Tank busters for the air forces?

[parsifal]

Pat II of II

4) How effectively alleid rockets worked against tanks is proven by the statistics of their own armies. German on the eastern front discovered that even small bombs had to land very near to the tank to disable it. Actually Panthers and Tigers often were surviving near explosions by artillery shells. Also imobilising a tank is not enough, it still can fire and both armies were expert at recovering

In fact I would say the germans were better at AFV recovery than the russians. but large numbers of German tanks were nevertheless lost because there was not time to undertake a recovery operation, whereas the ruaasians could often simply leave the tank and recover it later.

Whats your point about near explosions from artillery shells? and individual shell wont set up the compression wave and wont have the destructive power of 8 x 5" rockets landing withing 30 yards of your tank. Rockets with near misses are still only going to be about 5% effective. I dont know how that compares with guns ofr artillery but it suggests the main reason for firing them has little to do with knocking out the tank directly

5)Because i have enough with your detractions and insults towards me about not providing evidence i will suggest you some bibliography
a)Aggrersor:Tank Buster vs Combat Vehicle b)Fw 190 , Hs 129, Ju87 ,Bf 110 in action c) Stuka Pilot by Just d) Hans ulrich Rudels Memoirs ( I imagine your answer : He was a liar and a coward)

Why would I label him a liar and a coward? he was a brave soldier, used by the nazis for political purposes but he certainly achieved a lot.

But quoting sources in such a general sense does not do a lot to prove you have a good basis on which to make such claims. Further all the sources you have quoted are German, with no attempt made in your bibliography to achieve balance or look at the contrary view. Bergstrom uses all these sources in his bibliography, as well as looking at soviet sources. In this way i think he achieves a far more balanced conclusion than perhaps you will do by reading the accounts of just one side.

e) Panzer Aces 1,2 3 f) Armored battles of the Waffen SS g) Infantry aces of the eastern front h)Otto Carius memories j)Guns of the Reich k) Luftwaffe weapons l) Eagles of the third reich and quite a few more that i am boring writing .

These are all good sources. i have read most of them. Unfortunately they suffer from what most "biographical" sources suffer from.....they are not objective or balanced in their assessments. A

I write nothing from my imagination. You do have many knowledges but your biasment blinds you and you insult any one with diferent opinion..

I really am sorry if you have that view of me, but you are wrong. The types of books you read are good for what they are, but the problem is not the books, its the way you are using them. by having such a one sided and lop sided Biliography, you are in fact feeding your imagination and gaining a false view of how the fighting on the eastern front developed.

I would suggest you put some balance into your reading list to try and get some better idea of what was happening. if possible, I would also talk to any survivors of that war that you can. If you have, and still come to the same conclusions, then fair enough. I have gone through that excercise, i can assuere you, and came away with a view differnt to your own. Maybe that makes me biased, but it doesnt make me blind, and it doesnt make me rude. it makes me different to what you think should be so.

 

[parsifal]

Anton Flettner moved to the USA during 1945 and became chief designer for Kaman Aircraft. His WWII era Fi-282 helicopter evolved into the Vietnam era H-43. If you look at pictures of both helicopters it's easy to see the linage. This gives us a reference as to where Fi-282 helicopter development is heading if Anton Flettner receives adequate funding.
...............................................................................................................................

The historical Fi-282 was approved for service with the German Navy during 1942. However the program received crumbs for funding. Flettner never had more then 120 employees and that was during 1944 after the Heer placed an order for 1,000 helicopters. Let's get the Heer interested during 1942 and give the program serious funding.

Historically the more powerful Fi-285 was approved after the Heer order. This involves replacing the 160hp Bramo Sh-14A engine with a 240hp Argus As.10 engine to increase aircraft payload.

This gives the Heer an aerial tank buster which is inherently more accurate then a fixed wing aircraft. It's also more survivable as it can fly nape of the earth and pop up for a shot.

The Fi-285 has enough payload to carry a 3cm M103 cannon or FF rockets.

Thats a very intersting suggestion, and worth looking at in my opinion

 

[davebender]

Historical Fi-282. Pilot in front and observer in back.

