboat. According to H. W. Rudel, enemy fighters only once during the entire war forced him to drop bombs before reaching the target - in July 1944, in the Yaroslav region in Galicia. And even then it was the Mustangs of the US Air Force ... Both before and after, the famous "pilot" emphasized, "we always struck at the intended target, even in the event of an overwhelming superiority of enemy aircraft."

True, V. Schwabedissen also points to a decrease in the effectiveness of the Stuka bombing strikes in 1944-1945. due to strong opposition from Soviet fighters. In order to bypass the barriers of the latter, the Yu-87s were forced to go to the target at a very high altitude and, accordingly, dive from it - and this worsened the aiming conditions.

HOW EFFECTIVE WAS THE ACTIONS OF THE Yu-87

The actions of the Stukas of the 2nd and 77th dive squadrons considered above during Operation Citadel shed light on the next question - about the degree of effectiveness of the combat work of the Yu-87 on the Soviet-German front. As you can see, back in the middle of 1943, the "lappets" were an effective tactical weapon capable of deciding the outcome of the battle of ground troops ...

Even more such examples are given by the campaigns of 1941 and 1942. For example, on the North-Western Front on June 22, 1941, the 5th Panzer Division of the 3rd Mechanized Corps “lost its combat capability” from the massive attacks of the Stukas, defending the strategically important bridges across the Neman in Alytus; in August, the Laptezhiiki made it possible to repel a counterattack by the 34th Army near Staraya Russa. On the Western Front, on June 25, 1941, Yu-87 scattered the 6th Cavalry Division of the 6th Cavalry Corps, which had concentrated in the initial area for the offensive (near Makovlyany, southwest of Grodno), thereby excluding its participation in a counterattack by the cavalry-mechanized group of I.V. Boldin on Grodno (on June 26, in exactly the same way, the 13th Infantry Division of the 10th Army, retreating from the Narev River to Supraselskaya Pushcha, was scattered). To a large extent, due to the strikes of the Yu-87, the entire counterattack, delivered on June 24-25 south of Grodno by Boldin’s group, was choked, as well as three more counterattacks by the troops of the Western Front: the 29th Panzer Division of the 11th Mechanized Corps of the 3rd army west of Grodno on June 22, the 30th Panzer Division of the 14th Mechanized Corps of the 4th Army near Pruzhany on June 23 and the 5th and 7th Mechanized Corps of the 20th Army near Senno and Lepel on July 6-9, 1941 ( “The biggest losses from aviation,” the head of the combat training department of the Main Armored Directorate of the Red Army, A.V. Borzikov, reported on the actions of the 5th and 7th mechanized corps.) "The 77th dive squadron played a decisive role in the rapid rollback of the 28th rifle corps of the 4th army in the Kobrin-Brest direction on June 23-24, 1941." From the constant and cruel bombardment, the infantry is demoralized and does not show perseverance in defense", - the army headquarters stated in the operational report on the 24th. During the Rzhev-Sychevsk operation in August 1942, the Yu-87 repeatedly thwarted the attacks of the troops of the 30th Army of the Kalinin Front north of Rzhev even before them. began when the attackers were just accumulating in their original positions. As noted by A.I. Shchukin, who was then the head of the collection point for reports in the 140th Infantry Division, the work of the “Laptezhniki” “ if not completely, then significantly paralyzed the actions of our troops».

And at the beginning of the battle for Moscow, in October 1941, Yu-87 turned out to be a factor not of tactical, but of operational significance. By continuously bombing the troops of the 43rd Army of the Reserve Front, surrounded by the Vyazma floor, the Stukas of the 2nd dive squadron, in essence, deprived them of their chances of breaking out of the "cauldron". " Divisions as combat units do not exist,- informed, for example, in those days the headquarters of the army, - and there are small groups of infantry fighters, special forces and artillery, demoralized by enemy aircraft ... The divisions suffered very heavy losses, aviation is especially rampant. It makes systematic raids in groups of 20-25 aircraft. [...] In general, our army is not capable of waging any kind of battle, since all the remaining ones have become somehow crazy».

The Yu-87 made exactly the same contribution to the catastrophic outcome of the Kharkov battle of 1942 for the Soviet troops. " Particularly persuasive- noted in the report of the high command of the South-Western direction to I.V. Stalin on the results of the battle, - there were actions of enemy aviation against our troops, who were (May 22, 1942) surrounded. Continuous air attacks of the enemy made it extremely difficult; regrouping of troops for a strike to the east, violated command and control of the troops and, upsetting the battle formations, disrupted the actions of the troops to withdraw from the encirclement».

The following month, the continuous strikes of the Yu-87 helped the enemy to eliminate one more "cauldron" - between Lyuban and Novgorod, where the 2nd shock army of the Volkhov group of troops of the Leningrad Front (transformed on June 8, 1942 into the Volkhov Front) was surrounded ). " Enemy,- Reported on June 5, the commander of the Leningrad Front, M.S. Khozin, - uses a mass of bomber aircraft against our battle formations, which essentially paralyzes the actions of our advancing troops"- both the 2nd shock, and the 59th army making its way towards it. " Lieutenant General Vlasov especially emphasizes the destructive action of German aviation”, - it means in the protocol of interrogation of the captured army commander of the 2nd shock, dated July 15, 1942. Of course, prisoners are inclined to flatter those in whose power they are, but A.A. that “the troops of the 2nd shock “suffer huge losses from aviation and enemy fire”, the chief of staff of the front, G.D. Stelmakh, also reported upstairs). According to the report of an employee of the Special Department of the NKVD of the Volkhov Front, Kolesnikov (who personally observed the agony of the 2nd shock), it was the German dive bombers who prevented the breakthrough of the main forces of the army from the encirclement. The encirclement exit through the corridor near the village of Myasnoy Bor, which began on the night of June 25, 1942, was already stopped in the morning "due to almost continuous enemy air raids."

