MOST UNDERRATED AIRCRAFT OF WWII?

[swampyankee]

Yeah, but the stall is about 10-20 mph lower with the Storch.
I do remember the story, now that I read your link.
Haven't thought about that in many a year.
Kinda poetic if you think about it. Every other type of plane got into at least one dogfight during the war, why not the spotters too! =)
Thank for posting that.


Elvis

NOTE: now rethinking that "dogfight" comment. C47 in a dogfight? Now I have to research that one!

The US developed, during WWII, three aircraft, the Stinson L-1, the Bellanca YO-50, and the Ryan YO-51, which were at least as capable, and complex, as the Storch. The Stinson was produced in small numbers, but modified civil aircraft like the Cub and similar aircraft from Aeronca and Stinson could do the vast majority of tasks the L-1 could manage much more cheaply.

 

[Elvis]

XBe02Drvr,

Didn't think about that...and yes, I have seen those wings with no covering...you make a very good point.

 

[Schweik]

Although I am not really a fan of it, since I kind of associate it with "war crimes" in the early years of the war and Spanish Civil War, I really think the Ju 87 series "Stuka" is one of the wars most underrated aircraft. I think it was extremely useful - I would actually argue decisive for the Luftwaffe in the beginning of the war and continued to play a very important role almost to the end, certainly well into 1944.

The way the standard postwar Trope goes, the Stuka was recognized as quite effective in the Spanish Civil War, in Poland, and in the Battle of France, but then ran into a brick wall so to speak in the BoB, after which it was recognized as obsolete.

These things are all basically true but there is more to the story.

When you look at the ground wars in Poland and France, and in the early days of Russia and the North African campaigns, the Stuka was absolutely vital in it's role at knocking out tanks. One thing which tends to be ignored when evaluating WW2 bombers or fighter-bombers, is their actual bombing effectiveness. Most level bombers in WW2 had fairly abysmal accuracy, requiring multiple scores of sorties to neutralize targets. By contrast, as a dive-bomber, the Ju-87 was one of the most accurate bombers available to any army during the war.

If you read about the nitty gritty details of many of the early tank and infantry battles of WW2, time and time again you see the Stuka coming to the rescue. German armored thrusts would begin to get bogged down due to powerful enemy tanks (like the Matilda, KV-1 or the SOMUA for example) or enemy Anti-tank guns or artillery, or well dug-in infantry... and then the Stukas would come in and wreck the enemy position (or break up their attack) and the Germans would resume their Blitzkrieg.

Often more accurate than artillery and considerably more powerful, they repeatedly changed the course of numerous battles in Russia, Egypt, France and Belgium.

It did fail to some extent in the Battle of Britain for two reasons - it was not particularly useful as a Strategic bomber, so of limited effectiveness (though much more useful for example in bombing specific targets like radar stations or airfields than say, flattening Coventry) and when flying in large formations at medium to high altitude, it proved to be very vulnerable to the large formations of Hurricanes defending Britain, requiring a strong escort to survive.

So after the BoB, so the story goes, the Stuka faded into the background. Only it didn't.

On the Russian Front, in the early years fighter opposition was far less effective and Stukas and other Luftwaffe bombers fairly routinely struck targets without escorts. Due to the usually Tactical nature of the fighting they continued to be very effective, and were still turning the tide of battles all the way through 1942 and on a smaller scale still in 1943 and even 1944. Of all the bombers available to the Germans and their minor allies (Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, Bulgarians and Finns) the Stuka was arguably the most effective. Only the pinpoint dedicated CAS planes like the HS 123 and the quite formidable HS -129 were perhaps more accurate.

In North Africa, Stukas were a bit more vulnerable than in Russia but if you look at the day to day mission results, they do not often seem to have suffered the kind of catastrophic losses you see in the BoB, while on the other hand they were still taking out tanks at key moments in many of the battles. They took losses in larger missions but not in the 20's and 30's, more like in the 2's and 3's. In other words really not much worse than the Bf 109s were suffering. Toward the end of the North African campaign in 1943 they started taking heavier losses when attacked by Spitfires P-38's and late model P-40's, but certainly they were still useful in ground combat through the middle of that year.

