The "Sea Stuka"

Not really chasing upvotes here... this is just a variant that wasn't quite ready when I posted the attacker & dive bomber versions. You could even argue the plane never really existed in this form, but I thought it was kinda funny.

Brief history: the nazis were building carriers, the first of which would have been the "Graf Zeppelin". A carrier -obviously- needs planes. The Ju-87 Stuka had proven to be somewhat obsolete as a dive bomber, but Germany had thousands of these things in service. They weren't worth much on the battlefield, but were probably too expensive to simply discard... and so they tested several variants and adaptations. One of these was a torpedo bomber which would operate from the Graf Zeppelin and other future carriers.

Several existing Stuka's of various models were cut up over time and altered to test them as torpedo bombers, simulate carrier landings and so on.

This build is supposed to represent a Ju-87D-4 in a final, operational version; equipped with a PVC1600B pylon so it could carry a bomb or torpedo, sirens removed, folding wings for storage, tail hook for carrier landings, and larger fuel tanks for extended range. It has a F5b replica-torpedo, complete with wooden stabilizers designed to come off after launch.

As the Germans learned from their many tests, the Ju-87 wasn't the best choice; the rather heavy torpedoes and the additional fuel didn't help to improve the original Stuka's flight characteristics -it was rather slow to begin with- and you'll notice immediately it doesn't take off as nimbly as a standard Stuka.

They were trying to recycle obsolete junk, no doubt about it. Nothing ever came of it of course -the Graf Zeppelin was never finished, and neither were the planes it was supposed to carry.
At best, they would have succeeded in turning old Stuka's into something resembling the venerable Fairy Swordfish torpedo planes of the British navy... slow and outdated, but cheap & available -and therefore useful to some extent. In the end, the attempts were limited to various testbed-Stuka's, none of which were even close to what would have been the final naval version.

Flying/controls

The plane waggles like a sick goose on takeoff, and I chose not to do anything about it. Take a standard Stuka and add lots of weight; this is what you get. Instead of a single 500kg bomb, the plane carried a 750kg torpedo and an additional 400+ kg of fuel; this certainly wouldn't have improved handling. I assume pilots would be losing liters of sweat on takeoff from a carrier.

Controls;

AG1 : activate gyro and lock out plane controls, allowing the use of the rear gunner's station with pitch/yaw controls.
AG2: enables use of the torpedo. You still have to select it from SP's weapons menu though.
AG3: folding wings
AG4: tail hook for landing

Armament

The plane has a pair of 20mm cannons and of course its twin MG-81's for defense. The main armament however is a single F5b torpedo. Select it from the weapons menu, and make sure to have AG2 activated. In keeping with the real torpedo's specs, you will have to go low & slow (e.g. 200 km/h and 60 m altitude or less) to release the torpedo.

Enjoy!