# Tank busters for the air forces?



## tomo pauk (Apr 27, 2012)

Some air forces were employing the aircraft that were regarded as suitable to make pin-point attacks on the tanks/AFVs. NOT going into a debate* about the real benefit of such planes for different air forces and war theaters, nor about the real vs. claimed accuracy of their attacks vs. tanks/AFV, what would the dedicated tank buster airplane looked if you were at the helm? You can propose two separate designs, one to be used from 1940-42, other one from 1943-45. The ability to fight enemy planes does not yield any points here - the plane has its task to do well, that being killing some tanks 
The historically available components are to be used (armament, engines), the airframe should be designed from scratch, but you can propose a modification of an existing airplane, too. The main armament of the resulting plane is to be some nice cannon, not too heavy, nor too light, with decent ammo count. 

*we have other threads covering that


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## davebender (Apr 27, 2012)

Nothing prevents Germany from arming Ju-87s with cannon from 1939 onward. They just need to build additional aircraft for that purpose. Ju-87B cannon version would be armed with a pair of 3cm Mk101 cannon. Ju-87D cannon version would be the historical Ju-87G conversion with 3.7cm cannon.


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## Juha (Apr 27, 2012)

davebender said:


> Nothing prevents Germany from arming Ju-87s with cannon from 1939 onward. They just need to build additional aircraft for that purpose. Ju-87B cannon version would be armed with a pair of 3cm Mk101 cannon. Ju-87D cannon version would be the historical Ju-87G conversion with 3.7cm cannon.



I'd say that a Ju 87B with 2 MK 101s would have been a dog, 200hp less power and draggier fuselage.

Juha


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## davebender (Apr 27, 2012)

Gun armed tank busters are slow flying aircraft if they want to hit anything. So I don't think drag would be an issue. You just need an adequate power to weight ratio for hauling around heavy cannon plus significant cockpit armor.


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## tomo pauk (Apr 28, 2012)

My long-time favorite is a P-39 type of layout, that should enable a decent cannon centrally-mounted. 
From the cannons, a 57mm Molins would be simply cool, next being the 5cm BK, third being the N-45. Sure enough, a 7,5cm BK in a pusher plane, with single DB-610 at the other end, would just rock


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## Kryten (Apr 28, 2012)

guns were superceded by rockets in the RAF on Hurricane IID, I have never seen a comparison in it's effectiveness between the two though?


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## tomo pauk (Apr 28, 2012)

A quote from the 'Flying guns: Word War 2' by T. Williams and E. Gustin:



> " The ineffectiveness of air attack against tanks should have caused no surprise because the weapons available to the fighter-bombers were not suitable for destroying them. Put simply, the heavy machine guns and 20 mm cannon were capable of hitting the tanks easily enough, but insufficiently powerful to damage them, except occasionally by chance. The RPs and bombs used were certainly capable of destroying the tanks but were too inaccurate to hit them, except occasionally by chance."


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## Kryten (Apr 28, 2012)

so how did they fare with the 40mm's?
I have read they were accurate and effective but that was pretty much all it said on the subject?


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## Juha (Apr 28, 2012)

Kryten said:


> so how did they fare with the 40mm's?
> I have read they were accurate and effective but that was pretty much all it said on the subject?



IIRC I have already posted info on Hurri IID and IV on this site earlier.

Juha


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## riacrato (Apr 28, 2012)

Okay how about this then: A two engine, two crew aircraft the size of a Mosquito or Beaufighter. High wing to maximize view to the ground. Second crew member behind the first with the main purpose of loading the long barreled 50mm gun that sits between him and the pilot. the barrel either passing underneath the pilot or by his side. Compartment should be able to withstand rifle calibres and maybe the occasional heavy machinegun bullet. Wing area should be large to maximize low speed handling. Engines would be two Jumo 210s or similar class. No additional armament except maybe two light machineguns. Aircraft needs air-superiority in case it gets caught its only chance is low speed maneuvering until help arrives.


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## davebender (Apr 28, 2012)

P-39 type layout is good for ground attack but the historical P-39 is not the answer.

Start with a larger fuselage that can carry a decent payload and enough fuel to loiter. Cockpit must offer good visibility forward and down. Rear visibility doesn't matter. Pilot seat should be in an armored tray (or bath tub) to protect against ground fire. Wing loading should be low to improve low speed maneuverability and gun aiming. No rear gunner. CAS aircraft have adequate fighter escort or they don't fly. WWII era CAS aircraft will probably operate from rough airstrips so I recommend a tail dragger rather then tricycle landing gear.

Carry a cannon powerful enough to kill tanks plus a pair of .30cal MGs for killing people. Intermediate weapons such as .50cal MGs and low velocity 20mm cannon are a waste of payload. Wing hard points should carry cluster bombs or napalm for suppressing enemy AA fire.

Power to weight ratio (with payload) must be adequate but doesn't need to be outstanding such as you would desire in a fighter aircraft. A CAS aircraft relies largely on low wing loading to carry the payload rather then engine power.

A final but crucial detail. CAS aircraft have a low life expectency so they should be as inexpensive as possible. Their pilots should be single men and preferably orphans.


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## war eagle (Apr 28, 2012)

I,d go for the de havilland mossie with a modified armoured glass nose for the pilot to allow good forward and below visability (similar to the He111) the aircraft already had good resistance to battle damage,a pair of under body 50mm cannons plus two 4 rocket under wing racks.Engines would be two uprated fuel injected supercharged merlins.


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## tomo pauk (Apr 29, 2012)

Kryten said:


> so how did they fare with the 40mm's?
> I have read they were accurate and effective but that was pretty much all it said on the subject?



Hurri + 'S' class was a great asset, capable to kill the Pz-IV and lesser panzers (51mm at 20 deg at 700 yds, plane flying at 350 fps); Littlejohn adapter, with proper shot, adds some 50% to the penetration. A plane with dive brakes would have wreck the heavy stuff in no time. 



riacrato said:


> Okay how about this then: A two engine, two crew aircraft the size of a Mosquito or Beaufighter. High wing to maximize view to the ground. Second crew member behind the first with the main purpose of loading the long barreled 50mm gun that sits between him and the pilot. the barrel either passing underneath the pilot or by his side. Compartment should be able to withstand rifle calibres and maybe the occasional heavy machinegun bullet. Wing area should be large to maximize low speed handling. Engines would be two Jumo 210s or similar class. No additional armament except maybe two light machineguns. Aircraft needs air-superiority in case it gets caught its only chance is low speed maneuvering until help arrives.



That should make the tank crews worried, but let's attach some bigger engines 
Soviet 57mm on Pe-2 would be an interesting thing too, let alone if the Brits pass some info about the Molins system.



war eagle said:


> I,d go for the de havilland mossie with a modified armoured glass nose for the pilot to allow good forward and below visability (similar to the He111) the aircraft already had good resistance to battle damage,a pair of under body 50mm cannons plus two 4 rocket under wing racks.Engines would be two uprated fuel injected supercharged merlins.



Merlins were supercharged from day one; how about Mossie with Hercules? 
(ducks for cover)


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## davparlr (Apr 29, 2012)

How about the XA-38? Of course getting the engines could be tricky.

Factsheets : Beechcraft XA-38

TECHNICAL NOTES:
Armament: Six .50-cal. machine guns (two fixed in the lower forward nose and two pairs in General Electric remote-controlled dorsal and ventral turrets), *one 75mm cannon*, plus a variety of external stores including bombs, fuel tanks, smoke screen chemical tanks, torpedoes and depth charges
Engines: Two Wright GR-3350-43 Cyclone radials of 2,300 hp each
Maximum speed: 370 mph at 17,000 ft.
Cruising speed: 350 mph at 16,000 ft.
Range: 1,625 miles
Service ceiling: 29,000 ft.
Span: 67.08 ft.
Length: 51.7 ft.
Height: 15 ft. 6 in.
Weight: 36,332 lbs. maximum alternate gross weight
Crew: Two (pilot and gunner)
Serial numbers: 43-14406 and 43-14407; Beechcraft Model 28


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## Juha (Apr 29, 2012)

IIRC Germans thought that Bf 110 was too big to be a good weapon carrier to MK 101 and RAF tought that Mossie was too big, so IMHO a slightly bigger version of Hs 129 with better radials armed with Mk 103 or BK 37 or if allied side 40mm S-gun, adequate against all but Tigers and capable to carry 57mm Molins if needed, ie against Tigers. On the other hand RAF thought that Hurri IID was too specialised a/c, good only against AFVs, so plane had to be able to carry also bombs and rockets.

Juha


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## michaelmaltby (Apr 29, 2012)

"... IMHO a slightly bigger version of Hs 129 with better radials armed with Mk 103 or BK 37 or if allied side 40mm S-gun, adequate against all but Tigers and capable to carry 57mm Molins if needed".

Was the Hs 129 that great a platform ... french engines or otherwise....? The canon-Stuka I totally get. The Sturmovik, I get. But the Henschel ... looks great .. but was very claustrophobic to fly and not great visibility. At least in the Sturmovik someone has my six. 

MM


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## Edgar Brooks (Apr 29, 2012)

tomo pauk said:


> ; how about Mossie with Hercules?


And call it Beaufighter, perhaps.


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## Juha (Apr 30, 2012)

michaelmaltby said:


> "... IMHO a slightly bigger version of Hs 129 with better radials armed with Mk 103 or BK 37 or if allied side 40mm S-gun, adequate against all but Tigers and capable to carry 57mm Molins if needed".
> 
> Was the Hs 129 that great a platform ... french engines or otherwise....? The canon-Stuka I totally get. The Sturmovik, I get. But the Henschel ... looks great .. but was very claustrophobic to fly and not great visibility. At least in the Sturmovik someone has my six.
> 
> MM



Hello Michael
it seems to have been reasonable good plane, with twin you can put one cannon under fuselage, optimum place and better and more powerful engines would have allowed a bit bigger fuselage which would have allowed a bit bigger cockpit with better view.

Juha


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## tomo pauk (Apr 30, 2012)

Juha said:


> IIRC Germans thought that Bf 110 was too big to be a good weapon carrier to MK 101 and RAF tought that Mossie was too big, so IMHO a slightly bigger version of Hs 129 with better radials armed with Mk 103 or BK 37 or if allied side 40mm S-gun, adequate against all but Tigers and capable to carry 57mm Molins if needed, ie against Tigers. On the other hand RAF thought that Hurri IID was too specialised a/c, good only against AFVs, so plane had to be able to carry also bombs and rockets.
> 
> Juha


 
The Littlejohn adapter on the S-class cannon was enabling a 50% increase of the penetration (eg. at 400 yds it was 85 mm at 20 deg, plane flying at 350 fps). I'd like to see some dive-brakes on the tank buster carrying that, so he can execute a 60deg dive an harm the tanks through the thin upper armor. Even without the adapter.
The notion about a Hurri IID being too much a specialized A/C points at the fact that Germans were fielding far less tanks that they needed?



Edgar Brooks said:


> And call it Beaufighter, perhaps.



I'd like to see the Beau with 2 x 40 mm (as a plan B; plan A being the 'radial' Mossie); IIRC it was trialed with one instead one pair of Hispanos.


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## parsifal (Apr 30, 2012)

At the risk of being labelled parochial and slightly biased in favour of my own country, I would suggest the CAC Woomera strike aircraft armed with both rockets and the 57 mm molins cannon. 

This aircraft was never built, but it was designed as a purpose built divebomber. But its approach was fast, and it was quite well defended. So, it had the advanatage of a fast approach until over the target, and then a slow, accurate delivery of a divebomber.

With regards to rockets and accuracy, it really depends on the type selected, though admittedly none of them were super accurate. The first rockets developed by the allies were 3" or 25 lb warheads. Were reaonably accurate, but fireppower was limited. The 25lb warhead was a solid shot version, so was pretty useless. Quite early the allies upgraded both these weapons to the 5"FFAR series and the 60Lb FFAR versions, using the existing motors. Both these rockets packed a punch alright, easily enough to upend a Tiger Tank provided the rocket hit within about 30yards of the target. Even if this was not achieved, the sheer concussion of eight or ten such rockets hitting simulataneoulsy within that radius was usually enough to kill the crew. But the underpowered rockets were both slow and innaccurate, leading to accuracy issues....about 1% of rockets fired were thought to achieve direct hits, and about 5% within a lethal radius. Simply not good enough. The 2nd generation rockets, which were introduced from July 1944 and known as the 5" FFAR "Holy Moses" were greatly superior with regards to accuracy and speed, because the motors were greatly improved in power. British rockets improved accuracy in the wartime context by using longer launch rails. but more powerful rocket motors for the 60Lb FFAR would have to wait until after the war.

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## parsifal (May 1, 2012)

Here is a link to a website that is a pretty good summary of the development of unguided rockets since 1940.

[7.0] Unguided Rockets

With regard to the germans developments, they were working on a number of very promising developments at the end of the war. Whereas allied rockets used underpowered motors and fin stabilized ballistics, the Germans opted for smaller warheads and spin stabilized rockets, similar, in concept at least, to their nebelwerfer rockets. Spin stabilized is inherently more accurate whilst the smaller warhead size meant also an inherently more accurate delivery system. On the other hand German aircraft rockets would have been less potent than their allied counterparts and hence needed more accuracy to be effective


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## Juha (May 1, 2012)

tomo pauk said:


> The Littlejohn adapter on the S-class cannon was enabling a 50% increase of the penetration (eg. at 400 yds it was 85 mm at 20 deg, plane flying at 350 fps). I'd like to see some dive-brakes on the tank buster carrying that, so he can execute a 60deg dive an harm the tanks through the thin upper armor. Even without the adapter.
> The notion about a Hurri IID being too much a specialized A/C points at the fact that Germans were fielding far less tanks that they needed?



Yes, I know the adapter and how it improved penetration power. It was also used in 2pdr guns of Daimler armoured cars in 44-45, usually one car with it and one without if used at all bebause the adapter attached the 2pdr could not fire HE rounds. Now the story goes that some clever crews noticed that even without the adapter the APSV shot used with Littlejohn adapter had clearly better penetration than normal APCBC shot. In fact it that way it was much like Soviet "Arrowhead" APCR round.

But even with adapter 40mm S would have been a little marginal against side armour of a Tiger, but with Molins...

Juha


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## tomo pauk (May 1, 2012)

> Now the story goes that some clever crews noticed that even without the adapter the APSV shot used with Littlejohn adapter had clearly better penetration than normal APCBC shot. In fact it that way it was much like Soviet "Arrowhead" APCR round.



Improvisation being synonym for the Brits 



> But even with adapter 40mm S would have been a little marginal against side armour of a Tiger, but with Molins...



Well, I've already proposed a dive bomber + S class 
Or, let's attach the S class to the A-36 and be done with it.


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## davebender (May 1, 2012)

It's my understanding the Ju-87 was considered a better overall CAS platform. That's why the Hs-129 was phased out in favor of converted Ju-87s.


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## Juha (May 1, 2012)

davebender said:


> It's my understanding the Ju-87 was considered a better overall CAS platform. That's why the Hs-129 was phased out in favor of converted Ju-87s.



If we are talking on tank busters, in early 45 there were still c. 60 Hs 129Bs vs c. 30 Ju 87Gs, in Apr 45 22 Hs 129Bs and c. 35 Ju 87Gs

Juha


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## davebender (May 1, 2012)

The R4M FF rocket changed the equation during 1945. It allowed Fw-190F to become effective tank busters. Hs-129s and Ju-87s in service during 1945 were survivors that had been produced a year earlier.


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## davebender (May 1, 2012)

http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/ai...rences-between-fw-190-a8-fw-190-f8-21164.html


> Fw190F-8/Pb1 - Panzerblitz 1 (Pb 1) system was developed consisting of six and, more often, eight R4M air-to-air missiles. They were adapted for tank destroying by mounting an 80 mm M8 type warhead for an armour penetration of up to 90 mm. Using the Pb 1 unit it was possible to destroy tanks at a 200 m distance with rockets being fired in salvo or in pairs. The only limitation was a maximum speed of 490 km/hr, not to be exceeded during missile firing. Up to February 1945 the Luftwaffe received 115 Fw 190F-8/Pb 1 planes.
> 
> 
> Fw190F-8/Pb2 - Panzerblitz 2 (Pb 2) unit( the successor to the Pb 1 unit). The main difference between them was the replacement of the M8 warhead by a hollow-charge warhead able to penetrate up to 180 mm armour. Also developed was the new missile system Panzerblitz 3 (Pb 3) with a 210 mm hollow-charge warhead, but it was not operational by the end of the war.



The Fw-190F-8/Pb1 made all other tank busting aircraft obsolete but it appeared too late to make much difference in WWII. If it had been available two years earlier the results could have been decisive on the Russian front.


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## parsifal (May 1, 2012)

There is no doubt that the R4m panzerblitz rocket was a step forward. its use of spin stabilization relatively powerful motor and lightweight warhead gave it a marked advanatage in accuracy. Direct descendants can be found in the post war 70mm rockets (forget the name) and the vietnam era "zuni" rockets

However, its a stretch to say the system completely eclipsed all other systems Accuracy was greatly improved with the "Holy Moses" and the modifications to the British launching system. allied rockets retained a huge advantage in terms of simplicity and even relaibility, and the R4m rocket still suffered from a low velocity. that issue was not solved until post war. The most damning problem with the german system, however, was the small warhead size. it had a much smaller lethal kill zone than the big 5 in rockets developed earlier by the allies

Its also misleading to suggest the Germans could introduce the R4M Panzerblitz II earlier than they did. The Germans did not use airborne tankbusting rockets earlier thjan they did, because theyu were not available, moreover the germans had considerable difficulty in developing rockets for this purpose.



210 mm to 280 mm Werfergrenate - Modified army artillery rockets mounted under the wings of Fw190F's, also used to attack formations of Allied strategic bombers. greatly affected aircraft performance 

80 mm and 88 mm Panzerblitz I - Modified versions of the R4M anti-aircraft rocket with a hollow charge warhead, capable of defeating 100 mm of armor plate at ranges of 500 m. Main problems was projectile speed. PBII addressed this issue, but work was delayed due in part to technical diffieculties 

SG 113A 77 mm Recoilless gun (Forstersonde) - Perhaps the most innovative German aerial anti-tank weapon, the Forstersonde (Forester's probe) was a vertically mounted weapon that was fired via a magnetic trigger that would activate the weapon as it passed over its metallic target.


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## davebender (May 2, 2012)

Folding fin stabilization is the break through technology that made the R4M rocket possible. This same technology made the Panzerfaust LAW possible. 

Panzerfaust entered service during 1943. There's no reason the R4M aerial rocket couldn't also enter service during 1943. RLM just needs to fund development and production as the Heer did for the Panzerfaust.


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## parsifal (May 2, 2012)

The Panzerblitz I, based on the Hand held Panzer faust did not start development until after Normandy, and only after the Germans had suffered first hand from the concentrated assaults by Allied Rocket Firing aircraft. Up to that time it was their opinion that the gun armed tankbusters were as good as they could get. What limited these aircraft was their specialized nature....a gun armed a/c wasnt as versatile as a rocket armed aircraft against dispersed soft targets like Infantry .

So, it wasnt funding that held the Germans back.....they were already lavishing obscene amounts of capital on R&D.....it was enlightenment and also the sheer ability to produce an effective airborne air to ground rocket. Their attempts prior to 1943 had not been all that succesful. 

Also, even though spin stabilization was inherently more accurate than fin stabilization, it wasnt decisively so. The allies had access to German R&D in this area after the war, yet spin stabilization did not completely eclipse fin stabilzation, to this very day. FS does have big advantages in terms of cost....its cheap to develop and build. 

The German rockets were also far from effective in some respects. The original PBI developed after Normandy suffered from two serious faults....short range and slow speed, which, along with the small warhead, actually made it less effective than the Allied ordinance. The Panzerblitz II overcame two of those issues....range and speed, but retained a small warhead size. This immediately prevented the weapon from being an effective GP weapon, and required a greater level of crew proficiency. The smaller warhead meant a smaller lethal radius, a smaller lethal radius required better crew proficiency, and in 1944-5, better crew proficiency was a rare commodity in the LW.

The LW of 1944 was not really suited to the PBII. They needed a more GP weapon in which accuracy was not important....just point the thing in the general direction of the enemy and fire it. Killing things from the air is not the principal role of CAS aircraft....a far more important mission objective was suppression, and in the rocket firing world you do that better with firepower, not accuracy. The PBii might be aas much as twice as accurate as an M-8, but that just increases the instances of a direct hit from 1% of launches to 2%. If the kill radius of the 2.75" R4M rocket is 10yards (Im being generous here), and the 5" 60lb warhead is say 20 yards, your probability of a lethal hit hasnt really changed much, but your versatility using the german weapon (because of its warhead size and design) was more restricted.


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## jim (May 2, 2012)

parsifal said:


> The Panzerblitz I, based on the Hand held Panzer faust did not start development until after Normandy, and only after the Germans had suffered first hand from the concentrated assaults by Allied Rocket Firing aircraft. Up to that time it was their opinion that the gun armed tankbusters were as good as they could get. What limited these aircraft was their specialized nature....a gun armed a/c wasnt as versatile as a rocket armed aircraft against dispersed soft targets like Infantry .
> 
> So, it wasnt funding that held the Germans back.....they were already lavishing obscene amounts of capital on R&D.....it was enlightenment and also the sheer ability to produce an effective airborne air to ground rocket. Their attempts prior to 1943 had not been all that succesful.
> 
> ...


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## parsifal (May 2, 2012)

> What Lw needed DESPERATELY was something to kill tanks from the air. Soviet tanks



Which is a pipe dream that no combatant, from any nation was able to achieve during the war. The high kill rates from aircrafdt look impressive, until the actual details of individual actions are examined. According to Bergsytom, during the Kursk battle, there was an incident involving both of the HS 129 units....about 40 aircraft, that claimed the destruction of almost an entire Soviet Tank Brigade....about 70 tanks....in one day. Turns out just three tanks were destroyed.

What "tankbusting" aircraft could do was suppress them either by immobilizing them, killing or injuring the crews, or pining them to allow the ground formations to envelope, isolate and then destroy that armour 



> For suppresion work Lw had excellent, very effective, cluster bombs not to mention the powerful but inaccurate 21cm and28cm rockets.They prefered the bombs.



And the Soviets had the PTAB cluster bomb and an AT variant as well as well as the RS 82 rocket, all from 1941....much earlier than any of the ordinance you mention 



> About the killing radius, heavy tanks required direct hits for penetration of their armour



You dont need to penetrate the frontal armour of a tank to knock it out or disable it. A paytern of 5 inch rockets within 30 yards of the target will deliver around 800 lbs of high explosive in a tight radius around the target. more than enough to set up a concussion wave that will generally kill or maim the crew, take of a track, rupture a fuel line, or a dozen other ways to stop that tank. Firepowert was the key to understanding how allied rocket attacks worked. this was less apparent in the German approach. German approach was not invalid, it eventually overtook the allied approach, but not in the context of the war itself. Further postwar development was needed to bring those late war German projects to fruition. 

I see as usual your rebuttal has absolutely zero supporting evidence....nice


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## tyrodtom (May 2, 2012)

Folding fin aircraft rockets are spin stabilized, the fins are slighly canted like the feathers on a arrow. Maybe not all, but the FFARs i'm familiar with spun.

But i've never seen a FFAR that you could call accurate, even in the 70's. I don't know if the spin wasn't enough or/and the solid propellant just never burned evenly.


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## davebender (May 2, 2012)

That depends on how you define accurate.

Hs-129Bs and Ju-87Gs fired at armored vehicles from a range of about 300 meters. I think a volley of FF rockets could hit a tank from that distance.


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## jim (May 2, 2012)

parsifal said:


> Which is a pipe dream that no combatant, from any nation was able to achieve during the war. The high kill rates from aircrafdt look impressive, until the actual details of individual actions are examined. According to Bergsytom, during the Kursk battle, there was an incident involving both of the HS 129 units....about 40 aircraft, that claimed the destruction of almost an entire Soviet Tank Brigade....about 70 tanks....in one day. Turns out just three tanks were destroyed.
> 
> What "tankbusting" aircraft could do was suppress them either by immobilizing them, killing or injuring the crews, or pining them to allow the ground formations to envelope, isolate and then destroy that armour
> 
> ...


