How effective were ground attack aircraft against armor and other hardened land targets

[Schweik]

Allegedly a Tiger hit by multiple PTAB

A Yak-9B dropping PTAB

 

[Schweik]

 

[Schweik]

Extra top armor added to Pz IV, probably for a reason...

 

[Schweik]

(admittedly the reason could be heavy artillery)

 

[Fighterguy]

One of the essential benefits of air power, is it's impact on the moral of those being attacked by it. The attack itself may not do much physical damage, but the psychological effects more than make up for it. It's a very disheartening feeling to know that enemy aircraft can attack with near impunity. A German commander in Normandy once stated something to the affect, "It's like playing chess, where your opponent is able to make three moves to your one." German ground forces had to move with extreme caution in the Western front, preferring to do so during the night or inclement weather, because of the impact of airpower. Discussions (that usually devolve into arguments) over what was better, or who would win if... are moot. The Allies, particularly in the West, had the logistics and doctrinal advantage. Once a German position was located, either through air/ground reconnaissance, or force contact, some form of steel rain was forthcoming.

 

[Schweik]

I think maybe another nuance of this is that when effective air attack becomes a reality - either because the enemy has achieved local air superiority or has acquired more capable bombers or whatever combination of factors, the forces on the receiving end of the attacks initially suffer increased casualties. But assuming they aren't quickly defeated (ala France in 1940) then they adjust how they are fighting for as long as air attack remains a serious threat. They remain under cover of trees more, use smoke more, use lights less even when well behind the front lines, operate at night or in bad weather more, hide in civilian population centers more, spend more time putting out camo nets and so on every time they stop and so forth. All of which translates to a reduction of efficiency but so long as appropriate steps are taken it can greatly reduce the impact of air attacks.

We know that 20th - 21st Century US airpower is extremely effective on a technical level but if say, the Viet Cong or ISIS or the Taliban take appropriate measures, such as by hiding in jungle or under ground, they can greatly reduce that effectiveness. But they are forced to operate under the conditions required to maintain countermeasures against air attack, which imposes some restrictions... including limiting their use of vehicles.

And of course, when it comes to an armored column on the move, for example during an attack, there is only so much one can do to conceal the vehicles. So there will be circumstances where they will still be vulnerable.

 

[Navalwarrior]

Hey guys, been out of town all weekend at a martial arts tournament and doing a history presentation (very different era though!).

Some good points made here and at least one new (for me) data source that I still need to look at. I can certainly see the merit of the argument that the most telling effects of tactical air support was against those highly vulnerable soft skinned vehicles and logistics infrastructure, that disruption was often the real goal, that rockets were very inaccurate, and that tanks were tough and so on. We all know that. However I think maybe we are pushing the pendulum too far in one direction with regard to the efficacy of CAS against armor per se.

I don't have time to plunge deeply into this (yet) but I wanted to make a couple of quick points.