Even in the summer of 1943, which we consider to be the year of the sunset of the glory of the Yu-87, they could influence the course of operations ... The central fronts were not allowed to reach the main goal of the operation - the encirclement of the Oryol group of Germans. First, on July 14-17, 1943, Yu-87 (with the support of Yu-88) stopped the 1st Guards Tank Corps of the Bryansk Front - whose blow was supposed to cut through the Oryol group. “Aviation,” the commander of this formation, M.F. Panov, subsequently reported, “was the main means of influencing the enemy on advancing formations and parts of the corps. Quite often, losses from enemy aircraft exceeded losses on the battlefield. Then, on July 16-17, the Stukas were forced to stop and take cover in the forests and the mobile grouping of the Western Front - the 1st and 25th tank corps of the 11th Guards Army. But they have already escaped into the operational space and the reconnaissance units have already reached the Hotynets station on the Orel-Bryansk railway, i.e. threatened to cut the communications of the 2nd Panzer Army! The delay of this half of the Soviet "pincers" allowed the Germans to transfer reinforcements to the area north of Khotynets. And after the strikes inflicted by Lieutenant Colonel E. Kupfer’s air unit on the 1st and 25th corps on July 19-21, the commander of the 2nd Tank and 9th armies defending in the Oryol ledge, V. Model, is certainly a patriot of his ground forces - considered that " for the first time in the history of wars, an advancing tank grouping was destroyed only by aviation forces, without any support from ground forces ».

Meanwhile, the same Yu-87 from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd dive squadrons formed the basis of the “Kupfer combat formation” ... Finally, on August 1-3, Yu-87 and twin-engine bombers also detained the second , the southern half of the “pincers” that were planned to close in the rear of the Oryol group - the 9th tank corps of the Central Front. This allowed the German troops to break away from the persecution of Soviet tankers and catch on abroad along the Kroma River. And on August 5 - even though the Soviet fighters forced some of the "lappeters" to prematurely drop their bombs - the Yu-87, together with the twin-engine bombers, made it extremely difficult for the Soviet tankers to force the Kroma. Among other things, they put out of action the entire headquarters of the chief of artillery of the 9th Tank Corps, and the 106th Tank Brigade of the 6th Guards Tank Corps of the 3rd Guards Tank Army was forced to return to the southern coast ... First of all Yu-87 should also be attributed to the assessment of the representative of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command on the Western and Bryansk fronts N.N. Voronov, made by him on July 26, 1943: “ The experience of the battles shows that no "Tigers" and "Ferdinands" are afraid of ground troops, enemy aircraft have a strong moral impact on our troops, very often it slows down the pace of our advance ».

Following Orlovskaya, the Smolensk operation, which began on August 7, 1943, dragged on due to opposition. The "Laptezhniki" again inflicted heavy losses on the mobile grouping of Soviet troops - the 5th mechanized corps of the Western Front - and it was never able to turn the tactical breakthrough made between Kirov and Spas-Demensk into an operational one ...

Yu-87 made a formidable tactical weapon first of all high performance their bombings. We emphasize that it can only be assessed on the basis of information from ground-based observers. Aircrew reports cannot differ in accuracy by definition. Not to mention the natural desire to exaggerate their success, the aviators are simply not able to notice and count from the air all the soldiers, guns, etc. they have destroyed; the on-board photo or movie camera is not able to fix everything (all the more so since it was almost impossible to catch the attacked targets in the camera lens during a steep dive) ... As for ground observers, we do not know whether the German figures of tanks, pillboxes, etc. destroyed by the Stukas ground inspectors of the Wehrmacht. Yes, and such a check could take place only if the area in which they worked. Yu-87 then passed under the control of German troops - and this did not always happen; since the summer of 1943, it has been extremely rare in general ... Therefore, to evaluate the effectiveness of Yu-87 strikes, we will use almost exclusively Soviet sources.

These sources paint a very impressive picture. Here are just the results of the work of "Shtuka" in the first six days of the war in the zone of the Soviet Western Front - testified for the most part by those who were then subjected to their blows (and whose memories were collected by D.N. Egorov), as well as reports and reports from commanders and headquarters of Soviet units and formations.

June 22, 1941 Yu-87 completely (and in just 15 minutes!) Destroyed the 171st light artillery regiment of the 49th rifle division of the 4th army on the march, disabled all materiel of the 75th howitzer artillery regiment of the 27th rifle divisions of the 3rd Army, inflicted "tangible losses" on the 164th Light Artillery Regiment of the 2nd Infantry Division and the 7th Howitzer Artillery Regiment of the 7th Tank Division of the 6th Mechanized Corps of the 10th Army - and completely defeated the artillery -ryu defending on the Augustow Canal of the 56th Rifle Division of the 3rd Army. Already the first bombing strike disabled more than half of the guns, many tractors and vehicles and destroyed many soldiers and commanders of its 247th howitzer artillery regiment, and the second completely finished off this unit (out of 1240 personnel, only 78 soon left the Neman).

A significant contribution was made by "Stukas" to the destruction of the 113th light artillery regiment of the 56th division (in which by 18.00 only two guns remained). On that day, they inflicted great damage on the 85th Infantry Division of the 3rd Army southwest of Grodno ("very serious losses in people, materiel and horse composition" suffered, in particular, one of the divisions of its 223rd howitzer artillery regiment) and the 30th tank division of the 14th mechanized corps of the 4th army northeast of Brest. By bombing the combat formations of the 57th tank regiment of the 29th tank division of the 2nd mechanized corps of the 3rd army west of Grodno, Yu-87 achieved several direct hits on his T-34 and T-26; since the armor of these vehicles was also pierced by fragments of 250-kg air bombs, one should pay attention to the "soldier's rumor", which "on the second or third day of fighting" near Grodno "knew that many Soviet tanks were burned by strikes from air."

On June 23, southeast of Grodno, the “laptezhniks” destroyed the 1st division of the 444th corps artillery regiment of the 4th rifle corps of the 3rd army and the rear of the 85th rifle division

(3rd automobile battalion and 87th field auto-batch-water). Attacking the 7th Panzer Division of the 6th Mechanized Corps of the 10th Army east of Bialystok, they (as is clear from the report of Divisional Commander-7 S.V. Borzilov), disabled 17% of its tanks - 63 vehicles out of 368 available on June 22 - and completely defeated the rear of both tank regiments of the division. The 18th Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht, which counterattacked near Pruzhany, the 30th Panzer Division of the 14th Mechanized Corps of the 4th Army suffered from Yu-87 (according to the former Chief of Staff of the Army L. M. Sandalov) “no less losses than from tanks and artillery ". Before the battle, the 30th had 120-130 serviceable T-26s, and in the battle, according to the morning report of the Military Council of the 4th Army of June 23, it lost 60 tanks; consequently, the "laptezhniks" destroyed 20-30 T-26s - or from 16 to 25% of the division's combat-ready tanks ... And near the Name-day (north of Kobrin) they burned about 27-30 of the 67 tanks that had survived by that time kov of the 22nd tank division of the same corps.