 
Parsifal
Your post, as usual, is full of insults ,arrogance, ignorance and discrimination
1) Your claims that german aircrafts did not destroy soviet tanks has 0 evidence. You keep repeating that caramel about soviet brigade at Kursk. Soviet evidence show no kills but they dont explain why that brigade stoped. Do you want evidence? READ! Read SG2 s actions as fire brigade to stop soviets armor penetraions of the front. Read how ground attack forces were asking for support by cannon armed Stukas. There are photographic evidence as well. Why they were risking their lives flying Ju87Gs in 1945? For no reason? They did not knew ? You know Lw was evaluating the results of newly introduced weapons in the field. READ!. They dicovered the shortcomings of early 30mm cannons, they evaluated the reults of 37 mm as well . Overclaiming of course did occur. But in contrast to the aerial victories, in attacks against tanks there were not only forward directors but often whole companies and battallions to witness the results
2)Obviously you dont have a clue about the situation faced by the Germans on the Eastern front! Simply There were no enough ground forces to "envelope,isolate and destoy that armour" .How easy every thing looks from a chair!German held a line of strongholds and usually soviets tanks broke the line in the interim space. German tanks and and heavy self propelled guns of korps level reserve were going to counter attack but there were never enough of them. Luftwaffe had to destroy tanks breaking in the rear of german front lines. Soviets had so many tanks that very often used them as infantry carriers as well!
3) Did i say that soviets did not had cluster bombs??? What that has to do with this discusiion? My point is that German did not need the rockets as supression weapons, they had the their cluster bombs. You are so anxious to devalue anything german that you say irrelevant things!
4) How effectively alleid rockets worked against tanks is proven by the statistics of their own armies. German on the eastern front discovered that even small bombs had to land very near to the tank to disable it. Actually Panthers and Tigers often were surviving near explosions by artillery shells. Also imobilising a tank is not enough, it still can fire and both armies were expert at recovering
5)Because i have enough with your detractions and insults towards me about not providing evidence i will suggest you some bibliography
a)Aggrersor:Tank Buster vs Combat Vehicle b)Fw 190 , Hs 129, Ju87 ,Bf 110 in action c) Stuka Pilot by Just d) Hans ulrich Rudels Memoirs ( I imagine your answer : He was a liar and a coward) e) Panzer Aces 1,2 3 f) Armored battles of the Waffen SS g) Infantry aces of the eastern front h)Otto Carius memories j)Guns of the Reich k) Luftwaffe weapons l) Eagles of the third reich and quite a few more that i am boring writing . I write nothing from my imagination. You do have many knowledges but your biasment blinds you and you insult any one with diferent opinion..

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## tyrodtom (May 2, 2012)

davebender said:


> That depends on how you define accurate.
> 
> Hs-129Bs and Ju-87Gs fired at armored vehicles from a range of about 300 meters. I think a volley of FF rockets could hit a tank from that distance.



For once I can't disagree, but that's sort of like area bombing with rockets.


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## davebender (May 2, 2012)

Until gyro stabilized gunsights were introduced it's almost impossible for an aircraft to hit anything with either a cannon or rockets at ranges greater then 300 meters. If the target is an enemy fighter aircraft effective range drops to about 150 meters. That's WWII reality.


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## Milosh (May 2, 2012)

Maybe you should read this discussion jim,
Tank Busting Aircraft at Kursk - The Dupuy Institute Forum


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## davebender (May 2, 2012)

Anton Flettner moved to the USA during 1945 and became chief designer for Kaman Aircraft. His WWII era Fi-282 helicopter evolved into the Vietnam era H-43. If you look at pictures of both helicopters it’s easy to see the linage. This gives us a reference as to where Fi-282 helicopter development is heading if Anton Flettner receives adequate funding. 
...............................................................................................................................

The historical Fi-282 was approved for service with the German Navy during 1942. However the program received crumbs for funding. Flettner never had more then 120 employees and that was during 1944 after the Heer placed an order for 1,000 helicopters. Let’s get the Heer interested during 1942 and give the program serious funding. 

Historically the more powerful Fi-285 was approved after the Heer order. This involves replacing the 160hp Bramo Sh-14A engine with a 240hp Argus As.10 engine to increase aircraft payload.

This gives the Heer an aerial tank buster which is inherently more accurate then a fixed wing aircraft. It's also more survivable as it can fly nape of the earth and pop up for a shot.

The Fi-285 has enough payload to carry a 3cm M103 cannon or FF rockets.


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## parsifal (May 2, 2012)

Part I of II 



> Your post, as usual, is full of insults ,arrogance, ignorance and discrimination



Please point me to where mylast post to you is full of insults, arrogance ignorance and discrimination? disagreeing with you does not fit any of those categories. Pointing out you have no supporting material is not an insult, its a fact, and an invitation for you to correct that omission. 

1)


> Your claims that german aircrafts did not destroy soviet tanks has 0 evidence. You keep repeating that caramel about soviet brigade at Kursk.



I quoted bergstrom, who iss THE recognized authority on the Kursk air battle, at least in a widely published form. If you have better information, please present it. 



> Soviet evidence show no kills but they dont explain why that brigade stoped. Do you want evidence? READ! Read SG2 s actions as fire brigade to stop soviets armor penetraions of the front. Read how ground attack forces were asking for support by cannon armed Stukas. There are photographic evidence as well.



According to Soviet sources (Krivosheev i think....i rely on Bergstrom who mentions him i believe) the Brigade in question lost three tanks. This is confirmed, or at least supported by Bergstrom on that day, who also demolishes the claims made by the germans. Short answer is, i have read quite a bit on this subject, but im happy for you to present supported argument to the contrary. this far you have no supported evidence, and no verifiable sources quoted in your reply. which diminishes the credibilty of your response to about zero Im afraid. 



> Why they were risking their lives flying Ju87Gs in 1945? For no reason? They did not knew ? You know Lw was evaluating the results of newly introduced weapons in the field. READ!. They dicovered the shortcomings of early 30mm cannons, they evaluated the reults of 37 mm as well . Overclaiming of course did occur. But in contrast to the aerial victories, in attacks against tanks there were not only forward directors but often whole companies and battallions to witness the results



Obtaining reliable results from battlefields is harder, much harder when you are on the retreat. And thats the big problem for the germans in the last half of the war. they were retreating and often did not get to see or observe the results of their attacks properly.

Moreover there were massive gaps and weaknesses in the german evaluation and intelligence services, inlcuding the technical evaluation services. The best source i can recommend is gehlen who established the foreign armies east network (the so called "red books"). these were the best sources on Soviet military strength and capability available to the germans, yet after the war were found to be hopelessly innaccurate. gehlen himself admitted this after the war, but it was better than anything the germans possessed in the way of interlligence during the war. Hitler once threatened to have gehlen shot, because at the end of the war he accurately predicted the Soviet strength and tank availability on the Oder-Niese line. Gehlens command included a comprehensive technical branch to do the very job you are talking about. If you ever do actually do what you are admonishing me to do....read....you will find repeated lamentations from these officers about their inability to just what you are claiming....have the time to obseverve the results of such attacks.

Often tanks were knocked out by German attacks.....temporarily. Thats one of the advatages of being the strategic attacker....vehicles and AFVs knocked out of action can be returned to action because you as the attacker take the ground, make it secure and have the time to repair the equipment knocked out by the enemy. Such advantage does not exist for the strategic defender. seldom, or at least less often was it possible for the defender able to recover knocked out equipment. It happended to the Soviets in 1941-2, and it happened just as often to the Germans 1944-5. 



> 2)Obviously you dont have a clue about the situation faced by the Germans on the Eastern front! Simply There were no enough ground forces to "envelope,isolate and destoy that armour" .How easy every thing looks from a chair!German held a line of strongholds and usually soviets tanks broke the line in the interim space. German tanks and and heavy self propelled guns of korps level reserve were going to counter attack but there were never enough of them. Luftwaffe had to destroy tanks breaking in the rear of german front lines. Soviets had so many tanks that very often used them as infantry carriers as well!



You are right that as an outside observer I dont have the experiences of people that were there. But i have to ask you a question...are you an east front veteran. on the assumption that you are not I think I have as much knowledge as you to make observations about this TO. And, for the record, I have personal connections for people on both sides that fought on that front. People that have spoken to me in detail about their experiences.

having said that, what you are saying about the german inability to concentrate and achieve decisive advanatgaes in numbers is true, but only because of the production and military decisionms they themselves made, and not always true anyway at a tactical level. at a strategic level, the Russians achieved overwhelming suuperiority of numbers. Tactically, there are many instances the germans could and did achieve local superiorities. And it was not the passive supine defences that won battles for the germans after 1943....it was their ability to achieve local superiorities wherever possible and deliver stinging counterattacks that usually stopped the Russian offensives. 



> 3) Did i say that soviets did not had cluster bombs??? What that has to do with this discusiion? My point is that German did not need the rockets as supression weapons, they had the their cluster bombs. You are so anxious to devalue anything german that you say irrelevant things!



Its not irrelevant in my opinion. you presented your case as if nobody else possessed other weapons suited for suppression. I was merely citing an example of comparable capability. 

Saying the germans did not need a good air to ground rocket is just not supported by the facts. One of the great advatages of rocket area supreesive weapons is their ability to engage at range. Instead of having to fly over the target, they could be fired at some distance....usually 3-500m, but at a pinch up to 1200m or so, thereby reducing the effects of AA. 

Im not anxious to denigrate the germans, in fact the posts I have made over this thread are to acknowledge the technical advantages their rocket techs possessed. problem was it arrived too late and was not the right wepon for theeir wars end situation. thats not denigrating the germans, thats attempting to explain why they lost.

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## parsifal (May 2, 2012)

Pat II of II



> 4) How effectively alleid rockets worked against tanks is proven by the statistics of their own armies. German on the eastern front discovered that even small bombs had to land very near to the tank to disable it. Actually Panthers and Tigers often were surviving near explosions by artillery shells. Also imobilising a tank is not enough, it still can fire and both armies were expert at recovering



In fact I would say the germans were better at AFV recovery than the russians. but large numbers of German tanks were nevertheless lost because there was not time to undertake a recovery operation, whereas the ruaasians could often simply leave the tank and recover it later.

Whats your point about near explosions from artillery shells? and individual shell wont set up the compression wave and wont have the destructive power of 8 x 5" rockets landing withing 30 yards of your tank. Rockets with near misses are still only going to be about 5% effective. I dont know how that compares with guns ofr artillery but it suggests the main reason for firing them has little to do with knocking out the tank directly 




> 5)Because i have enough with your detractions and insults towards me about not providing evidence i will suggest you some bibliography
> a)Aggrersor:Tank Buster vs Combat Vehicle b)Fw 190 , Hs 129, Ju87 ,Bf 110 in action c) Stuka Pilot by Just d) Hans ulrich Rudels Memoirs ( I imagine your answer : He was a liar and a coward)



Why would I label him a liar and a coward? he was a brave soldier, used by the nazis for political purposes but he certainly achieved a lot. 

But quoting sources in such a general sense does not do a lot to prove you have a good basis on which to make such claims. Further all the sources you have quoted are German, with no attempt made in your bibliography to achieve balance or look at the contrary view. Bergstrom uses all these sources in his bibliography, as well as looking at soviet sources. In this way i think he achieves a far more balanced conclusion than perhaps you will do by reading the accounts of just one side. 




> e) Panzer Aces 1,2 3 f) Armored battles of the Waffen SS g) Infantry aces of the eastern front h)Otto Carius memories j)Guns of the Reich k) Luftwaffe weapons l) Eagles of the third reich and quite a few more that i am boring writing .



These are all good sources. i have read most of them. Unfortunately they suffer from what most "biographical" sources suffer from.....they are not objective or balanced in their assessments. A 



> I write nothing from my imagination. You do have many knowledges but your biasment blinds you and you insult any one with diferent opinion..



I really am sorry if you have that view of me, but you are wrong. The types of books you read are good for what they are, but the problem is not the books, its the way you are using them. by having such a one sided and lop sided Biliography, you are in fact feeding your imagination and gaining a false view of how the fighting on the eastern front developed.

I would suggest you put some balance into your reading list to try and get some better idea of what was happening. if possible, I would also talk to any survivors of that war that you can. If you have, and still come to the same conclusions, then fair enough. I have gone through that excercise, i can assuere you, and came away with a view differnt to your own. Maybe that makes me biased, but it doesnt make me blind, and it doesnt make me rude. it makes me different to what you think should be so.


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## parsifal (May 2, 2012)

davebender said:


> Anton Flettner moved to the USA during 1945 and became chief designer for Kaman Aircraft. His WWII era Fi-282 helicopter evolved into the Vietnam era H-43. If you look at pictures of both helicopters it’s easy to see the linage. This gives us a reference as to where Fi-282 helicopter development is heading if Anton Flettner receives adequate funding.
> ...............................................................................................................................
> 
> The historical Fi-282 was approved for service with the German Navy during 1942. However the program received crumbs for funding. Flettner never had more then 120 employees and that was during 1944 after the Heer placed an order for 1,000 helicopters. Let’s get the Heer interested during 1942 and give the program serious funding.
> ...



Thats a very intersting suggestion, and worth looking at in my opinion


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## davebender (May 2, 2012)

*Historical Fi-282.* Pilot in front and observer in back.






Proposed changes for Fi-285.
- More powerful engine.
- Delete observer.
- Pilot needs a gunsight. Perhaps also an enclosed cockpit to protect him from weapons blast.

The Fi-285 can lift a 3cm Mk103 cannon but can it withstand the recoil? I assume the cannon would be mounted under the fuselage.

FF rockets have no recoil so they should be no problem. Just install a rocket pod under the fuselage.


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## Njaco (May 2, 2012)

Ok guys, lets stop the name calling and sarcasm right here. I don't want this thread closed for stupid reasons.

Parsifal, I had posted this in the "This Day in Europe ...." thread a few years ago and I can't really remember the source but my question is this: If this stopping of Russian armour is a myth or not quite what it seems why does there seem to be so much info about this, such as personeel and air groups involved?



> 8 July 1943
> The Russian attack began in the morning, moving west in an attempt to cut the Begorod-Oboian highway. Along the woods north of Belgorod, Gruppenkommandeur Hptm. Bruno Meyer, flying a Hs 129B of IV./SG 9, spotted moving Russian tanks and large concentrations of troops in the attack on the German flank. Meyer radioed to base that he saw at least 40 tanks and, "....dense blocks of infantry, like a martial picture from the middle ages." and ordered the rest of his Gruppe up from Mikoyanovka to assault the Russian attack.
> 
> The Luftwaffe immediately scrambled 4 squadrons, a total of 64 Hs 129s, to Meyer's coordinates. Using high-velocity 30mm cannons, the planes swept the forset, pumping shells into the rears of the tanks. Within a few minutes, half a dozen tanks were destroyed and burning. Fw 190 fighters joined the fray, strafing infantry and bombing wherever the Soviets were clustered. Follow up attacks by squadrons led by Major Matuschek, Oblt. Oswald, Oblt. Dornemann and Lt. Orth along with attacks on the infantry by Major Druschel's Fw 190 jabos, soon destroyed the Russian brigade and they retreated into the woods. The Soviet armoured assault had been blunted solely through air power.


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## JoeB (May 2, 2012)

parsifal said:


> 1. According to Bergsytom, during the Kursk battle, there was an incident involving both of the HS 129 units....about 40 aircraft, that claimed the destruction of almost an entire Soviet Tank Brigade....about 70 tanks....in one day. Turns out just three tanks were destroyed.
> 
> 2. You dont need to penetrate the frontal armour of a tank to knock it out or disable it. A paytern of 5 inch rockets within 30 yards of the target will deliver around 800 lbs of high explosive in a tight radius around the target. more than enough to set up a concussion wave that will generally kill or maim the crew, take of a track, rupture a fuel line, or a dozen other ways to stop that tank.


1. Some believe that the high powered gun-equipped AT a/c like Ju-87's with 37mm or the Hs-129 with 30mm were much more effective than Allied rocket/bomb armed fighter bombers against tanks, but it does seem to be questionable. The highly rates of overestimation in claims by US and British fighter bombers against German tanks in the Northwest Europe 1944, and those of US a/c in the early stages of the Korean War as well, have long been well documented by English language operational research reports by the British and Americans themselves. The actual performance of German AT a/c v Soviet tanks OTOH hasn't been as well documented in the West, and it seems there's more tendency to accept the German antitank claims at face value or at least assume they are not as massively exaggerated. But perhaps they were.

Another example is from a Soviet report of the 3rd Guards Tank Brigade from July 6-14 1942, a year before Kursk, stating that German air attacks constituted about 1/2 the attacks on the brigade's tanks (40% were by AT guns, 9% by German tanks and 1% by infantry) but the brigade suffered no permanent tank losses at all to those air attacks.

A general Soviet report about air v tank, also from 1942, concluded (much the same as the Germans concluded v Allied air attacks ca 1944) that German air could disrupt Soviet armored operations overall, but generally inflicted small or neglible permanent losses of Soviet tanks.

2. I agree that a/c AT weapons didn't have to penetrate the *frontal* armor of tanks to be effective, but I don't agree that rockets would often score even mobility kills on tanks without actually hitting them. Back to Soviet experience, the 3rd Guards TB report gave an example of a medium bomb near miss less than 2m from a KV-1 which failed to permanently destroy it. A general report concluded that bombs had to land closer than that to reliably knock it out. German tests of the SC-250 GP bomb gave somewhat more optimistic results: test animals were killed inside captured T-34's within 6m of such a bomb. But a rocket with a small fraction the explosive of a 500#-class bomb would be very unlikely to kill a tank crew by blast effect without hitting it directly. And the Brits concluded that operational CEP's of rockets in 1944 was around 60m, hit rates v tanks around .5%. The USAF came up with considerably smaller CEP and much higher hit rate (1 rocket in a salvo of 6 would hit more often than not, it was predicted) in tests in reaction to complaints of rocket ineffectiveness v T-34's in 1950. But the latter were tests, not actual combat results v AA fire, v. obscured targets and so forth. In the latter tests standard HVAR's (with 5"/38 common shell as warhead) did catostrophic damage to T-34's if they hit directly (the crash development of the 6.5" HEAT rocket in summer 1950 wasn't really necessarily, it seemed) but near misses were only considered effective if close enough to cut a track, very close.

Of course fluke rocket near misses further away could do disabling damage with fragments...even .50 caliber API could KO tanks as documented in both WWII and Korea. That wasn't a complete myth; it just didn't happen very often.

This link is a long document in Russian about Soviet and German a/c v one anothe's tanks in WWII with lots of interesting excerpts from Soviet reports. 
Îñíîâíàÿ çàäà÷à - âûáèâàòü ó ïðîòèâíèêà òàíêè - 0001.htm

Another albeit short and unusual episode calling into question German AT a/c effectiveness is the campaign in Tunisia. Here, unusually compared to the rest of the war, the Germans had air superiority over the battlefield for significant periods in the presence of US armor. The pattern was a familiar one: the attacks were a serious menace to soft skinned vehicles, for example an advancing US arty battalion 'destroyed as a fighting unit' by German air attack around Sidi Bou Zid in the Kasserine campaign. And retreating general vehicle columns were vulnerable. But US tanks completely destroyed by German air attacks were apparently few, and the air attacks included Hs-129's as well as dive bombers and fighter bombers.

Joe

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## JoeB (May 2, 2012)

Njaco said:


> I had posted this in the "This Day in Europe ...." thread a few years ago and I can't really remember the source but my question is this: If this stopping of Russian armour is a myth or not quite what it seems why does there seem to be so much info about this, such as personeel and air groups involved?


Since only German units and personnel are named, that's apparently a claim by the Germans. This is the whole point. We know and have long known that Western airmen's claims against tanks in this era were typically highly exaggerated, much more than air to air claims typically were. We know this because British and US operational research reports found it by examining enemy (German, later North Korean) tank wrecks and comparing them to claims. Why would we assume German airmen's claims against tanks were so much more accurate? And there does seem to be countervailing evidence that the particular attack you mention did not destroy many Soviet tanks in fact.

But, the part about the Soviet tank formation retreating might be true. A tank unit didn't have to suffer heavy outright losses to air attacks to retreat to cover. This was also repeatedly shown on the Western front, and later in Korea. The German and NK tanks facing Allied/UN air superiority avoided large scale operations in good visiblity without cover (like trees) and their operations were also severely hindered by losses of soft skinned support and resupply vehicles, even though outright losses of tanks to attacking a/c were far less than what the opposing airmen believed.

Joe


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## tyrodtom (May 2, 2012)

davebender said:


> *Historical Fi-282.* Pilot in front and observer in back.
> View attachment 200328
> 
> 
> ...


Dave do you realize the top speed of that chopper is only about 90 mph, while more hp might increase the lift, a helicopter's speeds are determined by rotor design. The Vietnam era HH-43 with almost 5 times the hp only had about a 120 mph top speed.
Flying nap of the earth would only help so much when you're almost stationary, and if you fire rockets from a helicopter, everyone knows where you are. So a very slow moving aircraft, with a smoke trail leading back to it, not a good idea for battlefield survival.


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## parsifal (May 2, 2012)

Njaco said:


> Ok guys, lets stop the name calling and sarcasm right here. I don't want this thread closed for stupid reasons.
> 
> Parsifal, I had posted this in the "This Day in Europe ...." thread a few years ago and I can't really remember the source but my question is this: If this stopping of Russian armour is a myth or not quite what it seems why does there seem to be so much info about this, such as personeel and air groups involved?



Have a look at milosh's link to the Dupuy institute. it debunks this version of what happen very comprehensively. the debunked version is supported by bergstrom incidentally. im not sure if the attack was stopped or not.....wouldnt be surprised if it was stopped after an attack of that magnitude, but thats not the issue....the issue was how many tanks were destroyed....by the most reliable sources i know, three or less, not the 20+ claimed in meyers account


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## parsifal (May 2, 2012)

> 2. I agree that a/c AT weapons didn't have to penetrate the *frontal* armor of tanks to be effective, but I don't agree that rockets would often score even mobility kills on tanks without actually hitting them. Back to Soviet experience, the 3rd Guards TB report gave an example of a medium bomb near miss less than 2m from a KV-1 which failed to permanently destroy it. A general report concluded that bombs had to land closer than that to reliably knock it out. German tests of the SC-250 GP bomb gave somewhat more optimistic results: test animals were killed inside captured T-34's within 6m of such a bomb. But a rocket with a small fraction the explosive of a 500#-class bomb would be very unlikely to kill a tank crew by blast effect without hitting it directly. And the Brits concluded that operational CEP's of rockets in 1944 was around 60m, hit rates v tanks around .5%. The USAF came up with considerably smaller CEP and much higher hit rate (1 rocket in a salvo of 6 would hit more often than not, it was predicted) in tests in reaction to complaints of rocket ineffectiveness v T-34's in 1950. But the latter were tests, not actual combat results v AA fire, v. obscured targets and so forth. In the latter tests standard HVAR's (with 5"/38 common shell as warhead) did catostrophic damage to T-34's if they hit directly (the crash development of the 6.5" HEAT rocket in summer 1950 wasn't really necessarily, it seemed) but near misses were only considered effective if close enough to cut a track, very close.



joe

as usual, and excelent reply that i learnt a great deal from. I agree that a single rocket needed to make a direct hit or a near miss to have a good chance of lethal damage. But, given that rockets were usually fired in salvoes of 8 or more, if you have one rocket within that 30m CEP, it is likley there are 7 other exploding within that area as well. given that the HVARs carried a warhead derived from the 5/38 and the 5/38 could do a lot of damage with a direct hit, why would 8xrockets carrying the same warhead, behave any differently or less lethally?

also, the 5' HVAR was not the largest or most lethal rocket in the Us air to ground arsenal. the 11.38 "Tiny tim" was a 1200lb projectile, able to do the equivalent of a 12' battleships shell worth of damage. not used in Europe, but available just the same....


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## parsifal (May 3, 2012)

The Bruno Meyer Controversy

This is the clarification provided by Chris Lawrence, a moderator from the Dupuy Institute , and draws into sharp focus the issue of overclaiming that has been the subject of discussion these last few pages.

Chris is not only a moderator. He is an author and academic as well, and has very good credentials in this field 

Here are his findings on the Bruno Meyer controversy:

_The Bruno Meyer Story
This story was first published by Hans Seidemann (VIII Air Corps commander at Kursk) in 1947 as part of his write-up he did for the US Army on air operations at Kursk.

It this story, he clearly identifies the time and date (afternoon of July 8), the location ("from the woods east of GOSTCHEVO station"), the unit ("4th Group/9th Antitank Ground Attack Wing"), the German air response ("in a short time, they were on their way to meet the enemy force"), the duration of the battle("after about one hour") and the result ("approximately 40 tanks had been knocked out") and its effect ("the remainder of the enemy force discontinued the attack and turned around"). Furthermore, he identifies elsewhere the strength of the antitank unit as 60 planes. 

This story has the advantage of being specific enough that one can acually compare it to the opposing side's records (unlike most war stories).

There is some other confirming evidence for it in the German records. Primarily there is a claim in the VIII Air Corps records that they destroyed 84 tanks on the 8th, including 11 burned and damaged 21 tanks on July 8 and the comment for that day that the "The initial action by the antitank aircraft squadron was quite effective. Given the number of burning [enemy] tanks reported, it must be assumed that there was an even greater number that were just knocked out (more than 6 hits reported), Especially in the late afternoon attack from the northeast against SS Reich and the evening tank battle, the Russians were stopped and driven back."

The VIII Air Corps also reports the loss of two Hs-129s on this day.

