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

[Shortround6]

This chart is, I believe, for APDS shot and "normal" AP shot will show a bit less tendency to ricochet. But you can see the huge difference going from 60 degrees to 70 degrees makes.
As Greymans post shows, the large majority of attacks, by the British at least and since everyone operated under the same laws of physics I doubt anyone else operated much differently,
the top armor, if flat, is going to be hit at around 70-80 degrees.

HItting the rear turret armor or rear hull armor was much more productive.

 

[fubar57]

A PATTERN FOR JOINT OPERATIONS: WORLD WAR I1 CLOSE AIR SUPPORT, NORTH AFRICA pdf

https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/b6f2982e-2d5c-4265-9c2a-23b14a3011dd/downloads/1brdhg0c1_23208.pdf

 

[fubar57]

AIR CORPS FIELD MANUAL TACTICS AND TECHNIQUE OF AIR ATTACK-1940 pdf

https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/b6f2982e-2d5c-4265-9c2a-23b14a3011dd/downloads/1brdhk12a_558804.pdf

 

[fubar57]

THE EMPLOYMENT OF STRATEGIC. BOMBERS IN A TACTICAL ROLE pdf. Just stuff for you guys to read

https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/b6f2982e-2d5c-4265-9c2a-23b14a3011dd/downloads/1brdhndgh_249123.pdf

 

[Dimlee]

Even a few hundred heavy strafers with the larger caliber guns could and did certainly have an impact, but the Soviets had at least ~ 6,000 aircraft flying with 37mm guns (not counting the P-39s), several hundred with larger experimental guns (45mm Yak-9K etc.) and 15,000 or more Il-2's with 23mm cannon.

Just to note that those 6,000 and 15,000 aircraft were not available at once. They were produced and deployed in different areas from the Caucasus to Karelia during several years.
Number of Il-2 in some periods - front line / reserve (recon modifications and Il-2s in naval regiments not counted):
19th Nov 1942 - 1,644 / 252
01st July 1943 - 2,815 / 278
01st Jan 1945 - 4,060 / 308

 

[GrauGeist]

Just to note that those 6,000 and 15,000 aircraft were not available at once. They were produced and deployed in different areas from the Caucasus to Karelia during several years.
Number of Il-2 in some periods - front line / reserve (recon modifications and Il-2s in naval regiments not counted):
19th Nov 1942 - 1,644 / 252
01st July 1943 - 2,815 / 278
01st Jan 1945 - 4,060 / 308

Often times, numbers without context can be terribly misleading.

Thanks for posting those figures, it will help put things into perspective.

 

[Schweik]

A PATTERN FOR JOINT OPERATIONS: WORLD WAR I1 CLOSE AIR SUPPORT, NORTH AFRICA pdf

https://img1.wsimg.com/blobby/go/b6f2982e-2d5c-4265-9c2a-23b14a3011dd/downloads/1brdhg0c1_23208.pdf

Thanks for posting this. Where did you find it? Just started reading and I already noticed an interesting passage:

"The greatest problem, according to the ground commanders, was the repeated attack by the supposedly obsolete German Stukas. Fighters would be called up for defensive cover, but because of the great distances, the fighter loitering time was brief. While the Allied aircraft were in the air, German dive bombers merely returned to their airfields and waited for the all-clear signal. Allied air forces could not provide enough continuity in their air cover.17 "

and also

" Fighter groups continued their offensive air missions against enemy air bases and air defense over friendly forces, but were not trained for strafing. Light bombers, originally designed for close air support work, proved useless against well-protected targets and were assigned night bombardment duties, which minimized enemy defensive fire from aircraft or ground antiaircraft artillery. The Allies had no effective ground attack aircraft until mid-December, when they brought in some modified P- 40s and Hurricanes that would serve as fighter-bombers. "

So this sounds a lot like what I was saying - Stukas were effective, so long as they didn't have to contend with fighters, whereas level bombers like Blenheims and the A-20s they originally brought in for the job (I assume these were the "light bombers" they refer to here) weren't good for CAS, so they had to use fighter-bombers instead.

 

[fubar57]

Weird, I was at the site yesterday to get the three links and now I get a 403 and 404 code. I must have back-doored it somehow yesterday

 

[Schweik]

Weird, I was at the site yesterday to get the three links and now I get a 403 and 404 code. I must have back-doored it somehow yesterday

Good thing I downloaded that PDF!