Proposed changes for Fi-285.
- More powerful engine.
- Delete observer.
- Pilot needs a gunsight. Perhaps also an enclosed cockpit to protect him from weapons blast.

The Fi-285 can lift a 3cm Mk103 cannon but can it withstand the recoil? I assume the cannon would be mounted under the fuselage.

FF rockets have no recoil so they should be no problem. Just install a rocket pod under the fuselage.

 

[Njaco]

Ok guys, lets stop the name calling and sarcasm right here. I don't want this thread closed for stupid reasons.

Parsifal, I had posted this in the "This Day in Europe ...." thread a few years ago and I can't really remember the source but my question is this: If this stopping of Russian armour is a myth or not quite what it seems why does there seem to be so much info about this, such as personeel and air groups involved?

8 July 1943
The Russian attack began in the morning, moving west in an attempt to cut the Begorod-Oboian highway. Along the woods north of Belgorod, Gruppenkommandeur Hptm. Bruno Meyer, flying a Hs 129B of IV./SG 9, spotted moving Russian tanks and large concentrations of troops in the attack on the German flank. Meyer radioed to base that he saw at least 40 tanks and, "....dense blocks of infantry, like a martial picture from the middle ages." and ordered the rest of his Gruppe up from Mikoyanovka to assault the Russian attack.

The Luftwaffe immediately scrambled 4 squadrons, a total of 64 Hs 129s, to Meyer's coordinates. Using high-velocity 30mm cannons, the planes swept the forset, pumping shells into the rears of the tanks. Within a few minutes, half a dozen tanks were destroyed and burning. Fw 190 fighters joined the fray, strafing infantry and bombing wherever the Soviets were clustered. Follow up attacks by squadrons led by Major Matuschek, Oblt. Oswald, Oblt. Dornemann and Lt. Orth along with attacks on the infantry by Major Druschel's Fw 190 jabos, soon destroyed the Russian brigade and they retreated into the woods. The Soviet armoured assault had been blunted solely through air power.

 

[JoeB]

1. 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.

2. 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.

1. Some believe that the high powered gun-equipped AT a/c like Ju-87's with 37mm or the Hs-129 with 30mm were much more effective than Allied rocket/bomb armed fighter bombers against tanks, but it does seem to be questionable. The highly rates of overestimation in claims by US and British fighter bombers against German tanks in the Northwest Europe 1944, and those of US a/c in the early stages of the Korean War as well, have long been well documented by English language operational research reports by the British and Americans themselves. The actual performance of German AT a/c v Soviet tanks OTOH hasn't been as well documented in the West, and it seems there's more tendency to accept the German antitank claims at face value or at least assume they are not as massively exaggerated. But perhaps they were.

Another example is from a Soviet report of the 3rd Guards Tank Brigade from July 6-14 1942, a year before Kursk, stating that German air attacks constituted about 1/2 the attacks on the brigade's tanks (40% were by AT guns, 9% by German tanks and 1% by infantry) but the brigade suffered no permanent tank losses at all to those air attacks.

A general Soviet report about air v tank, also from 1942, concluded (much the same as the Germans concluded v Allied air attacks ca 1944) that German air could disrupt Soviet armored operations overall, but generally inflicted small or neglible permanent losses of Soviet tanks.

2. I agree that a/c AT weapons didn't have to penetrate the *frontal* armor of tanks to be effective, but I don't agree that rockets would often score even mobility kills on tanks without actually hitting them. Back to Soviet experience, the 3rd Guards TB report gave an example of a medium bomb near miss less than 2m from a KV-1 which failed to permanently destroy it. A general report concluded that bombs had to land closer than that to reliably knock it out. German tests of the SC-250 GP bomb gave somewhat more optimistic results: test animals were killed inside captured T-34's within 6m of such a bomb. But a rocket with a small fraction the explosive of a 500#-class bomb would be very unlikely to kill a tank crew by blast effect without hitting it directly. And the Brits concluded that operational CEP's of rockets in 1944 was around 60m, hit rates v tanks around .5%. The USAF came up with considerably smaller CEP and much higher hit rate (1 rocket in a salvo of 6 would hit more often than not, it was predicted) in tests in reaction to complaints of rocket ineffectiveness v T-34's in 1950. But the latter were tests, not actual combat results v AA fire, v. obscured targets and so forth. In the latter tests standard HVAR's (with 5"/38 common shell as warhead) did catostrophic damage to T-34's if they hit directly (the crash development of the 6.5" HEAT rocket in summer 1950 wasn't really necessarily, it seemed) but near misses were only considered effective if close enough to cut a track, very close.

