# Ground to Air combat



## GarudaMP (Aug 8, 2016)

I've always wondered, in situations where an AA gun or other countermeasures are not available, what would the ground forces of an army would do when an enemy's air force attacked? Would they return fire using firearms? Were there historical records of rifles and sub-machineguns downing aircrafts?


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## stona (Aug 8, 2016)

Take cover.
I know some infantry were trained early in the war to fire volleys at attacking aircraft, but in reality exposing themselves to do so was not a smart way to survive.
Cheers
Steve


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## aurora-7 (Aug 8, 2016)

Imagine as a foot soldier with a .303 rifle against an aircraft with .50 and/or 20mm guns. The aircraft's guns have a lot more hitting and penetration power so I think most (there are always exceptions) dove for cover on a strafing run.

I did come across a figure of the only 'non-fighter' ace of WW2 -an Australian named Norman. F Williams, who was a bomber aircraft gunner with 9 kills.


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## fubar57 (Aug 8, 2016)

S/Sgt. Michael Arooth (379th Bomb Group) was credited with 17 victories and Flight Sergeant F. J. Barker (RAF)scored 13 victories while flying as a gunner in a Boulton Paul Defiant turret fighter, piloted by Flight Sergeant E. R. Thorn, there is also a source that says 12½


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## pbehn (Aug 8, 2016)

I think Baron von Richthoven was killed by ground fire, a single .303 bullet.


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## stona (Aug 8, 2016)

pbehn said:


> I think Baron von Richthoven was killed by ground fire, a single .303 bullet.



I would say wood and fabric triplane flying at around 100 miles an hour (maybe), pusuing another aircraft, unarmoured and armed with a couple of rifle calibre machine guns poses considerably less risk than a Typhoon, P-47 or Fw 190 

Cheers

Steve


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## pbehn (Aug 8, 2016)

stona said:


> I would say wood and fabric triplane flying at around 100 miles an hour (maybe), pusuing another aircraft, unarmoured and armed with a couple of rifle calibre machine guns poses considerably less risk than a Typhoon, P-47 or Fw 190
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Steve


Sure thing but flying above a few thousand men armed with rifles and machine guns means you run out of statistical luck eventually.


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## stona (Aug 8, 2016)

pbehn said:


> Sure thing but flying above a few thousand men armed with rifles and machine guns means you run out of statistical luck eventually.



In a Fokker Dr.I ? Yes. At 400mph firing rockets and cannons in a Hawker Typhoon? not likely. A fast moving, fleeting target way beyond the ability of the average rifleman or machine gunner to hit, and that's if they are bold enough to get their heads out of the dirt.

Cheers

Steve


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## pbehn (Aug 8, 2016)

Rockets were inaccurate but used because they were a stand off weapon, the Il2 had a lot of armour to protect against ground fire. I agree its a difficult target to hit but there were a lot of allied planes that were hit.


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## stona (Aug 8, 2016)

pbehn said:


> Rockets were inaccurate but used because they were a stand off weapon, the Il2 had a lot of armour to protect against ground fire. I agree its a difficult target to hit but there were a lot of allied planes that were hit.



By light flak, that is anti aircraft fire. I'm sure some were hit by small arms, the sheer number of sorties flown would make this a statistical probability, but the response of any infantry to an air attack would be to seek cover and get their heads in the dirt, not start firing their rifles at the aircraft. 

One of the great strengths of the rockets was their psychological effect, even on well protected or dug in troops. The Germans were terrified by them, even more reason to seek cover.

Cheers

Steve


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## yulzari (Aug 8, 2016)

British special ops ish (not to identify them) advisors flew the Afghan Mujahideen to Scotland to teach them the art of small arms ambush of low flying aircraft in mountainous terrain in the days of the Soviets in Afghanistan.


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## GrauGeist (Aug 8, 2016)

Good photo of Russian snipers shooting at low flying aircraft.

The date was about 1943, if memory serves right.


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## stona (Aug 8, 2016)

I've seen that picture of the Soviets before. I call propaganda, it was a futile exercise, they would have had more chance of hitting the moon.