More interesting tidbits, this is all from during the Kasserine campaign right after Torch:

"The first intense encounters with German forces revealed a flaw in American support bombardment tactics. Their use of light and medium bombers for low-level close air support missions proved disastrous because of effective German light antiaircraft artillery. Arnold's fears about the new bombers were justified. The A- 20, B-25, and B-26 crews were forced to high altitude operations while in the middle of combat operations. While flying at a new altitude of 10,000 feet was not difficult, trying to hit targets using crude bomb sights and flying in formation proved impossible without intense training. The airmen had some succcess experimenting with the British fighter-bomber technique using bomb-carrying fighters to attack front-line targets. Fighter resources were overstrained, however, trying to provide escort for bombers and area defense for airfields and for the ground operations attacked by offensive-minded Axis air forces "

and

"With assistance from Rommel's German Desert Air Force and the Italian air forces, which had been forced back by the British in the east, the Axis kept effective control of the air over Tunisia. In the middle of the battle German Stukas laid a vicious attack on the 1st Armored Division's Combat Command D.* "

and

"air umbrellas overtaxed the limited resources and were, by their very nature, incomplete and ineffective. In addition, if the air support commander allocated his resources for a widespread defensive cover, he would be unable to concentrate his forces for the air superiority campaign. The only way to stop the enemy air attack, according to current Army Air Force doctrine, was to give it the highest priority and destroy aircraft in offensive air actions and attacks on enemy air bases. At Eisenhower's headquarters Kuter asserted that the German dive bomber attack on Combat Command D marked the only time American troops suffered greatly under destructive German air attack, even though Stukas attacked on several occasions. "

and

" Light bomber and fighter units tried to furnish defensive cover over retreating Allied troops. Success was mixed with failure. On one occasion fighter-bombers had appreciable effect bombing and strafing enemy infantry, guns, and tanks. On another occasion friendly ground fire was deadly to the air forces--on 21 and 22 February, Combat Command B antiaircraft fire turned back American flights, destroying five planes and damaging other friendly ground attack aircraft. "

 

[Greyman]

No one's saying that ground attack aircraft -- particularly Ju 87s -- can't be effective. It's the claim that dive-bombers are in any way 'tank-busters' that raises ... a bit of doubt.

 

[Milosh]

Weird, I was at the site yesterday to get the three links and now I get a 403 and 404 code. I must have back-doored it somehow yesterday

I can access the links.

 

[fubar57]

I can use the links but when I tried to access the site itself, I got the codes. There was some other interesting stuff there

 

[Schweik]

No one's saying that ground attack aircraft -- particularly Ju 87s -- can't be effective. It's the claim that dive-bombers are in any way 'tank-busters' that raises ... a bit of doubt.

Well, in this particular case they were mentioning specifically, a major incident in which a Combat command (roughly a regiment sized unit) of a US armor division suffered a significant setback due to an attack by Stukas at some point during the Kasserine pass campaign. This in turn contributed to a major shift in priorities by the Allied command in terms of how to deal with air support. It doesn't correlate specifically with losses of American tanks but I do think it nudges us in that direction a bit.

A few points which I think are already reinforced reading this:

Level bombers were ineffective at CAS in general
US light and medium bombers, including specifically B-25, B-26, and A-20, were too vulnerable to German AAA for use in the CAS role, so they were replaced with fighter-bombers
Stukas were noted as particularly effective, though how much of that is due to morale and things like forcing tanks to button up vs. actually K/O tanks is unclear yet

All of which matches what I had read in the day by day accounts in MAW and what I had posted previously in this thread.

 

[Schweik]

The article Fubar57 posted gives a nice overview but doesn't get into a granular enough level to tell us whether they were knocking out tanks. In that article, we hear a lot of about the morale effects (esp. infantry panicking and fleeing) and indirect effects (like being forced to button up)

It reminded me that most of the US fighter groups that were doing (shallow angle) dive bombing as well as the A-36 groups affixed sirens, often captured from Ju-87, so they could have the same terror effect. They mention an incident where Patton clashed with his British air commander after an air strike by Stukas which he said quickly knocked out all of his command posts and caused some panic with his infantry. No air support came to relieve them from the attack. Cunningham replied that it sounded like his unit wasn't ready for combat if they had been that rattled by an attack which only caused a handful of casualties... Eisenhower had to intervene.

But I was trying to find something close to the squad or platoon level to give more details.

