Sturmovik: how good was it really?

Juha · Feb 4, 2015

On Il-2
a) IIRC up to early 44 the produced Il-2s had wooden rear fuselages and maybe wooden outer wings too. So 190 with its four 20mm cannons could simply shot the rear part of Il-2 to pieces. One other way to down Il-2 was to attack from side shooting at wing root, AP rounds of MG 151 should be able to penetrate there if the angle wasn't too acute and ignite the plane because there was a fuel tank there. So Il was a hard but not an impossible nut to crack.
b) At first Il-2s were a problem to 20mm AA but using 50/50 mix of Minen and AP rounds that was overcome. Same to Finns, the number of Il-2 CLAIMS of the highest scoring 40mm and 20mm AA batteries were appr. identical.

Juha

Juha · Feb 4, 2015

LW's top Il-2 claimers Stormovik Killers

Shortround6 · Feb 4, 2015

tomo pauk said:
I'm not sure that we should use fighters as a measure for value of ground attack aircraft qualities. Use of fighters to do the ground attack should take a back seat to use of bombers for that work.

Ok, Russians had the SU-2

Powered, in most part, by the M-88 engine 1000-1100hp clone/development of Gnome-Rhone K/N.
Four forward firing 7.62 mg and one or two 7.62s for rearward defense. A rugged plane but not armored like an IL-2. Practical bombload not much different.

Needed escorting fighters to survive.

SB-2 bombers?

two forward firing 7.62 mgs, and while the bomb load is better this aircraft is rather similar to a Blenheim in performance in most versions. Use of under wing racks on later versions boost bomb load but costs performance.

DB-3?

Kind of like using a HP Hampden for close support

Leaves the PE-2

And now we are into the 2 small engines vs one big one and 3 man crew vs 1-2man crew and so on.

davebender · Feb 4, 2015

And that's all it needed to be. Might be a different story if Soviets tried to fight a mechanized army that included plenty of mechanized light flak.

tomo pauk · Feb 4, 2015

stona said:
But the reference was to 'CAS and short range interdiction' which was carried out largely by fighters for the RAF and USAAF and to a considerable extent, late war, by the Luftwaffe. The Soviets had a purpose built aircraft for the task (doctrine again) but the comparison with fighters tasked as fighter bombers is valid in this context I think.

Cheers

Steve

The comparison above was with Soviet-made fighters: 2-3 Laggs or Yaks for every IL-2 (ie. fighters needed to do the job of one Il-2).
The Germans used the Ju-87 as an attack aircraft, and persisted with Hs 129. The USAF have had the 'attack' aircraft category, eg. A-20, A-26, A-36, while initially wanted also the SBD (A-24) and SB2C (A-25), Vultee Vengenace (A-31). Italians wanted the Breda Ba.65 to do the similar job. In the RAF, the Lysander was to support Army.

dedalos · Feb 4, 2015

The Il2 is terribly overestimated.
It had strong armor but that s all. A bf 109 with single MG151 need careful aiming but scored heavily against the IL2, Fw s with 4x20mm had not problem at all,the Mk 108 30mm equiped bf 109s could completely destroy the Il2 at will.
In order to protect the IL2 s the soviets used their fighters like Human shields. They were placing their fighters just above the Il2s, sitting ducks for the higher flying german fighters. Also , since Human life was of no concern to them, the gunners were totaly unprotected.Can we discuss seriously about such choises?
The surviving rate of il2 improved durin 44/45 only because of the very few german fighters present on the Eastern front, the massive presence of soviet fighters, and the American long range fighters
Furthermore the Claims of the il2 units, very often have no touch with reality. Often claiming 2-3 times the Number of tanks availamble to the german unit they attacked
It was a CAS aircraft with liquied cooled engine, limited bomb load,unprotected gunner,very poor quality production, poor gun sights, with limited instumentation,
It s not true that it was invulnerable to 20mm and 37mm flak.It suffered very heavu casualties.
I wonder what history would say for the Il2 , if LW could keep 6-7 figter wings(as in Barbarossa) on the Eastern front for the entire war

tomo pauk · Feb 4, 2015

Shortround6 said:
Ok, Russians had the SU-2...
Needed escorting fighters to survive.

Il-2 also needed fighter escort to survive
But, agreed, it is a dead duck, like Devastator, Kate, Battle, Stuka, when going against half decent air defense.

SB-2 bombers? ...
two forward firing 7.62 mgs, and while the bomb load is better this aircraft is rather similar to a Blenheim in performance in most versions. Use of under wing racks on later versions boost bomb load but costs performance.

Not the best platform either. Ditch the bombardier so cannons can be installed? The rear gunner is there from day one. Flak will tear it to pieces, though, not just because the protection is at low level.

