Junkers Ju 87 "Winkle" Brown RN, a British test pilot and Commanding Officer of No. 1426 Flight RAF (the captured enemy aircraft Flight), tested the Ju 87 at RAE Farnborough. He said of the Stuka, "I had flown a lot of dive-bombers and it’s the only one that you can dive truly vertically. Sometimes with the dive-bombers...maximum dive is usually in the order of 60 degrees.. When flying the Stuka, because it’s all automatic, you are really flying vertically... The Stuka was in a class of its own." Extensive tests were carried out by the Junkers works at their Dessau plant. It was
Junkers Ju 87 Secretary of State for Aviation Erhard Milch, feared that such high-level nerves and skill could not be expected of "average pilots" in the "Luftwaffe". Nevertheless, development continued at Junkers. Udet's "growing love affair" with the dive bomber pushed it to the forefront of German aviation development. Udet went so far as to advocate that all medium bombers should have dive-bombing capabilities, which initially doomed the only dedicated, strategic heavy bomber design to enter German front-line service during the war years — the 30-metre wingspan He 177A — into having an airframe design (due to Udet examining its design details in