Douglas SBD Dauntless dropping a bomb, circa in 1942

Dive brakes or dive flaps are deployed to slow down an aircraft when in a dive. They often consist of a metal flap that is lowered against the air flow, thus creating drag and reducing dive speed.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms, third edition'', page 168. Aviation Supplies & Academics, 1997. In the past, dive brakes were mostly used on

dive bomber A dive bomber is a bomber aircraft that dives directly at its targets in order to provide greater accuracy for the bomb it drops. Diving towards the target simplifies the bomb's trajectory and allows the pilot to keep visual contact througho ...

s, which needed to dive very steeply, but without exceeding their red line speed, in order to drop their

bomb A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the Exothermic process, exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-t ...

s accurately. The airbrakes or

spoiler Spoiler is a security vulnerability on modern computer central processing units that use speculative execution. It exploits side-effects of speculative execution to improve the efficiency of Rowhammer and other related memory and cache attacks. Ac ...

s fitted to

glider Glider may refer to: Aircraft and transport Aircraft * Glider (aircraft), heavier-than-air aircraft primarily intended for unpowered flight ** Glider (sailplane), a rigid-winged glider aircraft with an undercarriage, used in the sport of glidin ...

s often function both as landing aids, to adjust the approach angle, and to keep the aircraft's speed below its maximum permissible

indicated air speed Indicated airspeed (IAS) is the airspeed of an aircraft as measured by its pitot-static system and displayed by the airspeed indicator (ASI). This is the pilots' primary airspeed reference. This value is not corrected for installation error, inst ...

in a vertical dive. Most modern

combat aircraft A military aircraft is any fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft that is operated by a legal or insurrectionary armed service of any type. Military aircraft can be either combat or non-combat: * Combat aircraft are designed to destroy enemy equi ...

are equipped with air brakes, which perform the same function as dive brakes.

Applications

Aichi D3A The Aichi D3A Type 99 Carrier Bomber ( Allied reporting name "Val") is a World War II carrier-borne dive bomber. It was the primary dive bomber of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and was involved in almost all IJN actions, including the a ...

Dornier Do 217 The Dornier Do 217 was a bomber used by the German ''Luftwaffe'' during World War II as a more powerful development of the Dornier Do 17, known as the ''Fliegender Bleistift'' (German: "flying pencil"). Designed in 1937 and 1938 as a heavy bomber ...

(attachable dorsal/ventral "petal" design at extreme rear of fuselage) *

Douglas SBD Dauntless The Douglas SBD Dauntless is a World War II American naval scout plane and dive bomber that was manufactured by Douglas Aircraft from 1940 through 1944. The SBD ("Scout Bomber Douglas") was the United States Navy's main carrier-based scout/div ...

Junkers Ju 87 The Junkers Ju 87 or Stuka (from ''Sturzkampfflugzeug'', "dive bomber") was a German dive bomber and ground-attack aircraft. Designed by Hermann Pohlmann, it first flew in 1935. The Ju 87 made its combat debut in 1937 with the Luftwaffe's Con ...

Nelson Hummingbird PG-185B The Nelson Hummingbird PG-185B is an American, tandem two seat, mid-wing motor glider that was developed by Nelson Aircraft after discontinuing the Nelson Dragonfly.Said, Bob: ''1983 Sailplane Directory, Soaring Magazine'', page 123. Soarin ...

Northrop BT The Northrop BT was an American two-seat, single-engine monoplane dive bomber built by the Northrop Corporation for the United States Navy. At the time, Northrop was a subsidiary of the Douglas Aircraft Company. While unsuccessful in its own rig ...

Schweizer SGS 2-33 The Schweizer SGS 2-33 is an American two-seat, high-wing, strut-braced, training glider that was built by Schweizer Aircraft of Elmira, New York.Schweizer, Paul A: ''Wings Like Eagles, The Story of Soaring in the United States'', pages 227- ...

A-36 Invader The North American A-36 (listed in some sources as "Apache" or "Invader", but generally called Mustang) was the ground-attack/ dive bomber version of the North American P-51 Mustang, from which it could be distinguished by the presence of rectan ...

SB2U Vindicator The Vought SB2U Vindicator is an American carrier-based dive bomber developed for the United States Navy in the 1930s, the first monoplane in this role. Vindicators still remained in service at the time of the Battle of Midway, but by 1943, all h ...

Blackburn Firebrand The Blackburn Firebrand was a British single-engine strike fighter for the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy designed during World War II by Blackburn Aircraft. Originally intended to serve as a pure fighter, its unimpressive performance and ...

References

Aircraft controls {{aviation-stub