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The thread was about tank busting aircraft and in this role ALL allied fighter bombers in North West Europe were virtually useless.
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Hello, Steve,
I really appreciate your input at this thread (and other constructive stuff from other people), but I'm afraid you're slightly wrong at the quoted sentence.
No this is incorrect. The weapons used were as mentioned in the causes of tank loss according to wreck surveys: napalm, rockets (mainly HVAR, some 6.5" ATAR which was HVAR with HEAT warhead, no folding fin rockets were used at that time), bombs and .50 cal/20mm strafing in order of number of known kills. No AT cluster bombs were used. The a/c involved had the same types of gyro gunsights used late in WWII, like the K14, which had no air to ground computing mode, you can read that in the pilot's manuals for F-51's and F-80's to see it explained. And many or the a/c themselves were WWII produced, like the F-51D's and USN/USMC F4U-4's, and others very comparable to WWII a/c like the AD. The main difference in a/c was that a fair % were straightwing jets like the F-80.1950 is a different ball game as most aircraft should have been equipped with gyro stabilized gun and bomb sights. FF rockets were available too and cluster bombers were more widely used. Weapons accuracy should have been much better then during 1940.
Here's a question, could the Bofors 40mm have been worked on, to be made into an aircraft born tank cracking gun?
.In total 5 hits (plus two near misses judged at least partly effective) in 83 shots if including the ATAR's. Again the F-80C's had no 'high tech' fire control systems which came much later, and if anything their higher speed might have been considered a liability to accuracy compared to prop planes. And indeed a similar test, but against just a simulated T-34 target area, conducted in Japan around the same time, F-51D's scored 20 simulated hits in 147 shots. That test like the F-80 test also included trials of single shot v ripple fire and six shot ripples were found optimum with 7 for 47, 15%, hits. So WWII era rockets had the potential for acceptable accuracy, and types like HVAR or RP-3 (though less so for example the USAAF's tube launched 4.5" used in 1944) had reasonable lethality against even fairly well protected WWII tanks if they hit directly. But, it's not hard for me to believe that the vagaries of actual combat lowered hit %'s drastically from what was achieved in these trials, as consistent with the relatively few enemy tanks found destroyed by rockets, even in Korea
Tests in the same series w/ F-80's with napalm were also not entirely to determine accuracy but also test different attempted aim points short of the tank. Drops 50-100' short with two cannisters if also correct in azimuth would envelope and destroy the tank. The exact % of 'live' runs which were hits is not clear, but see earlier figures, in real combat in Korea napalm kills were much more common against tanks than rocket kills. And though it's not clear either what total % of combat attacks were made by each weapon, anecdotally it doesn't seem as if napalm attacks were nearly as dominant a % of attacks on tanks as napalm kills were of a/c tank kills per the survey. It seems napalm was the superior tank killer in the Korean situation. Note that photos from these napalm drop tests sometimes appear in books mislabeled as actual combat shots.
The RAAF pilots found the accuracy of the conventional bombing in the mountainous Korean terrain left something to be desired and had a definite preference for the air-to-ground rocket. Late in 1951, the RAAF developed a new type of rocket containing napalm, known as the 'Flaming Onion', and after trials at Williamtown and preliminary testing in Korea, the first examples arrived at 77 Squadron early in February 1952.
The Americans showed considerable interest in the new weapon, and on 8 February 1952, when the napalm rocket was first used in combat, the USAF provided an RF-80 reconnaissance aircraft to record the results on film for later analysis. The Squadron's new CO, Wing Commander Ron Susans led four Meteors armed with the new rockets in an attack on several buildings with 75% of the rockets scoring hits on the targets, resulting in numerous fires. The new weapon was to prove extremely useful against the enemy vehicle convoys and troop concentrations and soon became the standard under wing weapon carried by RAAF Meteors, with each aircraft capable of carrying eight rockets.
. 19000 sorties to destroy 5000 targets means that during the war, if all missions are assumed to to be rocket strikes (which clearly they were not.......) equates to about a 2-5% hit percentage (each strike by a meteor carried 16 rockets0. if we allow 3000 sorties as rocket attacks, with 16 rockets carried per sortie, thats about 48000 rockets fired by the squadron to destroy 5000 targets (give or take)....or roughly a hit rate of 2.5%The contribution made by 77 Squadron during the three years of the Korean War is totally out of proportion to its size. During the war the Squadron flew a total of 18,872 sorties, comprising of 3,872 Mustang sorties and 15,000 Meteor sorties. The effect this had on the enemy was devastating; 3,700 buildings, 1,500 vehicles, 16 bridges, 20 locomotives and 65 railway carriages destroyed
Why not, it was much heavier than 40mm S gun, but if one developed a reliable autoloader, why not. Hungarians modified 4 Me 210Ca-1s with a M36 4cm Bofors, but probably for use against 4-engine bombers. But there were at least an AP and an AP-Tracker shells for the Bofors, at least Finns had them.
Juha
. 19000 sorties to destroy 5000 targets means that during the war, if all missions are assumed to to be rocket strikes (which clearly they were not.......) equates to about a 2-5% hit percentage (each strike by a meteor carried 16 rockets0. if we allow 3000 sorties as rocket attacks, with 16 rockets carried per sortie, thats about 48000 rockets fired by the squadron to destroy 5000 targets (give or take)....or roughly a hit rate of 2.5%