dive bomber
Sign in to saveAlso known as dive bomber aircraft
bomber aircraft that dives directly at its targets in order to improve the accuracy of bombing
Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- attack aircraft
- Image
- Junkers Ju 87B dropping bombs.jpg
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- Commons category
- Dive bomber aircraft
- topic's main category
- Category:Dive bomber aircraft
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via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
A Douglas SBD Dauntless drops its bomb. The dive brakes are extended and are visible behind the wings.
A dive bomber is a tactical bomber aircraft that attacks its target by performing fast dives in order to provide greater accuracy for the aerial bomb it drops. Diving directly towards the target before releasing gives the bomb a faster overall speed and a greater terminal momentum, straightens the bomb's free-fall trajectory, and allows the pilot to keep visual contact throughout the bomb run. This allows more focused attacks on point targets and ships, which were difficult to attack with conventional level bombers even en masse.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “dive bomber” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.