DB-3?
Kind of like using a HP Hampden for close support

Yep, not much of a sturmovik

Leaves the PE-2
And now we are into the 2 small engines vs one big one and 3 man crew vs 1-2man crew and so on.

[/QUOTE]

The Pe-2 have had the bigger bomb load than the Il-2, 600-1000 kg vs. 400-600 kg of the Il-2. One needs 10 Stormoviks to deliver what 6 Pe-2 were capable? 10 big engines vs. 12 small ones, also 10 pilots vs. six for the Pe-2 force.
Also it have greater speed, that precluded LW fighters racking scores on it, unlike what was the case for the Il-2. It did have rear gunner, the Il-2 won't get it until the uprated AM-38F is installed. The gun armament of the Pe-2 was lighter, though; the installation of 23mm cannons meant that max bomb load for the Il-2 is 400 kg.
Pe-2 also sported twice the range of the Il-2, and Soviet Union was a vast land. It was also better built, so the actual performance was far closer to prototypes than it was the case for the Il-2, that was 30-50 km slower than own prototype (TsKB-55P, same engine). More than 11400 Pe-2 was produced.
Granted, the Il-2 was better armored.

Too bad the Soviets did not adopted the Tupolev's '103', but with AM-38, into production.

Shortround6 · Feb 4, 2015

The 23mm cannon was a powerful weapon for ground attack, trouble is it weighed 68kg compared to the 20mm ShVAk's 40kg. Next problem is that that the ammo weighed 2 1/2 times as much per round. IL-2 with 150 rpg was carrying 140kg worth of 23mm ammo not including belt links.

You could stick it other aircraft but a pair of them is going to have an impact on bomb-load/performance no matter what you stick them in.
On the PE-2 you normally had two 7.62mgs or one 12.7mm mg and one 7.62mg firing forward. Adding about 100kg worth of guns and a bit over 100kg worth of ammo to the PE-2 means something is happening

Most any bombload over 600kg involved outside bombs.

bobbysocks · Feb 4, 2015

the russian front is where LW pilots racked up hundreds of kills...this specks volumes about the equipment ( with lack of armor ), pilot training, and tactics of the ussr.

michaelmaltby · Feb 4, 2015

The STURMOVICK was, like the T-34 tank, a representative Soviet design, reflecting design/manufacturing capabilities of the time and Soviet leadership's attitude to 'acceptable' losses.

tomo pauk · Feb 4, 2015

Soviets also designed the KV and IS series of heavy tanks, along with Pe-2 and Tu-2 bombers, that would look good in any armed force of ww2

@ Shortround6:
All fair points - the Pe-2 was a compromise that worked well.
Number of guns was two 12.7mm (three 12,7mm from 1942 on) and two 7,62mm (one 7,62 from 1943 on, with version Pe-2B), per Khazanov and Gordon.

Shortround6 · Feb 4, 2015

tomo pauk said:
Number of guns was two 12.7mm (three 12,7mm from 1942 on) and two 7,62mm (one 7,62 from 1943 on, with version Pe-2B), per Khazanov and Gordon.

Yes but one 12.7mm gun was fired out the top rear and one 12.7mm gun fired out the lower rear hatch. Sometimes a fifth gun was carried, a 7.62 that could be shifted from one side of the fuselage to the other for "beam" defense.

For strafing/ground attack you pretty much have the forward firing guns without the plane or crew-members performing acrobatics.

On an IL-2 the guns were a large part of the ground attack armament. On the PE-2 not so much. PE-2 wasn't going to handle ground fire as well either, (lots of 7.9mm bullets). Hitting the PE-2 would be harder as it was faster but the Germans had an awful lot of MG 34s and 42s and the reason for the high rate of fire was the AA role.

tomo pauk · Feb 4, 2015

I'll get back to a design what was IMO a better use of Mikulin's engines, the ANT-58, or aircraft '103', the predecessor of the Tu-2. The data about it and the '103U' (the 4-seater; '103' was 3-seater) can be accessed here (link), translation of a table from Shavrov's book; can be translated online (the '10ZU' is actually the '103U' - typo). Despite the high-alt engines, it's prototype was 40-60 km/h faster at SL than the prototypes of Il-2 powered by low-alt engine. 1000-2000 kg of bombs, 2 cannons + defensive MGs.
Please note the coolers buried in the wings, often found in Soviet designs of the era. Again, too bad it was not produced with AM-38 aboard.

GregP · Feb 4, 2015

Hi Tomo,

Of course you are right, my memory got the Mikulin and Klimov backwards. I checked with Joe Yancey and he said that he thought Paul Allen HAD a Soviet prop, but there was too much corrosion and they went with an American prop (from a DC-3) instead so they could fly. They are still looking for a Soviet prop that can be restored to running order, so far without luck.

Njaco, thanks for the possible source! I really appreciate that!

