WI no dive-bombing focus in the Luftwaffe?

[historyfool]

I just looked into SunDeeps thread about the effect of a more widespread He 129 and started to wonder what happened if Udet missed the Curtiss Hawk demonstration and the Luftwaffe never adopts the dive-bombing concept (or at least it is sidelined). WI instead they focus on low flying planes for CAS. I know in the early days of the German rearmament bombing sights are not quite there, but Germany otl was reluctant to destroy infrastructure, especially bridges, and against troops and vehicles at that time primarily autocannon armed planes with only inaccurate bombs might be considered sufficent in a tactical role.

 

[Deleted member 1487]

I just looked into SunDeeps thread about the effect of a more widespread He 129 and started to wonder what happened if Udet missed the Curtiss Hawk demonstration and the Luftwaffe never adopts the dive-bombing concept (or at least it is sidelined). WI instead they focus on low flying planes for CAS. I know in the early days of the German rearmament bombing sights are not quite there, but Germany otl was reluctant to destroy infrastructure, especially bridges, and against troops and vehicles at that time primarily autocannon armed planes with only inaccurate bombs might be considered sufficent in a tactical role.

Dive bombing had little to do with Udet, it was already a widespread concept; Udet just required everything to dive bomb during his tenure. Basically what you're suggesting is that the Stuka still dives and there are more Hs123s, but the Ju88, He177, Me210, and Do217 aren't made dive bombing capable.

The low flying CAS 'Schlachtflieger' wasn't a concept until 1937 and it took about 4-5 years to get operational; prior is was just the Hs123 which had that role. Keeping it in production throughout the war would be the trick and would fulfill your request. Good luck on finding a POD for that though, the Hs123 was deemed obsolete and was phased out by 1939.