Of course fluke rocket near misses further away could do disabling damage with fragments...even .50 caliber API could KO tanks as documented in both WWII and Korea. That wasn't a complete myth; it just didn't happen very often.

This link is a long document in Russian about Soviet and German a/c v one anothe's tanks in WWII with lots of interesting excerpts from Soviet reports.
Îñíîâíàÿ çàäà÷à - âûáèâàòü ó ïðîòèâíèêà òàíêè - 0001.htm

Another albeit short and unusual episode calling into question German AT a/c effectiveness is the campaign in Tunisia. Here, unusually compared to the rest of the war, the Germans had air superiority over the battlefield for significant periods in the presence of US armor. The pattern was a familiar one: the attacks were a serious menace to soft skinned vehicles, for example an advancing US arty battalion 'destroyed as a fighting unit' by German air attack around Sidi Bou Zid in the Kasserine campaign. And retreating general vehicle columns were vulnerable. But US tanks completely destroyed by German air attacks were apparently few, and the air attacks included Hs-129's as well as dive bombers and fighter bombers.

Joe

 

[JoeB]

I had posted this in the "This Day in Europe ...." thread a few years ago and I can't really remember the source but my question is this: If this stopping of Russian armour is a myth or not quite what it seems why does there seem to be so much info about this, such as personeel and air groups involved?

Since only German units and personnel are named, that's apparently a claim by the Germans. This is the whole point. We know and have long known that Western airmen's claims against tanks in this era were typically highly exaggerated, much more than air to air claims typically were. We know this because British and US operational research reports found it by examining enemy (German, later North Korean) tank wrecks and comparing them to claims. Why would we assume German airmen's claims against tanks were so much more accurate? And there does seem to be countervailing evidence that the particular attack you mention did not destroy many Soviet tanks in fact.

But, the part about the Soviet tank formation retreating might be true. A tank unit didn't have to suffer heavy outright losses to air attacks to retreat to cover. This was also repeatedly shown on the Western front, and later in Korea. The German and NK tanks facing Allied/UN air superiority avoided large scale operations in good visiblity without cover (like trees) and their operations were also severely hindered by losses of soft skinned support and resupply vehicles, even though outright losses of tanks to attacking a/c were far less than what the opposing airmen believed.

Joe

 

[tyrodtom]

Historical Fi-282. Pilot in front and observer in back.
View attachment 200328

Proposed changes for Fi-285.
- More powerful engine.
- Delete observer.
- Pilot needs a gunsight. Perhaps also an enclosed cockpit to protect him from weapons blast.

The Fi-285 can lift a 3cm Mk103 cannon but can it withstand the recoil? I assume the cannon would be mounted under the fuselage.

FF rockets have no recoil so they should be no problem. Just install a rocket pod under the fuselage.

Dave do you realize the top speed of that chopper is only about 90 mph, while more hp might increase the lift, a helicopter's speeds are determined by rotor design. The Vietnam era HH-43 with almost 5 times the hp only had about a 120 mph top speed.
Flying nap of the earth would only help so much when you're almost stationary, and if you fire rockets from a helicopter, everyone knows where you are. So a very slow moving aircraft, with a smoke trail leading back to it, not a good idea for battlefield survival.

 

[parsifal]

Ok guys, lets stop the name calling and sarcasm right here. I don't want this thread closed for stupid reasons.

Parsifal, I had posted this in the "This Day in Europe ...." thread a few years ago and I can't really remember the source but my question is this: If this stopping of Russian armour is a myth or not quite what it seems why does there seem to be so much info about this, such as personeel and air groups involved?