• Not every tank was a Tiger or a T-34/85, or even a Sherman or Pz IV.
• There were many open-topped armored vehicles of substantial importance and / or ubiquity on the battlefield. For the Germans the early tank hunters like the Marder and the Panzerjäger I, and later war behemoths like the Nashorn, the self propelled guns like the Wespe and the Hummel, and many armored cars were open topped (side armor on the Wespe was also down to 5mm). For the Americans similarly the M3 GMC, M10 GMC and that whole family of tank destroyers, plus the M7 priest and the similar British Sexton. The Soviets Su-76. Almost all the AAA vehicles too of course, and all the halftracks on every side*. Any open topped vehicle is going to be extremely vulnerable to hits from HMG or 20mm cannon.
• Not all 'Medium' level tanks or armored vehicles that did have armored tops were heavily protected on the tops and rear either - the StuGG III, one of the most important and ubiquitous German AFV's had armor down to 16mm even late in the war. The British Cruiser A-13 had armor down to 6mm, same for the Soviet BT-7. I don't think it's beyond conceivable that 12.7mm MG or 20mm cannon can bust these up. And no, a single 12.7mm bullet piercing armored bottom or top or engine compartment may not wreck the vehicle but it's dangerous as hell to be inside if it does and each hit poses a severe risk to crew and kit. I don't know if you have ever seen forensic photos of what happens when a couple of HMG rounds hit an occupied vehicle but it is not pretty.
• More to the point, it's certainly not inconceivable that the 23mm guns on an Il-2 or shaped charge bomblets, or 37mm guns used on a variety of CAS aircraft can destroy some of the heavier and better protected tanks and other armored vehicles.
• While say, 5-8% hits per strafing attempt may not sound like much, keep in mind thousands and thousands of sorties were flown. If and when the local AAA was neutralized, and fighter escort adequate, strafing Il-2s, Ju-87D (with 20mm cannon), and P-47s could do several strafing runs before retiring. If you had say two squadrons flying out of a cab rank or 'circle of death' to make 3 or 4 strafing runs each, that's 60 - 100 attacks, which statistically means probably at least a few hits for each mission. When you consider this is repeating almost every day, and even multiple times a day in some Theaters and during some battles, to me that adds up to a lot of heavy bullets smacking into AFV's on a pretty regular basis whenever they were caught exposed. Anecdotally, the cannon were the most effective weapons of the Il-2, not the bombs or rockets. And while anecdotes can be wrong I'm not sure it's safe to assume they were always wrong.
• For dive bombing in particular, I again remind everyone that we know for a fact that dive bombers could hit relatively small ships like troop transports, cruisers and destroyers. If dive bombers can hit the Shintai Maru No. 4 with a 6 meter beam, then dive bombers can hit a column of tanks driving down a road in Libya or Ukraine and land bombs close enough to kill them even if it was a Tiger or a KV.
• Tungsten / Wolfram also may be basis of the best AP ammo in WW2 but it was hardly the only AP ammo. Steel core bullets penetrated pretty well too, even steel shelled ones. The 23mm VYa of the Il-2 could punch through 25mm of steel plate at 400 meters. Even the 20mm ShVAK and 12.7mm DShK could penetrate 15mm armor at 30 degrees at short range and 20mm plate specifically on a Pz IV at 20- degrees (~150m).
• We shouldn't, I don't think, assume that the performance of every type of ground attack aircraft was identical through the war. I think that is the crux of the issue. What P-47s could do against late model German Panzers in autumn of 1944 may not reflect realities at Stalingrad or El Alamein or Arras. Maybe that is the pattern maybe it isn't - it's probably worth finding a bit more data before reaching firm conclusions. That was the point of the thread - to expose more data.

By the way, I forgot who commented "if 20mm guns could take out tanks they would have given them to infantry" or something along those lines... they did, actually, give them to infantry see the AT rifle, quite ubiquitous in the early war (and somewhat effective, notably in the hands of the Finns), and it was also the main armament of numerous armored vehicles again especially in the early war - Pz II, the T-60 etc.. In say 1940-41 the larger tank armament was usually in the realm of 37-50mm and that was meant to punch through frontal armor of rival tanks. 20mm was more than enough to destroy many lighter armored vehicles.

*There is a Soviet report on German tank armor showing that side armor of light armored cars and APC's (halftracks?) could be penetrated at 250-400m by DShK 12.7mm and ShVAK 20mm (which had similar penetration). This is the image from document "CAMD RF 38-11355-778" showing penetration and angles, also recommended as guidelines for T-60 and other Soviet AFV's with 20mm armament.

View attachment 550265

Resp:
I would think the engine area from above (vents, etc) would have been vulnerable to 20 mm cannons.

 

[BiffF15]

Resp:
I would think the engine area from above (vents, etc) would have been vulnerable to 20 mm cannons.

Navalwarrior,

The problem is the strafe angle. I don't think strafe above 10 degrees became popular until the 80s to 90s. Not much penetration from the shallower angles.