On June 24, Yu-87 (together with Hs123 attack aircraft and, possibly, Me-109 fighters) again inflicted heavy damage on people and equipment of the 85th Infantry Division near Grodno, and the 4th Panzer Division advancing on Indura (south of Grodno) the vision of the 6th mechanized corps from the blows of the "Stuks" - again achieving direct hits - lost, according to the report of division commander-4 A.G. Potaturchev, up to 20-26% of their tanks.

On June 25, in the area of ​​​​Makovlyan (southwest of Grodno), the “paw-men” destroyed all the artillery and a huge number of people and horses of the 94th cavalry regiment of the 6th cavalry division of the 6th cavalry corps of the horse-mechanized group I. V. Boldin and inflicted heavy losses on the 8th tank regiment of the 36th cavalry division of the same corps.

On June 26, in the area of ​​Bolshaya Berestovitsa (north of Volkovysk), the Stukas dispersed the 144th cavalry regiment of the 36th cavalry division, and north of Bialystok inflicted significant damage on the 200th rifle regiment of the 2nd rifle division of the 10th, which was retreating from Osovets to Suprasl army.

On June 27, after the Yu-87 raid, in two batteries of the 128th separate anti-tank battalion of the 86th rifle division of the 10th army, which were defending on the Narew River in the Bialystok region, only 3 guns remained, and in the Volkovysk area, “lapte zhni kya” was almost destroyed all the materiel that remained in the 35th tank regiment of the 6th cavalry division.

On the Northwestern Front, the Stukas accounted for a "significant percentage" of the approximately 90 BT-7s, T-28s and T-34s that were lost on June 22 by the 5th Panzer Division in the battle for Alytus; on the Southern Front, Yu-87s from the 77th dive squadron on July 8 inflicted "significant losses" on the 2nd mechanized corps advancing in Northern Bessarabia (north of the city of Balti).

And here are the results of Yu-87 attacks on tank units and formations at the end of 1941-1943. July 8, 1943, during the defensive battle of the Voronezh Front on the southern face of the Kursk Bulge, near the village of Storozhevoye: "laptezhniks" in one raid disabled a quarter of the tanks of the 15th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment of the breakthrough of the 2nd Tank Corps - two of the 11 British vehicles MK-4 ("Churchill") were half-beaten, and two burned out from direct hits of bombs.

On July 12, Yu-87s burned and knocked out 20% of the tanks that still remained in the 5th Guards Tank Corps (4 T-34s and 2 Churchills; dive bombers that day accounted for 37.5% of the total losses of the corps in tanks ). According to the report of the commander of the operational group of the Western Front, I.V. Boldin, on October 4, 1941, up to 30% of the materiel of his troops was destroyed in the area of ​​​​Kholm-Zhirkovsky Yu-87 - i.e. including the 126th and 128th tank brigades. Considering that the state of the tank brigade at that time should have consisted of 46 tanks and that the brigades were unlikely to be 100% equipped, it can be assumed that Boldin's group lost up to 25 tanks. According to German data, the Stukas flew 152 times that day to the Kholm-Zhirkovsky area; thus, for one destroyed tank, there were no more than 6 sorties (actually, apparently, less, since dive bombers probably bombed not only tank units). The latest conclusion is consistent with information about Yu-87 raids on the 9th Guards Cossack Cavalry Division of the 4th Guards Cossack Cavalry Corps of the 1st Belorussian Front in the Pruzhany area on July 12, 1944, reported by the former commander of the 181st Guards Artillery -mortar regiment of this division B.I. Strelchenko. During the first raid, 7 or 8 “lappeters” - despite, by the way, barrage fire from a battery of 37-mm anti-aircraft guns - destroyed three Valentine tanks of the 151st Guards Tank Regiment with bombs, i.e. 2-3 sorties were spent on one tank.

However, in mid-March 1943, west of Belgorod, one Yu-87 raid in the 3rd Guards Tank Corps of the Voronezh Front immediately killed 26 tanks. Since in the Battle of Kharkov in 1943, the “laptezhniks” acted in groups of 10-15 and 50 vehicles, it can be concluded that it took them only 5 to 2 sorties to destroy one tank. Just as effective was the strike of a group of 18 Yu-87 and 18 Yu-88 on the 1st Guards Tank Corps of the Bryansk Front near the village of Grachevka (in the Novosil area) on July 13, 1943. - from which the corps lost 23 tanks and 45 vehicles burned down and damaged. Even if we assume that the crews of the twin-engine "Junkers" acted with the same efficiency as the "piece pilots" trained in attacks of small targets, then it turns out that there were only about 1 sortie per hit tank Yu-87.

Let's compare these results with those achieved by the Il-2 attack aircraft. As we have seen, since the summer of 1943, the “humpbacked” began to use not only high-explosive bombs (like Yu-87V and D), but also much more effective cumulative bombs against tanks. But even then - as combat experience showed - for the guaranteed destruction of one tank on the battlefield, it was necessary to spend from 18 to 30 Il-2 sorties. And in order to guarantee the destruction of one tank from the 37-mm NS-37 guns - as field tests and, again, battle experience revealed - it was necessary to send at least 15 attack aircraft. As you can see, in the 41st, and in the 43rd, and in the 44th, the Yu-87 acted against tanks many times more effectively ... And this is using bombs - and two 37-mm guns mounted on Used since the summer of 1943, the Yu-87G were, according to German pilots, an even more effective anti-tank weapon.

The effectiveness of the Yu-87 bombing strikes can also be judged by the fact that in the second of the raids described by B.I. Strelchenko on July 12, 1944. 3, and then 7 "laptezhnikov" within two hours disabled approximately 12-15% of the personnel and 20% of the horses of the 32nd Guards Cossack Cavalry Regiment, almost its entire regimental battery (i.e., apparently , three guns out of four) and two of the four guns given to him by the 181st Guards Artillery and Mortar Regiment. Let's take the risk of recognizing this damage as significant, and the actions of the seven "lappeters" as highly effective ... According to the report of the headquarters of the Voronezh Front on the defensive operation on the Kursk Bulge, on the first day of this battle, July 54, 1943, the loss of troops in manpower from aviation (due to the presence of a "widely developed system of trenches and shelters") were "insignificant". However, in the combat log of the 52nd Guards Rifle Division of the 6th Guards Army, it appears that Yu-87 strikes in it that day "many artillery, weapons and manpower" were put out of action.