Have a look at milosh's link to the Dupuy institute. it debunks this version of what happen very comprehensively. the debunked version is supported by bergstrom incidentally. im not sure if the attack was stopped or not.....wouldnt be surprised if it was stopped after an attack of that magnitude, but thats not the issue....the issue was how many tanks were destroyed....by the most reliable sources i know, three or less, not the 20+ claimed in meyers account

 

[parsifal]

2. I agree that a/c AT weapons didn't have to penetrate the *frontal* armor of tanks to be effective, but I don't agree that rockets would often score even mobility kills on tanks without actually hitting them. Back to Soviet experience, the 3rd Guards TB report gave an example of a medium bomb near miss less than 2m from a KV-1 which failed to permanently destroy it. A general report concluded that bombs had to land closer than that to reliably knock it out. German tests of the SC-250 GP bomb gave somewhat more optimistic results: test animals were killed inside captured T-34's within 6m of such a bomb. But a rocket with a small fraction the explosive of a 500#-class bomb would be very unlikely to kill a tank crew by blast effect without hitting it directly. And the Brits concluded that operational CEP's of rockets in 1944 was around 60m, hit rates v tanks around .5%. The USAF came up with considerably smaller CEP and much higher hit rate (1 rocket in a salvo of 6 would hit more often than not, it was predicted) in tests in reaction to complaints of rocket ineffectiveness v T-34's in 1950. But the latter were tests, not actual combat results v AA fire, v. obscured targets and so forth. In the latter tests standard HVAR's (with 5"/38 common shell as warhead) did catostrophic damage to T-34's if they hit directly (the crash development of the 6.5" HEAT rocket in summer 1950 wasn't really necessarily, it seemed) but near misses were only considered effective if close enough to cut a track, very close.

joe

as usual, and excelent reply that i learnt a great deal from. I agree that a single rocket needed to make a direct hit or a near miss to have a good chance of lethal damage. But, given that rockets were usually fired in salvoes of 8 or more, if you have one rocket within that 30m CEP, it is likley there are 7 other exploding within that area as well. given that the HVARs carried a warhead derived from the 5/38 and the 5/38 could do a lot of damage with a direct hit, why would 8xrockets carrying the same warhead, behave any differently or less lethally?

also, the 5' HVAR was not the largest or most lethal rocket in the Us air to ground arsenal. the 11.38 "Tiny tim" was a 1200lb projectile, able to do the equivalent of a 12' battleships shell worth of damage. not used in Europe, but available just the same....

 

[parsifal]

The Bruno Meyer Controversy

This is the clarification provided by Chris Lawrence, a moderator from the Dupuy Institute , and draws into sharp focus the issue of overclaiming that has been the subject of discussion these last few pages.

Chris is not only a moderator. He is an author and academic as well, and has very good credentials in this field

Here are his findings on the Bruno Meyer controversy:

The Bruno Meyer Story
This story was first published by Hans Seidemann (VIII Air Corps commander at Kursk) in 1947 as part of his write-up he did for the US Army on air operations at Kursk.

It this story, he clearly identifies the time and date (afternoon of July 8), the location ("from the woods east of GOSTCHEVO station"), the unit ("4th Group/9th Antitank Ground Attack Wing"), the German air response ("in a short time, they were on their way to meet the enemy force"), the duration of the battle("after about one hour") and the result ("approximately 40 tanks had been knocked out") and its effect ("the remainder of the enemy force discontinued the attack and turned around"). Furthermore, he identifies elsewhere the strength of the antitank unit as 60 planes.

This story has the advantage of being specific enough that one can acually compare it to the opposing side's records (unlike most war stories).

There is some other confirming evidence for it in the German records. Primarily there is a claim in the VIII Air Corps records that they destroyed 84 tanks on the 8th, including 11 burned and damaged 21 tanks on July 8 and the comment for that day that the "The initial action by the antitank aircraft squadron was quite effective. Given the number of burning [enemy] tanks reported, it must be assumed that there was an even greater number that were just knocked out (more than 6 hits reported), Especially in the late afternoon attack from the northeast against SS Reich and the evening tank battle, the Russians were stopped and driven back."

