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The Littlejohn adapter on the S-class cannon was enabling a 50% increase of the penetration (eg. at 400 yds it was 85 mm at 20 deg, plane flying at 350 fps). I'd like to see some dive-brakes on the tank buster carrying that, so he can execute a 60deg dive an harm the tanks through the thin upper armor. Even without the adapter.
The notion about a Hurri IID being too much a specialized A/C points at the fact that Germans were fielding far less tanks that they needed?
Now the story goes that some clever crews noticed that even without the adapter the APSV shot used with Littlejohn adapter had clearly better penetration than normal APCBC shot. In fact it that way it was much like Soviet "Arrowhead" APCR round.
But even with adapter 40mm S would have been a little marginal against side armour of a Tiger, but with Molins...
It's my understanding the Ju-87 was considered a better overall CAS platform. That's why the Hs-129 was phased out in favor of converted Ju-87s.
Fw190F-8/Pb1 - Panzerblitz 1 (Pb 1) system was developed consisting of six and, more often, eight R4M air-to-air missiles. They were adapted for tank destroying by mounting an 80 mm M8 type warhead for an armour penetration of up to 90 mm. Using the Pb 1 unit it was possible to destroy tanks at a 200 m distance with rockets being fired in salvo or in pairs. The only limitation was a maximum speed of 490 km/hr, not to be exceeded during missile firing. Up to February 1945 the Luftwaffe received 115 Fw 190F-8/Pb 1 planes.
Fw190F-8/Pb2 - Panzerblitz 2 (Pb 2) unit( the successor to the Pb 1 unit). The main difference between them was the replacement of the M8 warhead by a hollow-charge warhead able to penetrate up to 180 mm armour. Also developed was the new missile system Panzerblitz 3 (Pb 3) with a 210 mm hollow-charge warhead, but it was not operational by the end of the war.
The Panzerblitz I, based on the Hand held Panzer faust did not start development until after Normandy, and only after the Germans had suffered first hand from the concentrated assaults by Allied Rocket Firing aircraft. Up to that time it was their opinion that the gun armed tankbusters were as good as they could get. What limited these aircraft was their specialized nature....a gun armed a/c wasnt as versatile as a rocket armed aircraft against dispersed soft targets like Infantry .
So, it wasnt funding that held the Germans back.....they were already lavishing obscene amounts of capital on R&D.....it was enlightenment and also the sheer ability to produce an effective airborne air to ground rocket. Their attempts prior to 1943 had not been all that succesful.
Also, even though spin stabilization was inherently more accurate than fin stabilization, it wasnt decisively so. The allies had access to German R&D in this area after the war, yet spin stabilization did not completely eclipse fin stabilzation, to this very day. FS does have big advantages in terms of cost....its cheap to develop and build.
The German rockets were also far from effective in some respects. The original PBI developed after Normandy suffered from two serious faults....short range and slow speed, which, along with the small warhead, actually made it less effective than the Allied ordinance. The Panzerblitz II overcame two of those issues....range and speed, but retained a small warhead size. This immediately prevented the weapon from being an effective GP weapon, and required a greater level of crew proficiency. The smaller warhead meant a smaller lethal radius, a smaller lethal radius required better crew proficiency, and in 1944-5, better crew proficiency was a rare commodity in the LW.
The LW of 1944 was not really suited to the PBII. They needed a more GP weapon in which accuracy was not important....just point the thing in the general direction of the enemy and fire it. Killing things from the air is not the principal role of CAS aircraft....a far more important mission objective was suppression, and in the rocket firing world you do that better with firepower, not accuracy. The PBii might be aas much as twice as accurate as an M-8, but that just increases the instances of a direct hit from 1% of launches to 2%. If the kill radius of the 2.75" R4M rocket is 10yards (Im being generous here), and the 5" 60lb warhead is say 20 yards, your probability of a lethal hit hasnt really changed much, but your versatility using the german weapon (because of its warhead size and design) was more restricted.[/Q
Far from the truth .