And here are the results of the Yu-87 strikes from Group I of the 5th dive squadron in Murmansk. During the raid on April 3, 1942 on the port of Murmansk, only 8 Stukas managed to effectively hit seven targets: they sank the English transports S-58 New Westminster City and S-67 Tobruk, the Soviet trawler RT -61 "Vodnik", damaged the transport S-52 "Empire Starlight", the Soviet hydrographic vessel "Ost" and the trawler RT-7 "Syomga" and destroyed the fish factory. On April 15, having dropped 19 high-explosive bombs on the port and the raid, the Yu-87s sank the S-59 Lancaster Castle transport, again damaged the Empire Starlight, destroyed berth No. 10, a warehouse, a railway crane and three railway tracks. On April 23, 10 Laptezhniks destroyed four targets in the port: they sank a 45-ton floating crane, the Stroitel tugboat, and destroyed berth No. 9 and a warehouse. On June 1, 14, the Stuks managed to reliably hit only two objects (they sank the Soviet steamship Subbotnik and finished off the Empire Star-light), but on June 5, pinpoint ulars completely destroyed the main food reserves of Murmansk hidden in the rocks and not only they destroyed the main station of the city water supply, but in six places they also hit the "thread" of the water main (on June 10 they broke it already in 18 places, and on the 12th - in 30). And on February 28, 1943, a pair of Yu-87s destroyed the building of the NKVD Directorate in Murmansk with a pinpoint strike ...

The effectiveness of the Yu-87 bombing strikes on sea targets becomes especially impressive when compared with that of the Soviet Pe-2 dive bombers (comparing the Yu-87 with the Il-2 will not be correct here: after all, ships and ships are classic point targets, bombing on which in those years it was best to carry out from a steep dive). Sources allow quite a complete comparison of the results of Yu-87 and Pe-2 strikes on ships of the destroyer class (in the Soviet fleet of those years it was called "destroyers" and included two subclasses: "destroyer squadrons" and "destroyer leader squadrons").

To sink the destroyer Steregushchy on September 21, 1941 in the Peterhof raid, the Stukas of the 2nd dive squadron needed (according to Soviet reports) only 12-16 sorties and one raid. For the destruction on October 6, 1943 in the Black Sea, a detachment consisting of the leader "Kharkov" and the destroyers ^Able" and "Merciless" "Junkers" of the III group of the 3rd dive squadron spent about 50 aircraft during four raids -tov, i.e. 16-17 per ship. (If we take into account that the Kharkov and the Merciless sank already as a result of the third raid, it turns out that only 27 sorties were required to destroy these destroyers, i.e. 13-14 per ship.) Sunk 20 July 1941 in the Polyarny destroyer "Swift" cost 9 sorties) Yu-87 from the IV (dive) group of the 1st training squadron and one raid54. For the sinking on April 16, 1945, in the Danzig Bay of the German destroyer 234, 16 Pe-2 sorties were not enough. On the ship, according to German data, only anti-aircraft artillery was seriously damaged - moreover, these damages could be inflicted by both “pawns*” and the Airacobra fighters participating in the attack. The Romanian destroyer Regele Ferdinand was also damaged, but not sunk, on which (more precisely, along the harbor in which it stood in Constanta) on August 20, 1944, from 12 to 30 Pe-2s from the 29th and 40 -th aviation regiment of dive bombers of the 13th aviation division of dive bombers of the Air Force of the Black Sea Fleet. Germansky 7.3] On April 8, 1945, 27 “pawns” of the 12th Guards Aviation Regiment of dive bombers of the 8th mine-torpedo air division of the Baltic Fleet Air Force attacked in the Danzig Bay - however, they only managed to damage the enemy ship.

In general, the Pe-2 (as well as the Il-2) does not have a single enemy destroyer sunk - and in fact, in the Baltic in late 1944 - early 1945, German ships of this class acted very actively ... "Piece" they also sank 9 Soviet destroyers and leaders (including the one that sank on November 12, 1941 in the Sevastopol dock "Perfect") - "Minsk", "Kharkov", "Frunze" (September 21, 1941 near Tendra), "Guarding ”, “Swift”, “Perfect”, “Free” (June 10, 1942 in Sevastopol), “Able” and “Merciless”98. Three more (including the subsequently sunk “Merciless”) they inflicted heavy damage, and “Strong” on September 21, 1941 suffered in Kronstadt from only 9 “laptezhnikov”, and “Flawless”, attacked the next day with such the same number of them near Odessa, turned out to be half-flooded.

One can, of course, point to examples of frankly unsuccessful actions of the Stukas. So, December 1, 1941 15 Yu-87. bombing the firing positions of the 1st battery of the 196th separate anti-aircraft artillery division on the Western Front in the Kubinka area, managed to disable only one gun - and even then temporarily. Apparently, it was the Yu-87s that were those “dive bombers” that at the end of May 1942, during the offensive of the 16th Army of the Western Front in the Zhizdra direction, practically unsuccessfully bombed the circle of sa -moletov" tank brigade standing still (!) “There were moments,” recalled the former commander-16 K.K. Rokossovsky, who observed this raid, “when the flames, smoke and dust from explosions of aerial bombs completely covered the tanks from observation. It seemed that only a pile of twisted metal would remain there. In fact, only two tanks were damaged in all the time. The Yu-87 and Yu-88 11th Guards Tank Brigade of the Central Front, fighting on the northern face of the Kursk Bulge, were bombed all day on July 7, 1943 - however, only one tank was disabled ...