The VIII Air Corps also reports the loss of two Hs-129s on this day.

Over the years, an expanded version of this story has appeared, I gather first from a German source that I have not identified. It shows up in Robin Cross' "Citadel: The Battle of Kursk" book (pages 198-199) and in a number of web sites about Hs-129s. A German site that has the story is linked below, and it appears to have been drawn from the same source as the Robin Cross version.

The expanded version of the story has Major Bruno Meyer flying reconnaissance in the morning, when "as the morning mist clears" he sees 60 tanks and their supporting infantry emerge from the woods. He calls in all the units of his group with the lead elements arriving from Mikoyanovka airfield within 15 minutes. They are supported by Fw-190s lead by Maj. Alfred Druschel (CO 1st Ground Attack Wing), who bomb the supporting infantry. They usually have the battle resolved in an hour, with Cross' claiming six tanks "within a few minutes" and 50 tanks within an hour. Most accounts claim 40-50 tanks. All the accounts place the attack on the flank of the SS Panzer Corps or the woods near Gostishchevo. The account often provide a detail OB of five squadrons with 16 planes each.


This is clearly the same story, with some detail added.


The German language version of the story is at:
http://www.wehrtechnik.net/wehrtechnik/henschel_129.html

Contradictory German information
Now, before we take a look at the Soviet data...there are a few problems with the German reports.

First, this attack is noted in the German SS Panzer Corps reports as an attack at 1145 with 20-40 tanks and weak infantry units through the ravine from Visloye and Ternovka to the west agains the defenses at the Belgorod-Kursk highway.

Visloye and Ternovka are both in front of the large woods south of Gostishchevo. This raises questions at to both the time and size of the attack (and therefore casualties).

Next, the sources I have located indicate that the IV/9th SG was created 18 October 1943 and its commander was Bruno Meyer. The III Pz Corps records do make reference to an panzer command as part of the 1st Ground Assualt Wing, but I do not know who commanded it, or what it consisted of. There were two AT squadrons (the 4th and 8th) armed with Hs-129s in the 1st SG. There is clear evidence that the 4.(Pz)/2 SG was also there as was the Pz. Sqdn/51 JG. All four of these squadrons were later used to create the IV/9 SG along with the 8.(Pz)/2 SG. I do not have clear evidence than this last unit was at Kursk, but I assume it was.

A good bio of Bruno Meyer would be of use here.

Third, the base listings I have put these Hs-129 squadrons at Varvanovka, not Mikoyanovka."

 

[parsifal]

The Bruno Meyer Controversy Part II

The Soviet Accounts

The Soviet Attack

"Conveniently enough the Soviet attack is clearly identified in their records and there is only one brigade it could be.

This is the 26th Tank Brigade of the II Guards Tank Corps. It is the only candidate and was reported at attacking from Visloye at 1200 Moscow time (1100 Berlin time).

There are no other candidates. The division operated with two tank brigades forward and one in the second echolon. The other forward brigade (4th Guards Tank Brigade) was to its right at Nepkhayevo while the other tank brigade remained in the rear. The Corps 47th Heavy Tank Regiment (Churchills) was already 7 - 10 kilometers away in the III Panzer Corps area engaged, and the independent 96th Tank Brigade was moving southeast of Gostishchevo and joined that fight.

Therefore, one is left with the 26th Tank Brigade. It reports that it attacked from Visloye at 1200 (Moscow) time. Visloye is at the northwest tip of the large woods south of Gostishchevo. This attack drove onto height 209.5, two kilometers southwest of Visloye. The brigade then reports being attacked by 40-50 planes during the German counterattack (which occurred at 1210 Berlin time according to German reports).

The 26th Tank Brigade as of 0700 July 8th has 26 T-34s and 15 T-70s. The attack also included one regiment from the 4th Guards Motorized Brigade, which may have included up to 20 Bren Gun Carriers. It was also supported by infantry from a Rifle Division.