Cheers,
Biff

 

[Fighterguy]

Well, sitting in front of a game console, and having to pump multiple rounds into an "enemy" tank until it obliterates, removing it from being combat effective, is a far cry from reality. It really doesn't matter if a 23mm or 37mm projectile will or will not penetrate the rear deck engine cover at a given angle. The fact that the crew is experiencing a significant life altering event, with all the noise, smoke, flying debris, confusion, and fear surrounding them, is enough to cause them to rapidly egress. U.S. tank crews discovered they could cause German crews to "jump ship," thinking their vehicle was on fire, by hitting them with smoke. A round doesn't have to penetrate the fighting compartment to disable a vehicle enough to render it non-combat effective. Tiger 131 at the Bovington tank museum was abandoned by its crew after receiving numerous non penetrating hits. It's believed that the crew may have suffered some injury. Tiger 131 could've been later recovered by the Germans, repaired, and put back into service, and therefore wouldn't have been considered destroyed, but was nonetheless knocked out of action. Again, as has been previously pointed out in other posts, hitting the AFV itself isn't the only way to disable it. Tanks, like any other weapons platform, require combat support elements close by, that aren't so hard to break. Losing that stuff is just as effective.

 

[Schweik]

We all know they need fuel and shells and support of other kinds, we know that crews sometimes panicked and bailed out too, but it is worth considering how many were actually knocked out by air strikes as in the hard way. A crew is also a lot more likely to bail out and flee if several of the other tanks or AFV's in their unit have actually been destroyed and are clearly in big trouble (brewing up etc.)

Then again, sometimes they didn't panic - a few of those tanks in the Battle of France were hit 40 and 50 times in one night and kept fighting, same famously with KV's and T-34s making breakthroughs in a couple of occasions, and of course there are the famous anecdotes of Tigers holding off large enemy units. These are situations in which air support can really make a difference (and when it's likely to be called in)

There appears to be something of a dearth of hard data on this, the few real analysis I've seen to date seem to get extrapolated far beyond what the data actually says (as in, to cover the whole war). I'd love to see some more hard statistics, I guess what is really needed are unit histories of armor units from various Theaters during different periods of the war.

 

[fubar57]

Probably a rehash of what most know...Combat Aircraft Versus Armour in WWII | Operation Barbarrosa

 

[fubar57]

https://www.historynet.com/myth-of-the-tankbuster.htm

 

[Schweik]

Yes this is the same data I've seen before... it's actually what led me to start this thread. You can find almost exactly the same summary with the same dozen or so factoids on 20 or 30 websites around the internet. Shocking levels of overclaiming... that is, shocking if you are unfamiliar with the general concept of overclaiming. If the Soviet Il-2s knocked out 49 instead of 250 tanks from the 3rd Panzer division at Kursk that would still be quite impressive to me. If they had 41 ten days later quite a few of those could also be repairs and replacements.

What constitutes a 'tank' as far as this analysis? From an airplane zooming by a smoky battlefield at 200 mph, a halftrack, a Marder, and Pz IV look very similar. The one he is most likely to notice is the flakwagon, and those, from what I have read, tended to have a pretty short lifespan. Everything else counts as a tank including no doubt quite often trucks, cars and other unarmored vehicles.

But if I was in charge of validating claims for Stalin I wouldn't execute guys who claimed a 'tank' when they really tore up a Sd. Kfz. 234 or a Marder. That is close enough for government work. And armored columns in WW2 rarely included only a single type of AFV as we know.

Even if the actual kill rates for tanks were as low as has been claimed in some of these 'revisionist' synopsis, 3 or 5% or whatever the figure is, that could be a rather key group of tanks, the ones they couldn't get with the AT guns or the friendly tanks... such as would so often be the case with self propelled artillery or well positioned Jagdpanzers.

Also, just because they could repair a tank a few days or even hours after it had been knocked out doesn't make it any less of a kill in my book. You can say the same for hits by tank guns or AT guns. Tanks could be fixed, so long as they didn't completely explode, even when the whole crew was killed they could and did just hose them out and put a new crew in it.