“But this does not always happen,” Rokossovsky added, “and the tankers know about it.” At the beginning of July 1942 "laptezhniki" within a few days almost destroyed the fully equipped 116th tank brigade of the Bryansk Front. “The losses were colossal,” recalls P.I. Kirichenko, who served in it then. “... by the time the infantry and tanks of the enemy approached, our brigade had a small number of vehicles left.” There is much more evidence in Soviet sources of evidence of the high effectiveness of Yu-87 strikes; here are just a few related to the same 1942. In March 1942, Colonel D.S. Sorokin, the commander of the 372nd Rifle Division of the 59th Army of the Volkhov Front, who fought at the Passkaya Polisty (north of Novgorod), complained of 13 “heavy losses” from the “heaviest strikes” of Yu-87. “The Germans’ dive bombers, five to six times a day, in single file, with a terrible howl, turning on special sirens, dive at crossroads,” a former artilleryman from 311th Rifle Division of the 54th Army of the Leningrad Front N.N. Nikulin. “Bombs scatter logs, dirt, cars, people…”. “In half an hour, neither the bridge nor the village itself was gone. Everything that could burn - burned. From the battalion, I managed to collect only 30 people, not a single wagon survived, ”describes the consequences of the Yu-87 raid on the crossing over the Berek River near the village of Bunakovo (south of Kharkov) on May 25, 1942. VF Ropotov, who then commanded the 3rd battalion of the 973rd rifle regiment of the 270th rifle division in the army group of Major General V. Bobkin. And here are the results of the Shtuk raid on the column of troops of the 39th Army of the Kalinin Front on July 5, 1942, who retreated along the forest road near Bely (southwest of Rzhev) " In all the war I have not seen anything more terrible, - recalled B.P. Polyakov, who was then serving as a communications officer in the 634th rifle regiment of the 1! 9th rifle division. — Large funnels were already filled to the brim with water. The road was littered with broken carts, motor vehicles, dead horses, corpses of people. A particularly dense heap of warped vehicles and guns encircled [...] the lake. [...] It took a lot of effort for us to make our way through the incessant blockages of fallen trees and piles of equipment».

Here it is necessary to mention such weapons of the “Stuk” as their famous sirens, which emitted “a loud howl, at first low tone” when the aircraft dived. Then as you approach the ground and pick up speed - higher and higher and louder and louder. Near the ground, this is already some kind of unbearable piercing squeal. Aircraft designer A.S. Yakov-lev in his famous book made it clear that this could only intimidate British colonial soldiers (presumably Indians). However, A.I. Shchukin, who fought in the 140th Infantry Division near Rzhev in the summer of 1942, testifies that the “piercing, howling sound” of sirens “depressingly affected the psyche” and Soviet boyps. me more than once he writes, I have seen people completely lose their temper, rush about in a panic, looking for shelter, and, as a rule, become victims of such "psychic" bombing". E.L. Balakina (Nazarov), who served in the medical unit of the 59th Infantry Brigade of the 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Front, writes about the same thing in June 1942: when Yu-87 “turned on the hellish siren, from which - la blood in the veins", the wounded "began to rush about in horror". " I do not know of a stronger psychological effect on a person in war than the whistle of a falling bomb, the howl of a dive bomber", - considers the veteran of the 116th Corps Cannon Artillery Regiment V.A. Khodosh (who fell under the bombing of the Shtuk in early 1944 on the Narva bridgehead captured by the 2nd shock army of the Leningrad Front across the Narova River)109. According to F.N. [...] It is not difficult to catch the “humpbacked” (nickname Yu-87), but it is much more difficult to keep it in sight - it dives quickly and howls strongly. It takes both skill and patience.". The effectiveness of the Laptezhiik sirens is also evidenced by the fact that in the summer of 1943, the Air Force Research Institute, having tested the captured Yu-87V-3, recommended releasing an experimental batch of these devices.

WHY WAS THE SHUKTS HITS SO EFFICIENT?

The high effectiveness of the Stuk bombing was due primarily to the high accuracy of the bombing. This was affected, firstly, by the use of its most accurate method - from a dive - and the excellent adaptability of the Yu-87 aircraft to deliver an aimed diving strike. Due to the high strength of the design, the "lappeteer" could attack targets from a steep dive - at an angle of 60-90 ° (for IL-2, as we remember, the limit was 30 °). German sources describe many episodes when the Stukas dived on the target completely vertically - so that "the wings of the aircraft vibrated, making high sounds, like a ghostly metal drum" "". But the closer the dive angle to 90 °, the more the trajectory of the dropped bomb coincides with the aiming line ... The Yu-87 dived steadily, not roaring and, very importantly, had a relatively low steady dive speed of -450 km / h at a dive angle of 70 ° ( here, by the way, not only special brake grids helped, but also the notorious non-retractable landing gear of the “lappeteer” - which created significant aerodynamic resistance).This gave the Yu-87 pilot more time to aim than the Pe-2 pilot, whose car (due to its greater weight and greater aerodynamic perfection) accelerated in a dive to 680 km / h.

In addition, the slower diving "lappet" had less inertia and, therefore, the exit from the peak could begin at a lower altitude compared to the "pawn". This means that he could also drop bombs from a height lower than the Pe-2 - i.e. again more accurate! Usually Yu-87s were released from bombs at an altitude of 1500-2000 m, but, according to the Germans, they often dived and “almost to the very ground”; in any case, they could also carry out bombing from a height of only 300 m (Ober-Lieutenant H. Urudel from the III group of the 2nd dive squadron, diving on September 23, 1941 at an angle of 90 ° (!) On the battleship " Marat”, after that he still managed to bring the “Stuka” - 3-4 meters above the surface of the water - into a horizontal flight). “Pawns”, even in the 2nd Guards Bomber Air Corps of I.S. Finally, the Yu-87, which dived at a relatively low speed, obeyed the rudder better than the Pe-2, so that it was easier for its pilot, if necessary, to turn the plane along the course, achieving more accurate aiming. This latter was facilitated both by the magnificent Stuka bombsight and the high landing of the pilot in the cockpit, which provided excellent visibility ...

The high level of bombing accuracy was also determined by the high level of training of the Stuk pilots (it was not for nothing that the saying was popular among them: “If you don’t train, nothing will work”) and the same huge combat experience of a significant part of them. Among other things, this experience allowed the “piece pilots” to confidently attack and carefully aim even under powerful anti-aircraft fire. " Many inexperienced pilots- testifies H.W. Rudel, - they began to worry, but quickly calmed down when they heard on the radio that the “old people” laughed at their fears and even allowed themselves to joke and sing. ... Gradually, all pilots acquired the same icy self-possession».