Cheers

Steve


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## stona (Aug 8, 2016)

yulzari said:


> British special ops ish (not to identify them) advisors flew the Afghan Mujahideen to Scotland to teach them the art of small arms ambush of low flying aircraft in mountainous terrain in the days of the Soviets in Afghanistan.



I assume that refers to helicopters. Not quite the same as a 300-400mph WW2 ground attack aircraft.

The Vietnamese certainly trained for volley fire against US helicopters. There is an account of this in (I think) Neil Sheehan's 'A Bright Shining Lie'.

Cheers

Steve


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## GrauGeist (Aug 8, 2016)

stona said:


> I've seen that picture of the Soviets before. I call propaganda, it was a futile exercise, they would have had more chance of hitting the moon.
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Steve


Just a few examples of Luftwaffe pilots encountering Allied small arms fire:
Joachim Münchberg (I./JG27) had his helmet speaker shot off by small arms fire during a strafing pass in his Bf109. North Afrika, June 1941.

Günter Egli (II/JG54) had his fighter disabled by small arms fire and forced to land near Grimbergen during operation Bodenplatte.

Then regarding the Red Army, this passage from the book "Junkers Ju88 Kampfgeschwader On The Russian Front" by John Weal:
"_II./KG54's second mission, flown about an hour later, did not go so well, however. Having bombed the airfeilds at Luck and Kolki, crews flew back at low level, ground strafing knots of enemy troops on the way. They received a rude surprise. For the first time they experienced the *Red Army's disconcerting habit when under fire, not of diving for the nearest available cover, but of standing it's ground and letting fly with every weapon that could be brought to bear.* The net result was two aircraft so badly damaged by small-arms fire that they were forced to crash-land behind enemy lines. Both machines were from 4. Staffel, including that of the Kapitän, Oberleutnant Günter Seubert who, although wounded, made his way back to friendly territory along with two of his injured crew._"

There's plenty of other examples of infantry (Axis and Allied) shooting at enemy aircraft with small arms, but these are the ones that come to mind at the moment.

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## stona (Aug 8, 2016)

There is no way of knowing what hit those aircraft. I bet it was fire from machine guns. Riflemen stand little chance of hitting a Ju88, well manned machine guns do.
Cheers
Steve


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## pbehn (Aug 8, 2016)

stona said:


> There is no way of knowing what hit those aircraft. I bet it was fire from machine guns. Riflemen stand little chance of hitting a Ju88, well manned machine guns do.
> Cheers
> Steve


Yes Steve but most infantry had machine gunners in the company


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## gjs238 (Aug 8, 2016)

GrauGeist said:


> Good photo of Russian snipers shooting at low flying aircraft.
> 
> The date was about 1943, if memory serves right.
> 
> View attachment 350016



Are they training? So many snipers together.
Or perhaps they are shooting at a flock of geese, scrounging up dinner.


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## GrauGeist (Aug 8, 2016)

Low flying aircraft, beit a bomber or fighter, can present itself as a target to even light caliber rifles.

The defenders at Tobruk made a showing of themselves with concentrated rifle fire, the Afrika Corps distributed insteuctions to their troops that instructed ALL personnel to employ available arms to engage enemy aircraft and even gave recommendations as to what range to engage at and when to shoot at it for maximum effect.

The USMC instructed Marines on how to employ their rifles in a concentrated defense against strafing aircraft.

The Imperial Japanese Army had extensive training to engage low flying aircraft with rifles.

The British Home Guard not only trained at using rifles at enemy aircraft, but were successful in several cases.

It's not impossible to land hits on an aircraft if you know how to "lead". As far as the hitting power of a rifle caliber bullet, bear in mind that most infantry rifles had comparable calibers to that of most Air Forces at the start of the war (.303 cal, 7.7mm, .30 cal., etc)

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## parsifal (Aug 9, 2016)

The French army of 1940 was virtually devoid of proper AA defences. The frontier forces in the Nth of France under Gen Georges had just 5 regiments of "_anciens_" AA weaponry to defend nearly 60 divisions plus all the rear area services. 