Over the years, an expanded version of this story has appeared, I gather first from a German source that I have not identified. It shows up in Robin Cross' "Citadel: The Battle of Kursk" book (pages 198-199) and in a number of web sites about Hs-129s. A German site that has the story is linked below, and it appears to have been drawn from the same source as the Robin Cross version.

The expanded version of the story has Major Bruno Meyer flying reconnaissance in the morning, when "as the morning mist clears" he sees 60 tanks and their supporting infantry emerge from the woods. He calls in all the units of his group with the lead elements arriving from Mikoyanovka airfield within 15 minutes. They are supported by Fw-190s lead by Maj. Alfred Druschel (CO 1st Ground Attack Wing), who bomb the supporting infantry. They usually have the battle resolved in an hour, with Cross' claiming six tanks "within a few minutes" and 50 tanks within an hour. Most accounts claim 40-50 tanks. All the accounts place the attack on the flank of the SS Panzer Corps or the woods near Gostishchevo. The account often provide a detail OB of five squadrons with 16 planes each.


This is clearly the same story, with some detail added.


The German language version of the story is at:
http://www.wehrtechnik.net/wehrtechnik/henschel_129.html

Contradictory German information
Now, before we take a look at the Soviet data...there are a few problems with the German reports.

First, this attack is noted in the German SS Panzer Corps reports as an attack at 1145 with 20-40 tanks and weak infantry units through the ravine from Visloye and Ternovka to the west agains the defenses at the Belgorod-Kursk highway.

Visloye and Ternovka are both in front of the large woods south of Gostishchevo. This raises questions at to both the time and size of the attack (and therefore casualties).

Next, the sources I have located indicate that the IV/9th SG was created 18 October 1943 and its commander was Bruno Meyer. The III Pz Corps records do make reference to an panzer command as part of the 1st Ground Assualt Wing, but I do not know who commanded it, or what it consisted of. There were two AT squadrons (the 4th and 8th) armed with Hs-129s in the 1st SG. There is clear evidence that the 4.(Pz)/2 SG was also there as was the Pz. Sqdn/51 JG. All four of these squadrons were later used to create the IV/9 SG along with the 8.(Pz)/2 SG. I do not have clear evidence than this last unit was at Kursk, but I assume it was.

A good bio of Bruno Meyer would be of use here.

Third, the base listings I have put these Hs-129 squadrons at Varvanovka, not Mikoyanovka."_


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## parsifal (May 3, 2012)

The Bruno Meyer Controversy Part II

The Soviet Accounts

*The Soviet Attack*

_"Conveniently enough the Soviet attack is clearly identified in their records and there is only one brigade it could be.

This is the 26th Tank Brigade of the II Guards Tank Corps. It is the only candidate and was reported at attacking from Visloye at 1200 Moscow time (1100 Berlin time). 

There are no other candidates. The division operated with two tank brigades forward and one in the second echolon. The other forward brigade (4th Guards Tank Brigade) was to its right at Nepkhayevo while the other tank brigade remained in the rear. The Corps 47th Heavy Tank Regiment (Churchills) was already 7 - 10 kilometers away in the III Panzer Corps area engaged, and the independent 96th Tank Brigade was moving southeast of Gostishchevo and joined that fight.

Therefore, one is left with the 26th Tank Brigade. It reports that it attacked from Visloye at 1200 (Moscow) time. Visloye is at the northwest tip of the large woods south of Gostishchevo. This attack drove onto height 209.5, two kilometers southwest of Visloye. The brigade then reports being attacked by 40-50 planes during the German counterattack (which occurred at 1210 Berlin time according to German reports).

The 26th Tank Brigade as of 0700 July 8th has 26 T-34s and 15 T-70s. The attack also included one regiment from the 4th Guards Motorized Brigade, which may have included up to 20 Bren Gun Carriers. It was also supported by infantry from a Rifle Division.

The Corps reported losing 8 T-34s and 3 T-70s for the day, with effectively only two of its brigades engaged. The 26th Tank Brigade at 0700 July 10 reported having 22 T-34s and 12 T-70s. The Corps reports only losing Churchills on the 9th. From 0700 on the 8th to 0700 on the 10th, the 26th Guards Tank Brigade shows a decline in ready-for action tanks of 4 T-34s and 3 T-70s, while the 4th Guards Tank Brigade shows a decline of 2 T-34s and 2 T-70s. The 25th Guards Tank Brigade's strength actually increases during this time. The Corps did have a coprs reserve of 20 T-34s and 10 T-70s located in Bubnovo on the 8th. This unit is no longer mentioned and may have been used on the 10th or 11th. 

As the 4th Guards Tank Brigade clearly took casualties, this all points to the actual losses of the 26th Guards Tank Brigade being around nine tanks. Assuming that some were lost to German armor, antitank guns and infantry (both during the attack and during the German counterattack) then it would appear that the claim by the VIII Air Corps of "more than 6 hits" may in fact be high. The claim of 40 tanks killed appears to be off by an order of magnitude. 

Glantz states (page 135):


quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Burdeiny's 2nd Guards Tank Corps fared little better. It jumped off at 1200 hours, and after limited progress suffered an unmerciful beating from German aircraft and Totenkopf's panzer regiment, losing 50 tanks in the process. German aerial reconnaissance had detected Burdeiny's concentration of armor, and four squadrons of Henschel HS-109 aircraft, specially equipped with 30mm automatic cannon for antitank missions, broke up the Soviet attack, perforating the thin overhead armor of the tanks and leaving a hideous, burning wasteland. This unprecedented action, in which a tank attack was halted by air power alone, set a dangerous precedent. Indeed, throughout the battle, Soviet troop movements had to be conducted at night to minimize such lossees. This in turn delayed the arrival of reserves to block the German penetration.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, I have a number of problems with this passage....

1. They did not loose 50 tanks. The Corps probably lost as reported 11 tanks on this day.

2. I do not have confirmation as to whether the AT Air Group had 4 or 5 squadrons.

3. The planes were Hs-129s, vice HS-109s.

4. Not sure of the details about "perforating the thin overhead armor of the tanks and leaving a hideous, burning wasteland."

5. The actual description of the operations from the 2nd Gds Tank Corps operational report 182, 0700 July 9, 1943 (page Fond: 2nd Guards Tank Corps, Opis: 1, Delo: 32, Page: 187):

"26th Guards Tank Brigade cross the Lipovyi Donets at 1200 in the area of Visloye, along with 1 regiment/4th Gds Motorized Brigade and 89th Gds Rifle Division, attacked height 209.5. The brigade, despite heavy enemy fire, together with 89th Gds Rifle Division, took height 209.5, after which the enemy launched armored counterattacks, supported by aircraft in groups of 40-50 planes. 89th Gds Rifle Division fell back on Visloye and after an hour 26th Gds Tank Brigade's tanks, having taken losses, fell back on the eastern slopes of height 209.5, where they consolidated and continued to fight the enemy.
At 1800 on July 8 26th Gds Tank Brigade attacked height 209.5 for the second time, but was unsuccesful."

The SS records support this account. Therefore, I must take exception with the conclusion that "a tank attack was halted by air power alone".

Furthermore, this statement about halting a tank attack with air power alone is contradicted by Glantz in his second sentence where he states "suffered an unmerciful beating from German aircraft and Totenkopf's panzer regiment"

6. For number of reasons, I disagree with the conclusion that this "set a dangerous precedent." and that "Soviet troop movements had to be conducted at night to minimize such losses. This in turn delayed the arrival of reserves to block the German penetration."

While the Soviet reserves regularly did travel at night...they also moved surprisingly fast. Any delays in the arrival of the 5th Guards Tank Army and the 5th Guards Army could be better explained by the date they were ordered to depart and the fact that they sent the 5th Guards Tank Army off to Oboyan first before they turned it around and sent it to Prokhorovka. As it was, it appears that the Soviet units had a tendancy to go into battle too quickly from the march and may have done better if they rested and prepared. I do not think that the Hs-129 attack on the 8th of July was a major factor in causing the Soviet Army to conduct night marches, as they had been doing this for a while as a matter of course." _

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## fastmongrel (May 3, 2012)

The Helicopter looks a good idea but I have only one point too make. I was in a piston engined helicopter once and while there is a chance something was out of balance I would liken the experience to sitting on a large washing machine with an out of balance load whilst it is doing the spin cycle. I dont think I could have hit the end of my nose with my right index finger let alone hit a tank at 300 yards.

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## tyrodtom (May 3, 2012)

I'm a old Army Aviation man, but WW2 era helicopters just are not fast enough for survival on a typical WW2 battlefield. With any sort of recipocating engine, even their lift capacity isn't going to be great, and their speed is only going to be around 100 mph.

Look at the performance of the Vietnam era Huey, the same HP as a WW2 fighter, 1200-1500 HP, but none could exceed 150mph. The only way a helicopter can survive is lots and lots of armor over it's many vunerable areas, pilot, fuel, engine, transmission, tail shaft and rotor, and that very important main rotor head.


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## Shortround6 (May 3, 2012)

A rough guess at the capabilities of a WW II "attack" helicopter can be made by going to Sikorsky H-5 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

and then checking out the operating manual at. (1951) AN 01-230HB-1 Handbook Flight Operating Instructions USAF Series H-5A, D, and E Navy Model HO2S-1 Helicopters

This is for a 450hp helicopter, granted it is not a German "luft 46" machine but I doubt anybody was really going to do much better with a _service_ machine even in 1945.


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## davebender (May 3, 2012)

Helicopters can fly nape of the earth. Something fixed wing aircraft cannot do. That's the survival trade off.

Don't get me wrong, I think early development of FF rockets attached to fixed wing aircraft is a better solution. But a 1943 attack helicopter is technically possible for Germany so I think it worthwhile to consider the posibility.


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## Shortround6 (May 3, 2012)

Try looking at the S-51 again, Nape of the earth at 85-90miles an hour isn't all that good. Payload vs range really sucks too. The S-51 had a practical range of 200 miles with 100 gallons of fuel. that is 600lbs of fuel out of a payload of just under 1000lbs. take out the pilot and your "war load" is 200-240lbs. Granted you can trade some fuel for weapons at the cost of even shorter range. Again this is for a 450hp machine. a 240hp machine would have a much more limited payload/range combination.


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## tyrodtom (May 3, 2012)

About the best illustration of the use of helicopters in a medium flak threat enviroment would be operation Lam Son 719/ Dewey Canyon II, the ARVN incursion into southern Laos, supported by US air power. About 120 choppers destroyed, 600 damaged, about 15 fixed wing destroyed, can't remember FW damaged.

Sort of illustrates the survival chances of the two different aircraft types over the same battlefield.


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## davebender (May 3, 2012)

160hp engine.
840 lb total payload. 
529 lb useful load (after subtracting fuel weight).
93 mph max speed. 
106 miles max range.
The German navy employed the Fi-282 for recon. It carried a pilot, observer and radio.
The Heer had the same intention except the observer would be an artillery forward observer.

I have been unable to find specifications for the proposed 240hp Fi-285. Perhaps it had a useful payload (after subtracting fuel weight) of about 750 lbs.

The much larger Fi-339 began development at the same time as the Fi-285.
BMW-132 engine.
20 passengers.

An attack helicopter doesn't need to carry 20 passengers but the payload is nice. Perhaps Flettner could do to the Fi-339 what Bell did to the UH1. Keep the powerful engine but use a smaller fuselage designed to carry weapons. A (crude) WWII version of the AH1 Cobra gunship.


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## davebender (May 3, 2012)

Kaman K-225 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia





Direct decendent of the Fi-282. I suspect the Fi-285 would look a lot like this.


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## davebender (May 3, 2012)

Kaman K-240 / HTK-1 / TH-43E helicopter - development history, photos, technical data





The next step in Flettner, err, Kaman helicopter development. Interestingly enough the K-240 had a 240hp engine. Just like the proposed Fi-285.


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## parsifal (May 3, 2012)

You have to ask the question whether helicopters can operate in airspace dominated by the enemy. historical experience would suggest not. The iraqis did not use helos during the UN invasion of Kuwait, or during desert storm. Neither did the NVA during vietnam. Where enemy activity is minimal, such as in the back blocks of Africa, both sides might use them.

On the other hand, it seems that at least theoretically both sides in the cold war at least expected to use helos in hostile air environments. The case in point are the preparations made by both the WP and the NATO forces during the Cold War. Both sides expected no better than air parity at the beginning, trending towards NATO air superiority D+30. Quite a few observers believed the WP would achieve air superiority for the first 7 days or so until the arrival of the two additional TFW from the US. Yet also both sides also expected to be able to use rotary wings at all times, though admittedly with far greater losses if the enemy held control of the air.

In the context of this hypothjertical, I would surmise it to be very difficult to maintain a significant rotary wing presence in the very hot environment of NW Europe. They might be able to maintain such presence on the eastern front in quiet sectors, where for long periods the VVS would absent. 

When I was in the RAN we tried to simulate this in excercise. We found we could operate our helos on a very limited basis, ie within the umbrella formed by our air warfare destroyers.....perhaps its possible to something similar using ground based flak. But certainly, general observation is that operation of rotary wings in a hostile air environment would be very difficult. no question

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## davebender (May 3, 2012)

All CAS aircraft require air superiority. That includes Fw-190fs loaded down with R4M rocket pods.


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## tyrodtom (May 3, 2012)

The intermeshing rotors were nice if you needed to do a lot of hovering, or load lifting. But they had NO speed . 
Even the HH-43, with 850 hp would only do 120 mph. 

That's why you only see them used for 2 things, firefighing close to a base, or rescue, also close to a airbase.

I'm not sure on this next thing, but I think they needed forward movement to turn, they couldn't do a fast pedal turn from a hover, since they had no tail rotor.


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## parsifal (May 3, 2012)

Yeah true Dave, but the question is one of suvivability. The Germans might get an occasional single aircraft over the target . They might get the limited advantage of a night airstrike. The question is.....is the air asset more survivable and more effective if it is rotary or fixed wing once you have lost air superiority. The FW 190F has the advantage of performance, but it might have to come some distance, and has to use an airfield that is vulnerable to damage and/or capture. With a helo, you could operate very close to the front, and dont need a lot of supporting infrastructure. on the other hand, you have a very low level of performance and a low level of carrying capacity. With 2-300 HP your concept vehicle might carry one rocket, which is just not enough firepower to set up the secondary blast zones that a full barrage of 8x5" rockets can


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## davebender (May 3, 2012)

The German navy conducted extensive survivability tests with the Fi-282. Exercises where Me-109s attempted to get within firing range and put the gunsight on target. They also tethered an unmanned Fi-282 and shot at it with light flak to see how much damage the rotor blades could take. The Fi-282 got high marks in all these tests. So I've got to assume survivability was good.


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## tyrodtom (May 3, 2012)

There's a heck of a lot more to a helicopter that's vital to flight than just the blades. The transmission has to be faultless, in any rorary wing ac. It can take NO damage. You armor it very well, or accept the casualties.

When you look at the combat unit using the Fi-282 for artillery spotting on the eastern front, they ran out of aircraft, they lost so many to aircraft and flak, they disbanded the unit.


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## parsifal (May 3, 2012)

I did find this:

_The following extract from the E-Stelle Travemunde's monthly report of June 1944 is also worthy of mention: 

"A mock combat between the Fl 282 (Flettner company pilot Fuisting) and a Fw 190 (pilot Ltn. Eisenlohr of E.Kdo.25) took place at Schweidnitz on 22.06.1944, in order to investigate the chances of a fighter hitting a helicopter. At present the evaluation of the film and the pilot reports have not yet arrived. At heights above 100 meters the fighter was able to get the helicopter in its sights briefly. Near the ground, especially in difficult terrain, the fighter has little chance against a helicopter." 

Vulnerability to gunfire was also investigated, whereby they proceeded on the assumption that the mathematical probability of a moving rotor blade being hit was much less than that of a fixed wing. Another consideration was that it should be extremely difficult to fire on and hit the slow-moving helicopter from a fast fighter. The latter could escape by making brief evasive movements, which the fighter could not follow. Furthermore, tests involving ground firing at the moving rotor blades were carried out, as the helicopter was felt to be more vulnerable to gunfire from the ground than from the air. An unmanned, tethered Kolibri was used; in spite of several hits in the rotor blades ground fire failed to bring down the helicopter..."_


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## parsifal (May 3, 2012)

The type is also noted for its great manouverability and stability. Perhaps i am easily deceived, but i kinda like the concept....I could envisage a 2 man crew powered by a 600-1000 hp engine carrying a minigun and and one or two R4M PB II rockets. Mind you it would have taken a massive mindshift conceptually to get this sort of thing going in 1942-3. The germans did authorise the production of 1000 unarmed Fi 282s in 1944, but the allies flattened the factory a few days after the contract was signed, and that ended that...


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## Shortround6 (May 3, 2012)

davebender said:


> Kaman K-240 / HTK-1 / TH-43E helicopter - development history, photos, technical data
> View attachment 200383
> 
> 
> The next step in Flettner, err, Kaman helicopter development. Interestingly enough the K-240 had a 240hp engine. Just like the proposed Fi-285.



Did you really look at the performance of this thing?

Top speed 81mph. 

Max rate of climb at combat weight 1300fpm
Max rate of climb at designed gross weight 1050fpm


combat weight (pilot+1 passenger and 20 U.S. gallons fuel) 2750lbs
Normal loaded weight ((pilot+1 passenger and 40 U.S. gallons fuel)2870lbs
Max loaded weight ( pilot + 3 stretcher cases and 15 U.S. gallons of fuel) 3100lbs. 

The Lycoming O-435 engine may have been a bit lighter than a German 240hp engine from WW II also. 

Data from a 1954-55 edition of Jane's All the Worlds Aircraft. Please note the rather large difference in weights from the website figures.


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## Erich (May 3, 2012)

don't forget the Me 262A-1a's of JG 7 with Pzblitz altered 8.8cm with panzerschrek heads against Soviet armor and MT.


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## parsifal (May 3, 2012)

Erich that absolutely represent the other end of the spectrum to what we have been discussing, and offers a very interesting contrast. The me 262 was a heavily armed, very high performance aircraft with a high degree of survivability in hostile airspace. 

But how survivable. How did its loss rates compare with say the FW 190F. With the exception of the standard Mk 108, the disposable stores carried by the two aircraft or planned for the two aircraft seems similar. I have no idea which of the two aircraft was the better delivery platform, though i have heard the Fighter bomber versions of the 262 did cause a few headaches for the soviets....pinpricks admittedly, but at least they were getting through. 

And comparing the 262 to the FW 190 is one thing.....how would it compare to Daves idea of a rotary winged GA aircraft. The problem that I have with using the 262 as a GA aircraft is that every airframe used for ground attack (or indeed any fighter adaptation in 1945 by the LW), is that strategically they could not afford that luxury. One less airframe used for air superiority, is an unnacceptable cost for the LW. and the 262, whatever its abilities as a GA aircraft, was above all an air superiority machine. One of the attractions about Daves suggestion is that it would not have had a great impact on fighter production....using a different factory, with engines more simply produced. operationally these helos would not have required fighter cover in an immediate sense, or airfields, or large amounts of tail. They very much represented an expendable resource...sure, not a war winning instrument of an all conquering air force, rather a quiet localised resource for immediate on-hand CAS at the disposal of the local commander....something able to hide, duck up for a short period, take the shot, and then get out of dodge as fast as it can. You dont win wars like that, but you can make life unpleasant for your enemies....


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## davebender (May 4, 2012)

Unless RLM decides to produce the Jumo 004A engine Me-262s will enter service too late to matter.

Fw-190f plus FF rockets is an easy and safe choice. Both can be available in large numbers during 1943. Early enough to make an impact on the Russian front, which is where Germany lost the war.


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## davebender (May 4, 2012)

> look at the combat unit using the Fi-282 for artillery spotting on the eastern front, they ran out of aircraft, they lost so many to aircraft and flak, they disbanded the unit.


The Heer artillery spotting section had three Fi-282 helicopters. So I think your statement about losing many aircraft is a bit of a stretch.


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## tyrodtom (May 4, 2012)

davebender said:


> The Heer artillery spotting section had three Fi-282 helicopters. So I think your statement about losing many aircraft is a bit of a stretch.



I think basing the survivability of a aircraft on only 2 tests, and there were only 1 fighter verses helicopter test, and only 1 theathered firing test, I think going by only those 2 test, is a stretch.

There were 3 Fi-282's and 3 Fa-223, in the unit, that test in a actual combat enviroment use didn't go quite as well as the test you showcased.


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## davebender (May 4, 2012)

Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Germany was experimenting with air dropped cluster munitions from 1939 onward. Why not fund development of DPICM artillery shells? It's a natural progression. You are packing bomblets into an artillery shell rather then a bomb casing.

With DPICM artillery shells the Fi-156 with artillery forward observer is the only aerial tank buster required.


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## parsifal (May 4, 2012)

davebender said:


> Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
> Germany was experimenting with air dropped cluster munitions from 1939 onward. Why not fund development of DPICM artillery shells? It's a natural progression. You are packing bomblets into an artillery shell rather then a bomb casing.
> 
> With DPICM artillery shells the Fi-156 with artillery forward observer is the only aerial tank buster required.




German artillery displayed remarkable flexibility and capability on the eastern front, that i will grant you. It was the German artillery that kept the heer together in its darkest hours.

However i doubt that German artillery, equipped with even the best ordinance is going to be effective enough, or more to the point concentrated enough to make much difference.

Typically Soviet offensives were concentrated fast moving affairs, but unlike german offensives were not constricted to a few sections of the front. The soviets usually opted for a "concentrated" "broad front" approach, using their numbers to great effect. there was usually a breakthrough echelon to exloit breakthroughs. The tanks would punch a hole in multiple places and on a broad scale. infantry would pour through and engage the Germans in close assault...all the while the Soviet artilery was pinning the German reserves so that they could not be moved. German artillery would respond, often over open sights but was not dense enough to make a difference. the first things the Soviet mobile forces would do was go after the German artillery, to either force it to disengage or be overrun. Soviet offensives carried on regardless of casualties....once started there was no stopping. They tended to be short ranged, short lived, very sharp and very fast moving affairs.

Against that sort of fast moving mobile attack, inirect fire was always hard pressed to do much. if the german forward defences could slow the Soviets, then maybe an indirect fire AT barrage might do something, but I doubt it. 

The best and obvious counter to these Soviet tactics was obviously a selective withdrawl of 30-50 Km just before the offensive, but a mixture of MT shortages and High command obstinance nearly always prevented that from occurring in the latter part of the war


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## parsifal (May 4, 2012)

davebender said:


> Fw-190f plus FF rockets is an easy and safe choice. Both can be available in large numbers during 1943. Early enough to make an impact on the Russian front, which is where Germany lost the war.



No they cannot. The r4m rockets were not ready until well after Normandy, and only after the Germans had observed for themselves the effectiveness of allied rockets used in massed attacks. the germans had made several attampts at development of rockets before that with only qualified success.


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## Shortround6 (May 4, 2012)

The Germans also had to prioritize, Rockets are cheap to make and can deliver a large warhead for very little launcher weight but they were/are relatively inaccurate and use a awful lot of propellant do deliver that payload. This is one reason the Germans stopped/cut back on the development of recoil-less guns. Aircraft launched anti-tank or general air to surface rockets need something besides blackpowder for propellant. 
Helicopter launched rockets some times need more powerful rocket motors than fixed wing rockets. 

Artillery sub-munitions tend to work a whole lot better from large shells, 15-21 cms than they do from 7.5-10.5cm shells. interior volume tends to go up with the cube of the caliber. NATO went in for sub-munitions in a large way but they also tended to be phasing the 105mm howitzers out when they did it.


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## davebender (May 4, 2012)

I agree. If the Heer design artillery sub munitions I recommend starting with the 17 cm Kanone 18 which entered production during 1941. Large shell with a range of 29km. A centrally located battery could deliver shells over an entire army area.

Anyone here knowledgable on the construction of DPICM projectiles? Could Krupp manufacture 17cm DPICM projectiles during WWII?


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## davebender (May 4, 2012)

Looks like WWII Germany already had an effective 10.5cm artillery cargo shell. If it can carry and expel propaganda leaflets then it can carry and expel sub munitions designed for that purpose.

Propaganda leaflets of World War 2: Spreading propaganda leaflets by artillery shell






Not as cool as a CAS aircraft but I think we've found the solution Germany needs for defeating Allied tank hordes. Fi-256 artillery spotting aircraft and 10.5 cm leFH 18 howitzers were already standard issue for German army divisions. The Heer just needs to design bomblets for the existing Weiß-Rot-Geschoß cargo shell and have Krupp put the new DPICM shell into mass production.


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## Shortround6 (May 4, 2012)

Before you get too carried away with this idea just how many "bomblets" do you think are going to fit the 105 shell? 

BTW, everybody had cargo shells as Parachute flares, smoke and chemical shells in addition to leaflet shells were cargo shells. Some smoke shells were bursters but many ejected multiple canisters of burning smoke composition. 