All this, however, did not exclude attacks on friendly troops: a number of such cases are recorded, for example, in the combat log of the 58th Infantry Regiment of the 6th Infantry Division

The 9th Army of the Wehrmacht, which defended in August 1942 near the village of Polunina north of Rzhev. However, this took place under conditions when the Soviet troops were continuously attacking and the battle formations of the opponents were approaching to the limit; Apparently, such mistakes in war are generally inevitable. In the same journal, we also find reports of successful bombing strikes carried out by "Stukas" at a minimum distance from the forward edge of the 58th regiment. And the private of one of the motorized infantry regiments of the 16th Panzer Division of the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht A. Rimmer on July 31, 1942, during the attack on Stalingrad, watched how the Stuka (together with heavy guns) destroyed 12 Soviet tanks located just 50 meters from the German trenches. We emphasize that this evidence is contained in a personal diary; it was made under the direct impression of what he saw and was not intended to be made public - and therefore deserves trust ...

The reliability of such evidence is also confirmed by Soviet sources - for example, the memoirs of a former officer of the 233rd (later - 46th Guards) tank brigade D.F. Loza. As it appears from them, the accuracy of the Stuk strikes was such that at the end of August 1944, during the Yassy-Kishinev operation, in front of the tankers of the entire 5th mechanized corps of the 6th tank army of the 2nd Ukrainian Front arose as a vital question: how to avoid a direct hit by a Yu-87 bomb on an M4A2 ("Sherman") tank? The reality of such a threat is clearly shown by D. Floza's description of the "anti-bomb" maneuver, invented by then senior lieutenant I.I. Yakushkin from the 233rd brigade. “The tank commander sees how a bomb comes off from the Yu-87 diving on his car. With every second, the weight is closer, it is getting larger. And the officer, taking into account the trajectory of her flight, corrects the further movement of the Sherman: a dash forward - and the bomb falls behind the stern of the tank; deceleration or instant stop - the sultan of the explosion in front of the tank. It was the "Immelmaners" who worked - the crews of the 2nd assault (former dive) squadron "Immelman" that gave most of the German dive aces ... And the "Stukas" of the 77th dive, bombing on June 23-24, 1941 positions 6- The 1st and 42nd Rifle Divisions of the 4th Army of the Western Front east of Brest, according to the report of Commander-4 A.A. Korobkov, "disabled gun after gun." Undoubtedly, only highly qualified pilots could work so accurately ...

The experience of the pilots was especially important for the successful operations of the Yu-87G assault version of the Shtuka, whose weapons were not bombs, but two 37-mm VKZ, 7 cannons, and the purpose was to fight Soviet tanks, in order to hit the latter as accurately as possible , "Gustavs" attacked them from a gentle gliding - at an angle of 15-20 ° (or even 10-12 °): after all, the smaller the dive angle, the faster the plane can get out of the dive and the closer, therefore, it can approach goals. However, this method of attack meant that they would have to shoot from a strafing (or almost strafing) flight. And at ultra-low altitude, it is very difficult for an average pilot to aim: in order not to crash into the ground, he has to concentrate on controlling the machine. (That is why Il-2 pilots with 37-mm NS-37 cannons attacked German tanks from a dive at an angle of 30 °. At the same time, they would be forced to open fire from a distance of not 30-100, as "stuff-lots", but 300 -400 meters123 - but on the other hand they did not fall below 100-150 meters and could aim more or less calmly.) And the Yu-87G - due to the long and heavy guns suspended under the wing - was also very difficult to pilot ... But the most experienced pilots of anti-tank detachments, starting to dive gently from a height of about 800 m, were able to bring the car to the tank at a distance of only 15 meters - and still managed to pull it out of the dive! They managed to aim accurately, even flying at low level - and not at the "tank in general", but exactly at the roof of the engine compartment, which was covered with the thinnest armor! (Theoretically, hitting these horizontal armor plates at an angle of 10-20 °, the shells should have ricocheted. But, apparently, the Germans managed to hit the net or blinds above the ventilation hatches in the armor.) Note that the aiming error here could not be adjusted due to the dispersion of a large number of fired shells: the rate of fire of the VK3,7 guns was rather low, and the Yu-87G ammunition load consisted of only 24 shells (against 100 for the Il-2 with NS-37 guns). Therefore, the successes achieved by the Yu-87G attack aircraft in the fight against Soviet tanks further emphasize the highest qualification of the pilots of these aircraft.

And the Soviet side also recognized the high effectiveness of the actions of the Yu-87G. Already after the debut of this machine in the Battle of Kursk in July - August 1943, the Soviet command "was seriously concerned about the increased capabilities of German aviation to defeat our armored vehicles." According to the headquarters of the 1st Tank Army of the Voronezh Front, the effectiveness of the Yu-87G turned out to be "undeniable". Indeed, on August 12, 1943, near Vysokopolye (south of Bogodukhov), from one of their raids in the 200th tank brigade of this army, 8 tanks failed; since in the Kharkov region the Germans then had - as part of the 10th (anti-tank) detachment of the 2nd dive squadron - no more than 10 Yu-87G, no more than 1 sortie was spent on defeating one tank. The Soviet analogues of the Yu-87G - Il-2 with NS-37 guns - for this (as field tests and battle experience showed) required at least 15 sorties. The question of creating a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun, “which could follow directly in the battle formations of tanks and self-propelled artillery”, V.I. this appearance.

Worthy of attention is the content of radio conversations of Soviet guidance officers with fighter pilots intercepted by the Germans, who were supposed to attack the anti-tank Stukas, which was intercepted by the Germans. It also testifies to the high performance of the Yu-87G. So, in August 1944, during the fighting near Vilkavishkis on the border of Lithuania and East Prussia (where the 2nd Guards Tank Corps of the 3rd Belorussian Front then broke through), the guidance officer emphasized that the approaching Yu-87s - “this is probably a group of lieutenant colonel Rudel, who always knocks out our tanks." “A lone “lappet” with two stripes intends to attack our tanks - I am sure that this is the fascist bastard who burns our tanks ...”; "Don't you see that one tank is already on fire?!" - the Germans heard such remarks on the air in late October or early November 1944, when Rudel attacked a tank column north of Kecskemet in Hungary on the Yu-87G (from where the 2nd and 4th Guards mechanized corps then rushed to Budapest 2nd Ukrainian Front).

