hval
Whilst I think of it, the angle an aircraft would be able to dive at would depend upon the weapon to be released (weight and aerodynamics) as well as the internal characteristics of the bomb bay for the aircraft, the position of the bomb in the bomb bay and how the weapon is/ was released. Fuel load, engine type, propellor blade design would also have an influence on the dive angle allowed.
I was thinking mostly of the dive speeds reached, and G-load required to get out of the dive without taking the wings off would be the predominant factor. Though that is admittedly affected by weight.
Still as I understand it most planes have a combat weight which presumes a certain amount of fuel is burned off
(with fighters it's 50-60%) by the time the aircraft will engage in combat. Might be more complicated with bombers due to the variations in bomb-loads.
In case you don't know, the Lancaster could do corkscrew dives of about 60 Degrees in a an emergency.
I wouldn't have thought that was possible for such a large aircraft. What kind of G-load did that put on the plane? If I recall a 60-degree bank in level flight is 2.5g, but I don't know what the g-load to recover from a 60-degree dive would be
(it would include a lot of variables such as the speed the dive was entered at, the speed the dive was exited at, the altitude the dive was started and terminated)
This could only be done for a maximum of about 230 metres before an overspeed situation occured.
Of the wings or the props?