Against these paltry defences, one would expect virtually no losses to the attacking LW, yet in that 6 week campaign, the LW lost very heavily, something like 1500 a/c in total to all causes. The French fighter arm is credited with about 500 victories in that period, the RAF about 300 or so. That leaves about 700 LW aircraft downed to various other causes. Some of that number had to be to ground fire.

Hedgehopping attacks are about as dangerous as it gets for aircraft. everything that can, will fire at you, and some of those weapons will hit you. rifle fire is pretty desperate and forlorn, but HMG fire has a real chance of hitting and hurting an attacker.

The solution is to fly higher, which is precisely what everyone did. Fly at above 5000' and no weapon of MG calibre is going to hit you. even most LAA weapons will struggle. at zero feet, in an unarmoured or inadequately armoured aircraft, you are vulnerable to small arms fire.

Aircraft like the heavily armoured IL-2 could operate at hedgetop height with a degree of impunity and dropping bombs at this height made it easier to hit stuff.


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## GrauGeist (Aug 9, 2016)

parsifal said:


> ...Aircraft like the heavily armoured IL-2 could operate at hedgetop height with a degree of impunity and dropping bombs at this height made it easier to hit stuff.


Agreed. Aircraft like the IL-2 and the Hs129 weren't going to be as susceptible to small arms fire as medium bombers or fighters were going to be.

A fighter's main armament is designed primarily to protect them from enemy aircraft fire from behind or to the sides, which is typical of engagement.

But when a fighter or bomber flies low over a bunch of scared and angry guys armed with rifles and SMGs, they are exposing their unarmored bellies.

Stressed aluminum isn't all that great at stopping a bullet...


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## GarudaMP (Aug 9, 2016)

GrauGeist said:


> Agreed. Aircraft like the IL-2 and the Hs129 weren't going to be as susceptible to small arms fire as medium bombers or fighters were going to be.
> 
> A fighter's main armament is designed primarily to protect them from enemy aircraft fire from behind or to the sides, which is typical of engagement.
> 
> ...



Let's say that the soldiers knew to lead their shots on strafing enemy aircrafts, and considering that by WW2, most aircrafts are made of metal and the standard rifle and HMG ammo of the time were somewhere around 7.xx calibres, how great are said soldiers' chances at doing actual damage or wounding the aircraft's occupants?


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## yulzari (Aug 9, 2016)

stona said:


> I assume that refers to helicopters. Not quite the same as a 300-400mph WW2 ground attack aircraft.
> Cheers
> Steve


Actually they trained against RAF fast jets. Possibly as they are committed to a trajectory at low level in a valley or because helicopter targets were more unusual in the area whereas low fast jets were commonplace so security was better maintained.


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## parsifal (Aug 9, 2016)

GarudaMP said:


> Let's say that the soldiers knew to lead their shots on strafing enemy aircrafts, and considering that by WW2, most aircrafts are made of metal and the standard rifle and HMG ammo of the time were somewhere around 7.xx calibres, how great are said soldiers' chances at doind actual damage or wounding the aircraft's occupants?



against an aircraft that is armoured, light rifle calibre weapons aren't a great chance of bring the aircraft down. against lighter un-armoured or underarmoured aircraft, which was the norm prior to 1942, rifle calibre wepons had a reasonable chance of bringing down an a/c, as the RAF experience in the BoB clearly shows.

HMGs (weapons with a calibre 12.7 mm or above) were generally able to cope with most a/c for the entire war. 

The main problem with rifle calibre weapons, of any size is the amount of damage they could do. A single hit is unlikely to bring down an a/c whereas a single 20mm explosive shell might do it, and a 37mm shell will probably do the job . there are statistics on this, which I don't have, but I surmise maybe an average of 1-3 30mm+ hits, 5-10 20mm 10-20 0.5" and maybe 20-30 7.7mm hits might be needed to bring down an average aircraft.......