The Corps reported losing 8 T-34s and 3 T-70s for the day, with effectively only two of its brigades engaged. The 26th Tank Brigade at 0700 July 10 reported having 22 T-34s and 12 T-70s. The Corps reports only losing Churchills on the 9th. From 0700 on the 8th to 0700 on the 10th, the 26th Guards Tank Brigade shows a decline in ready-for action tanks of 4 T-34s and 3 T-70s, while the 4th Guards Tank Brigade shows a decline of 2 T-34s and 2 T-70s. The 25th Guards Tank Brigade's strength actually increases during this time. The Corps did have a coprs reserve of 20 T-34s and 10 T-70s located in Bubnovo on the 8th. This unit is no longer mentioned and may have been used on the 10th or 11th.

As the 4th Guards Tank Brigade clearly took casualties, this all points to the actual losses of the 26th Guards Tank Brigade being around nine tanks. Assuming that some were lost to German armor, antitank guns and infantry (both during the attack and during the German counterattack) then it would appear that the claim by the VIII Air Corps of "more than 6 hits" may in fact be high. The claim of 40 tanks killed appears to be off by an order of magnitude.

Glantz states (page 135):


quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Burdeiny's 2nd Guards Tank Corps fared little better. It jumped off at 1200 hours, and after limited progress suffered an unmerciful beating from German aircraft and Totenkopf's panzer regiment, losing 50 tanks in the process. German aerial reconnaissance had detected Burdeiny's concentration of armor, and four squadrons of Henschel HS-109 aircraft, specially equipped with 30mm automatic cannon for antitank missions, broke up the Soviet attack, perforating the thin overhead armor of the tanks and leaving a hideous, burning wasteland. This unprecedented action, in which a tank attack was halted by air power alone, set a dangerous precedent. Indeed, throughout the battle, Soviet troop movements had to be conducted at night to minimize such lossees. This in turn delayed the arrival of reserves to block the German penetration.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now, I have a number of problems with this passage....

1. They did not loose 50 tanks. The Corps probably lost as reported 11 tanks on this day.

2. I do not have confirmation as to whether the AT Air Group had 4 or 5 squadrons.

3. The planes were Hs-129s, vice HS-109s.

4. Not sure of the details about "perforating the thin overhead armor of the tanks and leaving a hideous, burning wasteland."

5. The actual description of the operations from the 2nd Gds Tank Corps operational report 182, 0700 July 9, 1943 (page Fond: 2nd Guards Tank Corps, Opis: 1, Delo: 32, Page: 187):

"26th Guards Tank Brigade cross the Lipovyi Donets at 1200 in the area of Visloye, along with 1 regiment/4th Gds Motorized Brigade and 89th Gds Rifle Division, attacked height 209.5. The brigade, despite heavy enemy fire, together with 89th Gds Rifle Division, took height 209.5, after which the enemy launched armored counterattacks, supported by aircraft in groups of 40-50 planes. 89th Gds Rifle Division fell back on Visloye and after an hour 26th Gds Tank Brigade's tanks, having taken losses, fell back on the eastern slopes of height 209.5, where they consolidated and continued to fight the enemy.
At 1800 on July 8 26th Gds Tank Brigade attacked height 209.5 for the second time, but was unsuccesful."

The SS records support this account. Therefore, I must take exception with the conclusion that "a tank attack was halted by air power alone".

Furthermore, this statement about halting a tank attack with air power alone is contradicted by Glantz in his second sentence where he states "suffered an unmerciful beating from German aircraft and Totenkopf's panzer regiment"

6. For number of reasons, I disagree with the conclusion that this "set a dangerous precedent." and that "Soviet troop movements had to be conducted at night to minimize such losses. This in turn delayed the arrival of reserves to block the German penetration."