US 105mm howitzer shells of much later than WW II (some used in first Gulf war) carried 18 anti personnel bomblets. one type was 38mm in diameter, 63mm long, weighed 120grams and had 28 grams of explosive filler. 

A 155mm could hold 60-96 bomblets, or 9 anti-tank mines or 36 anti-personel mines.

An 8 in shell could hold 192 M42 dual purpose grenades. 

Pictures of US bomblets here: Subs 2

The tapes or ribbons on some indicate armor piercing bomblets as the tape or ribbon acts as a tail to help them hit hollow charge side down. 

Figure in WW II fuses and WW II knowledge of shaped charges and I doubt that WW II bomblets are going to be quite as small.


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## stona (May 5, 2012)

davebender said:


> Until gyro stabilized gunsights were introduced it's almost impossible for an aircraft to hit anything with either a cannon or rockets at ranges greater then 300 meters. If the target is an enemy fighter aircraft effective range drops to about 150 meters. That's WWII reality.



I'm glad someone has finally mentioned sighting. The introduction of the modified Mk.IID gunsight on Typhoons did improve accuracy somewhat. ORS 2nd TAF compared attacks on German occupied buildings in Holland in 1944 and attacks on similar targets in Germany in 1945 with the newer sight. It found that distance of the mean point of impact of rockets from the aiming point had decreased from 62.5 yards to 43 yards,hardly enough to have well dug in or protected enemies quaking in their boots. Essentially,as someone pointed out earlier,any hit with a rocket was a lucky one.

Another report directly compared the accuracy of various weapons used in strafing. It makes for sobering reading for the peoponents of rocketry.

Aiming at a 10 foot square target normal to the line of flight of attacking aircraft 32 out of 120 rounds from 20mm cannon were hits. For 3" rockets the hit rate was 0.045 for every eight fired.

At least rockets were better than bombs! In another test 89% of rockets landed within 150 yards of a target whereas only 45% of bombs did.

Fighter bombers in WW2 were so inaccurate that the British Armies Military Operational Research Unit (MORU) report into air support of 1946 carried a warning for future historians in its introduction.

"He will remember,too,the tremendous bombings aroun Caen where it seemed that nothing could survive ,and yet where the the SS and parachute troops fought on as bitterly as ever............
He will remember too how the Germans managed to stage an Army Group counter-attack in the Ardennes,almost without air support of their own,and he will remember those Germans,among them Rommel,who claimed that our air superiority was by no means the decisive factor in the North West European Campaign..............
He will be able to sum up only by saying,at greater or lesser length,that air support was immensely important,perhaps vital,but that sometimes it seemed signally to have failed,and that some people held that it was important perhaps,but not particularly so."

I would suggest that investing a lot of time and effort in any tank busting aircraft and associated weapons system would be a poor investment. The return on that investment will certainly be low. The largest effect it seems to have had was not a physical one but a degrading of enemy morale,something that various allied research organisations struggled to quantify.
The Western allies,with their Fighter-Bomber concept probably got it just about correct.

Cheers
Steve


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## stona (May 5, 2012)

parsifal said:


> only after the Germans had observed for themselves the effectiveness of allied rockets used in massed attacks. .



What effectiveness?
For a 50% chance of hitting a 5 yard diametre gun pit required 350 rockets (44 sorties)
For a Panther tank it is 140 rockets and 18 sorties.
For a large gun position of 10 yards diametre it is 88 rockets and 11 sorties.

To get into the realms of what a flight of Typhoons might reasonably expect to hit we need to look at much larger targets.

For an "Army Hut",taken to be 60'x30'x20', it is 24 rockets and 3 sorties.

For what an individual aircraft might have a 50% chance of hitting we need to go larger still!

For a large building, taken to be 120'x54'x50', it is 7 rockets and 1 sortie.

I'm not sure what "massed attacks" the Germans witnessed,but to do any real physical damage we would have needed thousands of these rocket firing aircraft. As I intimated above the effect on morale may have been more important and was reflected in PoW interrogations carried out by the various Operational Research Sections (ORS).

Those of you proposing twin engined types might want to consider another type of efficiency. One area where single engined fighter bombers do outshine twin engined types or larger medium bombers is in their Load/Personnel factor. Essentially how many people you need to deliver a tonnage of ordnance.

Cheers
Steve


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## stona (May 5, 2012)

davebender said:


> Until gyro stabilized gunsights were introduced it's almost impossible for an aircraft to hit anything with either a cannon or rockets at ranges greater then 300 meters. That's WWII reality.



Not for rocketry.
The official RAF methods for attack with rockets were two fold.

1. Against a heavily defended target the attacking aircraft would make a steep 60 degree dive at 7-8,000 feet and fire all eight rockets in a salvo from 1,500 feet at a range of 1,000 yards.

2. Against lightly defended targets the attcking aircraft were to make a shallow dive at 20-30 degrees from 3-4,000 feet and fire their rockets in four pairs,again from a range of about 1,000 yards.

There is plenty of gun camera footage of both these modes of attack

The official tactics were not always used. One Typhoon pilot recalled that his unit's method was to fly low in a shallow dive,aim at 600-700 yards and then fire cannon and all rockets in a salvo from close range,between 400 and 250 yards.

The tactics for a strafing attack,with MG or cannon, were quite different. The attacking aircraft approached the target from a wide turn with a loss of height that ensured they were at "average" speed and not higher than 1500 feet when levelling out for the attack. After steadying the aircraft and acquiring his target the pilot would open fire at a height of 700 feet and a range of 500 yards and at an angle of 25-30 degrees. It was found that the harmonisation of the guns at 250 yards,which was an air-to-air combat consideration,worked well for this kind of strafing attack on an individual target. For attacking so called area targets pilots would open fire at wider ranges in order to create a larger "beaten zone" covering the target.

Cheers
Steve


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## Shortround6 (May 5, 2012)

Thank you, all very important points to consider.


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## davebender (May 5, 2012)

I agree. To make fighter bombers effective for CAS you need cluster bombs.






German AB500 container. A fighter-bomber such as the Fw-190f would probably carry the smaller AB-250 container which holds 40 SD4 AT bomblets. A Fw-190f or Ju-87 would carry one AB-250 container under each wing.






SD4 AT bomblet. HEAT warhead more then adequate for penetrating the top armor on WWII era tanks. As a bonus the blast will kill enemy infantry riding on the tank.


However I still think artillery offers a more economical method for delivering AT bomblets. Aircraft delivered cluster munitions could supplement artillery attacks by striking enemy staging areas located beyond artillery range.


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## stona (May 5, 2012)

davebender said:


> Aircraft delivered cluster munitions could supplement artillery attacks by striking enemy staging areas located beyond artillery range.



Therein lie other problems. 

Targets such as bridges or railway lines could be seen by pilots,though they rarely hit them. The average radial error for bombs dropped by fighter bombers (Typhoons and Spitfires in this case) was 158 yards! 50% of bombs fell within 130 yards. A very blunt tool. There is no way they could have dropped cluster type munitions any more accurately and it is not good enough for them to have been effective.

Smaller or camouflaged targets were difficult to see and were usually marked by smoke fired from allied artillery. This means the target is already within artillery range and adds another potential error.

We live in an era of precision,guided,weapons systems. It is difficult to overstate just how innacurate the weapons available for CAS were in WW2.

The most accurate weapons these aircraft had were their cannon and machine guns and others have already shown the limited effectiveness of these against armoured or fortified targets. They could be devastating on a horse and cart,as some US gun camera footage shows,but on a well constructed bunker more or less useless.

Cheers
Steve


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## davebender (May 5, 2012)

An entirely different matter from destroying armored vehicles. An R4M rocket or SD-4 bomblet would barely scratch a bridge or rail line. You need a 500kg bomb delivered with precision. That's what Ju-87, Ju-88 and Me-410 dive bombers are for.

More info on the SD-4 bomblet.
SD-4 HL, hollow charge anti personel vehicle bomb


> Penetration of the Hollow charge of the Sd-4 Hl is 130mm steel @ 60 degr. angle.
> 
> Length of comlete bomb : 310mm
> Length of body : 212mm
> ...



IMO the SD-4 is overkill. 50mm penetration would punch through top armor of WWII era tanks. Shrink this 4kg bomblet to 1.5 kg and it will still get the job done. However you would only need a 100kg container so the aircraft can carry twice as many weapons. A CAS aircraft such as the Ju-87 or Fw-190f could carry 4 such weapons. Two under each wing.


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## stona (May 5, 2012)

davebender said:


> An entirely different matter from destroying armored vehicles. An R4M rocket or SD-4 bomblet would barely scratch a bridge or rail line.



That's not the point I'm making. A fighter bomber was unable to place any kind of bomb or bomb container with any degree of accuracy. If,on average,you are deploying your bomb container more than 150 yards from your intended target what are the chances of one of your bomblets actually hitting the target? This is assuming the pilot has actually managed to see a camouflaged tank.
The complete inability of these aircraft to deliver any weapon (apart from MG or cannon rounds) within a viable range of any target with any certainty makes them inherently unreliable. I posted the awful figures for rockets (from ORS 2nd TAF) and yet rockets were actually more accurate than air dropped munitions. An allied cluster weapon is a "what if" and obviously no data exists for it but I suspect that had it existed the data would make familiarly depressing reading.

I've been trying to find some reliable data for the use of cluster weapons by the Luftwaffe but so far have drawn a blank. I appreciate that they were not widely used in a CAS role.Luftwaffe doctrine favoured dive-bombing and the adoption of the Fw190 (mainly,though I've seen pictures of a Bf109 armed with anti-personel bomblets) in a fighter bomber role was really forced on it. If anybody has this information I would love to see it.

Cheers
Steve


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## davebender (May 5, 2012)

With good reason as a Ju-87 could place 50% of bombs within 30 meters of the aiming point. But air superiority is essential if you want to use dive bombers. 

Which begs the question why the RAF and USAAF didn't employ dive bombers as they normally had air superiority from 1941 onward.

WRG - Luftwaffe Bomb Annex - AB 250-3 Type I II Container
The AB250-3 container was designed specifically for dive bomber use. So you get 30 meter accuracy plus cluster munition area coverage. A winning combination if you have air superiority.


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## parsifal (May 5, 2012)

> What effectiveness?
> For a 50% chance of hitting a 5 yard diametre gun pit required 350 rockets (44 sorties)
> For a Panther tank it is 140 rockets and 18 sorties.
> For a large gun position of 10 yards diametre it is 88 rockets and 11 sorties.



There are problems with this analysis, not that for even a second would i suggest rockets were accurate for pinpoint attack. they relied on their massed effect to be effective.A direct hit was difficult to achieve, but eight rockets hitting the ground simultaneously is going to do a lot of damage. With that many detonations occurring simulataneously, you wont need a direct hit to knock out the tank. If the eight rockets hit within about a 40m radius there is a very high likelihood of disabling either the tank, or the crew or 
both.

The other thing is that rockets are a weapon fired at a single tank is unlikely to hit....but a rocket fired at a concentration of tanks is likely to hit something. and for tanks to be effective they have to form a concentrated phalanx to provide mutual protection and firepower. A tank attacking individually, or in small groups will minimise the risk from rocket or gun attack, but greatly increase its risk from individual stalking or counterbattery fire.

To give some idea of the firepower being unleashed by an eight rocket 5" HVAR barrage, each rocket has the equivalent effect of a 5/38 shell, and it was a known fact that a 5/38 was easily able to stop even a tiger tank, with or without a direct hit, as was shown repeatedly during sicily, but in particular at gela during husky. And the 5' HVAR was not even the heaviest ordinance carried. that was reserved for the "Tiny Tim", used at okinawa with a projectile weight in excess of 1200 lbs, an expplosive capility superior to a 12"/50 shell.

I dont know as much as yourself about the statistical probabilities of Rockets in WWII. Ive read that rockets fired at an individual vehicle had about a 1% chance of a direct hit, and about a 5% chance of a hit within 30 yds. But the thing is, if one rocket of a salvo hits within that zone, chances are 6 or 8 are also going to hit there as well. And therein lies your lethality.

In Korea, the 21st CAG of HMAS Sydney and 77 Sqn of the RAAF, between them fired a total of 8900 rockets between September 1951 and February 1952. In that period they are credited with destroying over 80 tanks. one might be termpted to say that the success rate for these rocket attacks was in line with WWII average of 1%, but rocket attacks on tanks were not the only targets. For 817 Sqn, flying fireflies, there were five main targets , including, roads, bridges, rail links, communication, airfields, and finally troop concentrations. If we assume equal effort for each of these target types, and then split the 20% of rocket attacks in half between attacks on tanks and attacks on other troops, then somewhere between 900 and 1800 rockets were needed to destroy 80 tanks. Thats somewhere between 10 and 20 rockets expended for every kill. Admittedly most of the kills were burn outs (based on the reports by the advancing UN troops being supported...which makes sense, since the australians were using napalm rockets by then ) and the koreans/chinese were using their tanks almost wheel to wheel, but it certainly is a lot better than "almost never" hitting the target. 


I do know as well the level of success enjoyed against u-boats and German Shipping. In 1944 the 30 or so mosquitoes attached to just one of CC in the north sea, sank 8 u-boats using rockets and cannon fire. Other aircraft types achieved other victories. And achieving a sink of a sub really did require a direct hit. arguing that rockets could not hit anything is clearly wrong, given those known outcomes. Chances were low, but they existed, and were more than just lucky shots, 





> To get into the realms of what a flight of Typhoons might reasonably expect to hit we need to look at much larger targets.
> 
> For an "Army Hut",taken to be 60'x30'x20', it is 24 rockets and 3 sorties.
> 
> ...



What about the chances of hitting a concentration of 45 tanks (a typical tiger battalion), supported by 8-900 men, 150 trucks etc by 30 aircraft, each armed with 4x 20mm cannon and 8 x 5 'HVAR? your scenario is unrealistic, because it is not looking at the typical circumstances that might confront the CAS aircraft...multiple targets concentrated and fully engaged. 




> I'm not sure what "massed attacks" the Germans witnessed,but to do any real physical damage we would have needed thousands of these rocket firing aircraft. As I intimated above the effect on morale may have been more important and was reflected in PoW interrogations carried out by the various Operational Research Sections (ORS).
> 
> Massed attacks are attacks by many aircraft into a small area on an enemy forced to concentrate due to the pressures of the ground assault it was resisting. Though not the focus of a fighter bomber attack, read what happened to Lehr during the cobra breakout. I do not accept that given the right conditions, that Fighter bombers were inneffective. All the training, all the experience i have suggests quite the opposite. the scenario you are envisaging is not a realistic application of fighter bombers in warfare i would suggest because it fails to take into consideration troop concentrations, and multiple attacks.


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## Juha (May 5, 2012)

Hello
Much of CAS effectiveness depended on environment, on the terrain and on the lever of enemy‘s countermeasures.
When German tanks were caught in fairly open area as the 112 PzBrig was at Dompaire, fighter bombers could be rather effective against tanks, as all participants of the combat at Dompaire testified. At Dompaire I./PZR 29 lost 34 of its Panthers and after the battle had only 4 operational Panthers left. PzAbt 2112 had only 17 of its original 45 Pz IVs operational. Of the 33 tanks found in Group Massu’s sector, 13 had been knocked out by tank or TD fire, 16 by air attack made by P-47s and 4 had been abandoned intact. French losses were 5 M4A2s, 2 M5A1s, 2 half-tracks and 2 Jeeps. One P-47 was shot down.
Same in Eastern Front, In late July 43 W of Orel LW CAS a/c very effectively hindered Soviet armour attacks.
On the other hand during the big battles on Summer 44 in Karelian Isthmus appr 400 Il-2s didn’t succeed to destroy even one Finnish AFV and according to Soviet info but contrary to LW claims and Finnish opinion during these battles the ability of Ju 87s of I./SG 3 or Fw 190s of 1./SG 5 to destroy Soviet AFVs was very limited indeed. The terrain is rather closed there. And at least 1./SG 5 had to change its tactics because the amount of Soviet AA protecting Soviet major assault was much more than that they were used in the Northernmost part of the Eastern Front.

And in any case much of the effects of any CAS was psychological, which wore out quickly, so a land attack should follow quickly and in deep penetration attack that produced problems if enemy defensive system was a deep one. If the attack plan incl a massive air attack, even if at first defenders were stunned, deeper one penetrated, more time the defenders had to recover, as during the Goodwood. If the plan incl. series of air attacks ever deeper in enemy rear that easily meant that the attacker could not utilize fleeting opportunities opening during the attack because of the fear to be caught by own air bombardments as during the Totalizer. 

Juha


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## stona (May 5, 2012)

davebender said:


> Which begs the question why the RAF and USAAF didn't employ dive bombers as they normally had air superiority from 1941 onward.



The only dive-bomber used operationally during WW2 by the British/Commonwealth Air Forces was the Vultee Vengeance which equipped four RAF squadrons (45,82,84,110) and two RIAF squadrons in the Far East. They can't have been very good as a report comparing dive bombers and fighter bombers in close support compiled by RAF 3rd Tactical Air Force (of Air Command South East Asia) noted that 4th Corps considered Hurricane fighter bombers more accurate and they didn't require an escort,which the Vengeance units did. This was after operations in the Arakan.
Peter Smith's book "Jungle Dive Bombers At War" covers this very well.

The RAF did not have a doctrine or culture of dive bombing. The pilots were fighter pilots and continued flying armed reconnaissance missions as such throughout operations in North West Europe. For example pilots of the 2nd TAF received an initial three week course on rocket firing,followed by regular refresher courses at Armament Practice camps back in the UK. Attendance at the latter demonstrated just how innacurate they were!

There was also an inter service rivalry which is difficult to understand with modern eyes. Much blame may be attached to the RAF which exhibited a junior service complex,always seeking to assert its equality and independence and fighting to resist Army attempts to subordinate air operations to those on the ground. From the Army's side most General Staff officers had no understanding of the role air power could play and generally considered it someone else's problem,leaving it to their G (Air) sections. They resented what they saw as the other services interference in their operations.

Only one school of instruction in air support was set up and the Army made clear what it thought of it.

"The object of the course has been confined almost entirely to teaching the soldier about the Air Force,a statement which might be qualified by substituting - to teach the Army what the Air Force thinks the Army ought to know about the Air Force."

This is in an official report and the resentment is clear to see.
Another Army report of late 1944 stated,regarding Army policy towards the RAF.

"Whether a policy of appeasment was ever profitable is a matter of opinion. In any case it is difficult to believe in it under the present circumstances where,superficial affability and goodwill on the one hand, and behind the scenes criticisms and back biting on the other .... constitute a poor substitute for genuine cooperation".

Ouch!

Another 1944 report stated.

"Improvement can only come from a recognition of air action as an integral part of Army operations...
If this recognition is to take a practical form a reorientation of our training will be necessary so that at all stages and in all our staff colleges and schools, supporting air action is taught and studied in the same way and with the same prioritie as other operational subjects".

In 1943-5 the British Army was doctrinally unprepared for such a step and the RAF would not have stood for it. 

This is why CAS was such a shambles and also why the RAF never developed dive bombers. Any successes were in spite of,rather than because of the policy of the two services' senior officers. They were often due to cooperation,on the ground,by junior officers trying to win a war.

Cheers
Steve


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## parsifal (May 5, 2012)

I forgot to add, the average frontage of a german division in Normandu was less than 4km width, and 2km depth. The average frontage of a tank battalion in an offensive posture was about 500 yards, and a depth of about 250 yds. But the tanks in a concentrated posture ar likley to be deployed around key point of that deployment zone and may well be concentrated within an area less than 12000 square yds for the battalion, which as i said might be supported by 8-900 men and somewhat further behind 150-200 soft skinned vehicles. Thats one tank every 240 m2 (sorry for the change to metric), and one man every 12m2. how many square metres does a salvo of eight rockets obliterate?

i admit that my scenario represents the other end of the spectrum to attacking an individual tank. A panzer battalion would be unlucky to be caught so badly. but it is equally unrealistic to damn fighter bomber attacks of wwii as inneffective because they could not hit a single vehicle. WWII vehicles seldom operated on their own. There was always some dgree of concentration 

Dont get me wrong. Statistically, air attack only ever accounted for about 5-10% of casualties on the ground, even under the most optimistic of conditions. but they were worth every penny spent on them in my opinion


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## davebender (May 5, 2012)

The British Army was on the receiving end of quite a few Ju-87 and Ju-88 attacks. I'm surprised people like FM Montgomery didn't demand similiarly accurate CAS support by RAF dive bombers.


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## stona (May 5, 2012)

parsifal said:


> All the training, all the experience i have suggests quite the opposite. the scenario you are envisaging is not a realistic application of fighter bombers in warfare i would suggest because it fails to take into consideration troop concentrations, and multiple attacks.



Every single number and statistic I have quoted comes from the Operational Research Section of the 2nd TAF. You may consider it unrealistic but these were the men who went on the ground both during and after a battle to analyse the results of the RAF's efforts. They measured the craters,examined the vehicles and gun emplacements and interogated the PoWs.

By far the most likely way for a German tank to be destroyed was by its own crew. 

As a typical example 82 German tanks were destroyed in the "Shambles" area in August 1944.
8 by armour piercing shot (ground fire)
2 by rocket
38 by crew
33 abandoned
1 unknown cause.

Similar statistics for the "Chase" area where 98 tanks were destroyed.
8 by armour piercing shot (ground fire)
55 by crew
26 abandoned
9 unknown cause.

You'll notice here a big fat zero for rockets.

For the oft quoted "Falaise Pocket" I can give you the numbers for armour but not specifically tanks. This includes tanks,self propelled guns and AFVs.

11 by rockets
4 by bombs
18 by cannon or MG
100 abandoned/destroyed by crew.

Cheers
Steve


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## stona (May 5, 2012)

davebender said:


> The British Army was on the receiving end of quite a few Ju-87 and Ju-88 attacks. I'm surprised people like FM Montgomery didn't demand similiarly accurate CAS support by RAF dive bombers.



Montgomery was a soldier. 

The RAF had kept control of air operations in the Western desert and had been vindicated by the results. A vast expanse of more or less featureless desert with one road in it is not North Western Europe.

RAF officers who proved willing to cooperate closely with their Army counterparts in 1943-45,such as Air Vice Marshall Broadhurst (who had commanded RAF Desert Air Force after Coningham) was actually censured by his seniors whilst in control of No.83 Group 2nd TAF in North Western Europe.

This is a doctrinal and cultural problem within both services,the sort of thing that takes years to overcome.

Cheers
Steve


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## riacrato (May 5, 2012)

I think this subject's been dealt with a million times and the not very satisfying answer to "what was the best tank killer aircraft of ww2" seems to be: There is none. They were all rather ineffective and the occasional tank they got didn't matter in the bigger picture.

So keep it to fighter bombers and destroy the supply vehicles, half tracks, troops and the likes. Leave the tanks without the support they need and they will either flee or be abandoned or destroyed by your ground forces. That doesn't mean tanks cannot be supportive in destroying tanks: They can force them to dig in and suppress their movement, they just are not very likely to actually destroy them.


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## parsifal (May 5, 2012)

> By far the most likely way for a German tank to be destroyed was by its own crew.



As for the previous post, this point rather misses the point. Why on earth would the crews destroy their own tanks for no reason, which is what is suggested or inferred here. they would destroy them pure and simple for three possibilities

1) they were out of fuel or ammunition...ask yourself...why would they run out fuel or ammunition....answer (or at least a big part of it) because of the interdiction undetaken by the air umbrella above them

2) They could not retreat because the roads and bridges they needed to make their escape were destroyed, or being interdictewd by allied air power. better to take your chances on foot than risk geting your backside blown away as you tried to cross a river, or down a street heavily patrolled by allied fbs

3) Your tank has broken down. Often because of near misses by aircraft 



> As a typical example 82 German tanks were destroyed in the "Shambles" area in August 1944.
> 8 by armour piercing shot (ground fire)
> 2 by rocket
> 38 by crew
> ...



Yep, those numbers say it all...airpower , particuilarly CAS aircraft were very effective at providing the key force multippliers that enable armies to destroy the fighting potential of your enemy. this is the classic theories of tactical airpower applied. The ground is taken by the ground force, but the ground force has it fire potential multilied by the aiurpower....and airpower in 1944 meant fighters firing rockets.....Have you looked at why 33 tanks were abandoned and 38 were destroyed by their own crews? I will bet the family fortune some of them were abandoned because they didnt go anymore, and I bet that was because there huge holes in the ground nearby 



> Similar statistics for the "Chase" area where 98 tanks were destroyed.
> 8 by armour piercing shot (ground fire)
> 55 by crew
> 26 abandoned
> 9 unknown cause.




Tells the same story as above, and can be readily argued how effective the fighter bombers were in neutralising the German AFVs. Frontal penetrations of armour are always about the last way a tank is destroyed



> You'll notice here a big fat zero for rockets.