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## Glider (Aug 9, 2016)

I think its worth remembering that the main point of AA fire isn't to shoot the enemy down, its to stop him hitting you. If you can throw enough tracer at the incoming aircraft you do have a chance of putting tem off. Now I wouldn't expect your average squaddie to have tracer but the AA guns normally did.


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## Shortround6 (Aug 13, 2016)

GrauGeist said:


> Good photo of Russian snipers shooting at low flying aircraft.
> 
> The date was about 1943, if memory serves right.



I would say it is posed.

As already noted that is an awful lot of snipers to located in one area. Also the field of view through through some of the those scopes is a bit restricted making acquiring the target and keeping it a bit problematic. 

Some armies did make a doctrine out of all available troops firing at attacking planes. The Japanese even went to the extent of fitting AA sights to some of their rifles. 






The horizontal swing out bars being the AA part. Notice the amount of 'lead' needed. I have no idea if the numbers refer to speed of the target or range. Without even this rudimentary arrangement pointing rifles skyward is the epitome of spray and pray. 

I would note that there was a considerable period of time between the Fokker Dr 1 and the Typhoon. 1939-1943 saw an awful lot of ground attack being done by 200-300mph aircraft. 

It was done, planes were brought down by this kind of fire. It may have been more of a morale booster than real defense. Being able to shoot back, even at really crappy odds often beat laying down and taking it. High speed aircraft had enough trouble picking out AA guns let alone riflemen in fields and bushes. There were no tracers to lead the pilots eyes back to the firing positions.


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## GarudaMP (Aug 15, 2016)

_View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ptx8fW6SN54_


Russian tanks ftw


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## parsifal (Aug 15, 2016)

I hope that was posted as a joke.......


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## GarudaMP (Aug 15, 2016)

parsifal said:


> I hope that was posted as a joke.......



Of course it is. So sorry, I just can't help it. For some reason, this question is bugging me a lot more than it should. I've been thinking about it all day and it is annoying as hell. I thought to myself to take a break and do something else. Maybe watch something funny on the web.

So I browsed youtube.

For some reason, that video appeared in my recommendations.

So I just thought of sharing it here.


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## Shortround6 (Aug 15, 2016)

GarudaMP said:


> Let's say that the soldiers knew to lead their shots on strafing enemy aircrafts, and considering that by WW2, most aircrafts are made of metal and the standard rifle and HMG ammo of the time were somewhere around 7.xx calibres, how great are said soldiers' chances at doing actual damage or wounding the aircraft's occupants?



Try doing the math. 300mph airplane is doing 440fps. at distance where the time of flight for soldier to airplane is 0.2 seconds (around 175yds for the higher powered rifles) the plane will cover 88ft. at 300 yds the time of flight might be over 0.35 seconds and the lead needs to be about 150ft. Differnt speeds need different leads and even a plane flying at a steady speed will need a different amount of lead for every shot depending on how far away the plane is from the shooter. A bolt action rifle is going to be lucky to get off more than 2-3 rounds per attack, at least at anything approaching effective distance. 500 yds for a .30-06 could mean a almost a 0.70 second time of flight for the bullet and 300 ft worth of lead (roughly 9-10 plane lengths).
Planes were shot down this way, not often and it took thousands of rounds (more likely tens of thousands of rounds) fired on average per plane but it was done.


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## GarudaMP (Aug 18, 2016)

So simply put, it happened, but not in a practical sense to be considered an effective strategy.

Thanks for all your answers!


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## gjs238 (Aug 18, 2016)

GarudaMP said:


> So simply put, it happened, but not in a practical sense to be considered an effective strategy.
> 
> Thanks for all your answers!



The P-51 was the exception though, which could be brought down by one well placed shot to the radiator


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## Shortround6 (Aug 18, 2016)

It didn't even have to be well placed, The P-51 radiator sucked in bullets that would have been near misses on other airplanes.

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## GarudaMP (Aug 21, 2016)

gjs238 said:


> The P-51 was the exception though, which could be brought down by one well placed shot to the radiator





Shortround6 said:


> It didn't even have to be well placed, The P-51 radiator sucked in bullets that would have been near misses on other airplanes.



