A.G. Williams
Airman 1st Class
- 182
- Oct 10, 2020
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I'd be interested to see what people make of the article The Myth of The Tank Buster
Seems to be generally OK, with a couple of comments:
the Hawker Hurricane Mark IID, armed with two Vickers S 40mm cannons firing tungsten-tipped rounds.
Nope - steel AP shot only.
Subsequent investigation of the battlefield by operational research teams, however, showed that of the 43 tanks and three self-propelled guns not removed by German recovery teams
In the fighting in NW Europe, the German forces were generally in retreat so had little opportunity to recover anything from the battlefield.
PS - I am interested in buying some of your books - though the price on Amazon had me swallowing hard! Can you recommend any stockists?
I wonder about the effect of ground attack on the many Draft Horses the Axis used. Apparently you can train horses to ignore the background noise of a battlefield rear echelon but I imagine an IL2, Typhoon or P47 roaring low overhead dropping munitions might be more than the horse could handle.
That said, although I've yet to read any accounts of pilots deliberately targeting horses and horse drawn transport, it would be an entirely logical thing to do. (Though its equally possible that many pilots - especially Brits and Americans with their associated sentimentality for things equine - may have specifically tried to avoid doing it).
Just a week or two ago I saw a gun camera footage compilation on YouTube which showed what appeared to be a horse-drawn cart being strafed by an Allied fighter. The pilot aimed at the cart, which took most of the hits, but naturally the horses didn't fare too well regardless.
It was shown in "The World at War" the BBC series narrated by L. Olivier.Just a week or two ago I saw a gun camera footage compilation on YouTube which showed what appeared to be a horse-drawn cart being strafed by an Allied fighter. The pilot aimed at the cart, which took most of the hits, but naturally the horses didn't fare too well regardless.
It was shown in "The World at War" the BBC series narrated by L. Olivier.
That is what was on "The World at War" if I remember it correctly, discussing the preparations for D-Day he went through the targets hit from the air, after a long list with some clips ended with "and a horse and cart" showing that terrified horse, he was a great orator.ANYWAY, during my tenure there, hidden away in my bunker like room, watching hours and hours of footage, I ended up going through many rolls of Polish RAF gun camera film. Much of it was of strafing attacks pre and post Normandy over occupied France. I don't think the brutality of war was ever brought home to me as firmly as then. Trucks, cars, trains - literally ANYTHING on the road got strafed. And I couldn't help wondering how on earth the pilots could even begin to distinguish civilians from combatants. In one surreal and disturbing section of footage, gun camera film showed a single cyclist making their way down a poplar tree lined avenue. The aircraft behind the gun camera made at least three separate passes, hosing the road and the hapless cyclist until they ended up in a ditch at the side of the road. Based on that, I'm quite sure horse drawn vehicles would have been absolutely fair game. Maybe not to some of the officer class - but for those from occupied countries, or those aircrew who'd seen their families houses bombed flat, and families killed, I suspect there would have been no squeamishness. Anyone who would make multiple passes to vaporise a single cyclist with 2 x 20mm and 4 x 303s would definitely see horses as a legitimate target.
I used to be a film archivist many years ago. I worked for a company who used to make documentaries for The History Channel and Discovery called Wingspan - until one dark day, I was informed that the largest customer had decided that the manager was getting too big for his boots, and basically demanded he sold them the archive and rights to the documentaries we'd produced to date. The way I heard it, he was told that it was a case of accepting the cash, or they'd never buy another one of his documentaries again. The carefully crafted documentaries which paid very close attention to historical, technical and first hand accounts were instead handed over to non aviation nuts and experts - and instead chopped up, re-edited, rescripted and turned into the error strewn fodder you get on your screens today. Real shame.
ANYWAY, during my tenure there, hidden away in my bunker like room, watching hours and hours of footage, I ended up going through many rolls of Polish RAF gun camera film. Much of it was of strafing attacks pre and post Normandy over occupied France. I don't think the brutality of war was ever brought home to me as firmly as then. Trucks, cars, trains - literally ANYTHING on the road got strafed. And I couldn't help wondering how on earth the pilots could even begin to distinguish civilians from combatants. In one surreal and disturbing section of footage, gun camera film showed a single cyclist making their way down a poplar tree lined avenue. The aircraft behind the gun camera made at least three separate passes, hosing the road and the hapless cyclist until they ended up in a ditch at the side of the road. Based on that, I'm quite sure horse drawn vehicles would have been absolutely fair game. Maybe not to some of the officer class - but for those from occupied countries, or those aircrew who'd seen their families houses bombed flat, and families killed, I suspect there would have been no squeamishness. Anyone who would make multiple passes to vaporise a single cyclist with 2 x 20mm and 4 x 303s would definitely see horses as a legitimate target.
Yes - that would tally logically- the volume shot and shell produced for the Vickers S must have been tiny, and so development of more penetrating rounds after it was virtually abandoned in '43 would have been pointless - especially as even HE rounds used by the Hurricane iv in the far east were more than capable of wrecking thinly armoured Japanese tanks anyway (as well as being more versatile against other targets)
And as for the Germans inability to recover vehicles, it actually flatters the numbers found on the battlefield, versus the wild overclaiming by the pilots, doesn't it? An abandoned but essentially intact vehicle has not been destroyed or necessarily knocked out, even if it is 'hors de combat'
PS - I am interested in buying some of your books - though the price on Amazon had me swallowing hard! Can you recommend any stockists?
Even if the Germans had had enough trucks, they still would have had problems from railhead to the front.
Just a week or two ago I saw a gun camera footage compilation on YouTube which showed what appeared to be a horse-drawn cart being strafed by an Allied fighter. The pilot aimed at the cart, which took most of the hits, but naturally the horses didn't fare too well regardless.
I found the video referenced above. According to the video description, it shows gun camera footage filmed during a P-47 attack on a German airfield in April 1945. The horse-drawn cart incident is shown (briefly) starting at 1:23.
WWII P-47 "Thunderbolt" Pilot Strafing German Aerodrome(4/13/1945)
Railhead is where the train was unloaded.No doubt but the studies show that it was not the rail that was the bottleneck at Normandy.
The big guns seem to be mostly CAS, anti armour and anti ship. But what of large air combat guns? The Me 262 had four 30mm cannons. One was tried with a 50mm cannon, intended to hit bombers outside the range of their defensive armament. Did any other aircraft carry a heavier air to air gun?It got me pondering the relative benefits and disadvantages of large bore weaponry (20mm and above) in aircraft - and how they served in contrast and compared to rocket projectiles (which had largely replaced anything above 30mm by the end of the war.)