I have offered my claims list on here before and I think I posted it once, but any updates would be very good to get when I'm not preparing to teach a new course. That usually takes all the spare time, at LEAST for the first semester you teach it. After that, things settle down. So I'll be visiting that page when I get the chance. Again, much thanks ...

davebender · Feb 4, 2015

I'm under the impression KV series heavy tank was a lemon with terrible reliability record and a relatively weak 76mm main gun. Reliability was so poor even by Soviet standards that later versions had less armor in a futile hope that less weight would place less strain on the drivetrain.

Sure it looked invincible when confronted by German light tanks during 1941 but that situation changed completely when Germany began fielding medium tanks during 1942. Soviet's own evaluation admitted KV was far inferior to the German heavy tank (i.e. Tiger) when Germany finally began fielding heavy tanks.

Shortround6 · Feb 4, 2015

Once again, timing is everything.

In the Summer of 1941 there were around five hundred KV tanks .

The relatively weak 76mm main gun was actually the most powerful commonly mounted tank gun in the world in 1941, and was pretty much equal in power to the 75mm guns mounted in Grants, Shermans and a host of British tanks.

Again timing is key, what was a powerful gun in 1941 was distinctly 2nd rate in 1943/44, just as what was first rate in 1942 (German L48 gun) was 2nd rate in late 1944 and 1945.

Just what medium tank did Germany begin fielding in 1942?

MK IV had been fielded years before and the Panther wasn't fielded until 1943.

KV did have number of problems but then it was the first heavy tank built in large numbers (by the hundreds if not thousands when other heavies were being built by the dozen).

net_sailor · Feb 5, 2015

alejandro_ said:
A few weeks ago I was discussing about armament with a Russian guy. He could not understand why Luftwaffe pressed ahead with cannon versions of Ju 87 and Hs 129 instead of using PTAB bombs. They had a similar model for airfield attacks (SD4) but nothing against tanks/vehicles.

The SD4 bomb had an V shaped charge for cumulative effect, and could penetrate 60 mm armour on 60 deg. hit angle. Introduced on front units in March 1944 were stored in several types of containers. For example AB 500 container could carry 74 SD4 or AB 250 with 40 SD4. All these containers could be suspended under any type of aircraft with bomb rack. The best advantages of containers were quick suspension (all PTAB-s were manually loaded in bomb bays - this takes a lot of time) and good concentration of ammunition around the aiming point (circle or ellipse path).

alejandro_ · Feb 5, 2015

I'm under the impression KV series heavy tank was a lemon with terrible reliability record and a relatively weak 76mm main gun.

Lightened version was designed to improve manoeuvrability as well. No German tank could cope with a 76mm hit in 1941/42. For me the main error was to give so much priority to production over new models. T-34-85 and KV-85. could have been produced in 1943.

It was a CAS aircraft with liquied cooled engine,

Why do you assume that an air cooled engine could have been mounted with the same protection?

The Il2 is terribly overestimated.

Did the RAF/USAAF had something totally superior in 1941?

Shortround6 · Feb 5, 2015

Did the RAF/USAAF had something totally superior in 1941

The Russians were bit ahead of the curve here but the measure of an aircraft as a weapon is in it's target effect, not in a line by line comparison of features/performance.

In 1941 the IL-2 was sort of in a field of it's own. By 1942 the RAF/USAAF had no need for such an aircraft as they were using fighter-bombers for much of the same role/s.
The RAF/USAAF fighter-bombers carried more powerful armament than the Russian fighters and heavier bomb-loads. They had much less need for a single engine attack bomber/strafer. They had planned on single engine attack bombers, usually dive bombers but found them to be unnecessary (even if useful at times) in the long run.

net_sailor · Feb 5, 2015

alejandro_ said:
Why do you assume that an air cooled engine could have been mounted with the same protection?

Where did you found this statement? Air cooled engine no need such armour protection as liquid cooled engine cause there is no vulnerable wet coat on it. Soviets known that and tried to built-up an ASh-82 radial engine in Il-2, as reserve on case AM-38 shortages. Ił-2 M-82 flew quite well, and was equal in performances as standard plane, but AM-38 deliveries never stooped, so another type of engine would be an disturbance in mass production.

alejandro_ said:
Did the RAF/USAAF had something totally superior in 1941?

Dedicated tank-destroyer type was unique for VVS. Western air forces used more versatile planes such dive bombers, fighter-bombers or light bombers on this role. For USAAF there was attack category: A-20, A-24, A-36. In RAF an Fairey Battle and Hurricane IID served. All mentioned aircraft are from 1941-42 period. Did they were superior? It depends...
Almost all (except Hurricane) could carry more bomb load (most of them far above 400 kg on Il-2) and flew with more speed (because speed is good protection against ground fire). Not all were strong protected or with heavy gun equiped as Il-2, but it depends on different tactic (Western "hit and run" against Russian "circle of death").

Sturmovik: how good was it really?

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