Talk:QF 2-pounder Octuple Pom-pom Gun Mount/@comment-115.65.58.153-20161216065417/@comment-173.94.172.54-20170310110249

How close a dive bomber got largely depended on how brave (or not) and or foolish the guy on the stick was, but it was widely agreed by the leading practiores (the IJN, USN, and Luftwaffe) that about 1500 feet or around 500 meters was the best comprimise between safety and accruacy. Guys that got skittish in the face of AA would drop higher with much reduced chances to hit, guys that had perhaps ore balls then sense would nearly scrap the water on pull out.

But in general AA was fairly ineffective against them once they pushed over, assuming the dive was in a proper nearly vertical drop. The rate of change in alltitude and speed was too much for any director of the period to deal with meaning the only option was really to spray lead from machine cannons in their general direction. This was rarely all that effective, loss rates for dive bombers in the terminal phase of an attack were quite low, most were lost either on approach or exit after their pull out, although even in the later phase their vulnerability was limited they had a large ammount of stored air speed and were a rapidly receding target.

The greatly improved surviavlbity of dive bombers was one reason the USN favored them over torpedo bombers going into the war, the downside was that the bombs were much less effective at sinking anything above destroyer tonnage.