Al Williams And Dive Bombing

Read virtually any biography or description of the American racing and test pilot Al Williams and it calls him “the father of dive bombing” or “the inventor of dive bombing.” Yet when I read extensive on-line articles about the development of dive bombing, Williams is never so much as mentioned, though his friend Ernst Udet is often referenced.

Is Williams’s dive-bombing involvement simply one of those aviation myths that has survived simply through frequent re-telling, or was he actually important in the development of dive bombing?