443rd AAA Bn - World War II - Ousseltia Valley Operation

This gives some interesting details about the cat and mouse ... and cat game between the Luftwaffe and the AAA elements

The US brought something new to the game in the Western Desert after Torch which was the very high ubiquity of pretty effective 12.7mm HMG, and specifically their use of the various AAA 'Gun Motor Carriages' with dual or quad HMG emplacements on fast-rotating turrets. The article describes a kind of back and forth, where Stuka strikes cause serious problems initially, AAA support makes adjustements and begins to cause some casualties among the slow-moving Stukas (with fine details such as acquiring polarized sunglasses from the Navy to make it easier for gunners to see and track targets), the Luftwaffe adjusts in turn with special tactics (diversionary attacks from fighter bombers, the use of smoke to obscure the AAA from the bombers, recon flights to test AAA before a raid and so on). Toward the end of this page they describe an engagement with some Bf 109 (possibly Jabo's) in which 2 Bf 109s were shot down for the loss of 2 M-16 GMC vehicles, 1 KiA and 7 wounded.

 

[Schweik]

According to this interesting article on Stukas.... average (median?) lifespan of a Stuka airframe in early 1940, - 10.5 months. By 1941, 6 months. By mid 1942 on the Russian Front - 4 days of combat.

 

[pbehn]

Without air superiority dive bombers are extremely vulnerable, with air superiority you don't have to actually knock out the tanks as long as you hit everything else.

 

[Shortround6]

Without air superiority dive bombers are extremely vulnerable, with air superiority you don't have to actually knock out the tanks as long as you hit everything else.

Yes and no

It is poor comfort indeed to the infantryman who's fox hole has just been run over by tanks if tanks run out gas 1-2 miles past his foxhole. He wants the tanks stopped before they get to his foxhole, preferably in his sight and in flames so he knows it won't come back again.

high ranking officers can take a bit less personal view. As long as the the attack is stopped (or the retreat) they really don't care about a mile or two here or there, except perhaps if they lose too many of their men.

Dive bombing land targets also lost a lot of its appeal when the ground troops got better AA guns. Trading a dive bomber for a tank (1 for 1) might or might not be considered a good trade.
trading even a 1/2 dozen dive bombers for a destroyer is a good trade and the larger the ship the better the trade.

 

[Dimlee]

According to this interesting article on Stukas.... average (median?) lifespan of a Stuka airframe in early 1940, - 10.5 months. By 1941, 6 months. By mid 1942 on the Russian Front - 4 days of combat.

I wonder if this claim about 4 days is founded on the same "research" as another claim in the same article about 3,700 tanks eliminated by 58 pilots on Eastern Front.

 

[Schweik]

Without air superiority dive bombers are extremely vulnerable

This comment probably needs to be qualified. We know that SBD's carried out successful strikes without air superiority, sometimes without even escort fighters. In the Med, A-36 (P-51 dive bombers) also often carried out strikes without escort. Air superiority was basically contested most of the time and yet Stukas were able to carry out strikes, at least for a while. There does seem to be a point wherein they started taking too many losses but that may have been due to improving AAA.

with air superiority you don't have to actually knock out the tanks as long as you hit everything else.

This comment seems to hinge on the idea that either dive bombers couldn't hit a tank (but could hit other types of vehicles) or that a 500 or 1,000 lb bomb couldn't hurt a tank, both of which appear to be ludicrous upon first examination.

 

[Schweik]

I wonder if this claim about 4 days is founded on the same "research" as another claim in the same article about 3,700 tanks eliminated by 58 pilots on Eastern Front.

That 3,700 figure is probably based on adding up pilots claims, but indeed - who knows. We do know there are different types of records and data. Overclaiming is certainly a constant in WW2. And I don't know how much overclaiming ratios work out to be for tanks destroyed (or things that look like tanks... is a marder a tank? An Sd,Kfz 234?) but I doubt it was anywhere near 3,700 to 1...

As for the "lost after 4 days of combat" claim, again who knows. Stuka's certainly did start taking much heavier casualties on the Russian Front by 1943, to the extent that they started being phased out in favor of Fw 190 Jabos and specialist planes like the Hs 129. The 4 days of combat could be B.S. or it could refer to a specific period of action during a big battle (of which there were quite a few). I know some models of Soviet planes had quite astonishing loss rates per mission, the single seat Il-2 got down to the point of survival rates of a loss for every 13 missions or so during Battles like Stalingrad or Kursk. The A-20 wasn't much better in Soviet service per the same source (one per 19 missions), the two seat Il-2 one per 26 missions, and the Pe-2 one per 54 missions.

It wasn't unusual for both sides to run 3 or 4 sorties per day so certainly for the Soviet planes you could see them lost at that rate.

In the Med, Stukas were effective but did take heavy losses from 1943 especially to groundfire, and not just 'theoretical' losses because there are numerous cases of surviving pilot and crew being captured. More on that in a minute.