Both in Russia and in North Africa (and I think Italy? But not certain) cannon-armed tank buster Stuka variants were used with substantial success.

It is worth noting however that the Luftwaffe pilots hated escorting Stuka's due to their slow speed, which they felt made them more vulnerable. Similar complaints about Blenheims etc. led the DAF to switch over to using fighter bombers, relying on the faster or more heavily defended American bomber types once they became available (A-20, B-25, B-24). By 1943 the Germans too were starting to switch over to "Jabos" in the West, the most effective of which were undoubtedly the Fw 190 though they also got some use out of Jabo Bf 109's and Bf 110's.

One other useful trait though became more obvious in both Russia and North Africa - part of why losses were not so devastating as in the BoB was that in smaller engagements, and / or when allowed to break out of formation and evade pursuers, Stukas proved to be pretty good at surviving. Droning along in a tight formation, they really lacked sufficient defensive firepower for safety, and when pounced on by packs of Hurricanes in the BoB, they took heavy losses.

But the big dive bomber with it's huge wings was a very tight-turner, and being stressed for dive bombing could withstand high G maneuvers. In multiple engagements in Russia and the Med, in a purely evasive mode (albeit often after jettissoning bombs, sometimes over their own troops) Ju-87s proved to be pretty good at desperately twisting and turning to avoid destruction. Also once the Ju-87D emerged, they had pretty hard-hitting guns of their own with which to fight back. Rather like the American SBD, they could sometimes turn the tables on attackers.

Finally as dive bombers Stukas also played a particularly useful role in maritime operations. Many of the convoys which precariously fought their way to Malta for example were nearly smashed, with many ships sunk in particular by Stukas The Ju-88 had a more useful range, and was less vulnerable to fighters thanks to it's high speed, but did not get as many lethal hits on ships, or sink as many ships. And here too, the Stuka did not suffer the kind of crippling losses seen in the BoB.

The Stuka was a hammer that the German panzer generals could use to flatten enemy strong points right up to the tipping point of the war around the winter of 1942 / 43 and was still useful quite a bit beyond that. I think the impact of this aircraft tends to be underestimated. Therefore I grudgingly nominate it for one of the most underrated aircraft of the war.

S

 

[Schweik]

I also want to reiterate my belief that the Zero is one of the most underrated aircraft of the war.

We tend to focus so much on air battles in 1944 or 1945, but by then, was there really any chance that Germany or Japan, let alone Italy, had any chance of winning the war? The crucial parts of the war were the beginning in 1940-41, when the Axis was surging to victory everywhere, then the middle (1942 and into early 1943) when the Allied resistance stiffened and they started to take the offensive.

But I don't believe the Japanese would have ever posed a true existential threat of any kind or taken over nearly the whole Pacific Rim if it hadn't been for the Zero. The A6M series fighters were quite unusual in that, as both a carrier fighter and (for the time) a very long ranged fighter, they were more than capable of handling any enemy opposition they encountered. Most carrier fighters in the war were either a little bit inferior (F4F) or very inferior to land based types (Fulmar, Gladiator etc.)

That isn't to say that Allied pilots didn't have a chance. We all know how in 1942 Allied pilots, especially flying F4F and P-40 fighters, and later P-38s, began to figure out the weaknesses in the A6M (and Ki-43) fighters and gradually learned to exploit them with the strengths of their own aircraft. In hindsight of course this seems decisive, But this was by no means an easy or immediate process. The A6M was still giving trouble to Spitfire, Hellcat and Corsair pilots in 1943 and 1944. This to me speaks strongly of the extreme effectiveness of the original design.