Yes, I do, and I also notice how many were destroyed by their own crews, or were otherwise abandoned. There is a reason for that. A retreating army, unhindered by an enemy air force over their heads, firing rockets at themn doesnt leave 88 tanks and then 97 tanks (or whatever the number), because it had a bad day at the office. Compare the losses suffered by the germans in the collapse after Normandy to the losses they suffered after an equally catrophic defeat in 1918You will not find such wholsale abandonments unless they are being harrassed by airpower. 

Incidentally your summation of the vengeance squadrons omitted the additional squadrons used by the RAAF and the RNZAF. Wildcat will know the precise numbers but it was quite a few squadrons. in the Jungles of New Guinea they were highly prized, and were only withdrawn from New Guinea because of range issues


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## JoeB (May 5, 2012)

parsifal said:


> 1. With that many detonations occurring simulataneously, you wont need a direct hit to knock out the tank. If the eight rockets hit within about a 40m radius there is a very high likelihood of disabling either the tank, or the crew or
> both.
> 
> 2. To give some idea of the firepower being unleashed by an eight rocket 5" HVAR barrage, each rocket has the equivalent effect of a 5/38 shell, and it was a known fact that a 5/38 was easily able to stop even a tiger tank, with or without a direct hit, as was shown repeatedly during sicily, but in particular at gela during husky.
> ...


Again I think we all agree that (.50/20mm) strafing, rocket and bomb attacks as characterized Western fighter bombers in WWII/Korea could severly impact mechanized operations, by knocking out non-armored vehicles and causing morale effects on tank units themselves. The early phase of the Korean War shows this clearly, according to extensive interviews with captured KPA armor crews, and just the conduct of KPA operations: in the opening week or two from June 25 1950, T-34 units were used in relative mass in daylight, after around July 10 they weren't, but in smaller numbers and near dawn or dusk or otherwise limited visbility. 

But you come back to the point of supposed ability of rocket near misses to actually knock out tanks, and in studying this I've seen little evidence of this: I don't believe it would be common.

1. I've found some of the individual wreck survey reports done by the US forces in the Korea in 1950, and research papers written at the time based on them. I know of no cases where the wrecks were determined to have been knocked out by rocket *misses*, though the exact causes weren't always known. In the live fire tests the USAF did v captured T-34's with HVAR's, a couple of near misses were speculated to have been close enough to break the tracks on the tank, but the target captured tank had no tracks actually. 

2. Jentz's "Panzertruppen" Vol 2 reproduces the combat reports of Hermann Goering Pz Div, the german tank unit involved at Gela. In the actual battle at Gela only 1 Pz.III was reported lost to naval guns. In later battles further inland in following days 2 Pz.IV's were repoted lost to naval guns. No Tigers (of 17 of Pz.Abt.504 attached to HG Pz Div) were reported lost to naval guns. Again, the armored operations were definitely affected by the naval gunfire, especially the Pz.III/IV equipped portions of HG Pz Div which actually reached the beaches at Gela July 11. They did then retreat and though their report says it was due to fuel and ammo shortages, the storm of fire from offshore, and some US tanks and arty pieces already on the beaches, surely affected the situation also. And some tanks blown to prevent capture, rather than recovered, might have been due in part to artillery fire falling all around, in part naval. But I see no reason to disbelieve their account of tank losses directly to NGF. An Italian unit with captured French light tanks also suffered unknown losses possibly to NGF in an attack before the German one. But there is no evidence here that medium naval shell near misses would commonly actually destroy medium or heavy tanks.

3. Yes, but this weapon was mainly limited to single shots where a hit or very near miss on a tank was not likely. And I know of no verified claims of TT's knocking out tanks by either hits or near misses, though latter might be be theoretically possible.

4. There was no surveying of wrecks of Communists tanks in Korea in this period, only in the period following the initial North Korean retreat from South Korea up to November 1950. At that time, 239 T-34 wrecks were reported, of which 60 were to napalm, 17 to rockets, 7 to bombs, 4 to strafing and 10 to air-unspecified, though 15 were altogether unknown. In "Tank Warfare in Korea" Zaloga says this correponded to 857 USAF claims of tanks destroyed; in "Armor of the Korean War" Dunstan says 1134 UN aerial claims v tanks; but counting that myself in original records I would say even Dunstan's number is low, I get past it even with some known omissions. 

So, there's no way to say how many real tank kills the 80 claims represents, but IMO we can't base any firm conclusion on assuming the claim accuracy was much better than the earlier period in Korea, or the similarly low % apparently achieved by both USAAF and RAF fighter bombers in NW Europe in 1944.

Communist tanks or their wrecks were very rarely seen by UN ground forces after early November 1950. We know from Communist accounts that the KPA rebuilt their tank units (virtually destroyed in the opening phase) and the Chinese sent some, but known accounts from that side also say they were usually held in reserve. In fact in the few cases where the Chinese claim their tanks ko'd UN tanks later in the war, UN accounts don't even corroborate that such tank v tank battles occurred. Air units saw and attacked these tanks sometimes, but we just don't know the actual results, and in the static warfare of that period of the war, it's also likely there were decoys.

Joe


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## stona (May 5, 2012)

The abandoning or destruction of tanks by their own crews fell into an area which noone,including the various ORS at the time could quantify. This was the degradation of morale caused by constant air attack by an enemy with total air supremacy. Some consider this,rather than any physical destruction,to have been the most important contribution of allied air power in North Western Europe.
There is no doubt that other factors applied to that statistic as well. The soldiers would argue that it was the approach of "feet on the ground" that caused the abandonment and destruction of so many tanks by their crews. The truth lies somewhere between the two.

In the Falaise pocket (and elsewhere) the Germans were unable to resupply their tanks and other vehicles. With no fuel or ammunition they were always going to be abandoned. I have never suggested that the allied Air Forces didn't have a hand in this. It was Rommel and various other German commanders,not me,who said that they were not a decisive factor.

Another report on the effect of air power on the stemming of the Ardennes offensive said whilst the allied Air Forces had made a considerable contribution this

"was not by the direct destruction of armour,which appears to have been insignificant; but rather by the strafing and bombing of supply routes,which prevented essential supplies from reaching the front"

This is not CAS. 

The thread was about tank busting aircraft and in this role ALL allied fighter bombers in North West Europe were virtually useless.

I did miss the other Commonwealth Vengeance squadrons. I was quoting from notes rather than Smith's book.
4 RAAF squadrons used the type in combat.

21 Squadron used it for two weeks in New Guinea in January 1944 before the type was withdrawn. The squadron returned to Australia and converted to Liberators.

23 Squadron used theirs supporting American troops around Saidor for less than a month in February 1944 before they too converted to Liberators.

24 Squadron used the Vengeance,in combat and as a dive bomber from August 1943 until March 1944,a decent period,before they returned to Australia and converted to the Liberator.

25 Squadron used the Vengeance in various Army support roles from August 1943 right through until January 1945.

I'm not aware of any reports or comparisons of the Australian use of these aircraft,unlike their British and Indian colleagues but I'm all ears if anyone has some information on them.

I have a note about RNZAF personel at Amberley in Australia with the word "Vengeance" in brackets. Not sure what I meant,anyone able to cast some light on New Zealand use of the aircraft? Of the 24 or so RNZAF squadrons that fought in the Pacific were any Vengeance equipped?
I simply don't have time to go trawling through my library 

Cheers
Steve


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## davebender (May 5, 2012)

1950 is a different ball game as most aircraft should have been equipped with gyro stabilized gun and bomb sights. FF rockets were available too and cluster bombers were more widely used. Weapons accuracy should have been much better then during 1940.


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## Juha (May 5, 2012)

IMHO one should not be too pessimistic on the effects of air attacks on tanks, while generally ineffective, there were exceptions, for ex. P-47s at Dompaire, LW CAS planes during Orel Bulge fighting mid-July –early Aug 43, Hurricane IIDs in Africa, when they caught panzers in open without AA support and in India/Burma during Imphal fighting. These all are verified results. Also Il-2s made effective strikes against 8.PzD in 44, but I cannot remember was it only soft targets which suffered or also Panzern. 

Juha


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## tomo pauk (May 5, 2012)

Hello, Steve,



stona said:


> ...
> The thread was about tank busting aircraft and in this role ALL allied fighter bombers in North West Europe were virtually useless.
> ...



I really appreciate your input at this thread (and other constructive stuff from other people), but I'm afraid you're slightly wrong at the quoted sentence. 
The thread is not about tank busting aircraft that existed, but rather about how the dedicated tank buster for the air forces would've looked like if we go for an ideal plane's layout. The second part of the sentence is okay, and sorta makes the point that Allies could've used such a plane - a big gunned craft, hopefully well armored, and, by 1944, able to carry a significant 'suppressing' weaponry (or more big guns).


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## stona (May 5, 2012)

I have found at least a partial explanation for the tendency of tank crews to bale out under air attack from rocket firing aircraft. It comes from "Tactical Buletin no.45" from RAF No.38 Group and is from October 1944.

"Interrogation of prisoners has shown without question that German tank crews are extremely frightened of attacks by RP (rocket projectiles).
Crews are very aware that if an RP does hit a tank,their chance of survival is small. It is admitted that the chances of a direct hit are slight;nevertheless,this would hardly be appreciated by a crew whose first thought would be of the disastrous results if a hit was obtained".

Also from ORS 2nd TAF/No.2 ORS joint report No.3

"Experienced crews stated that when attacked from the air they remained in their tanks which had no more than superficial damage,cannon strikes or near misses from bombs. They had great difficulty in preventing the inexperienced men from baling out when our aircraft attacked".

Cheers
Steve


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## parsifal (May 5, 2012)

hi Steve

I want to repeat again my opinion that the chances of a direct hit by an RP are very small, but still not so small as to be irrelevant. the threat of rocket attack were very real. i have said repeatedly that the generally accepted number for WWII era CAS was about 1%. Quite possibly the abandonment due to fear of attack is another possibility, though I would surmise that is less likely than we would like to think. I think caution, and the will to survive is a better way of describing the human factors. What i think would be highly likely, is a german tank, bailed up in cover, but being pressured by ground forces, but too concerned about air attack to move because of the fear of crossing open ground due to the air attack threat. Whilst not particularly glamorous it still attaches value to rocket firing aircraft, or any other ground attack aircraft. It certainly was the case in 1940, when German Stuka attacks, or the threat of them, caused the so-called 'finest army in Europe" at that time 9the french army) to lose its nerve on countless critical occasions 

You mentioned somewhereabout rommels quotes on airpower. The best one i know are his comments pertaining in Alam halfa, where, the Rommel papers he states "…non-stop and very heavy air attacks by the R.A.F., whose command of the air had been virtually complete, had pinned my army to the ground and rendered any smooth deployment or any advance by time-schedule completely impossible" that suggests to me that like the abandonment issue, on an army wide scale, sustained CAS would pin the army, and prevent its freedom of movement, and again, as the French campaign clearly shows, mobility is far more important to an army's effectiveness than any other factor, including firepower. Surely you will agree that CAS denied mobility to the germans . Viewed in those terms, allied CAs was not just a thing 'nice to have....it was absolutely critical to allied victory. the allies could not afford manpower wise to get into a heavy slugging match with the germans, yet most post war studies clearly shhow that man for man, without airpower, the Germans enjoyed a significant qualitative advantage over the allied armies. The Dupuy institute have made an indepth analysis of this as i recall. The comparisons are not great exercises military analysis, but revealing just the same. without the effects of airpower, in 1940, the "average" german soldier (in the context of his organization) was the equivalent of 2.63 british soldiers. By September 1944, that ratio was down to about 1.53, from memory. With airpower effects thrown in, and the superiority of British army mobility that superiority was completely turned around.... 


Field Marshal Rommel's reaction to being pinned to the ground by Allied tactical air was a repetition of the feelings he had expressed during the dark days of 1942, when confronted with the effects of the DAF. Already by June 9, Admiral Ruge was writing that "the air superiority of the enemy is having the effect the Field Marshal had expected and predicted: our movements are extremely slow." The next day, Rommel wrote to his wife: "The enemy's air superiority has a very grave effect on our movements. There's simply no answer to it." In walks with Ruge, Rommel continued to complain about the invasion situation, "especially the lack of air support." Ruge concluded that "utilization of the Anglo-American air force is the modern type of warfare, turning the flank not from the side but from above." The situation turned increasingly bleak. By July 6, during a dinner party, a "colonel of a propaganda battalion" remarked that soldiers were constantly asking "Where is the Luftwaffe?"


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## stona (May 5, 2012)

tomo pauk said:


> Hello, Steve,
> I really appreciate your input at this thread (and other constructive stuff from other people), but I'm afraid you're slightly wrong at the quoted sentence.



You are quite correct of course,sorry for the misquote.
I would say that because of inter-service rivalries as well as doctrinal and cultural reasons the Anglo-American allies were never going to invest in any specific tank busting aircraft. Their own intelligence showed that they didn't need one.
Cheers
Steve


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## stona (May 5, 2012)

At the battle of Mortain the Germans committed 70 Panthers,75 MkIVs and 32 self-propelled guns (177 vehicles). The attack was halted on 7th August nine miles short of Avranches. Everyone,including the Germans was convinced it had been halted by the intervention of 83 Groups rocket firing Typhoons.They were supported by P-47 fighter bombers and the rare rocket firing P-47s from the USAAF 9th Air Force. Other American fighters ensured that the Luftwaffe fighters meant to cover the advance didn't get within forty miles of the action. The British flew 294 sorties and the Americans 200 in good weather,it should have been a slaughter. When two different ORS examined the battlefield they did not miss a single German vehicle,even doing an air reconnaissance of the battlefield. They found only 46 tanks and SPGs in the area and only NINE had been destroyed from the air. German PoWs were adamant that tanks hit from the air were never recovered as they were inevitably irepairable.The histories of both the 2nd Panzer Division and 1st SS Panzer Division (Liebstandarte Adolph Hitler) greatly exaggerate the effect of the air attack,though not quite as wildly as the RAF pilots' claims. Attacking pilots said that their attacks caused great confusion and that they saw German tank crews bailing out and running for cover,regardless of whether their tanks were blocking the road. This is the psychological effect of such attacks 

Rommel did suffer at the hands of the Desert Air Force. Particularly effective was the Hurricane IID with its 40mm cannon. We have already seen that cannon or MG were by far the most accurate weapons for a fighter bomber. So impressed was Rommel that he is said to have taken a sample of one of the armour piecing shells that the RAF (and SAAF) had been shooting at his tanks back to Germany,when illness compelled his return after the battle of Alam Halfa in September 1942.
The most important thing the RAF took from the Desert Air Forces North African operations was the basis for the command and control of Close Air Support operations developed by Coningham which was fused with the system developed in 1940 (after the French debacle) by Group Captain Wann and Colonel Woodhall who carried out various experiments in the relative safety of Northern Ireland.

The allied Air Forces certainly denied both freedom of movement, by day, and the ability of the Germans to concentrate their forces. They fighter bombers were also effective as a phsychological weapon and produced a real collapse in some units ability to fight. One officer described the effect of a few rocketing Typhoons on a German unit as being greater than a creeping artillery barrage.
They were also effective in an interdiction role,not so much against infra structure as supply lines,soft skinned vehicles,tankers,which could be accurately attacked with cannon and machine guns. 

As an aside,and supporting evidence from Korea,a direct hit from an RP was the only means of disabling or destroying a tank.
A trial was conducted in 1944 by the RAF using a captured Panther tank. It was set up as a stationary target and attacked by rocket firing Typhoons. 64 rockets were fired and a total of three hits achieved. One hit the tanks engine cover and exploded inside igniting the remnants of oil and petrol. One hit the side of the turret and exploded and one struck the tank's gun barrel. These hits showed that the rockets could penetrate all but the frontal armour of the Panther hull or turret but it was considered that even hits here might cause casualties amongst the crew. The rocket had no near miss value with blast and splinters of nearby ground strikes causing no damage.
This is from Appendix F of No.83 Group ORB "Trial to determine the effect of an RP fitted with a 60lb H.E. shell on a German Panther tank",July-August 1944.

Cheers
Steve


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## Lucky13 (May 5, 2012)

Here's a question, could the Bofors 40mm have been worked on, to be made into an aircraft born tank cracking gun?


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## JoeB (May 5, 2012)

davebender said:


> 1950 is a different ball game as most aircraft should have been equipped with gyro stabilized gun and bomb sights. FF rockets were available too and cluster bombers were more widely used. Weapons accuracy should have been much better then during 1940.


No this is incorrect. The weapons used were as mentioned in the causes of tank loss according to wreck surveys: napalm, rockets (mainly HVAR, some 6.5" ATAR which was HVAR with HEAT warhead, no folding fin rockets were used at that time), bombs and .50 cal/20mm strafing in order of number of known kills. No AT cluster bombs were used. The a/c involved had the same types of gyro gunsights used late in WWII, like the K14, which had no air to ground computing mode, you can read that in the pilot's manuals for F-51's and F-80's to see it explained. And many or the a/c themselves were WWII produced, like the F-51D's and USN/USMC F4U-4's, and others very comparable to WWII a/c like the AD. The main difference in a/c was that a fair % were straightwing jets like the F-80. 

But on the whole the situation of a/c AT operations Korea was quite comparable technologically to that of typical 'Western style' (non heavy gun, non cluster weapon) AT a/c of late WWII. And it's well documented. Also, while comparable technologies were used, it's a useful alternative example to a question which can otherwsie perhaps get too narrowly focused on just the campaign in France in 1944. Note for example that some 9th AF fighter bombers in 1944 also used napalm though it's less often mentioned in discussions of that campaign. Some units believed it the most effective AT weapon available, and this is confirmed in study of the the early Korean War example.

And also though similar technologies were used and some aspects of the results were similar to NW Europe, like the very high overclaim rate, other aspects were not the same, like the fact that a significant % of the enemy tank losses in the 1950 campaing were to a/c. In fact there's little question IMO that air action was the biggest single factor in neutralizing the KPA tank threat. The early successful actions of US medium tanks (like M4 and M26) and the 3.5" bazooka v the T-34 are often celebrated, but first occurred weeks and days respectively after the KPA tank threat had actually crested. Air attacks in the first week and a half of July not only largely stripped the KPA tanks of their support vehicles as many POW's later related, but inflicted relatively heavy losses on the tanks themselves, particularly when a large KPA armor column was stalled south of Pyeontaek July 11, 1950, and an estimated 38 were (actually) destroyed. Thereafter the KPA tanks were never used quite as aggressively or in the same numbers in any one place. Most of the subsequent KPA successes in the first phase of the war were infantry-centered, though other interesting armor actions were also fought.

Joe


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## stona (May 5, 2012)

Napalm was extensively used by the 9th AF. It was considered effective against armour though it was not used in close proximity to friendly troops. 

The 9th's own ORS described how it reduced German defensive effectiveness.

"Heavy artillery and/or GP bombing destroys or damages buildings,communications facilities,prepared defences. Consequently the enemy must utilise masses of rubble and smashed houses as defensive positions.Napalm,upon the devastated area renders these temporary emplacements untenable,causes fires to take hold in the wreckage and drives the enemy into the open. The enemy troops who are not evacuated have,in a majority of cases,taken refuge in cellars and are subject to assault without being able to offer effective resistance."

It was also effective against targets which you might not expect. It was used against pill boxes and other fortifications.

"(the napalm) had a tremendous psychological and physical effect upon the enemy troops occupying the defences outside the pill boxes. These outer defences were given up because of the napalm attack,forcing the enemy troops into the pill boxes. This enabled our attacking troops to get to the rear of these fortifications,utilise pole charges and sieze the pill boxes.
PoWs stated that napalm did not bother them while they were in pill boxes,however the demoralising effect was great and fear of further attack by 'fire bombs' persuaded them to stay in their pill boxes"

Cheers
Steve


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## Juha (May 5, 2012)

Lucky13 said:


> Here's a question, could the Bofors 40mm have been worked on, to be made into an aircraft born tank cracking gun?



Why not, it was much heavier than 40mm S gun, but if one developed a reliable autoloader, why not. Hungarians modified 4 Me 210Ca-1s with a M36 4cm Bofors, but probably for use against 4-engine bombers. But there were at least an AP and an AP-Tracker shells for the Bofors, at least Finns had them.

Juha


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## JoeB (May 5, 2012)

QUOTE=stona;895634]A trial was conducted in 1944 by the RAF using a captured Panther tank. It was set up as a stationary target and attacked by rocket firing Typhoons. 64 rockets were fired and a total of three hits achieved..
[/QUOTE]
For completeness, the comparable live fire trial results by USAF v captured T-34's were as follows, per a memo to 5th AF Hq Oct 7 1950:
5" HVAR v tank: F-80C's carrying 4 HVAR
Part I: rockets fired one per pass, 28 of 32 functioned properly, 1 hit, pentrated top of turret and completely destroyed the tank; one near miss did cut the tank's track (misrecalled that before) and a later near miss it was believed would have if the track had still been there. 
Part II: first pass one rocket, second pass rippling off the remaining 3, 21 of 24 functioned properly, one hit blew off front sprocket and penetrated tank's side armor, tank considered destroyed.
Part III: all four rockets in ripple, 15 of 16 functioned properly, 3 hit all penetrating the turret.
6.5" ATAR v tank, four rockets fired in ripple, 19 of 20 functioned but none hit (a test stateside showed that an ATAR placed against the side armor of an M26 was effective).

In total 5 hits (plus two near misses judged at least partly effective) in 83 shots if including the ATAR's. Again the F-80C's had no 'high tech' fire control systems which came much later, and if anything their higher speed might have been considered a liability to accuracy compared to prop planes. And indeed a similar test, but against just a simulated T-34 target area, conducted in Japan around the same time, F-51D’s scored 20 simulated hits in 147 shots. That test like the F-80 test also included trials of single shot v ripple fire and six shot ripples were found optimum with 7 for 47, 15%, hits. So WWII era rockets had the potential for acceptable accuracy, and types like HVAR or RP-3 (though less so for example the USAAF’s tube launched 4.5” used in 1944) had reasonable lethality against even fairly well protected WWII tanks if they hit directly. But, it’s not hard for me to believe that the vagaries of actual combat lowered hit %’s drastically from what was achieved in these trials, as consistent with the relatively few enemy tanks found destroyed by rockets, even in Korea.

Tests in the same series w/ F-80’s with napalm were also not entirely to determine accuracy but also test different attempted aim points short of the tank. Drops 50-100' short with two cannisters if also correct in azimuth would envelope and destroy the tank. The exact % of 'live' runs which were hits is not clear, but see earlier figures, in real combat in Korea napalm kills were much more common against tanks than rocket kills. And though it's not clear either what total % of combat attacks were made by each weapon, anecdotally it doesn't seem as if napalm attacks were nearly as dominant a % of attacks on tanks as napalm kills were of a/c tank kills per the survey. It seems napalm was the superior tank killer in the Korean situation. Note that photos from these napalm drop tests sometimes appear in books mislabeled as actual combat shots.

Joe


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## davebender (May 5, 2012)

Schlachtflieger-Experiences
*Brief summary of interesting details*
Bombs used: AB250, AB500-SD1 and -SD10, AB250-SD4HL on 20-30% of aircraft. Enemy fears AB-bombs.

Normal drop height of Fw 190 after starting the attack at 3-5.000m is 1.000.1.400m, 

ABs should not be dropped above 1.000m

dive angle ca. 50-60°.

The hitting accuray with Fw 190 is the same as with Ju 87.

For strong flak defense, one Staffel per Gruppe is dedicated for attacking the Flak


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## parsifal (May 5, 2012)

> In total 5 hits (plus two near misses judged at least partly effective) in 83 shots if including the ATAR's. Again the F-80C's had no 'high tech' fire control systems which came much later, and if anything their higher speed might have been considered a liability to accuracy compared to prop planes. And indeed a similar test, but against just a simulated T-34 target area, conducted in Japan around the same time, F-51D’s scored 20 simulated hits in 147 shots. That test like the F-80 test also included trials of single shot v ripple fire and six shot ripples were found optimum with 7 for 47, 15%, hits. So WWII era rockets had the potential for acceptable accuracy, and types like HVAR or RP-3 (though less so for example the USAAF’s tube launched 4.5” used in 1944) had reasonable lethality against even fairly well protected WWII tanks if they hit directly. But, it’s not hard for me to believe that the vagaries of actual combat lowered hit %’s drastically from what was achieved in these trials, as consistent with the relatively few enemy tanks found destroyed by rockets, even in Korea


.

I would claim this to be fairly consisten with my guesstimate of 900 rockets at least half of which were napalm fired by 21st CAG an d 77 TFW to destroy or disable 80 tanks. I note and concur with your appraisal of the problem of the f-80's high speed as a disadvantage to accuracy. RAAF Meteor f-8 of the 77 wing/sqn had similar issues. They were judged significantly less effective in the CAs role compared to the Fireflies of 21 CAG. Fireflies had a top speed of 386mph, but thanks to their patented youngman wings could slow thir bomb runs to well under 200mph. This was only possible if flak was absent or could be suppressed, and explains why if possible firefllies carrying out a rocket attack would usually have a Furey escorting it, assigned to Flak suppression.

