Stuka, no landing gear.

[seanrx]

Has somebody already built an inflight Stuka with battle damage landing gear?

Today, I read an old BoB magazine with a German photo (from cockpit)

of two Stukas returning from UK and one is totally missing both of its U/C legs.

[Pete in Lincs]

If I remember correctly, It's a picture showing a Navalised Ju87 originally meant for the Kreigsmarine carrier. 

They had the ability to jettison the landing gear, presumably so they could ditch without turning over.

The lack of a carrier meant that they went to the Luftwaffe.

[Black Knight]

Actually, all Ju87s had the facility to jettison the u/c

[Duncan B]

12 hours ago, Black Knight said:

Actually, all Ju87s had the facility to jettison the u/c

Jings, I never knew that. Every day is a school day.

 

Duncan B

[Troy Smith]

13 hours ago, seanrx said:

Has somebody already built an inflight Stuka with battle damage landing gear?

Today, I read an old BoB magazine with a German photo (from cockpit)

of two Stukas returning from UK and one is totally missing both of its U/C legs.

IIRC this was a propaganda photo, and they just retouched the photo,  to remove the U/C legs,  in the way the famous diving Stuka photo is ones in level flight turned to a suitable angle....

[Graham Boak]

I recall it as being credited to the Polish campaign.  But then why waste a good story by only telling it once?

[Black Knight]

and the Greece/Jugoslavian, the North African, the Eastern Front. the Battle of France

 

as far as I recall it was actually from a pre-war training flight. The pilot did jettison his u/c and the second 87 went alongside to confirm this and to guide him into a belly landing

In the Polish campaign propaganda it was cited that the pilot had flown so low over his bridge target that he wiped the u/c off, or that it was shot off or. . . . 

[G.R.Morrison]

The (retouched more-than-once) photo first appeared in Legion Condor / Spanish Civil War markings, then in Luftwaffe crosses during the Polish campaign.  The 'struck the water' story dates from this time.  It was always a fake.

 

The jettisonable undercarriage legs did not appear on Ju 87s until the D-5, although the RLM had asked for this feature earlier.  First tested in the summer of 1942, intended for the D-1, the charge in the (one) explosive bolt was too large and would damage the airframe.  A reduced-charge bolt was developed by the beginning of 1944, and it could be retrofitted by four installers within five hours.  Most of the conversion was done at Wels.  The explosive device could be fired only up to a maximum of 250 KPH, as to do otherwise would endanger the aircraft and crew.

 

A photo-sequence of a real jettison / emergency-landing incident, with a Flak-damaged Ju 87G-2 of the 10.(Pz.)/SG 2, can be seen on p.194 of Aders/Held, Stukas Jagdbomber  Schlachtflieger, Motorbuch Verlag, ©1980, and follow-up photos in Nauroth, Stukageschwader 2 Immelmann, ©1988, pp270, 288

 

Hope this clarifies, GRM

[Work In Progress]

21 hours ago, Black Knight said:

Actually, all Ju87s had the facility to jettison the u/c

I didn't know that either. Any idea why? It makes sense for the naval one, for the ditching reason, but I can't think why you'd want a flight-detachable undercarriage for the original land-based design

[Black Knight]

Damaged u/c or u/c down during a forced landing, especially on unknown ground, is highly dangerous. The u/c could fold, break off or catch on something and the aeroplane would tip nose over. Easier to repair the underside of an aeroplane than to bury and replace the dead crew who were killed when their aeroplane tipped nose over onto the cockpit area.

Thats why you see so many wheels-up crash landings. Its not that u/c was damaged, it was to stop fatal nose overs

[Work In Progress]

This is a fine theory and it's why on some retractable-gear aircraft I would consider forced-landing wheels up depending on surface, but no-one else I can think of has ever incorporated it as a design feature so I'm still very surprised that Junkers did on what is after all a relatively low-speed aeroplane.

 

I'm also not convinced that it was a great theory in the first place given that the death and serious injury rates don't seem to bear out the theoretic advantage of landing with retracted gear in light singles and twins: they have roughly double the death rates in forced landings of fixed gear equivalents in the small and medium weight categories 

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/187964 

 

But still, there are a lot of weird bits of design in '30s aviation and I suppose this is one of them.

Edited October 5, 2020 by Work In Progress

[Black Knight]

That is an investigation of modern crashes, not of WW2 types. It is not complete and misses several points

You cannot use modern research of modern aeroplane crashes to prove WW2 actions and results.

I think if you were to look at wheels-up crash landings and the survival rates in WW2 you'll see that was the way to do it.

I used to know several WW2 RAF pilots (now all passed on) who survived wheels-up landings in everything from Spitfires to Lancasters. In the case of the Spitfire pilot, he walked away from his crashed Spitfire and took to the air in another

In WW2 more German pilots were killed 'ground looping' Messerschmitt 109s than were killed in combat. Ground looping is another name for going tail over nose.

The Ju87 was fitted with a heavy cast and welded roll-bar behind the pilot's head, just for when the 87 nosed over. 

When I was leaning to fly in the RAF one instruction was never to try landing a disabled aircraft with u/c down, always have it retracted.

Experience of deaths in crash landings certainly led to the instruction to crash land with u/c retracted.