While it's true that Japan suffered many fatal flaws in it's aircraft industry, perhaps the most fatal of which was the inability to really develop their engines, and they no doubt waited far too long to develop effective new fighter types like their Ki-61 series, Ki-84 and N1K1 etc., I think that the Pacific War simply would not have been the contest it really was in 1942 and 1943 if it had not been for the Zero. Without the Zero in fact I believe the Pacific War would have reverted to the mopping up operation it became by 1944 much earlier, probably in 1942.

The Japanese had other weapons in their arsenal besides the Zero- several other effective planes like the Ki-43, the D3A and the G4M, their long lance torpedo, night fighting training, huge battleships, very strong highly motivated ground troops and so on, and their momentum probably would have led to many conquests in the early months of the war regardless, but without the Zero the Americans and their allies the UK, Australians, New Zealanders, Chinese and so on would have seized air superiority much sooner.

S

 

[Shortround6]

The Stuka was a hammer that the German panzer generals could use to flatten enemy strong points right up to the tipping point of the war around the winter of 1942 / 43 and was still useful quite a bit beyond that. I think the impact of this aircraft tends to be underestimated. Therefore I grudgingly nominate it for one of the most underrated aircraft of the war.

The Stuka gets a lot credit that should have gone to the German artillery. In Poland there were 340 Stukas available. German Artillery was generation ahead of the Polish artillery both in gun types and fire control. A standard German (if there was such a thing) infantry division carried 230 tons of artillery ammo as it's basic load, well above what a Polish division could carry with their lack of trucks. German resupply was better due to the higher number of trucks (even if nowhere near fully motorized). The Germans had 68 tubes per infantry division (not counting the 75mm and 150m infantry guns) compared to 48 tubes for a Polish infantry division and the Germans were using 105mm howitzers (mostly) compared to the Polish 75mm guns.
This advantage carried over into the French campaign. Being able to call in artillery fire using radios was huge advantage over field phones in a war of movement.

The Stukas did do a lot of good work but all too often they get the lion's share of the credit for the "firepower" advantage the Germans had in the early campaigns.

 

[Vincenzo]

actually german infantry division had, the 1/9/39, at the best 48 howitzer (not counting infanterie guns): 36 leFH-18 and 12 sFH-18 (ever at best few had old WWI era howitzer)

 

[Schweik]

Shortround I think you are overstating the case for the German artillery.

While Poland - and to some extent really, none of the Allies were truly prepared for the War Germany brought to their doorstep, and Germany did indeed have more and better artillery than the Polish and vastly better organization than the French - heavy artillery was not as rare as you imply, nor is effective use of it. The English artillery was fairly well organized (with radios and forward observers) and their QF 25 pounder was quite effective, and the Soviet, while initially disorganized and inadequate, very quickly reached and surpassed the German both in terms of quantity of available ordinance, and also the power - 152mm and 122mm guns, 122 rockets and 120mm mortars becoming very ubiquitous by 1942. Even in 1941 each Soviet infantry division already had a battalion of 122mm guns.

And of course the American artillery was better than the German both in terms of logistics, accuracy and (especially) response time. And they had plenty of 105 and 155mm guns.

But there are few artillery guns indeed with the power of a 550 lb bomb. When it comes to armor, even 105mm howizters are often unable to destroy medium tanks. You really need 12-15 cm weapons. If you look at the major battles in the French campaign, for example at Arras, Hannut or Abbeville. The Germans could knock out the more heavily armored Allied tanks (Matilda, SOMUA, Char B1, or 2C) with their 88 mm AA / AT guns - especially in defense, but in offense it was the Stuka which smashed the enemy tanks. The Germans in fact used 105mm howitzers against Char B1 and SOMUA tanks at Abbeyville but found them almost as ineffective as their 37mm AT guns.