I will see if i can dig up these reports I keep talking about. i know I have them somewhere... 





> Tests in the same series w/ F-80’s with napalm were also not entirely to determine accuracy but also test different attempted aim points short of the tank. Drops 50-100' short with two cannisters if also correct in azimuth would envelope and destroy the tank. The exact % of 'live' runs which were hits is not clear, but see earlier figures, in real combat in Korea napalm kills were much more common against tanks than rocket kills. And though it's not clear either what total % of combat attacks were made by each weapon, anecdotally it doesn't seem as if napalm attacks were nearly as dominant a % of attacks on tanks as napalm kills were of a/c tank kills per the survey. It seems napalm was the superior tank killer in the Korean situation. Note that photos from these napalm drop tests sometimes appear in books mislabeled as actual combat shots.



Ive recently downloaded a document (which i will attempt to find) that says something similar....napalm attacks were not used on a widespread basis until 1951.....but were more effective than HE at killing tanks


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## parsifal (May 6, 2012)

Ive found this regarding the operations 77 sqn 91 composite wing (my mistake on the name)

Meteor Operations in Korea

Some extracts which i think are consistent with what we are saying:

_



The RAAF pilots found the accuracy of the conventional bombing in the mountainous Korean terrain left something to be desired and had a definite preference for the air-to-ground rocket. Late in 1951, the RAAF developed a new type of rocket containing napalm, known as the ‘Flaming Onion', and after trials at Williamtown and preliminary testing in Korea, the first examples arrived at 77 Squadron early in February 1952.


The Americans showed considerable interest in the new weapon, and on 8 February 1952, when the napalm rocket was first used in combat, the USAF provided an RF-80 reconnaissance aircraft to record the results on film for later analysis. The Squadron's new CO, Wing Commander Ron Susans led four Meteors armed with the new rockets in an attack on several buildings with 75% of the rockets scoring hits on the targets, resulting in numerous fires. The new weapon was to prove extremely useful against the enemy vehicle convoys and troop concentrations and soon became the standard under wing weapon carried by RAAF Meteors, with each aircraft capable of carrying eight rockets.

Click to expand...

_



> _The contribution made by 77 Squadron during the three years of the Korean War is totally out of proportion to its size. During the war the Squadron flew a total of 18,872 sorties, comprising of 3,872 Mustang sorties and 15,000 Meteor sorties. The effect this had on the enemy was devastating; 3,700 buildings, 1,500 vehicles, 16 bridges, 20 locomotives and 65 railway carriages destroyed_


. 19000 sorties to destroy 5000 targets means that during the war, if all missions are assumed to to be rocket strikes (which clearly they were not.......) equates to about a 2-5% hit percentage (each strike by a meteor carried 16 rockets0. if we allow 3000 sorties as rocket attacks, with 16 rockets carried per sortie, thats about 48000 rockets fired by the squadron to destroy 5000 targets (give or take)....or roughly a hit rate of 2.5%


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## parsifal (May 6, 2012)

Tuening now to 817 sqns Fireflies i have not been able to find an overall combat summary. However from this website, I did find the following;

HMAS Sydney

(Sydney on 18th November departed )....for the East coast, to take part in Operation Athenaeum, a co-ordinated air and surface strike against Hungnam, carried out on 20th and 21st November. Sydney flew 113 sorties in two days, 78 were strike, and 38 CAP. 11 buildings were destroyed, and 31 damaged.

now there were 11 Fireflies on strength but after the typhoon I believe that only 9 were actually available. Anyway, assuming all 78 combat sorties were rocket attacks (and rockets, like 77 Sqn rockets were overwhelmingly the preferred ordinance, that means a maximum of 320 rockets. Assuming 1 hit for destruction, and at least one hit within 20m for a damaged building, thats a total of 42 hits or near misses or a hit or near miss rate of about 12-14%....in wintery conditions


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## stona (May 6, 2012)

The American asessment of the effects of a near miss from a rocket on a tank differ from 83 Group's which specifically states that a near miss caused no damage to the Panther. The British definition of a near miss is vague "nearby ground strikes" gives no distance from the target.

According to Price in "The 3" Rocket" an average Typhoon pilot firing all eight rockets had a 4% chance of hitting a target the size of a German tank.

Rockets were not much used by the USAAF 9th Air Force. The first P-47s equipped with rockets became operational in July 1944. Initially each aircraft carried only four 5" HVARs. This was increased to ten later.
The 9th Air Force fired a total of 13,959 rockets during the war which may seem a lot,but compared with the 222,515 fired by fighter bombers of RAF 2nd TAF pales into insignificance.
It could be argued that napalm became the blunt weapon for the 9th,equivalent to the British use of rockets. The Americans were aware that they had no other viable airborne anti-tank weapon.
Both weapons had a profound psychological effect on German troops despite their limited lethality. The various researchers found this effect difficult to quantify at the time,but it was very significant. 

This example is typical.

On 1st November 1944 a German strongpoint on the island of North Beveland declined an offer to surrender from the 8th Canadian Reconnaissance Regiment. Air support was sought from 2nd TAF's 84 Group. The Canadian commander informed the Germans that the Typhoons would make one pass without firing but subsequently would attack their position. 18 Typhoons appeared on schedule and flew low across the island. As soon as they had passed over the Germans started to surrender,the Canadians taking 450 prisoners without a shot being fired.

Cheers
Steve


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## Lucky13 (May 6, 2012)

Juha said:


> Why not, it was much heavier than 40mm S gun, but if one developed a reliable autoloader, why not. Hungarians modified 4 Me 210Ca-1s with a M36 4cm Bofors, but probably for use against 4-engine bombers. But there were at least an AP and an AP-Tracker shells for the Bofors, at least Finns had them.
> 
> Juha



Cheers Juha!


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## Glider (May 6, 2012)

parsifal said:


> . 19000 sorties to destroy 5000 targets means that during the war, if all missions are assumed to to be rocket strikes (which clearly they were not.......) equates to about a 2-5% hit percentage (each strike by a meteor carried 16 rockets0. if we allow 3000 sorties as rocket attacks, with 16 rockets carried per sortie, thats about 48000 rockets fired by the squadron to destroy 5000 targets (give or take)....or roughly a hit rate of 2.5%



This isn't my strong suite but I think your maths is out. They also seem to work on the basis that only one aircraft attacked each target and that only one rocket hit each target. I suspect its more likely that more than one plane attacked each target and probable that on average more than one rocket hit as a building is a lot bigger than a tank.
Some of the 2TAF strikes against buildings had a respectable hit rate. It depends on the building but most would need more than one to knock it down


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## davebender (May 6, 2012)

New technology is nice but Germany doesn't require it. Just different production priorities.

Several German aircraft types were able to kill tanks. However experts such as Rudel and Neumann preferred the Ju-87. I’ve got to assume they knew what they were talking about. So the Ju-87 will be the standard German tank busting aircraft. 

This presents a problem as so few Ju-87s were produced historically.
1939. 134.
1940. 603.
1941. 500. Ju-87D introduced during 1941.
1942. 960.
1943. 1,672.
1944. 1,012. Ju-87 production ends.

Our minimum objective should be 1,200 Ju-87s operational on the Russian front. This would provide 100 army divisions with a single Ju-87 squadron for CAS. To meet the objective Ju-87D production will be quadrupled to 2,000 aircraft during 1941. IMO entirely reasonable for an inexpensive single engine aircraft. Engines are not a problem as Germany had plenty of Jumo 211s.

We will speed introduction and production of the 3.7cm gun pod for the Ju-87. No new technology. Just different production priorities.

We will increase production of existing cluster munitions so they are widely available for Ju-87 units. 

We will fund development of an improved AT bomblet that is smaller and less expensive then the SD4. Ultimately we want an effective 100kg AT cluster munition that is inexpensive to mass produce. This would allow a Ju-87D or Fw-190F to carry two under each wing plus a drop tank under the fuselage.


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## stona (May 6, 2012)

Glider said:


> Some of the 2TAF strikes against buildings had a respectable hit rate. It depends on the building but most would need more than one to knock it down



According to Operational Research Section 2nd Tactical Air Force Report No.20 "The Accuracy of Rocket Firing at Armament Practice Camps" 10% of rockets fired would hit a large building,defined as 120'x54'x50'. One aircraft firing eight rockets might reasonably,statistically,expect to score at least one hit. It had a slightly better than 50% chance.

Only 2.8% of rockets fired would hit an Army hut,considered to be 60'x30'x20', so one aircraft firing eight rockets was statistically unlikely to hit it.

Hitting a tank was an altogether more difficult proposition with only 0.5% of rockets fired scoring a hit. 

This was at practice camps,not in theatre where the attacking aircraft might themselves expect to be opposed by various types of Flak.

Cheers
Steve

Edit. BTW the rather odd size of the large building equates to a horizontal projected area,from a 45 degree dive,of 1,000 square yards. There is reason in their madness!


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## davebender (May 6, 2012)

Fw 190F-8


> Against the enemy tanks and armoured vehicles we usually made skip bombing attacks, running in at speeds of around 485 k.m./h. [300 m.p.h.] at between 4 and 10 m [15 and 30 ft] above the ground and releasing the bomb just as the tank disappeared beneath our engine cowling. The 250 kg bombs used during these attacks would either skip off the ground and into the tank, or else smash straight into the tank, the bombs were fused with a one second delay to give us time to get clear before they went off. It was a very accurate form of attack and we used it often against tanks we caught in open country



This method may work but flying directly over an enemy tank at an altitude of 10 meters exposes the CAS aircraft to fire from every machinegun in the vicinity. Even a point blank anti-infantry weapon such as the 92mm Nbw grenade launcher (standard on most late war German tanks) has a chance to hurt the aircraft. Dropping a cluster bomb from 500 meters is still plenty dangerous but it's a vast improvement over dropping an iron bomb from 10 meters.


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## tomo pauk (May 6, 2012)

Great find - a skip bombing of a tank is as great as it sounds 
As for level of danger: a bomb run done at 500 ft altitude is way more dangerous (for the airplane) than an one made at 10m. The plane dashing at 10m is a tough thing to spot, let alone to train the MG/cannon against it.


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## stona (May 6, 2012)

The USAAF 9th Air Force pilots tried to "bounce" their .50 Calibre machine gun rounds off a roadway or hard surface in an attempt to strike the underside of a tank but this did not involve making the virtually suicidal attack described above.

I don't have the book mentioned in the link. I wonder which pilot and what unit was making this type of attack.

Cheers
Steve


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## stona (May 6, 2012)

tomo pauk said:


> Great find - a skip bombing of a tank is as great as it sounds
> As for level of danger: a bomb run done at 500 ft altitude is way more dangerous (for the airplane) than an one made at 10m. The plane dashing at 10m is a tough thing to spot, let alone to train the MG/cannon against it.



Except that the attacking aircraft would have to descend and fly straight and level on a direct course for the intended target for some time. This goes against everything that the pilots of the Western Allies were taught to do when attacking ground targets. The attacking German fighter is not altering its bearing or elevation relative to the target's guns,and is only altering its bearing slowly relative to nearby weapons,for several seconds which has to be a very dangerous tactic.
I was taught as a boy that my best chance of hitting a rabbit (with a shotgun) was if it ran directly away from me. A German fighter flying directly at me in level flight presents the same easy solution.
Cheers
Steve


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## davebender (May 6, 2012)

> a bomb run done at 500 ft altitude is way more dangerous (for the airplane) than an one made at 10m.


Who am I to doubt an air defense expert? 
However I still think cluster munitions are preferable to iron bombs for tank busting. Even a green pilot can hit a tank with an AB250 container from an altitude of 10 meters.

If your standard attack altitude is 10 meters then a dive bomber such as the Ju-87 offers little advantage. Might as well use some Fw-190Fs at low altitude to supplement Ju-87s diving from 3,000 meters.


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## tomo pauk (May 6, 2012)

> Who am I to doubt an air defense expert?


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## tyrodtom (May 6, 2012)

Diving down from altitude and leveling off at 4-10 meters at 300 mph isn't something a green pilot is going to be able to do very consistently. 30 feet at 300mph is only a eyeblink away from -1 ft. And terrain isn't usually flat anywhere in the world i've been, flying 12-30 ft at 300mph over most terrain is going to take a experienced pilot, or you're just gonna end up with a lot of instant burials.
But if you get down that low the only weapons that's going to be able to follow you is one you're headed directly for, or from. Most Russian and Axis tanks only had the main gun and hull MG, they're not going to be shooting at you, western tanks were the only ones with the turret hatch mounted .50 or .30.

The Russian tanks sometimes had several tank riders, they might be shooting, or they might be looking for cover.

I know from my own experience in Vietnam, you avoid those middle altitudes, it's either 50 feet and below, or above 3000 agl. 500 ft might be above small arms, except for a golded BB, but that's about ideal height for light flak.


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## tomo pauk (May 6, 2012)

With top MG in the hands, tank's commander can be shredded by planes MGs/cannons. I agree that flying at such low altitudes is a risky business, maybe just slightly lower than at the altitudes where light AAA can get you.


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## stona (May 6, 2012)

Does anyone know who was using this tactic?
I'm not doubting a quote repeated by Price,I would just like to back it up with some hard evidence.
Cheers
Steve


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## Glider (May 6, 2012)

stona said:


> According to Operational Research Section 2nd Tactical Air Force Report No.20 "The Accuracy of Rocket Firing at Armament Practice Camps" 10% of rockets fired would hit a large building,defined as 120'x54'x50'. One aircraft firing eight rockets might reasonably,statistically,expect to score at least one hit. It had a slightly better than 50% chance.
> 
> Only 2.8% of rockets fired would hit an Army hut,considered to be 60'x30'x20', so one aircraft firing eight rockets was statistically unlikely to hit it.
> 
> ...



I stand corrected, thanks for this its always good to pick up info like this


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## JoeB (May 6, 2012)

parsifal said:


> .
> 
> I would claim this to be fairly consisten with my guesstimate of 900 rockets at least half of which were napalm fired by 21st CAG an d 77 TFW to destroy or disable 80 tanks.


The problem though is that the controlled trial results I quoted were highly inconsistent with actual combat results in Korea in the only period where we know those results with any degree of certainty. Again, UN a/c in the period June-Nov 1950 claimed at least 1100 North Korean tanks destroyed, and a pretty extensive survey report concluded that only on the order of 100 had actually been destroyed by a/c (both of which are fairly rough numbers as discussed above, but the ordre of magnitude is clear). If results like those in the trials were common in actual combat, it stands to reason the rate of overclaim would have been much lower (though a/c are still naturally prone to overclaims v tanks by 'killing' the same tanks multiple times, even before decoys are considered). And in the RAF case 1944 we have a direct estimate of the variation between trial and combat results, both of which have been quoted in the thread. A controlled trial yielded 3 for 64 or around 5%, but operations research concluded that the average combat hit rate was more like 0.5%.

Again, there were no on-the-ground verifications of UN aerial claims of Communist tanks destroyed after Nov 1950, so simply no evidence as to how many actual tanks destroyed are represented by the 80 claims you mention. The 1950 results would imply the 80 claims might correspond to around a half dozen different tanks actually destroyed. Although it could have been many more. Or it could have been fewer or none at all especially considering the possiblity of tank decoys when striking the essentially static Communist armies in that period. That wasn't as much of a factor in the initial mobile phase of the Korean War, nor in France in 1944.

I have lots of war diaries of air units in Korea. USMC ones in particular are often very detailed. We could also go through their claims for tanks destroyed '51-'52 period (including their carrier ops in the Yellow Sea: small USN carriers with a Marine F4U sdn and RN/RAN light carriers rotated in that duty, exact same missions) and find the types and amount of ordnance they used to do it mission by mission. But, we just couldn't conclude anything solid from it, as far as effectiveness: we have no way of estimating their actual success, and previous examples like 1950 and 1944 refute the idea estimating their success by assuming it would closely follow trial results.

Joe


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## stona (May 6, 2012)

JoeB said:


> Again, UN a/c in the period June-Nov 1950 claimed at least 1100 North Korean tanks destroyed, and a pretty extensive survey report concluded that only on the order of 100 had actually been destroyed by a/c
> Joe



Interestingly that claim to loss ratio almost exactly reflects that in a report compiled by Wing Commander Graham and Squadron Leader Abel of ORS 2nd TAF. They were based at Aywaille in the Ardennes salient from where they carried out an extensive ground search for tanks destroyed by the Air Forces,in this case primarily the USAAF. 
They concluded.

"For every hundred claims we could only find one tank indubitably destroyed by air."

I really need to put the books away and get on with my crashed Fw190 "fliegerdenkmal" diorama 

Cheers
Steve


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## parsifal (May 6, 2012)

I have located an article by Fred Lane, who I believe works at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney, in an article titled " Operation Strangle: Naval aviation in Korea.” delivered to the Naval Officers Club in July 2004 HMAS Sydney’s ground strikes undertaken in her 11 patrols yielded the following results

"_According to verifiable results from the CBAL section_(CBAL is, I think, the Australian intelligence operational research section attached to the Australian command based in Japan....I think) _Sydney's aircraft, in total, killed 1428 troops, destroyed 7 armoured vehicles_(my mistake.....I didnt recall correctly, or perhaps the reference to 80 tanks is the claimed casualty number, and 7 is the actual number) , _7 field guns, and destroyed 47 rail and 4 road bridges. Most of these bridges had, of course, been dropped more than once. The aircraft had demolished more than 1000 buildings or troop shelters, sunk 39 junks and 66 sampans or barges and destroyed 234 MT and horse drawn vehicles of various kinds (including trucks and ox carts). Sixteen ammunition dumps and seven fuel dumps were blown up_".

To achieve this outcome, the flew just over 1607 strike sorties, expended 802 bombs and 6359 three-inch rockets. In total 240000 rounds of 20mm ammunition was expended by the air group. 

Langs analysis of Sydneys air/ground results, he notes RAN operational technmiques and usual load outs...." _RAN Fireflies were used extensively for for bridge-dropping and tunnel-blocking tasks. They usually carried two 500 lb bombs and 240 rounds of 20 mm for this task and adopted a a 30-degree dive bomb to a 10-degree anti-submarine glide bomb profile, with 37-second delay fuses, Firefly pilots became expert at dropping bridge spans and blocking tunnels. For armed reconnaissance sorties of the road, rail and waterways networks, RAN Sea Furies typically carried eight three-inch ballistic rockets with 60 lb HE heads, 600 rounds of 20 mm and two 45-gallon drop tanks. Unlike the RAAF, USAF and USN, no RAN aircraft ever carried napalm in Korea_”(another mistaken assumption by me apparently. According to RAAF sources I have looked at, Napalm bombs were not used by them in Korea until Feb 1952).

When carrying bombs, the Fireflies could carry 4x 60lb RPs at the same time. With two bombs per a/c, and 802 bombs dropped, the maximum number of targets destroyed by bomb ordinance cannot exceed 401 targets (both bombs have to be droped simultaneously). From the information provided in Langs paper, we know that there were 1404 targets hit and destroyed. There is no information on near misses. Deducting the 401 targets destroyed by bombs (assumed), and disregarding the 1428 personnel killed (a fair bet they perished by strafing anyway) we arrive at a figure of 1003 targets destroyed by rocket attack, or at least likely to have been destroyed by rocket attack. And just to drive the point home, RAN reporting procedures were the far more conservative than either the USN, or the USAF at this time. 

1003 targets destroyed by 6359 projectiles is an accuracy rate of 15.7%. That takes no account of near misses or direct hits. This analysis works on the principal of “if its destroyed it counts toward the projectiles accuracy.” 

Lang notes that RAN reporting standards were far higher and conservative compared to those used by either the USN or the RN. He states "_RAN aircrew claims were deliberately conservative. For instance, RAN aircrew claimed a North Korean Army divisional headquarters building destroyed in 6 October 1951 raid, but nothing else. An American Army ground-based intelligence source, "Leopard", credited the same raid with not only destroying that building but also many troops, stores, vehicles, outlying shacks and other booty. RAN aircrew found this very hard to believe and it was never included in any formal RAN damage claims

Conversely, reliable reports plus good photographic data led to Sydney claiming no rail or road bridge standing in the RAN sector on completion of one patrol in late November 1951. That included the important main rail line running south from Pyongyang. Days later, a major USAF intelligence summary reported rail traffic unhindered and operating at normal capacity throughout North Korea. Again, RAN aircrew found this hard to believe, at least for the sector they controlled. 

It was perhaps no coincidence that about that time that even the USAF Fifth Air Force was trying to convince the CinCFE (GENL Ridgway, who had relieved the sacked GENL MacArthur in April 1951) that it was time to change its costly Operation Strangle strategy_"

Lang then produces some photograhs that show a number of bridges withinn the Sydneys operational sector as clearly destroyed.....


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## davebender (May 6, 2012)

> Diving down from altitude and leveling off at 4-10 meters at 300 mph isn't something a green pilot is going to be able to do very consistently.


Experienced Fw-190f pilots did a power dive @ a 50 degree angle. That way you get below effective AA range as quickly as possible. A green pilot would probably dive at a shallower angle and lower rate of speed, making it easier for someone like tomo pauk to put a couple 30mm rounds into your aircraft. That's the price you pay for poor pilot training.

Your starting altitude is about 3,000 meters. The dive to 10 meters should only take a minute. It will take tomo that long to put down his doughnut and coffee cup. 8)


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## parsifal (May 7, 2012)

With regard to the effects of RP firing aircraft in sinking U-Boats, it needs to be understood that rockets were seldom used as the only weapon in a given attack. A far more usual method was to deliver a rocket attack and then follow that up immediately with a pattern of depth charges from the same aircraft. Consequently it is difficult to know what was the cause of the U-Boat sinking. 

Neither is the total number of sinkings by aircraft all that helpful. The peak month of U-boat losses to aircraft was July 1943, when 34 were lost to aircraft, either wholly or partially due to air attacks. At that time all attacks were either bomb or DC attacks or both. Coastal Command A/C were only flying an average of 200 hours per attack , compared to 800 hours per attack in 1944. The reason for this is primarily the changes in U-Boat tactics. Whereas in July they were remaining surfaced and attempting to fight it out with CC, and generally following a more or less direct route to the western approaches, by January 1944, the U-Boats were remaining submerged by day, and only briefly surfacing by night to recharge batteries. they were also taking enormous detours to avoid CC, via the coasts of Spain and similar.

Howerver between July 1943 and January 1944, RP became more or less part of the standard arsenal of CC and the USN CVEs operating in the Atlantic (and the RN CVEs as well) In July the number of sinkings per airborne attack was 11.5%....that is, 11.5% of attacks carried out resulted in the loss of the U-Boat. By January 1944, whilst the total number of attacks had dropped, of those attacks were far more lethal. Fully 35% of attack made resulted in the loss of the U-Boat. And nearly all attacks by January 1944 involved either rocket attacks, or Molins Gun (or equivalent) attacks. 

There are, of course other factors at work here. For one thing, whereas in 1943 the U-Boats were concentrating less on concelament and more on firing back (which had to have had an effect on accuracy) by 1944 they were hardly firing back at all, and were relying on concelament. by definition, then, if they were being attacked, their primary means of defense (their concealment) was already compromised. Still, one cannot help but think that the RPs were improving the lethality of the aircraft that used them.....that was certainly the view of the crews involved.


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## Edgar Brooks (May 7, 2012)

It should also be remembered that, in a lot of cases, the rockets fired _backwards_; the early manifestation of MAD gear was in the western approaches to the Mediterranean, where U-boats passed through submerged, but not far below the surface. The aircraft (often a B-24) flew over, and, if the magnetic gear was activated, fired its rockets back at the spot, then turned and followed up with depth charges.


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## stona (May 7, 2012)

Lets call the armoured formation that Tomo wants to attack "lightly defended", in terms of Flak.

The RAF would attack this with a dive bombing attack. A relatively steep dive angle was considered essential for safety and accuracy. My scanner is bust so I can't post the contemporary diagram I have but I can repeat the explanatory notes.

"When in vicinity of target section changes to echelon starboard. The leader when over the target allows it to pass under the leading edge of his port wing as in second phase in diagram.When the target reappears at trailing edge the leader executes a semi stalled turn to port,followed by the other aircraft of his section. The result of this manoeuvre is a line astern attack at a steep angle on the reciprocal of the original course as shown in the third phase of the diagram. After releasing bombs,all aircraft make a violent evasive turn in a prearranged direction and reform in a section line abreast." 

At no point do any aircraft fly straight and level.

The RAF did make low level attacks. These were carried out in a dive at about 30 degrees with the bombs released at about 800' and the aircraft flying at high speed to escape small calibre and light flak as well as fragments and debris from their own bombs.Typhoons attacked in pairs using bombs fitted with short delay fuses (like the Fw190s) so that the second pair attacked just after the first's bombs had exploded. Such attacks were considerd extremely hazardous and an RAF report warned that four aircraft going down in two pairs was all that could reasonably expected to get away with this type of attack.