While the Soviet reserves regularly did travel at night...they also moved surprisingly fast. Any delays in the arrival of the 5th Guards Tank Army and the 5th Guards Army could be better explained by the date they were ordered to depart and the fact that they sent the 5th Guards Tank Army off to Oboyan first before they turned it around and sent it to Prokhorovka. As it was, it appears that the Soviet units had a tendancy to go into battle too quickly from the march and may have done better if they rested and prepared. I do not think that the Hs-129 attack on the 8th of July was a major factor in causing the Soviet Army to conduct night marches, as they had been doing this for a while as a matter of course."

 

[fastmongrel]

The Helicopter looks a good idea but I have only one point too make. I was in a piston engined helicopter once and while there is a chance something was out of balance I would liken the experience to sitting on a large washing machine with an out of balance load whilst it is doing the spin cycle. I dont think I could have hit the end of my nose with my right index finger let alone hit a tank at 300 yards.

 

[tyrodtom]

I'm a old Army Aviation man, but WW2 era helicopters just are not fast enough for survival on a typical WW2 battlefield. With any sort of recipocating engine, even their lift capacity isn't going to be great, and their speed is only going to be around 100 mph.

Look at the performance of the Vietnam era Huey, the same HP as a WW2 fighter, 1200-1500 HP, but none could exceed 150mph. The only way a helicopter can survive is lots and lots of armor over it's many vunerable areas, pilot, fuel, engine, transmission, tail shaft and rotor, and that very important main rotor head.

 

[Shortround6]

A rough guess at the capabilities of a WW II "attack" helicopter can be made by going to Sikorsky H-5 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

and then checking out the operating manual at. (1951) AN 01-230HB-1 Handbook Flight Operating Instructions USAF Series H-5A, D, and E Navy Model HO2S-1 Helicopters

This is for a 450hp helicopter, granted it is not a German "luft 46" machine but I doubt anybody was really going to do much better with a service machine even in 1945.

 

[davebender]

Helicopters can fly nape of the earth. Something fixed wing aircraft cannot do. That's the survival trade off.

Don't get me wrong, I think early development of FF rockets attached to fixed wing aircraft is a better solution. But a 1943 attack helicopter is technically possible for Germany so I think it worthwhile to consider the posibility.

 

[Shortround6]

Try looking at the S-51 again, Nape of the earth at 85-90miles an hour isn't all that good. Payload vs range really sucks too. The S-51 had a practical range of 200 miles with 100 gallons of fuel. that is 600lbs of fuel out of a payload of just under 1000lbs. take out the pilot and your "war load" is 200-240lbs. Granted you can trade some fuel for weapons at the cost of even shorter range. Again this is for a 450hp machine. a 240hp machine would have a much more limited payload/range combination.

 

[tyrodtom]

About the best illustration of the use of helicopters in a medium flak threat enviroment would be operation Lam Son 719/ Dewey Canyon II, the ARVN incursion into southern Laos, supported by US air power. About 120 choppers destroyed, 600 damaged, about 15 fixed wing destroyed, can't remember FW damaged.

Sort of illustrates the survival chances of the two different aircraft types over the same battlefield.

 

[davebender]

160hp engine.
840 lb total payload.
529 lb useful load (after subtracting fuel weight).
93 mph max speed.
106 miles max range.
The German navy employed the Fi-282 for recon. It carried a pilot, observer and radio.
The Heer had the same intention except the observer would be an artillery forward observer.

I have been unable to find specifications for the proposed 240hp Fi-285. Perhaps it had a useful payload (after subtracting fuel weight) of about 750 lbs.

The much larger Fi-339 began development at the same time as the Fi-285.
BMW-132 engine.
20 passengers.

An attack helicopter doesn't need to carry 20 passengers but the payload is nice. Perhaps Flettner could do to the Fi-339 what Bell did to the UH1. Keep the powerful engine but use a smaller fuselage designed to carry weapons. A (crude) WWII version of the AH1 Cobra gunship.

 

[davebender]

Kaman K-225 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Direct decendent of the Fi-282. I suspect the Fi-285 would look a lot like this.

 

[davebender]

Kaman K-240 / HTK-1 / TH-43E helicopter - development history, photos, technical data

The next step in Flettner, err, Kaman helicopter development. Interestingly enough the K-240 had a 240hp engine. Just like the proposed Fi-285.