Whoa, really? Any recorded instance, or better, video of this happening?


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## Glider (Aug 21, 2016)

gjs238 said:


> The P-51 was the exception though, which could be brought down by one well placed shot to the radiator


Anything with a radiator could and sometimes were brought down with one well placed shot.


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## parsifal (Aug 22, 2016)

Anything with an unprotected fuel tank could be brought down with one shot. anything with an unprotected pilot could be brought down with one well placed shot. unprotected or inadequately protected aircraft were susceptible to accurate ground fire, whatever their vulnerability . If you couldn't shoot straight, you made up for it with volume of fire. not many were lost, but that's because only a few aircraft were risked in this way. those that ignored this, early on, like the French suffered heavy losses to small arms 

Most pilots in these unprotected aircraft, if they wanted a career that lasted more than a few days or hours, flew higher than rifle fire could reach.

Armoured aircraft didn't have to worry about this so much


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## Wurger (Aug 22, 2016)

"The Chinese can do evrything.."
Comrade Mao....


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## Shortround6 (Aug 22, 2016)

It is volume of fire. Put enough bullets into the air and some unlucky pilot/s are bound to run into one or more due to the laws of statistics. 
However using rifles was a rather poor substitute for even things like this.




or even this.




No idea on the movie camera but at least the Mg has an AA sight.

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## pbehn (Aug 22, 2016)

I think a major consideration for a soldier would be how many bullets he has and how quickly he can get more, I doubt that paratroopers were trained or encouraged to shoot at attacking enemy A/C but those on a supply route may well have been.


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## tyrodtom (Aug 22, 2016)

I have read that during WW1 British mess halls had a shortage of the lids for their cook stoves, They kept disappearing .
Apparently the aircrews were stealing them and sitting on them.

I know during Vietnam a lot of aircrew members sat on extra flak jackets.

I have seen a WW1 era picture of a whole platoon lying down in the grass with their rifles pointed skyward.
Was such a method ever actually used ?


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## Shortround6 (Aug 22, 2016)

The method was used, it varied according to which army and what year. WW I aircraft were doing 80-120mph near ground level (with few exceptions) and had little or no armor (again with a few exceptions) so they needed about 1/3 to 1/5 the amount of lead of most WW II aircraft. In Vietnam The Helicopters were back to WW I aircraft speeds.  

Even early WW II aircraft might be engaged by rifles depending on type, Lysander? Hs 126? assorted other early tactical recon/army co-op planes (read slow). Fighters and fast bombers are much harder to hit (nothing is impossible) but proper AA guns, even rifle caliber MGs with proper sights and mounts were much more effective than scores if not hundreds of rifles. 

Some officers encouraged the practice more as a means of keeping up morale than with any real expectation of _stopping _the air attacks. Seeing plane go down was very encouraging even it was actually hit by a machine gun 500-800yds away 

BTW hits to the radiator take a number of minutes to take effect and the ground troops would rarely, if ever, see a plane force land they they had hit in a radiator or oil cooler. It would come down miles away.

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## The Basket (Aug 22, 2016)

The anti aircraft sights on the Type 99 is not that crazy as it was a late 1930s design and so plenty of biplanes in China. Certainly could get a few rounds at a P-26. The pilot was exposed so even a head shot was on the cards. 

not every aircraft in a war zone is a 400 mph fighter


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## Juha2 (Sep 6, 2016)

When serving in the Finnish Army in mid 70s (shortly after Vietnam War) we were trained to use our assault rifles against a/c and helicopters. A squad would fire together a short burst following orders of the squad leader who would give the nature of the target, its flight direction and the amount of the lead and then order "Fire". We were not suppose to fire at oncoming aircrafts or attack helicopters but at those flying past us.
During the WWII Finnish light AA batteries had also two? twin rifle calibre AA mgs, in 1944 they were used to fire departing Il-2s in order to kill the rear-gunners.

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