In 1944 (as testified, in particular, by the same H. W. Rudel), the training of young pilots of the Yu-87 - as well as in general of the entire young replenishment of the Luftwaffe - worsened due to a lack of gasoline for training - but this, note, by German standards.

The accuracy of the Stuk bombing strikes was supplemented by the significant power of the bomb salvo for a single-engine aircraft. The normal bomb load of the Yu-87V was only 500 kg, but in practice the Berta lifted both 700 and 1000 kg. And on the Dora (Yu-87D), the maximum bomb load was already brought up to 1800 kg (and normal - up to 700 kg). Thus, since 1942. The “lappeters” began to surpass in this indicator not only the IL-2 (400 kg of bombs, and 600 in overload), but also the twin-engine Pe-2 (respectively 600 and 1000-1200 kg). In practice, Yu-87Ds usually took on board 700 kg of bombs (this was, for example, the usual load of aircraft of the III group of the 1st dive squadron in the spring of 1943) - however, during most of the war, no more (600 - 750 kg) they usually lifted the Pe-2 ...

Larger than that of Soviet vehicles, the Yu-87 had the maximum caliber of the bombs used. Unlike the Stukas, the Il-2s could not carry 500-kg bombs and practically did not use 250-kg bombs (only 100 kilograms or less), and Pe-2s could not carry 1000-kg - while Yu- 87B were able to lift and 1800-kilogram. This, in particular, significantly increased the effectiveness of the Stuka's strikes on tanks and ships. Since a direct hit on the tank was still unlikely, the effect of the bombing directly depended on the distance from which the tank armor was pierced by fragments of bombs that exploded away from the vehicle. And here, of course, the 250- and 500-kg Yu-87 bombs would have all the advantages over the 50- and 100-kg Il-2 bombs ... In the same way, the ship could receive heavy damage not only from a direct hit , but also from a close rupture of a large-caliber bomb: this caused such a hydrodynamic shock that a hole of several tens of square meters was formed in the board.

WHY DID THE "LAPTEHNIKERS" CONSTANTLY HANG OVER THE BATTLE FIELD?

The high effectiveness of Yu-87 bombing strikes was multiplied by the highest intensity of use of these aircraft. Complaining about German dive bombers constantly hanging overhead is a common place in the memoirs and diaries of Soviet participants in the war. Here are just a few such testimonies relating to September 1942; the first of them belongs to I.I. Maslennikov, a staff officer from the 618th rifle regiment of the 215th rifle division of the 30th army of the Western Front, which was then advancing on Rzhev. According to his diary (possibly processed later) entry, September 1, 1942 in the Rzhev region " enemy aircraft appeared at sunrise, and there was no free sky until sunset. Yu-87 and Yu-88 all the time hung over our battle formations and second echelons. Before one echelon of "Junkers" has time to leave, a second echelon appears on the horizon and sets from the sun ...»

On September 12, 1942, the commander of the 861st Infantry Regiment of the 2nd Shock Army of the Volkhov Fringe, advancing on Sinyavino (near the southwestern tip of Lake Ladoga) and attacked by Yu-87, _Yu-88 and Xe 111: " Enemy aircraft bomb-bit all the time. The whole earth trembles from bomb explosions. It seems that the Germans want to raze everything to the ground. Their war machines are constantly flowing and bombing, bombing”(quote is given in reverse translation from German).

The same thing happened in those days at the other end of the huge Soviet-German front, near Stalingrad. The pages of the memoirs of V.I. our battle formations and over the Volga. And the responsible editor of the "Red Star" D.I. Ortenberg on September 12, 1942. was located north of Stalingrad, at the location of the 173rd Infantry Division of the 24th Army of the Stalingrad Front. " German aviation dominates here too, he wrote later. — She continuously attacks our infantry. There is a wild howl in the air. These are special devices howling on the planes (in fact, on the fairings of the landing gear) of the Yu-87 bombers...". The writer K. M. Simonov, who was waiting for Ortenberg, counted that day 390 dive-bomber sorties over units of the 173rd division.

On September 22, 1942, "Stukas" from the 2nd dive squadron bombed the floating craft in Stalingrad all day, providing the central crossing across the Volga. On the same day, Yu-87s raged southeast of Leningrad, where the Germans began an operation to encircle the Soviet 2nd shock army that had broken through to Sinyavin. On September 29, they also joined the operation “Michael”, which unfolded south of Staraya Russa, an offensive to expand the famous “Ramushev corridor”, through which the communications of the German group, which occupied the Demyansk ledge, passed.

And this despite the fact that in September 1942 in all combat units of the Luftwaffe there were only about three and a half hundred Yu-87s (on July 1 there were about 340, and on October 1 - 365) And on On the Soviet-German front, there were only about 275 of them at that time: three of the twelve Luftwaffe dive groups fought in North Africa. Even more impressive examples of the intensity of use of the Yu-87 are the fighting on the northern wing of the Soviet-German front in the spring of 1942. So, at the end of March, "Stukas" continuously bombed both units of the 59th Army of the Volkhov Front north of Novgorod (where they tried to unblock the 2nd shock army surrounded in the Ltaban "cauldron") and troops of the 11th and 1st shock armies of the North-Western Front southeast of Staraya Russa (where the Germans were already advancing to join with their grouping in the Demyansk “sack”) ... But in March 1942, the Germans in the entire northwestern strategic the direction was (as part of the 1st air fleet) only two groups of "Pieces" (III group of the 1st and 1st group of the 2nd dive squadron), i.e. only about 60 Yu-87s, of which only about 30-35 were combat-ready! And in April - three groups (the II group of the 2nd squadron was added), i.e. about 90 "lappeters", including no more than 50-60 combat-ready. And at the same time, they helped their troops at Pogostye (southeast of Leningrad), and at Staraya Russa, and at Kholm - in the strip of as many as three Soviet fronts: Leningrad, North-Western and Kalinin - and even bombed Soviet ships on Neva.