What the French and British lacked was an aircraft which could hit with pinpoint accuracy on the battlefield and destroy German armor, artillery or strongpoints such as or for example, emplacements of their lethal 88mm guns. The Germans conversely could break almost any strongpoint with their Stukas. The Soviets had their own answer in the Il2, but it probably took a little longer to start bearing fruit as a weapons system (adding the rear gunner helped a lot with survivability). The Anglo-American answer to this was the fighter bomber and they did have fairly good accuracy but not as good as a dive bomber.

My argument is not so much that the Stukas were (in part) the key to the early German successes - I believe they were, but that is common knowledge. I'm pointing out that the Stuka remained effective for more than three years past the Battle of Britain and continued to confer a major advantage up until the point that the Germans truly lost the ability to seize even temporary Tactical air superiority.

S

 

[Shortround6]

If anything I may have understated the case for German artillery.
Few, if any, nations artillery arm stayed static during WW II.
And in many countries there was a marked difference between 1st line units and 2nd line when it came to equipment. Perhaps less so when it came to doctrine/tactics?
By the time the American's show up with their artillery park the Stuka had pretty much ceased flying by daylight.
British artillery in France in 1940 was a mixed bag. There were few of the modern 25 pdrs. Most units having the 18/25 pdrs. A few had 18 pdrs and 4.5 in howitzer. Heavy artillery, what there was of it, consisted of WW I guns with rubber tires and brakes suitable for motor towing. By the end of the war the British had one of the best, if not the best, systems of fire control and command that existed, backed up with large amounts of ammunition. Number of radios in the division's artillery net had either tripled or quadrupled.
Germans went from having a good number of guns and a good amount of ammunition to shortages of both. While they may have started the war with a good fire control system it didn't get a lot better during the war and ammunition shortages hampered later operations.
Russian artillery also fluctuated widely.
And it rarely, if ever, had the flexibility of western artillery, no matter how good it was at pre-planned fire missions.
The Stuka was over publicised by the Germans as part of the propaganda war in the early days. And like many airplanes it depended on well trained pilots to achieve good results. As the quality of pilots declined so did the effectiveness of dive bombers.

 

[Schweik]

You are probably forgetting that the Americans were in action against the Germans in early 1943, the Stuka was very much in the game at that point - in fact they proved very effective against American forces, and in particular against American Artillery parks (as well as tanks) during the Battle of Kasserine Pass.

By the end of the Tunisian campaign and into the invasion of Sicily American artillery had improved in terms of efficiency to surpass the Germans and the British. It was the strongest part of the American war machine.

But they still made extensive use of fighter bombers, just as the Germans continued to use Stukas, as well as increasingly "Jabos".

One of the reasons for the changing fortunes of the Anglo-Americans in North Africa was due to their going after Axis supply convoys and aircraft, forcing the Luftwaffe more on the defensive and leaving fewer fighters available to escort Stukas.

S

 

[wuzak]

But there are few artillery guns indeed with the power of a 550 lb bomb. When it comes to armor, even 105mm howizters are often unable to destroy medium tanks. You really need 12-15 cm weapons.

Not many tanks carried 12cm-15cm guns, but they still destroyed other tanks.

 

[michael rauls]

There were so many planes in ww2 that dont get there due its hard to pick one but i would like to throw the A 20 into the mix as under rated.
Actually outright ignored might be a better discription for the attention the A20 gets.

 

[Stig1207]

I am left with the impression, reading this and the sister thread, that just about every plane that flew was either:
a) underrated
b) overrated
C) or in some cases, all of the above!

 

[michael rauls]

I am left with the impression, reading this and the sister thread, that just about every plane that flew was either:
a) underrated
b) overrated
C) or in some cases, all of the above!

I guess it all depends on who's doing the rating

 

[Shortround6]

Not many tanks carried 12cm-15cm guns, but they still destroyed other tanks.