Again this is a diving attack,albeit ffrom a shallow angle,and at no point are the attacking aircraft flying straight and level which the RAF considered suicidal.

Cheers
Steve


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## davebender (May 7, 2012)

That probably has a lot do do with poor accuracy. Cluster munitions are essential for dive attacks on armored vehicles. Even when using a Ju-87, which is inheritly more accurate then any fighter-bomber.


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## riacrato (May 7, 2012)

Don't forget the Steckrübewurf tactic described above for the Fw 190 F was pioneered with Ju 87s, in other words: they also used level attacks on tanks (sometimes).


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## stona (May 7, 2012)

davebender said:


> That probably has a lot do do with poor accuracy.



The RAF considered a steep dive essential for bombing accuracy for a fighter bomber,which was essentially aiming through a gun sight.

The Luftwaffe had been "lobbing" bombs since the beginning of the war. It was certainly a method used by Bf109 Jabos in 1940. This was referred to in a document I have somewhere about the positioning of airfield defences. It was not done from anything like 30' though.

Cheers
Steve


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## davebender (May 7, 2012)

If that's true then why not take the next step to produce proper dive bombers as Germany did? Dive brakes and a proper dive bomber sight (i.e. not gun sight) work with the steep dive to further improve bombing accuracy.


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## tomo pauk (May 7, 2012)

I've already proposed the A-36/S class combo


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## war eagle (May 7, 2012)

What about a couple of late variant 3,000 hp 24 cylinder napier sabre,s! that,d give it some oomph.


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## Glider (May 7, 2012)

Dive bombers come down slowly and are very vulnerable to AA fire plus there were few targets that a dive bomber would be much better at hitting compared to a fighter bomber.


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## davebender (May 7, 2012)

Not necessarily true. Rudel clearly states that dive brakes weren't used when flak was heavy.

Flak isn't always heavy. That's when dive brakes make a difference in weapons accuracy.

Whether dive brakes are used or not, a proper bomb sight always makes a difference in accuracy.


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## JoeB (May 7, 2012)

parsifal said:


> _Sydney's aircraft, in total, killed 1428 troops, destroyed 7 armoured vehicles_(my mistake.....I didnt recall correctly, or perhaps the reference to 80 tanks is the claimed casualty number, and 7 is the actual number) ,


There is no way that a stat like the number of Communist tanks destroyed by UN a/c in a particular area was firmly known in that period of the war. Any number you see in such a source is a UN side estimate, not a count of wrecks by a survey team, nor the result of a communications intercept or humint with that kind of detail. If there are various conflicting numbers I'd assume it was some kind of mistake.

Then you widen the discussion to aerial weapons' effectiveness v targets like small coastal craft, trucks, oxcarts, etc. These were all targets a lot more vulnerable than tanks. Rocket near misses, .50cal/20mm strafing, or medium bombs with CEP's 10's-few 100' could destroy such soft targets. They could not as often destroy tanks (like a T-34-85). That took rocket direct hits, *very* near medium bomb misses, and .50cal/20mm fire could only do it by fluke, though it happened.

Then you further widen the discussion to the overall UN interdiction effort in Korea, much bigger topic. But suffice it to say that just as the specific types of operations and claims you mention for the RAN air units are virtually identical to those of CVE/CVL borne USMC F4U squadrons and FAA air groups which rotated through the same operations, the disbelief of airmen that the enemy could rebuild and keep operating his transportation system under those attacks is common to not only those carrier based operations over southwestern NK, but all UN air interdiction. 

But also as you mention in your excerpt, the UN command concluded that Strangle was a failure. Intel and recon they had showed that, whatever the enemy vehicle losses actually were, or bridges the opposing armies and their large civilian manual labor forces had to bypass, rail cuts repair, tunnel entrances clear, the Communist armies got adequate supplies for their needs in semi static warfare. And studies showed that the all-in cost to deliver say a 100# bomb to cut a rail line was a multiple of what it cost the Communist forces to fix it. Attempts to interdict German supplies in the static Italian theater 1943-45 also basically failed. OTOH air could have a much more dramatic affect on the higher and more time sensitive logistics needs of mobile warfare, which were also harder to conceal. The opening campaign in Korea as well as the France campaign of '44 were examples, besides coincidentally being cases with good studies of real a/c results v tanks.

Joe


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## parsifal (May 8, 2012)

> There is no way that a stat like the number of Communist tanks destroyed by UN a/c in a particular area was firmly known in that period of the war. Any number you see in such a source is a UN side estimate, not a count of wrecks by a survey team, nor the result of a communications intercept or humint with that kind of detail. If there are various conflicting numbers I'd assume it was some kind of mistake.



No its not a UN side estimate, its based on multiple sources according to langs article, including the findings of the US army's Leopard Intellibence teams and this organzation called "CBAL" (which i am not exactly it is), post war analysis amd aerial recon undertaken by 21 CAG and the photo recon unit attached to 91 Composite Wing (RAAF) . Lang is at pains to show that the figures come from multiple sources, he points out the weakness and strengths of those sources and at the end of the day consistently adopts the most conservative figures that can reasonably be deduced from the available figures. Your comment suggests they are based on a snapshot taken at the time, but this is clearly not the case. 



> Then you widen the discussion to aerial weapons' effectiveness v targets like small coastal craft, trucks, oxcarts, etc. These were all targets a lot more vulnerable than tanks. Rocket near misses, .50cal/20mm strafing, or medium bombs with CEP's 10's-few 100' could destroy such soft targets.



Agreed, I have looked at the total effect....but these are force multipliers that in the end affect the ability of the armour to function. I was more concerned in the finish to try and address the over accuracy of FB operations, as it was clear that you were right and direct effects on armour by RP was quite limited. I dont see anything wrong or sinister or innappropriate approaching the issue that way.

Your method of research, based on our earlier discussions about other subjects is basically a ground up approach...."look at the trees, and from that you should be able to determine the size of the forest" so to speak. That is a valid approach, and produces good results, generally, but another methodology can be used, and to use the same metaphor is basically "look at the forest, and you can determine the effects of individual trees". basically a top down approach. Both methods have their validities and weaknesses. This assessment is more a "top down" assessment, so i expect you are not going to approve of it. 

The amount of ordinance is known....802 bombs dropped 1600 sorties flown, 240-600 rounds of 20mm ammunition carried per sortie, 1500 offensive sorties out of a total of 2500 and 240000 rounds expended in total (estimate that 150000 rounds expended on offensive missions). How many rounds of 20mm ammunition are needed to knock out 1 man or a sampan or an oxcart. No way of knowing, but if you guesstimate 30 seconds of firing time per target, and ther are 4 x 20mm firing @ 500 rpm, then a plausible figure is 1000 rounds per target. A reasonable allowance for the number of targets destroyed by cannon fire would be in the vicinity of 150-300 of those 1400 targets destroyed (and still i have not attempted to make allowance in the ordinance expenditure for the persdonnel casualties). But then, if we are going to do that then we have to also estimate how many of those 401 bombing runs actually hit. at the moment, i have assumed all 401 hit and destroyed their targets. thats a strike rate of 100%. lets be optimistic but a little more realistic and assign a hit rate of 20% for the free fall bombs, and also be optimistic and allow 300 targets destroyed by the cannon fire. Calculating that out, you get the following targets destroyed by the following ordinance types

Cannon.....approx 300
Bombs......approx 80-160...say 160 to be as optimistic as we can be (and as hard on the RPs as possible and still be in the realm of rationality)

that leaves 900-1000 targets still unaaccounted. since no other type of ordinance exists, other than the RPs , we have to conclude that the RPs destroyed that 1000 targets and thats a hit rate of 14-15.8%

This analyis obviously challenges the asserions that rockets only hit 5% or less of the targets. So be it. Those figures (5%) are no more reliable than my figure (15%). Its a matter of what you want to believe i guess. The data is the data. if that blows the preconceptions out of the water, so be it....it called operational research 



> They could not as often destroy tanks (like a T-34-85). That took rocket direct hits, *very* near medium bomb misses, and .50cal/20mm fire could only do it by fluke, though it happened.



no argument there. The report states only 7 AFVs destroyed, which is entirely consistent with what you are saying.....the RAAF report I mentioned (which i believe now may be based on the UN claims you are running down) do say 80 AFVs destroyed.....but the RAN only claims 7, yet the RAN contributed 3 sqns to the battle, for 5.5 months, whilst the RAAF committed one wing of just one squadron for 3 years (I think...havent checked) 



> Then you further widen the discussion to the overall UN interdiction effort in Korea, much bigger topic. But suffice it to say that just as the specific types of operations and claims you mention for the RAN air units are virtually identical to those of CVE/CVL borne USMC F4U squadrons and FAA air groups which rotated through the same operations, the disbelief of airmen that the enemy could rebuild and keep operating his transportation system under those attacks is common to not only those carrier based operations over southwestern NK, but all UN air interdiction.




I agree, but your point is....in actual fact it is not true that "all UN air interdiction suffered friom this problem. The RAN was critical of the losses and the results of Strangle from the very beginning. i believe the Brits were of a similar opinion. The problem lies in the US command and the friction that existed between the 5th AF and the USN. It depends on who you read as to whether the results of Strangle (in US military) eyes was a success or a failure. The CW always believed it to be a strategic failure, but a tactical success....the Communists were having a hard time with their logistics, but they overcame those difficulties, and the cost of maintining the blockade became very high. it was the cost, not the ability to hit or miss that cause d the campaign to be discontinued. 



> But also as you mention in your excerpt, the UN command concluded that Strangle was a failure. Intel and recon they had showed that, whatever the enemy vehicle losses actually were, or bridges the opposing armies and their large civilian manual labor forces had to bypass, rail cuts repair, tunnel entrances clear, the Communist armies got adequate supplies for their needs in semi static warfare. And studies showed that the all-in cost to deliver say a 100# bomb to cut a rail line was a multiple of what it cost the Communist forces to fix it. Attempts to interdict German supplies in the static Italian theater 1943-45 also basically failed. OTOH air could have a much more dramatic affect on the higher and more time sensitive logistics needs of mobile warfare, which were also harder to conceal. The opening campaign in Korea as well as the France campaign of '44 were examples, besides coincidentally being cases with good studies of real a/c results v tanks.




The "UN" command in this statement should be substituted by the "US" command. "Strangle" was not judged a (military) failure as such by anyone except the 5th AF, and they had a political reason for saying that. Other non-US commands believed the strategy to be a qualified but expensive success. only the air force, with the USN firmly in its sights judged the airstrikes themselves to be a failure, according to Lang. its very illuminating to see that after Strangle was cancelled it was replaced by a different initiative, that emphasised massive strategic strikes against the frontline, run by , you guessed it, the AF. This was judged a failure (or at least no more successful) by all except the USAF. A great deal of care needs to be excercised when relying on reports from the US military at this time....there was alsmost as much fighting going on between the navy and the air force as there was between the UN and Communists. Lang notes that as well


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## stona (May 8, 2012)

davebender said:


> If that's true then why not take the next step to produce proper dive bombers as Germany did? Dive brakes and a proper dive bomber sight (i.e. not gun sight) work with the steep dive to further improve bombing accuracy.



It's a matter of doctrine. The RAF,a newly independent service,rejected the whole concept of close air support during the inter-war period.The air support that the RAF was trained and equipped to provide in 1939 was "Army Cooperation" and this emphasised reconnaissance. Fighter cover and bomber support for the BEF in France was provided by the few squadrons sent to France which formed the "Air Component" of fighter and reconnaissance squadrons attached to the BEF and an independent "Advanced Air Striking Force" (AASF) of light bomber squadrons. Both remained under RAF control under "British Air Forces in France Command" (BAFF) under Air Marshall Sir Arthur Barrat.
There was a lengthy and convoluted command structure which proved useless in the face of the highly mobile warfare of 1940.

During WW2 senior airmen were determined to avoid a commitment to support the Army.They felt that the such a comittment could lead to the loss of the RAF's relatively new found independent status and that it was a misuse of air power. It wasn't until May 1941,having seen the way the Luftwaffe supported the German Army that the War Office demanded that the RAF be equipped and prepared to provide similar support to the British Army. This was strongly resisted by the Air Ministry and the Director of Plans (Air Vice-Marshall Slessor) who condemned the Army's tendency to ask the RAF to do what it should be doing itself,saying that it was the job of the Army's anti-tank weapons to destroy enemy tanks on the battlefield (he was right). The role of the RAF was,he said,to prevent enemy forces operating due to shortages of fuel,food and ammunition (he was at least partly right again).

Having totally rejected the concept of CAS they were hardly likely to develop an aircraft that specialised in this role. Infact it was in 1941 that the Air Ministry rejected the idea of dive bombers,pointing out that the Army's perceived omnipetence of the Ju87 was illusory and due to local German air superiority.The RAF was well aware of just how vulnerable these aircraft were when unprotected from their experiences in the BoB. This appeared to the Army as yet another example of incalcitrance from the junior service and led to demands for a seperate Army air arm (Alanbrooke was a major proponent of such a scheme).

The result of all this was that in 1943-45 the RAF had no dive bombers and none of the aircraft providing CAS to the Army had been originally developed for that role.

Cheers
Steve


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## davebender (May 8, 2012)

> May 1941,having seen the way the Luftwaffe supported the German Army that the War Office demanded that the RAF be equipped and prepared to provide similar support to the British Army. This was strongly resisted by the Air Ministry


Sounds like the RAF were determined to fight their own war independent of the British Army. And apparently the RAF had enough political clout to get away with it.


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## Glider (May 8, 2012)

The RAF consdered dive bombers to be vulnerable to AA fire and fighters. Fighters by this time were starting to carry similar payloads to divebombers and were almost as effective in a number of roles so the luxury of a single use aircraft was considered to be a luxury.


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## stona (May 8, 2012)

davebender said:


> Sounds like the RAF were determined to fight their own war independent of the British Army. And apparently the RAF had enough political clout to get away with it.



They were and to a large extent they did get away with it. 
By 1943 they were developing better ways of providing CAS to the Army,in particular a more streamlined chain of command and communications system which enabled them to respond quickly to Army requests. It is still far too complicated to explain in an easy post!
It is fair to say that most senior airmen did not consider this a fruitful use of air power,even post invasion and into 1945.
Cheers
Steve


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## davebender (May 8, 2012)

At least Britain has an excuse - air force and army were seperate service branches.

U.S. heavy bomber barons acted much like their British counterparts yet they were still part of the U.S. Army. Not sure how they got away with that.


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## parsifal (May 8, 2012)

davebender said:


> At least Britain has an excuse - air force and army were seperate service branches.
> 
> U.S. heavy bomber barons acted much like their British counterparts yet they were still part of the U.S. Army. Not sure how they got away with that.



There was a voracious separatist attitude within the AAC, exemplified by men such as Mitchell. Immediately after the war, the USAF was formed, and if anything that inferiority complex about being the junior service got much worse. the USAF went after the USN (the other big operator of fixed wing a/c) with a vengeance. They had in their sights on carrier borne avaition. The rivalry and internecie bickering did not really abate until after Korea.


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## Siegfried (May 9, 2012)

It seems to me that both the USAAF avoidance of dive bombers and morseo the RAF's avoidance of dive bombers was *purely* political, they were avoided precisely because they wanted to avoid embroilmen in spending money on providing close air support not because of their at that time theorectical vulnrabillity. No such conflictural or doctrinal problem existed in the Luftwaffe or the Nazi system of division of effort between Army and Luftwaffe.

Dive bombers would certainly have been usefull to the allies and in fact the Navies of both the British and United States had effective models that could have been borrowed. I regard the justification of not developing them because that they were 'too vulnerable' as a case of the tail wagging the dog. Nothing could be more vulnerable than a Fairy Battle or Blenheim.

The key to the succesfull use of dive bombers like the Ju 87 was simple: don't use them for deep penetration missions; only use them for combat air support close to the front lines and do provide them escorts to keep fighters of their back and help supress local AAA defenses if the target is well defended.

The Luftwaffe and Goerings big failure was in lack of support for the Germany navy. The Ju 87 did a reasonable job, as did the Ju 88 as both a dive and torpedo bomber however as a long range figher the Ju 88 didn't cut it nor was the FW 200 survivable.


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## parsifal (May 9, 2012)

> It seems to me that both the USAAF avoidance of dive bombers and morseo the RAF's avoidance of dive bombers was *purely* political, they were avoided precisely because they wanted to avoid embroilmen in spending money on providing close air support not because of their at that time theorectical vulnrabillity. No such conflictural or doctrinal problem existed in the Luftwaffe or the Nazi system of division of effort between Army and Luftwaffe.



Substantially sio, but not purely so. The RAF viewed the vulnerability of types like the Ju87 and determined that divebombers were too vulnerable to flak and fighters. Fighter Bombers offered a far higher level of survivability and were "good enough" when it came to general targets. Not a lot needed to be done to a Fighter to make it a fighter bomber, so there were advantages in terms of production.

On the other hand you are absolutely right that the RAF rejected dedicated ground support as a role until the war was well under way, and that was driven by the political motivations of the RAFs top brass. 



> The Luftwaffe and Goerings big failure was in lack of support for the Germany navy.



It was not their only big failing by a long shot, though it was one of the bigger ones. Turning east before the job was complete in the west was a bigger mistake. Over - use and over-elitism in the LW was another. Unfocussed R&D with little direct benefits to the war effort another. Poor integration of the economic assets another......and so on. The Luftwaffes failures were far more than just a failure to develop good co-opperation with the fleet.


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## stona (May 9, 2012)

The RAF considered support of the Army to be a misuse of air power. This was the fundamental doctrinal problem. The points that Slessor and Embry raised in the correspondence around the memorandum "Use of Bombers in Close Support of The Army" regarding the vulnerability of dive bombers (Embry stated explicitly that the scale an intensity of German anti aircraft fire was such as to make CAS prohibitive with a potential casualty rate amongst aircraft out of all proportion to results achieved) were really just reinforcing that fundamental view. This discussion took place in May 1941 and the huge losses of,for example,Fairey Battles attacking German columns would have been fresh in Embry's mind.

Parsifal is correct about the seperatist attitude within the USAAC/USAAF. I am less familiar with the ins and outs of the political in fighting in,or structure of,the US system but they too rejected dive-bombers for similar reasons. 

The installation of bomb racks on pursuit (fighter) aircraft was prohibited between 1936 and 1938 and as late as 1941 the Plans Division of the Air Corps remained opposed to any modification of such aircraft for ground support operations.

US War Department Field Manual 100-20 "Command and Employment of Air Power" (May 1943) prioritises mission types. First was the need to secure air superiority,second attacks on enemy troop concentrations,supplies and communications OUTSIDE the battle area. Third and last was Close Air Support which came with the warning that such missions would be difficult to control,expensive,and least effective,being appropriate only at critical periods. This is just a year before the invasion!
Cheers
Steve


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## Glider (May 9, 2012)

Siegfried said:


> Dive bombers would certainly have been usefull to the allies and in fact the Navies of both the British and United States had effective models that could have been borrowed. I regard the justification of not developing them because that they were 'too vulnerable' as a case of the tail wagging the dog. Nothing could be more vulnerable than a Fairy Battle or Blenheim.



In 1939/40 I do totally agree with you on this. The RAF could have done a lot worse than replace the Battle with the Skua


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## stona (May 9, 2012)

Glider said:


> In 1939/40 I do totally agree with you on this. The RAF could have done a lot worse than replace the Battle with the Skua



For the reasons I've explained variously above this was never going to happen. 

However,as a what if,it would have failed in 1939/40 for various reasons. First and foremost the cumbersome command system meant that the RAF could not respond to an Army request in a useful time frame.

For example a request was made at 8.30 am on 20th May 1940 for the bombing of German armoured columns approaching the Canal du Nord near Bapaume.The RAF appeared at 11.30 am by which time the leading German units were across the canal and advancing on the other side. This three hour time lag is not atypical,it is about average,and useless on the 1940's battlefield.

Secondly how would the RAF protect these dive bombers? They needed protection and the few Hurricane squadrons in France could barely protect themselves. The need to protect dive bombers was regarded as a serious disadvantage militating against there use in the Arakan Campaign in the Far East later in the war.

Most historians (with the noteable exception of Peter Smith who is an unrepentant supporter of the type) agree that the decision not to develop a specialised dive bomber for the RAF in 1941-2 was the correct one.

Cheers
Steve


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## parsifal (May 9, 2012)

Yes, I agree steve, Perhaps i am repeating what you are saying, but to me, it wouldnt have mattered even if divebombing had been adopted. the hostility about providing direct support to the army on the battlefield was so deep it wouldnt have mattered what delivery system or bombing technique adopted.

People tend to atribute the German successes in direct support to divebombing alone. In fact this was just one element in their recipe for success. there was a deep level of co-operation at all levels, that ensured timely and sufficient support in the right places at the right times. more than anything it was the german integrated command structures, and the priority given to ground support that handed the germans their early successes.

I would go so far as to say, if the British had developed a similar level of co-operation in their training and mission priorities....making ground support their main mission prior to the outbreak of the war, but went to war with Battles as was historically the case, they would have gotten a lot more out of the Battles than they actually did. Level bombing,, glide bombing, fighter bomberws were all less effective than dive bombing when it came to accuracy, but they would have still been 'good enough" if only the RAF had had a different mindset about CAS


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## stona (May 9, 2012)

Indeed,I do nonetheless think that the RAF attitude at the time had some grounds for justification. There is no excuse for the petty rivalry and "junior service complex" (a phrase repeatedly used in Army reports about relations with the RAF). The predominant thinking in most interwar Air Forces was bomber orientated. The airmen were going to pulverise the enemy's means of production and infrastructure and more or less nullify the need for the Army to take to the field. Of course this was pie in the sky and by 1941 the senior airmen were becoming aware of just what a blunt tool air power in the 1940s was going to be. It is no accident that in the months after the invasion there was such a propensity for allied aircraft to attack friendly forces that many Army units would open fire on any aircraft overhead! 
This is not the place for a discussion of bomb lines and/or marking techniques,nor the evolution of forward air control,sufficeth to say that all these things took time to develop.
We live in an era when CAS has become one of the principle roles of any Air Force but the communcations and weapons systems to achieve the sort of results we see on the news (or Liveleak or Youtube) simply didn't exist during WW2. It's also noteworthy that the multi role aircraft is the backbone of most modern Air Forces and this is a direct descendant of the WW2 fighter bombers,aircraft forced into multiple roles for which they were never intended. It is easily forgotten that the Typhoon was designed as an air superiority fighter.
The dive bomber was a dead end,useful in its time,but whose days were always numbered.
Cheers
Steve


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## Shortround6 (May 9, 2012)

Glider said:


> In 1939/40 I do totally agree with you on this. The RAF could have done a lot worse than replace the Battle with the Skua



Perhaps but they weren't designed to do the same job. The Battle was an oddball aircraft. It was designed with political considerations and no real idea of the effectiveness of it's armament. It was never intended to be a close support aircraft but rather a strategic bomber. The Battle could carry twice the bomb load of a Skua and carry it several hundred miles further. To do this required a large airplane. 8 feet more wingspan and 34% more wing area. It was sort of a less extreme Vickers Wellesley. 
The Blenheim was another aircraft that was misused and whose reputation suffered as a result. It carried the same bomb load as the Battle ( a bit of a mistake in requirements but there you are) even further and a bit faster. 

Neither planes was intended for low level bombing against defended targets. The Battle carried a bomb aimer who laid prone in the bottom of the plane underneath the pilot and used his bomb sight through a window in the bottom of the plane. Hardly the preferred method of low level bombing. 

The idea of using single engine long range bombers with small bomb loads may have appealed to both politicians and peace advocates in the early/mid 30s ( a provision or possible provision of one treaty called for an empty weight of 6000lbs for all future bombers) even though such aircraft didn't really make very good weapons.

The RAF would not substitute The Skua for the Battle because the Skua could not do the Battles job. Of course it was found that even the Wellington could not do the Battles job, fly hundreds of miles without escort into enemy airspace in daylight to bomb infrastructure.


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## parsifal (May 9, 2012)

> [This is not the place for a discussion of bomb lines and/or marking techniques,nor the evolution of forward air control,sufficeth to say that all these things took time to develop.
> We live in an era when CAS has become one of the principle roles of any Air Force but the communcations and weapons systems to achieve the sort of results we see on the news (or Liveleak or Youtube) simply didn't exist during WW2.



I cant see why this is not the place to discuss FACs. Its such an integral part of delivering effective CAS, so why not discuss it.

