"German close air support. " Topic

Were infantry units able to communicate directly to german stuka pilots or were Air attacks always precoordinated events? How effective/accurate were stuka attacks?

There weren't FACs in the modern sense, but Luftwaffe liaison officers were attached (typically at regimental level) who coordinated requests for attacks.

So, depending on your level of game, this stuff may be regarded as on call or pre planned.

Prime targets were logistics, HQs and artillery positions, all of which Stukas were extremely effective against. Dropping bombs on blokes in slit trenches doesn't work too well, unless you drop a lot of very big bombs.

Stukas were effective close support a/c and operated over the Eastern Front right through to the last days of the war.

Close air support (and reconnaissance), provided by both Stuka and medium bomber formations were an important component in the success of German armored deep thrust operations in the same way that US tactical air power later supported US 3rd Army's deep advances in France. When numbers of German bomber units were withdrawn from the Eastern Front for re-training as fighter units to make up for heavy losses suffered by air defense units over the homeland, the efficiency of German armored unit operations suffered commensurately.

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For techniques, read this: PDF link

That's about all you need to know, and it's short.

Some good facts and discussion of dive bomber accuracy here link

link

As a very rough figure to represent all the inaccuracies that creep in due to flak, stress, training variations, etc., I'd use a CEP of 100m. That means that 50% of the bombs hit within a radius of 100m of the target. If you're dropping 500 lb bombs, well, those have large blast radii and throw fragments a long way indeed. You may not do much against troops in slit trenches, but you're going to wreck artillery batteries in the open, which is exactly what happened at Sedan.

You can Google "Stuka CEP" for more information.

If you're playing a skirmish-scale game (1:1), keep in mind that any Stuka attack should be about 12 aircraft. You're not going to see a single Stuka attack by itself. 8 Stukas are enough to about obliterate most skirmish-scale tables …

What Martin said.
Your infantry platoon/coy (even battalion) commander couldn't go "wow! look over there, 500 metres away…lets drop some bombs…NOW!" as he seems to in way too many wargames. Requests went up the chain of command…then back down again…So the relatively rare attacks on front line units were usually pre-planned by hours rather than minutes…called in defensive tasks were rarer still, unless hitting previously observed forming up areas/arty positions etc.

Interesting read, but didn't the US Marines have their own doctrine developed in Central American in the 1920s?