The mechanism of destruction is different.
However in 1939/40/41 the numbers of tanks that were "shell proof" ( tank would survive a 75mm HE hit as opposed to an AP projectile) was not that great.
The lighter tanks were considered "splinter proof" (crews and vital tank parts were protected against rifle/machinegun bullets and splinters/fragments from shells/bombs). The dividing line is about 30mm. 75mm HE shells could still get mobility "kills" on the larger tanks by blowing tracks/road wheels off.
Artillery fire can also disrupt an armor attack without "killing" a very high percentage of the tanks involved.
Some early tanks used radios with rather vulnerable antennas for their radios and many early tanks had rather poor vision when closed up. Some used signal flags to relay orders. Trying to spot and shoot defenders when artillery explosions were obscuring the line/s of sight was a problem.
And charges/advances by tanks without accompanying infantry generally did not end well for the tanks whatever the initial gains were.

The larger artillery shells (around 12cm or up) could destroy some of the "middle" (a rather flexible term I know) tanks even using HE, or at least render them unusable or incapacitate the crew.

This was the most common Polish armored vehicle

You don't need a 550 or 1100 pound bomb to destroy it. A few dozen such bombs dropped into a concentration of such vehicles will certainly disrupt any attack or defensive position but then so will a few hundred artillery shells.

 

[rochie]

I am left with the impression, reading this and the sister thread, that just about every plane that flew was either:
a) underrated
b) overrated
C) or in some cases, all of the above!

Bingo !

in most polls for best/worst its funny that the P-51, Spitfire, BF 109 and FW 190 all seem to be near the top of both, go figure !

 

[Schweik]

Not many tanks carried 12cm-15cm guns, but they still destroyed other tanks.

Do you really have trouble understanding why? let me help:

Investigate the difference between HE and AP shells in defeating armor
Investigate the rate of direct hits to vehicles in a typical artillery strike vs. direct fire

That should nudge you along toward enlightenment.

S

 

[Schweik]

There were so many planes in ww2 that dont get there due its hard to pick one but i would like to throw the A 20 into the mix as under rated.
Actually outright ignored might be a better discription for the attention the A20 gets.

A20 was definitely one of the best Allied bombers. Fast first and foremost, maneuverable for a bomber, pretty good bomb load for the time, decent range, well protected with armor and self sealing tanks, and heavily armed. Effective as a level bomber, a strafer, or a torpedo bomber- and a pretty good night fighter. They were one of the most survivable Allied bombers (mainly due to speed), and a major asset in the Pacific, the Med, and in Russia.

It's one of those few aircraft that everyone seemed to like and managed to do damage to the enemy for a long time in the war, proving quite versatile for example when re-invented as a strafer and a skip-bomber for the Pacific Theater (which was also done in the Med).

Though the flight envelope and strengths weaknesses are a bit different, I would consider the A-20 roughly the Allied equivalent of the Ju 88.

I think it's probably discounted or ignored for the same reason as a lot of the others, it was an early-war design that had largely been replaced by 1944-1945, and that seems to be the only part of the war that gets attention.

S

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Let's tone it down...

 

[Schweik]

The mechanism of destruction is different.
However in 1939/40/41 the numbers of tanks that were "shell proof" ( tank would survive a 75mm HE hit as opposed to an AP projectile) was not that great.
The lighter tanks were considered "splinter proof" (crews and vital tank parts were protected against rifle/machinegun bullets and splinters/fragments from shells/bombs). (snip)
This was the most common Polish armored vehicle
View attachment 511071
You don't need a 550 or 1100 pound bomb to destroy it. A few dozen such bombs dropped into a concentration of such vehicles will certainly disrupt any attack or defensive position but then so will a few hundred artillery shells.

