Jabberwocky
Staff Sergeant
Lack of success, as well as a complete reorganisation of Soviet long-range bombardment assets.
Between 1942 and 1944, long-range aviation was almost completely subordinated to tactical operations. Medium and heavy bombers were primarily used as flying artillery rather than strategic weapons. Even longer-range missions were primarily directed against targets of tactical importance.
To quote from a USAF historical paper on German views of the Soviet air war:
"Long-range aircraft were employed, by preference, at points of main effort until the end of 1943. These aircraft, operating in conjunction with mobile, forces and spearhead armies, were supposed to prevent the moving up of German Army reserves, and to disrupt the German supply services, important rear installations, such as communications centers and airforce ground services were preferred targets."
Strategic bombing raids on the German zone of interior were limited in 1943 to isolated raids on East Prussian targets…
In 1942-43, Russian bombing operations in rear areas were mainly directed against tactical objectives. Attacks on strategic objectives were… rare exceptions"
From 1944 the story changes a little. As the USAF study notes, the performance of the Soviet bomber arm "changed profoundly". Russian bombers began to attack German rear area and naval targets in increasing strength and with increasing discipline and success.
While frontline/ rear area targets were the norm, Soviet bombers began to operate more "quasi strategic" operations, particularly at night from spring 1944 onwards. Attacks against towns/cities such as Sevastopol, lvov, Riga, Dvina, Libau, Koenigsberg, Budapest, and Danzig were conducted. There were more than 3,000 night sorties conducted at night against long-range targets in Finland.
Night bombing moved from single harassing aircraft to Western style bomber stream operations.
Again, to quote from the USAF study:
"Soviet bombers rarely flew quasi-strategic daylight missions. At night, however, they carried out such missions with increasing frequency and power, but without achieving any appreciable measure of success. Such attacks were conducted primarily against large towns considered important because of the size of their population or because of their functions as administrative centers."
While Soviet operations never matched the scale or success of Western strategic operations, they did happen.
) it's a good concrete example but only one example. And, the factor that doesn't enter in that case is where different air units attacked the same dead tanks and claimed then a bunch of times. The USAF spent a good deal of effort studying the results of air attacks on North Korean tanks in the Korean War. This was also a pretty easy example since the NK Army lost or abandoned practically all their tanks after their defeat in the intial phase of the war (ie. from the beginning in June 1950 to their collapse after the Inchon invasion in Sept-Oct of that year, before the Chinese entered the war in late Oct). The bulk of the NK tank force was lying around in UN held areas for survey teams to analyze. The ratio in that case, recorded claims in air unit reports v tank wrecks classed as destroyed by air, was >10:1, and the claim number quoted might not even be complete. Also, many tanks had been hit with multiple weapons and survey teams had to do some guess work to say which hit first, and which might have been KO's of already dead tanks, or ad hoc testing of AT weapons etc (eg. 3.5" bazooka shots against known dead T-34's for target practice and to gain confidence in that new weapon's destructive effect). It's easy to believe that many napalm attacks on tanks (by far the most common tank killer among a/c weapons in that war) were accurate drops which enveloped the tank, but an already dead tank. 
