Quote:
Originally Posted by Pursuivant
That's exactly what happened. Rudel was a master of his aircraft and was able to make sharp evasive maneuvers at close to ground level. His opponent either took a lucky shot from Rudel's rear gunner and/or stalled out with too little altitude to recover.
Rudel only knew that he'd won the fight when his rear gunner told him the Soviet plane had crashed, which tells you that he was utterly focused on defense.
By rights, Rudel should have been dead, but his opponent got greedy for the kill, got sucked into a low speed maneuver fight, and then screwed up (or got unlucky) doing it.
Smart tactics for the Soviet pilot would have been to get a few of his buddies together and do "Thatch weave" beam attacks by sections. Twisty, windy, slow speed evasive tricks only work well against one opponent. They don't work so well if you're bracketed by 2 or 4 fighters.
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Ju87D had a wing loading of 196 kg./m2. The Yak 9t (not the lighter of Russian fighters) had a wing loading of 176 kg/m2. Why the Yak should stall at higher speed than the Dora? Or how the Dora should manoeuver better at low altitude?
In any case, if not by luck and chance, a Stuka can win only if the fighter pilot is incompetent or makes a series of bad mistakes. History demonstrated that slow and lightly armed bombers were easily shot down, regardless their pilots and gunners ability. And Rudel's memories.