I just get the sense those stat blocks and quite convincing little summaries are not telling the whole story, but I gather I'm in the minority on that opinion.

 

[Navalwarrior]

Well, sitting in front of a game console, and having to pump multiple rounds into an "enemy" tank until it obliterates, removing it from being combat effective, is a far cry from reality. It really doesn't matter if a 23mm or 37mm projectile will or will not penetrate the rear deck engine cover at a given angle. The fact that the crew is experiencing a significant life altering event, with all the noise, smoke, flying debris, confusion, and fear surrounding them, is enough to cause them to rapidly egress. U.S. tank crews discovered they could cause German crews to "jump ship," thinking their vehicle was on fire, by hitting them with smoke. A round doesn't have to penetrate the fighting compartment to disable a vehicle enough to render it non-combat effective. Tiger 131 at the Bovington tank museum was abandoned by its crew after receiving numerous non penetrating hits. It's believed that the crew may have suffered some injury. Tiger 131 could've been later recovered by the Germans, repaired, and put back into service, and therefore wouldn't have been considered destroyed, but was nonetheless knocked out of action. Again, as has been previously pointed out in other posts, hitting the AFV itself isn't the only way to disable it. Tanks, like any other weapons platform, require combat support elements close by, that aren't so hard to break. Losing that stuff is just as effective.

Resp:
I don't do games, but I have a fair amount of experience in 'bomb damage assessment' or BDA. However, none of it was during WWII. The angle of attack often depends on what altitude the attacking aircraft is, to the vehicles on the ground. Almost all armored vehicles are most vulnerable from above.

 

[fubar57]

Interesting book....

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I was unaware the P-40 or at least some of them didn't have a gun camera. Excerpt from the book

 

[Schweik]

Some P-40s definitely did have gun cameras.

HD Stock Video Footage - Aromere loads and mounts the A-N Gun Camera in U.S. Curtiss P-40 and U.S. Lockheed P-38 Lightning aircrafts in the United States.

Does look like a good book.

 

[eagledad]

FYI

I couple of comments on the video. I believe the first camera is being serviced on a Curtis trainer, (Falcon?) not a P-40. Many of the gunnery passes shown are made by a T-6. Finally, while at first glance, it seems ingenious to mount the gun camera in the central pod beneath the guns on a P-38, in practice, the pictures taken many times were so blurred that no determination could be made as to the success or failure of he gunnery pass. (Gun vibration). This led to the mounting of the gun camera on the wing pylon on late model P-38s.

Eagledad

 

[fubar57]

From the "P-40 Warhawk Pilot's Flight Operating Manual"

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[eagledad]

Furbar

Thank you. I stand corrected.

Eagledad

 

[Greyman]

View attachment 550590​

Interesting bit about speed and dive angle for strafing attacks on vehicles and how it would relate to the idea of simply shooting up a tank's top armour.

I dug around for some British information and found relevant stuff in a study of 2nd Tactical Air Force ground strafing of motor transport and locomotives. Gun camera films from Dec '44 to Mar '45 were selected and only 750 were clear enough to discern all of the important details (this was only about 15% of those available. British gun camera film was notoriously bad quality).

- relatively steep diving angle of about 30 degrees (7% of attacks on MT), produced limited results as "it is impossible to press the attack home to a sufficiently short range; it is necessary to stop firing and to pull out at about 500 yards from the target, to avoid passing too close over flying debris, etc."​

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- medium dive angle of 10 to 20 degrees (I assume about 87% of attacks on MT), attack usually pressed home to well below 500 yards. "the proportion of these attacks with a closing range above 500 yards is less then 0.5%". Average closing range was 310 yards.​

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- very shallow dive of 0 to 10 degrees (6% of attacks on MT), "usually results in poor shooting. It is difficult to hold the sight down on to the target, when the aircraft is flying so near to the deck".​