JU-87 In A Class Of It's Own

[Lobster]

Giving ground support aircraft a special rating would not be a bad thing. [;)]

https://militaryhistorynow.com/2015/06/ ... -87-stuka/
https://military.wikia.org/wiki/Junkers_Ju_87

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Lobster

Giving ground support aircraft a special rating would not be a bad thing. [;)]

Supposedly, the specific noise made by an Hs-123 in a dive triggered panic in horses. By 1939, only a small number were still in service, but the psychological effects in the Poland campaign were so decisive that all the mothballed machines were pressed back into service. As late as 1943 enquiries were made about further production- but all the tooling had already been destroyed.

Then of course there's the Fairey Swordfish (rather harshly rated by Norm for TOAW), which was being replaced by the Fairey Albacore when the war broke out. However the Fleet Air Arm was still using the Swordfish when Germany surrendered, whereas the Albacore had been out of service for some time.

The apparent obsolescence of the Swordfish actually gave it some serious advantages in survivability:
1) bullets, even cannon shells, would simply pass through the canvas covering, rather than exploding inside the air frame of a aluminium-skinned aircraft
2) If pursued by a Me-109, the Swordfish pilot would simply drop the speed to the point that the fighter would be forced to overshoot, since the Swordfish could operate comfortably well below the Me-109's stall speed