In general, on the Soviet-German front, the Germans never had more than 540-550 Yu-87s - but these few vehicles compared to the Soviet Il-2 did not stand idle, they worked with maximum efficiency! It has already been shown earlier how much more intensively the pilots of the German attack aircraft flew compared to the Soviet ones; Let us now pay attention only to the load that falls on the "pilot" (and his plane) during the day. Captain A. Burst from the 1st group of the 2nd dive squadron, operating from July 25 to August 28, 1943 against the Soviet troops in the Oryol ledge, made 100 sorties, i.e. for a whole month, he performed an average of three flights a day. Ober-lieutenant T. Nordmann from the III group of the 1st dive squadron from February 1 to about March 20, 1943, completed 200 sorties, i.e. within a month and a half, he took to the air an average of four times in laziness. The crews of the 2nd squadron in Belarus in June 1941 worked with the same intensity, and during the fierce battles in the Oryol region in the summer of 1943, Captain H.U. Rudel, who fought in the III Immelman group, flew out for three weeks on combat missions, on average, already five times a day: from July 24 to August 12, he made 100 sorties143. At least (even, most likely, more often) the Stukas of the 1st Air Fleet, which opposed the three Soviet fronts, rose into the air in March 1942 (this month, for each serviceable bomber of this fleet, there were 4 combat departures per day144, but, pd87 acted much more intensively than the twin-engine bombers Yu-88 and Xe-111, which were based farther from the front line).

If the airfields were very close to the front line, then the “laptezhniks” flew out on combat missions and even more often. As we have already seen, in the first days of the Battle of Kursk, the pilots of the III group of the 1st dive squadron made 5-6 sorties a day. For comparison: the attack aircraft of the 16th Air Army of the Central Front operating in the same sector on July 5, 1943, with 109 combat-ready crews and 267 serviceable Il-2s, made only 225 sorties - an average of about 2 per crew and 0.84 per aircraft. And in the 2nd Air Army of the Voronezh and 17th - South-Western Fronts, the intensity of use of the Il-2 turned out to be even less then - 372 sorties for 359 combat-ready crews and 488 serviceable vehicles, i.e. only about 1 departure per crew and 0.76 per aircraft. On May 30, 1944, at the beginning of the German-Romanian offensive near Iasi, Lieutenant V. Shtaler from the III group of the 2nd assault (former dive) squadron completed 10 sorties, and on May 31 - 8. Under Stalin - hail in December 1942, the pilots of the 1st Immelman group made ten sorties a day, and Lieutenant H.U. Rudel took to the air 17 times one day!

Let's pay attention to one more circumstance. In September-October 1942, on the entire Soviet-German front, the Germans, as already noted, had no more than 275 "Pieces" - almost an order of magnitude less than the IL-2 on the Soviet side. Nevertheless, Yu-87, as we saw, did not give the Soviet troops peace almost everywhere where the Wehrmacht then solved the most important strategic tasks - near Sinyavin, where the Germans sought to prevent the release of Leningrad; near Rzhev, where the enemy had to keep the Rzhev-Vyazma ledge hanging over Moscow; near Stalingrad, where he tried to cut off communications through which Baku oil flowed.

Thus, not only the designer H. Polman and other engineers of the Junkers company, not only experienced pilots, but also German aviation commanders made the Yu-87 aircraft a formidable operational-tactical weapon. It was they who, skillfully organizing an airfield maneuver and a maneuver with radii (i.e. actions in different directions - say, along the Sinyavin area and along the "Ramushev corridor" - from one airfield), ensured the timely concentration of relatively few "Stukas" on the most important sectors of the Soviet-German front at the moment. It was they who - again compensating for the relative small number of these aircraft - ensured the highest intensity of their use - having achieved the accurate work of the rear services that supplied the airfields with fuel and ammunition, and having established reliable communications with the ground forces. Communications officers from dive groups were constantly in infantry and tank units, promptly calling their Yu-87s to help them by radio and pointing them at the target. The speed with which the "lap-tezhniks" came to the rescue of their ground troops is constantly noted in the memoirs of Soviet front-line soldiers ...

Good day dear colleagues! I present another whale from my collection - Ju-87B2 manufactured by Zvezda.
The famous Junkers-87 Stuka bomber, which went through the entire Second World War, was born long before it. The first flight - in 1935, combat use - in 1936 as part of the Condor Legion in Spain. Nearly 6,000 Ju 87s were built between 1936 and August 1944.
Despite the low speed and mediocre aerodynamics (the landing gear was non-retractable), it was one of the most effective weapons of the Luftwaffe due to its ability to dive-bomb. Yu-87 is one of the most famous symbols of blitzkrieg. The most famous pilot of the Ju-87 was Hans Ulrich Rudel, who received the highest awards among the pilots of the Luftwaffe.
In the Soviet troops, he had the nicknames "laptezhnik" (for a non-retractable specific type of chassis) and "pevun" (for the howl of a siren, "Jericho trumpet", during a dive).
The name "Stuka" comes from the German STUrzKAmpffugzeuge - strike aircraft, dive bomber. As in Spain, he showed himself well at the beginning of World War II, when he cleared the way for Wehrmacht tank columns. Accurate bombing and small arms fire, the mutual assistance of the pilot and gunner in the search and processing of the target, both aviators and ground commanders liked. And the sirens, howling wildly during the attack, attached to planes and bombs for mental impact, really oppressed the enemy and delighted their troops. But all this was good when the victorious march of the Wehrmacht did not meet with much resistance from the fighters. So it was in Poland, Norway, France and at the beginning of the war with the USSR. But with England and a little later over Russia, the Stukas had a hard time. By that time, both speed, and defensive weapons, and armor had become insufficient. In 1943, near Kursk, A. Gorovets shot down 9 Yu-87s in one battle!
Well, now not much about the assembly. As usual, I started with the cockpit. The interior of the cabin in the proposed set is not completely worked out, to put it simply - it simply does not exist. To begin with, I made such a dashboard. Behind that, the interior of the cabin was made of plastic, beer tin and wire. Then everything is as usual: the main assembly, puttying, sanding, priming, preshading, painting. For coloring "Star" offers two options. I chose the one with the snake. There is not a lot of fuss with washing and tinting and applying decals, and as a result, I got another one in my collection, which, it seems to me, is not a bad copy. In order to see the interior of the cabin, the lantern was made movable.
What else from improvements:
- pulled the antenna;
- bano Elf.
For painting and varnishing the model, I used Akan paints and varnishes. I made the wash with Akan soluble pigments. Traces of dust on the wheels and smudges of fuel on the wings - AK Interaktive.