Dive Brake
Dive brakes or dive flaps are deployed to slow down an aircraft when in a dive. They usually consist of a metal flap that is raised against the air flow, thus creating drag and reducing dive speed.
In the past dive brakes were mostly used on dive bombers, which needed to dive very steeply, but not exceed their red line speed in order to drop their bombs accurately. Dive brakes are often fitted to the bottom surfaces of glider wings as companion controls to top-surface-mounted spoilers. Most modern combat aircraft are equipped with air brakes, which perform the same function as dive brakes.
Read more about Dive Brake: Applications
Famous quotes containing the word dive:
“I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire—thinner than the paper on which it is printed—then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)