The Ju 87 might have proved useful as a dive bomber against static targets in a relatively benign environment but it was lousy against ships.
Really
FodPlod? Try telling that to Tony McCrum navigator on HMS Skipjack. In May 1940 Skipjack arrived off the Dunkirk beaches, one of the first ships to help the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force. Having made several successful Channel crossings ferrying home
troops, the French coast suddenly became even more dangerous as the Luftwaffe presence increased in support of their advancing army which had now reached the area. With a full load of troops aboard,
and was mortally hit and
sunk. Eventually rescue was at hand and McCrum was landed at Ramsgate. 19 of the crew and 294 troops went down with the ship. Just one of many sunk by Stukas during the Dinkirk evacuation.
Or all those other ships the Stukas sank in the initial phases of BoB, effectively shutting down the Channel to all shipping movements?
Or the Stukas in the Med which in just one week sank three RN cruisers (HMS Fiji, HMS Gloucester and HMS York), eight RN destroyers (incl HMS Juno, HMS Greyhound, HMS Kashmir and Mountbatten's HMS Kelly) and damaged 13 other British ships?
Or perhaps
FodPlod you were thinking the Stukas were
"lousy against shipping" because in the attack on Adm Cunningham's carrier HMS Illustrious they wreaked havoc but failed to actually sink her?
"In a few minutes the whole situation had changed," wrote Cunningham. "At one blow the fleet had been deprived of its fighter aircraft, and its command of the Mediterranean was threatened by a weapon far more efficient and dangerous than any against which we had
fought before.
The efforts of the Regia Aeronautica were almost as nothing compared with those of these deadly Stukas of the Luftwaffe."
The near-destruction of HMS Illustrious, which threatened to tip the balance of power in the Mediterranean in favor of the Axis powers, was the low point in the career of Cunningham, widely regarded as Britain's greatest naval commander since Lord Horatio Nelson.
It wasn't something their pilots were trained for, either.
Nonsense! Of course they were. The results above speak for themselves and there are countless other examples of Ju-87 handiwork resting at the bottom of the ocean.
Contrary to your claim, Stukas were in fact by far the most devastating anti-shipping asset the Luftwaffe posessed.
Talk about rewriting history.