The Polish Army was not known for their armor, this is well established. They were struggling to catch up from post WWI era technology and really hadn't gotten there yet. Yes Polish "tankettes" were certainly vulnerable to even medium artillery (75mm and 81mm) but they were also fairly easy to destroy using a variety of means, from grenades to anti-tank rifles and even heavy machine guns. They were certainly well within the kill envelope of the lighter tank and AT guns (37mm on down, for the most part) that the German army had available. That isn't to say that the Polish army was a total pushover- the Germans did suffer ~ 10,000 casualties during their conquest of Poland and they had Soviet help lets not forget. I wouldn't call that negligable. But the Poles had mostly infantry and lighter kit.

We also did see later in the war how good Polish soldiers were, notably in the Air War as I believe they one of the best performing fighter squadrons in the RAF depending on how you measure such things. Not to mention their role in securing ENIGMA equipment and so on. Lets also not forget that most of the German army wasn't not fully mechanized with trucks or half-tracks, and in fact most German artillery was being moved around through horse-drawn rigs to the end of the war.

While I certainly wouldn't argue that German artillery wasn't an important part of their army, in fact I would definitely acknowledge that their artillery was good, I don't think they were unique in that respect. Yes they had different strengths and weaknesses in their artillery than say, the English, Americans and Soviets, but the latter three powers also had formidable artillery as we know from the large number of German and other Axis troops, equipment and material that they destroyed with it and the key role it played in numerous battles. For the Soviets see the isolation and destruction of the 6th Army at the end of Stalingrad.

My point was that in the early battles, as well as later on, it was in fact air assets, and specifically the Ju 87, that helped the German army solve the problem of larger and heavier allied tanks, the type that you could not easily destroy or disable with a 37mm or even 50mm AT gun, let alone with a 75mm howitzer. The Matilda, SOMUA, Char-B1, and KV-1 tanks in the early years. As I pointed out previously, if you read accounts of many of the key battles of the early years of the war, the Ju 87 was indeed the key factor at many crucial points.

Nor did that end with the Battle of Britain. As I pointed out, the Stuka was still playing a very important role in North Africa and Russia in 1942 and 1943, again as I noted, including at Kasserine Pass, as well as during many of the campaigns by Rommel against the British Commonwealth forces. The USAAF changed fighter tactics in part to better prevent German CAS missions from wreaking havoc on American armored formations and artillery parks.

Finally while it's true that even light or medium artillery can cause problems for armored units by doing things like forcing crews to button up, & knocking off radio antennas, semaphore flags or even tracks, these would not for example necessarily prevent them from destroying German tanks and armored vehicles that tried to pass through their position subsequent to an artillery strike. It was generally considered that heavy artillery, meaning 12 - 15 cm on up, was required to significantly damage medium or heavy tanks and even then it often didn't work (in part due to accuracy).

What made the Stuka somewhat unique was that it was one of very few "true" dive bombers that remained in use as a tactical support weapon for land armies through the war. The Americans and Japanese had true dive bombers for use against naval assets, where a high loss ratio was acceptable thanks to the potentially very high value of the targets - and both the D3A and SBD bombers were very important planes in their own right, the Stuka was one of the very few that was available for a land army. Many aircraft described as dive bombers in the war had limited dive angles because either they lacked dive brakes or their airframe couldn't handle the stresses of recovering from an 80-90 degree dive. As a result they were simply not as effective.

So again, somewhat grudgingly, and I know as a bit of an outlier from the consensus in this forum as usual, I would continue to assert that the Stuka was in fact an underrated aircraft, at least for the majority of the war that took place after the Battle of Britain. I have yet to see any argument that convinces me otherwise.

S

 

[Schweik]

I should add that the Americans did make some use of the SBD as a land based bomber (as the A-24) but they didn't have a lot of them in play and didn't get as much use out of them. The Allison-engined P-51A (A-36) dive bomber was one of the many that was limited in it's dive angle and eventually after they had a few break up they stopped using the dive brakes altogether IIRC.

The Soviet Pe-2, German Ju-88, and various fighter bombers used by both sides were considered pretty accurate but they did not dive down at true dive bomber angles in most cases, so their accuracy was not as good as the Stuka.

S