What Lw needed DESPERATELY was something to kill tanks from the air. Soviet tanks. Something that could be used by their best CAS aircraft ,Fw190F8. For suppresion work Lw had excellent, very effective, cluster bombs not to mention the powerful but inaccurate 21cm and28cm rockets.They prefered the bombs.
About the killing radius, heavy tanks required direct hits for penetration of their armour
What Lw needed DESPERATELY was something to kill tanks from the air. Soviet tanks
For suppresion work Lw had excellent, very effective, cluster bombs not to mention the powerful but inaccurate 21cm and28cm rockets.They prefered the bombs.
About the killing radius, heavy tanks required direct hits for penetration of their armour
Which is a pipe dream that no combatant, from any nation was able to achieve during the war. The high kill rates from aircrafdt look impressive, until the actual details of individual actions are examined. According to Bergsytom, during the Kursk battle, there was an incident involving both of the HS 129 units....about 40 aircraft, that claimed the destruction of almost an entire Soviet Tank Brigade....about 70 tanks....in one day. Turns out just three tanks were destroyed.
What "tankbusting" aircraft could do was suppress them either by immobilizing them, killing or injuring the crews, or pining them to allow the ground formations to envelope, isolate and then destroy that armour
And the Soviets had the PTAB cluster bomb and an AT variant as well as well as the RS 82 rocket, all from 1941....much earlier than any of the ordinance you mention
You dont need to penetrate the frontal armour of a tank to knock it out or disable it. A paytern of 5 inch rockets within 30 yards of the target will deliver around 800 lbs of high explosive in a tight radius around the target. more than enough to set up a concussion wave that will generally kill or maim the crew, take of a track, rupture a fuel line, or a dozen other ways to stop that tank. Firepowert was the key to understanding how allied rocket attacks worked. this was less apparent in the German approach. German approach was not invalid, it eventually overtook the allied approach, but not in the context of the war itself. Further postwar development was needed to bring those late war German projects to fruition.
I see as usual your rebuttal has absolutely zero supporting evidence....nice
That depends on how you define accurate.
Hs-129Bs and Ju-87Gs fired at armored vehicles from a range of about 300 meters. I think a volley of FF rockets could hit a tank from that distance.
Your post, as usual, is full of insults ,arrogance, ignorance and discrimination
Your claims that german aircrafts did not destroy soviet tanks has 0 evidence. You keep repeating that caramel about soviet brigade at Kursk.
Soviet evidence show no kills but they dont explain why that brigade stoped. Do you want evidence? READ! Read SG2 s actions as fire brigade to stop soviets armor penetraions of the front. Read how ground attack forces were asking for support by cannon armed Stukas. There are photographic evidence as well.
Why they were risking their lives flying Ju87Gs in 1945? For no reason? They did not knew ? You know Lw was evaluating the results of newly introduced weapons in the field. READ!. They dicovered the shortcomings of early 30mm cannons, they evaluated the reults of 37 mm as well . Overclaiming of course did occur. But in contrast to the aerial victories, in attacks against tanks there were not only forward directors but often whole companies and battallions to witness the results
2)Obviously you dont have a clue about the situation faced by the Germans on the Eastern front! Simply There were no enough ground forces to "envelope,isolate and destoy that armour" .How easy every thing looks from a chair!German held a line of strongholds and usually soviets tanks broke the line in the interim space. German tanks and and heavy self propelled guns of korps level reserve were going to counter attack but there were never enough of them. Luftwaffe had to destroy tanks breaking in the rear of german front lines. Soviets had so many tanks that very often used them as infantry carriers as well!
3) Did i say that soviets did not had cluster bombs??? What that has to do with this discusiion? My point is that German did not need the rockets as supression weapons, they had the their cluster bombs. You are so anxious to devalue anything german that you say irrelevant things!