FACs is considered to have been invented during the American Civil War in the Union Army Baloon Corps, by its commander Thaddeus Lowe. Its most effective applications were during the sieges of Richmond and Petersburg, when Union artillery was accurately directed by the balloon crews using portable telegraph 

Im not sure if there was any effective FACs in the allied camp at the outbreak of the war, and that certainly shows in the abysmal showing made in the first years of the war. Conversely I am fairly sure the Germans had an effective FACs system grafted or embedded into their unit command structures. i hav idea how it worked or how it was organized, but you dont get the level of effectiveness that they di by having aircraft flying around the battle unco-ordinated (in an immeediate sense).

For the allies, by 1943, the situation had completely changed. Significant strides were made in defining the role of airpower in close support of ground forces. Forward air control concepts were tried with limited success by the South African Air Force as part of the Royal Air Force in the African campaigns but it wasn‟t until the war in Italy that the concepts of ground and airborne forward air controlling were well defined.

The Rover system was developed by the British and adopted by the Americans. A Rover unit consisted of an RAF controller, and an Army Air Liaison Officer, and VHF radio for aircraft communications. Their function was to apply air power to targets, often fleeting, close to the front line. A fundamental feature of the system was use of waves of strike aircraft, with pre-briefed assigned targets but they were required to orbit near the line of battle for 3-20 minutes, subject to Rover preemption and use against fleeting targets of higher priority or urgency. If the Rovers did not direct the fighter-bombers, the latter attacked their pre-briefed targets. U.S. commanders, impressed by the British at the Salerno landings, adapted their own doctrine to include many features of the British system. One important aspect of the Rover system was the willingness to use large numbers of tactical attack aircraft, which were only available after air supremacy had been achieved in the area.

The Rover system was complimented by the use of airborne Forward Air Controllers flying light aircraft (British Lysanders and USAAF L-5 Sentinels). These FACs used the collective call sign Horsefly. Success of the Horsefly operations was tempered by inadequate communications equipment and extreme vulnerability to hostile air-to-air action and Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA).

For the Normandy invasion each beachhead was assigned an LST with a combined Army and Air Force control element to coordinate Army requirements for close air support. Rover parties went ashore with all the ground forces. However, it wasn‟t until the fall of 1944 that Horsefly-type FACing became common. Increased resources and the full use of the expanded air-ground liaison teams produced a functional system of airborne FACs.

There are many stories of individual heroism by Forward Air Controllers in WW II but perhaps none is more impressive than the story about Captain James E. Parker. Captain Parker was in charge of the air support party that had been rushed to Bastogne on 18 December 1944. It was his job to integrate Close Air Support (CAS) into the fight throughout the siege. Captain Parker, a veteran fighter-bomber pilot with considerable experience in both the Pacific and European theaters, was also an experienced Forward Air Controller. Parker talked to flight leaders en route to Bastogne, gave them approach instructions, and helped them identify intended targets. P-47s came in low and fast, catching the Germans by surprise. On more than one occasion, ground troops received CAS within fifteen minutes of requesting an air strike. Enemy flak was heavy and elusive, with German batteries apparently moving from position to position around the Bastogne perimeter. On 28-29 December, Captain Parker coordinated a series of combined arms air-artillery attacks that finally silenced the threat and enabled the American Army to break the siege.

At the conclusion of WWII the US seems to have forgotten many of the hard lessons of WWII and in their haste to demobilize disbanded the airborne Forward Air Controller concept and relegated it to a ground based system using radio equipped jeeps. This is where the system was at the beginning of the Korean War, and it explains the generally lower accuracy rates achieved by the USAF and USN for the early parts of that conflict. 

It was probably true that FACS did not exist in the allied armies at the beginning of the war




> It's also noteworthy that the multi role aircraft is the backbone of most modern Air Forces and this is a direct descendant of the WW2 fighter bombers,aircraft forced into multiple roles for which they were never intended. It is easily forgotten that the Typhoon was designed as an air superiority fighter.



True, but some adapted to the job better than others. I dont know all that much about Typoons, but Furies and fireflies achieved impressive results during the Korean war



> The dive bomber was a dead end,useful in its time,but whose days were always numbered.




Absolutely.


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## stona (May 9, 2012)

There was no such thing as FACs in France in 1940 in the way we understand it.
After the German breakthrough and encirclement of the Anglo-French forces in France the rudimentary system that did exist really broke down. Most of the "Air Component" was operating from bases in Southern England,seperated from RAF headquarters in France,while the AASF withdrew to bases further South,away from the Germans but also virtually cut off from the BEF.
Army officers in France were reduced to telephoning the War Office in London to try and arrange bomber attacks! 

Books have been written on the adoption of the so called "tentacle" system developed by the British following their experience in North Africa and refined in 1942. This system was also adopted as the basis of the American system.
I will scan a couple of diagrams from Gooderson's book when my other half vacates the office in lieue of typing a thousand words.

One problem that was never solved was a lack of personnel in these new and vital roles. There was all sorts of petty squabbling about appropriate/equivalent ranks and responsibilities. It's a miracle that we ever managed to get any fighting done.

Cheers
Steve


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## pbfoot (May 9, 2012)

On the staff of Lord Gort in France was a single RAF liason officer so the chance of CAS was a non eveent


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## davebender (May 9, 2012)

Britain was never short of fighter aircraft and probably had a surplus from 1941 onward. If they were unable to furnish fighter escort for dive bombers the RAF must have had leadership problems.


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## stona (May 9, 2012)

pbfoot said:


> On the staff of Lord Gort in France was a single RAF liason officer so the chance of CAS was a non eveent



There was a joint RAF/Army School of Army Cooperation at Old Sarum. Here,under No.22 Group,junior Army officers were trained for liason duties with the squadrons detailed to support the BEF. They were in no sense FACs,rather they would liase with their RAF counterparts over the provision of tactical and photographic reconnaissance and artillery spotting. This is WWI stuff and completely out of date by 1939/40.
Cheers
Steve


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## stona (May 9, 2012)

davebender said:


> Britain was never short of fighter aircraft and probably had a surplus from 1941 onward. If they were unable to furnish fighter escort for dive bombers the RAF must have had leadership problems.



I was referring to the period of the Battle of France. The RAF most certainly did not have a surplus of fighters available for such duties. Most squadrons in France were scrambling from one airfield to another usually without sufficient motor transport. They were arriving on unsuitable airfields with a lack of basic communication equipment,spares,ground crew or sometimes fuel and ammunition. Later in the campaign they returned to England whilst many of the units you would have them escort moved South of the German's advance on the channel coast.

After the BoB it was one of Leigh Mallory's less brilliant ideas to send large numbers of fighters across the channel supporting a few bombers which would act as bait to lure the Luftwaffe to its destruction. This cost the RAF many pilots' lives and singularly failed to do the damage to the Luftwaffe envisaged by the new C-in-C Fighter Command. It was always pilots not aircraft that was a potential shortfall for the RAF.Would they have done any better escorting dive bombers? I very much doubt it.

My personal view is,that for Fighter Command at least, Leigh Mallory was a leadership problem incarnate,but that's another matter

Cheers
Steve


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## tomo pauk (May 9, 2012)

Would the Luftwaffe made the same reaction on the, say, 300 (any-type of) bombers, as it was making at appearance of few bombers?


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## davebender (May 9, 2012)

> Would the Luftwaffe made the same reaction on the, say, 300 (any-type of) bombers, as it was making at appearance of few bombers?


That depends on what the RAF decide to bomb. 

Most Circus raids were pinprick affairs against French targets that had little military or economic value to the German war effort. Why should Germany spend a bunch of resources intercepting such raids? Every French citizen killed and every French property destroyed is more incentive for France to cooperate with Germany.


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## parsifal (May 9, 2012)

Lee mallory had overly ambitious objectives for the 1941 offensive over france, but just be aware that there were many other objectives that were achieved. It never ceases to amaze me that because the RAF failed in one of its self imosed objectives, and that one objective was so unrealistic as to be surreal, yet the whole campaign is then judged to be a failure.

The RAF had no choice bu to attack in small packets of bombers in 1941. The RAF had oodles of fighters, but 2 Gp (the tactical day bomber force) consisted of all of five squadrons (of Blenheims) at that time. There were roughly 300 bombers ( Septemeber) undetaking deep penetration strategic ops over Germany, and a few score engaged in Coastal Command. The RAF was not strong in bombers in 1941.... 

In fact there was a great deal of success to the '41 campaign. The Germans were defeated in the skies over britain. Britain gained air superiority over the Channel, and made seaborne traffic relatively safe, whilst denying or substantially denying Axis freedom of movement over the coastal seas of Western Europe. The RAF gained substanial control of the coastal areas of NW europe and they also gained substantial freedom of movement and operation over the coastal regions (of france). what they failed to do was force or entice the Germans to come up and get themselves killed.

Most of the allied objectives were achieved. One was not. overall, thats still a success in my book. Without those operations, the subsequent offensive ops in 42-3 would not have been possible.


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## Glider (May 10, 2012)

I admit to believing that the fighter units in SE England would have been better used in the Med and Far East. The RAF Hurricanes were seriously outclassed by the Me109 and Spits from earlier in the campaign would have had significant advantages


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## Siegfried (May 10, 2012)

parsifal said:


> Substantially sio, but not purely so. The RAF viewed the vulnerability of types like the Ju87 and determined that divebombers were too vulnerable to flak and fighters. Fighter Bombers offered a far higher level of survivability and were "good enough" when it came to general targets. Not a lot needed to be done to a Fighter to make it a fighter bomber, so there were advantages in terms of production.
> 
> On the other hand you are absolutely right that the RAF rejected dedicated ground support as a role until the war was well under way, and that was driven by the political motivations of the RAFs top brass.
> 
> It was not their only big failing by a long shot, though it was one of the bigger ones. Turning east before the job was complete in the west was a bigger mistake. Over - use and over-elitism in the LW was another. Unfocussed R&D with little direct benefits to the war effort another. Poor integration of the economic assets another......and so on. The Luftwaffes failures were far more than just a failure to develop good co-opperation with the fleet.





Was the Ju 87 vulnerable? It would seem only for certain kinds of mission. As a tank buster I believe its loss rate was half that of the FW 190 in the same role. As a low level night harrasment aircraft it had among the lowest loss rate of any bomber of the war.


There was no time to complete "the job in the west". The BoB was only about forcing the British to negotiate. It was necessary to turn East before Stalin turned West.


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## parsifal (May 10, 2012)

> Was the Ju 87 vulnerable? It would seem only for certain kinds of mission. As a tank buster I believe its loss rate was half that of the FW 190 in the same role. As a low level night harrasment aircraft it had among the lowest loss rate of any bomber of the war.



All divebombers have inherent vulnerabilities. Not unique to the Ju 87 but neither was the ju 87 immune to those effects. Divebombers achieve their accuracy by a slow rate of descent, and a steep angle of attack. At both the top of the dive, and the bottom of the dive they are basically flak magnets . Even during the descent they have to carry out the manouver in a straight line, and slowly, all of which greatly increases their vulnerability. 

Ju87s were certainly effective at Night Harassment, but they are far from the most resilient. all aircraft types on the eastern front suffered massive attrition rates, which immediately eliminates all German aircraft from that sort of mantle. Dont know about the comparison of Ju87 to FW 190, but they did suffer more heavily at Kursk compared to both the ju88 and the Hs 129. Ju87 losses at Kursk were quite heavy compared to other types, and Kursk was really the first time the VVS mounted a sustained challenge to german Air superiority. 



> There was no time to complete "the job in the west". The BoB was only about forcing the British to negotiate. It was necessary to turn East before Stalin turned West


.

That sitaution only arose from the comprehensively poor planning and assessments made by hitler. if preprations for dealing with britain had been made from the very beginning, instead of basing their assessments on racist claptrap, they would have had plenty of time to "finish the job. if the occupied territories and the axis partneers had been better integrated, which hitler and his economics minister (Goring) could easily have done instead of basing their decisions on whacko 'lebenraum" theories, and the german economy had been made more ready prewar for the war, the resources at germany's disposal would have been massively greater. germany as an economic entity was twice as powerful as britain in 1940, and to that could have been added the entire economic potential of the other occupied nations. instead the economies the germans controlled were comprehensively trashed.

Lastly, you dont deal with mutiple threats by not dealing with the most vulnerable first. that flies in the face of every theory on concentration of force known in miliatry theory.

hitler and his mate goring were just breathtakingly incompetent when it came to higher grand strategyh


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## stona (May 10, 2012)

parsifal said:


> Lee mallory had overly ambitious objectives for the 1941 offensive over france, but just be aware that there were many other objectives that were achieved. It never ceases to amaze me that because the RAF failed in one of its self imosed objectives, and that one objective was so unrealistic as to be surreal, yet the whole campaign is then judged to be a failure.



I agree with the body of your post but not your conclusions regarding Leigh Mallory. Bad leadership is repeating your's or other's mistakes and that's what he did. The RAF was commited over France/NW Europe to fight at the same disadvantage experienced by the Luftwaffe a year or so earlier. It cost hundreds of lives. I believe the same objectives could have been achieved using different tactics and achieved less expensively.

Cheers
Steve


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## stona (May 10, 2012)

An unprotected formation of Ju87s certainly was vulnerable to fighters. The RAF found them easiest to attack after they had made their dive and were reassembling at low altitude. A Ju87 is a relatively slow,large,poorly armed target and lacking manoeuvreability relative to any contemporary fighter worthy of the name. 
I think it was Lacey (not sure) who described the Ju87 as his favourite target because it would burst into flames at the wing root as soon as it was hit. This is an important consideration given the resilience of other Luftwaffe types to rifle calibre machine guns.
Cheers
Steve


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## davebender (May 10, 2012)

> Ju87 is a relatively slow,large,poorly armed target and lacking manoeuvreability relative to any contemporary fighter worthy


The Ju-87 was not exceptionally vulnerable. Lancasters and B-17s cruising to the target @ 180mph were just as vulnerable to enemy fighter aircraft.


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## stona (May 10, 2012)

davebender said:


> The Ju-87 was not exceptionally vulnerable. Lancasters and B-17s cruising to the target @ 180mph were just as vulnerable to enemy fighter aircraft.



Except that the Lancasters went by night and the B-17 was both heavily armed and,eventually,heavily escorted.

The point is that without local air superiority the Ju87 was so vulnerable to enemy fighters that it became unuseable,as in the BoB. 
They were effectively withdrawn after losses on 18th August,though they did make some anti-shipping strikes in the channel later. The dive bombers were escorted but one unit (I./StG 77) was seperated from its escort and lost 10 of 28 aircraft,5 in the initial interception by the Hurricanes of 43 Squadron (according to Patrick Bishop). 
Other Ju87 Gruppen came under attack from 153,601 and 602 Squadrons. In total 16 were shot down and 2 more crashed on returning to France. 4 more were badly damaged.
I'd call that vulnerable. Facts are facts and opinions are just opinions.
This was a lesson not lost on the RAF and was one of the arguments used against not just dive bombing but CAS generally in the debates of 1941.
Cheers
Steve


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## parsifal (May 10, 2012)

There is just no comparison between the vulnerability of aircraft like the Ju87 and B-17s. It was a bad day for a B-17 if a formation lost 10% of the force. it happened, but not generally. 10% losses for a formation of Ju87s in a hostile airspace would be incredibly low, even on the eastern front. it was nothing for stukas to lose 20-40 or even 50% of their forces when employed in a defended airspace


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## Altea (May 10, 2012)

Hello,

Why not the Polikarpov VIT -1 and VIT-2 ? 
Polikarpov VIT-1 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Exceptionnal punch (2 x 37mm canons, 2 x 20 mm + ShKases) and performance for 1937/1938. Even i'm more impressed by the gigantic size of the TsAGI wind tunnel (look at the man inside) than by the plane as itself.

The problem is that soviets were fighting hard for years in Spain and China on the same time. With R-5, R-Zet, I-15 and SB in ground support rules. From *obvious *reasons that you can only see by practical war experience, tha CAS/Tank-buster as aperfect boxer should not only have the ability to kick hard himself, but also have to roll well with the punches (withstand heavy damage). 

That's why the Il-2 was adapted, the VIT abandoned. The Il-2 was not really a tank-buster.

In conclusion: having heavy punch is not enough, you have to survive in the battlefield first to get the opportunity to use it.

Regards


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## Altea (May 10, 2012)

Siegfried said:


> Was the Ju 87 vulnerable? It would seem only for certain kinds of mission. As a tank buster *I believe its loss rate was half that of the FW 190 in the same role*. As a low level night harrasment aircraft it had among the lowest loss rate of any bomber of the war.



Do you *believe*, or do you* know*? 
There are two very different things...
Considering all (reliable?) sources, for instance:
Mister kit et G. Aders " Junkers Ju-87 STUKA", Spécial la Dernière Guerre, Éditions Atlas 1979.
as well as
Herbert Leonard et André Jouineau, Junkers Ju87 de 1936 à 1945, collection Avions et Pilotes, Édition Histoire et Collections

...Stukas were specially replaced by FW-190 because of their high attrition rate and full inability to fulfill mission, even in the eastern front when opposed by soviet fighters...

Regards


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## tomo pauk (May 10, 2012)

Hi, parsifal,



parsifal said:


> Lee mallory had overly ambitious objectives for the 1941 offensive over france, but just be aware that there were many other objectives that were achieved. It never ceases to amaze me that because the RAF failed in one of its self imosed objectives, and that one objective was so unrealistic as to be surreal, yet the whole campaign is then judged to be a failure.
> 
> The RAF had no choice bu to attack in small packets of bombers in 1941. The RAF had oodles of fighters, but 2 Gp (the tactical day bomber force) consisted of all of five squadrons (of Blenheims) at that time. There were roughly 300 bombers ( Septemeber) undetaking deep penetration strategic ops over Germany, and a few score engaged in Coastal Command. *The RAF was not strong in bombers in 1941....
> *
> ...



RAF BC had on the disposal circa 730 bombers, May 1941.


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## riacrato (May 10, 2012)

stona said:


> The point is that without local air superiority the Ju87 was so vulnerable to enemy fighters that it became unuseable,as in the BoB.
> ...This was a lesson not lost on the RAF and was one of the arguments used against not just dive bombing but CAS generally in the debates of 1941.
> Cheers
> Steve


The Ju 87 was used outside of its capabilities in the BoB. And CAS was definetly not what it was doing.
So drawing a conclusion about whether or not a dive bomber or CAS in general is a worthwhile undertaking based on its loss rate in the BoB has to be faulty. In a typical CAS scenario the defender would have less time to react and much less information about the attacker (the extreme would be he only realizes the attacker once the attack has begun or is about to). That doesn't mean the CAS aircraft in question can go without escort, but it does make life a whole lot harder for the defending force.

Since there was a budget for the A-36... there must've been some people, at least in the USAAF, who were pro-dive bombing, no?

In general though I agree, from a certain point in time, maybe post early 42, the useful bombload of the average fighter is high enough and developing and fielding specialized aircraft (if they are anything other than modifications of existing fighters) doesn't seem economical to me.


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## stona (May 10, 2012)

riacrato said:


> The Ju 87 was used outside of its capabilities in the BoB. And CAS was definetly not what it was doing.
> So drawing a conclusion about whether or not a dive bomber or CAS in general is a worthwhile undertaking based on its loss rate in the BoB has to be faulty.


Dive bombing radar stations was surely exactly the sort of thing the Ju87 was supposed to excel at. The Ju87 wasn't outside its capabilities it simply met,for the first time,an organised and integrated air defence system which caused it to be caught without even local air superiority.
Apart from that I agree 100%,nonetheless this was one of the arguments used by senior airmen in 1941 and again in 1942 after experiences with the Vengeance in the Far East. As I said before it was an argument (vulnerability and need for escort) used to bolster the senior airmen's distaste for any kind of role supporting the Army and to reinforce their belief that such a role was a fundamental misuse of air power.

Cheers
Steve


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## Shortround6 (May 10, 2012)

In the build up to the start of the war and even in the US until late in the war there wasn't enough capacity to build and man all the planes that might be wanted for all the jobs possible. Air staffs had to prioritize where their money and effort would go. Tactical support of the army (and second class status for the air service) or strategic bombing and 1st class status for the air service. Trying to both jobs with the resources in hand (money or appropriations) would almost guarantee failure at both. Look at the rather dismal job bomber command did in 1940-41-42. Crews trying their best and dying but the actual effect on Germany was pretty small. Now cut that by 30, 40, or 50% for increase CAS and/or tactical bombing. Dismal becomes pathetic. Would the effort put into CAS or tactical bombing really pay off that much better? 
For effective CAS or tactical bombing you need command of the air, at least in the operational areas, you need to be able to suppress Flak to some extent, if heavy flak is present. You need a command structure that allows for a fast and flexible response for air support and/or very good tactical reconnaissance. 

German air support in Poland worked well for a number of reasons. Germans had effective command of the air, The Polish defenders didn't have much in the way AA defenses for the field armies. The Germans had an adequate if perhaps not an outstanding command system. 

The German air support was given more credit than it was due. A standard German infantry division had more artillery tubes than a standard Polish division. More importantly the tubes were bigger, more 105mm howitzers vs 75mm guns and more 150mm howitzers vs Polish 105s and 155s. And just as important the German divisions had more motor transport, not that they were anywhere near fully motorized but even a few hundred more trucks per division meant the average German Division had dozens more tons of artillery ammunition than an average Polish division. This basic firepower advantage is often overlooked and more credit is given to the Luftwaffe than it really deserved. 
I have not seen a similar analysis of the western campaign but would not be surprised if the Germans did not have a similar artillery advantage over the French. The Luftwaffe did provide some notable examples of support but they were not everywhere, supporting every division.
The British army got screwed because in the budget process in the 30s the RAF "claimed" they could provide support for the army and the army wouldn't need any/many large expensive pieces of modern heavy artillery. in the late 30s the RAF finally admitted it could provide no such support and the Army scrambled to design/build up it's heavy artillery park.


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## davebender (May 10, 2012)

Germany produced 4,881 Ju-87s during 1939 to 1945. Not all were lost in combat.

Anyone who thinks B-17 survivability was better then Ju-87 survivability might want to look at official USAF loss statistics. We lost 5,548 heavy bombers (B-17 plus B-24) in Europe alone. Army Air Forces in World War II


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## stona (May 10, 2012)

You are comparing apples and oranges.
Steve


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## parsifal (May 10, 2012)

davebender said:


> Germany produced 4,881 Ju-87s during 1939 to 1945. Not all were lost in combat.
> 
> Anyone who thinks B-17 survivability was better then Ju-87 survivability might want to look at official USAF loss statistics. We lost 5,548 heavy bombers (B-17 plus B-24) in Europe alone. Army Air Forces in World War II



You have got to be kidding. B-24 and B-17 production amounted to 31000 airframes for the entire war. Ju87 production amounted to about 5000. I will dig out bergstrom when I get home, as well as one or two other sources. i gurantee that Ju87 losses as a percentage of the total production run will be four or five times higher per sortie than Heavy Bomber losses. I will not be at all surprised to find the outright numbers of Ju87s destroyed in the air being greater than the outright number of B-17s and B-24s lost in combat. numbers lost to attritional causes (not relating to enemy action) will be higher for the heavy bombers, simply because they out numbered the German type by roughly 5:1.... 

Ju87s represented good value for what they were....cheap, easily built low cost aircraft built to deliver pinpoint attacks at the cost of all other considerations. they were not built for durability, and were certainly not built with high performance in mind. Trying to argue the Ju87 was all these things is just patently untrue. even the germans themselves admitted that.


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## Altea (May 11, 2012)

davebender said:


> Germany produced 4,881 Ju-87s during 1939 to 1945. Not all were lost in combat.



J'v got some other numbers : 5700 in 39-45 in my books, even more: 6513 in 35-44
http://www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/av...2-stukas-left-tact-today-7603.html#post238294

Whatever, how many Stukas were lost in combat, written-off for combat damage, and written-off for just for tear and wear?


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## Altea (May 11, 2012)

davebender said:


> Gun armed tank busters are slow flying aircraft if they want to hit anything.


True... But they *also* need to be nimble, and it's not the Ju-87 with 2 x 37mm case!



> So I don't think drag would be an issue. You just need an adequate power to weight ratio for hauling around* heavy cannon* plus *significant cockpit armor*.


That mean poor power to weight ratio and high wing loading one. It makes not only a slow, but also an unmanoeuvrable aircraft...


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## stona (May 11, 2012)

Apples and oranges.
Some RAF Bomber Command statistics that demonstrate that Ju87 operations were of a different scale,never mind nature.

Bomber Command flew on 1,481 nights during the war (71.4% of all nights during the war)

They flew 307,253 night sorties

They lost 7,953 aircraft (2.6%) at night,which is far more than total Ju87 production. What percentage of Ju87s were lost operationally? I can't find a total figure but of those comitted to the BoB more than 20% were lost.

They also flew 80,163 day sorties,losing 1,000 aircraft (1.2%). This loss percentage is skued by the majority of daylight sorties being flown in the last year of the war under allied air supremacy.

Statistics from "The Bomber Command War Diaries-An Operational Reference Book 1939-1945" by Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everitt.

Cheers
Steve


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