"Relative effectiveness of air strikes" Topic
22 Posts
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4th Cuirassier | 26 Jan 2023 2:28 a.m. PST |
Something that has always surprised me is the relatively high effectiveness of German versus other nations' close air support in WW2. Germany was able to use the Ju87 until 1944, no doubt because on the eastern front, the Russians had no fixed air defence perimeter. This meant the (obsolete elsewhere) Ju87 could still strike and withdraw unintercepted. Individual pilots thereby racked up enormous personal scores. Now admittedly so did fighter pilots, and we know how that ended. But some Stuka pilots' scores were so huge that even allowing for some over-claiming, some individuals destroyed more Russian armour than the entire western air forces. Rudel, for example, was credited with destroying over 500 tanks. The allies probably didn't destroy 500 German tanks on the ground for the whole period between 1940 and 1945. So there's no way Rudel's individual score was at the expense of the overall effectiveness of the air arm. There's really not much arguing with 500 tanks destroyed. I have never really understood why this is. The obvious go-to explanations don't really work. There were more Russian targets, for example, than German. Well yes there were, but the tanks were thinly spread, so not exactly lined up like a shooting gallery. In Normandy the density of forces was such that there were more German tanks per mile of front than anywhere in the east, but it made no difference. If target availability were the limiting factor, here was an episode when targets weren't limited, but the result was the same. Were Russian tanks easier to bust than German? Well, maybe, but maybe not. Wargamers' tabletop forces are always heavy on the T-34s, KVs and JSs, with the large proportion of T-60 and T-70 light tanks not represented as often, but the top armour of a JS wasn't any better protection against a Stuka than that of a T-60 so this can't be it. Air superiority doesn't explain this either because in the west post-1942 the allies always had it, whereas in the east the Germans did not. Despite this factor in the allies' favour, their tank-busting success rate in 1944 did not improve. Weaponry doesn't explain it either. The Germans relied on pod guns rather than on rockets but even a 37mm can be fired through the top armour of a JS2. If this solution were better than rockets the allies would never have abandoned guns in favour of rockets. The only explanation I can really think of is that in the east the targets of all the tank-busting were tactically on the offensive, and could thus be found and hit without the aircraft being shot up by the accompanying AA. In the west the Germans were on the defensive, so even where the armour was numerically thick on the ground, it was dug in where it couldn't be seen and had its organic AA nearby. When it could be seen, as in, when it was moving, rocket strikes gave the German armour pause for thought even while not really doing it any harm. What does the panel think? |
HairiYetie | 26 Jan 2023 3:22 a.m. PST |
Hi Cuirassier. You make some excellent points here. Can I add a couple factors which MAY have had SOME influence … 1 More open areas in the east with less opportunity for Soviet tanks to hide during an attack? 2 More mature ground support techniques and effective training in the Luftwaffe? |
advocate | 26 Jan 2023 3:43 a.m. PST |
Where do Rudel's figures come from? At the time, Allies were over-estimating the effectiveness of their air arm. What is hard to over-estimate is the morale effect of the allied air forces in Normandy and beyond, as measured by contemporary German reports. The American and British air forces certainly lost a lot of aircraft when carrying out ground attack, suggesting that German AA fire was more effective than Russian. |
mkenny | 26 Jan 2023 5:52 a.m. PST |
Look into Rudel's claim to have sunk a Battleship to see how the 'confirmation' process worked |
Herkybird | 26 Jan 2023 5:55 a.m. PST |
I think the angle of armour (Eg on the side of a 251) would enhance their protection against direct fire MGs. Also would a strafing run with guns against thinner tank top armour also strike at an angle? Just a stray thought! |
Frederick | 26 Jan 2023 7:06 a.m. PST |
One thought – the Red Army never – ever – thought of air supremacy but rather local air superiority, a doctrine that translated over into the post war Red Army and the post USSR Russian Army – which would give the Stuka jockeys much more leeway than in the West; as for US/British fighter-bombers, the German AA as noted above was pretty good and the German tankers were expert at concealing themselves from Jabos |
Mserafin | 26 Jan 2023 7:51 a.m. PST |
More mature ground support techniques and effective training in the Luftwaffe? This may have some merit. The Germans consistently developed their air support doctrine from before the war. The British, at least, had to make theirs up. And when they'd worked it out to be effective in the desert, those personnel were broken up and they had to re-learn it all in Normandy. |
4th Cuirassier | 26 Jan 2023 8:38 a.m. PST |
@ Frederick I suppose my point is that if you lose a lot of tanks, like the Russians did, to air attack because you don't have air supremacy, then logically the Germans were able to do so much damage either because they had it or nobody did – locally at least. If so, why didn't the allies do anything like as much damage given that they always had air supremacy? They weren't struggling to find ways to get their air strike assets over the enemy without being slaughtered by his fighters. Allied air went wherever it liked, including over the front line in daylight. Despite this, the actual damage meted out by allied air strikes seems to have been trifling. @ Herkybird Rudel claims he either fired his 37mm into the engine louvres, or stood the Stuka on its nose in an 80 degree dive so as to hit the top armour. On an armour-pen chart, if you look up the performance of a 37mm AT weapon at say 200m and compare it to the top armour of, well, anything, the 37mm wins. @ advocate The morale effect of allied air strikes may have arisen in the first place from the actual physical effect of such strikes in the east. There, they were actually dangerous. In the west, rockets made impressive explosions that may have alarmed tank crews, but broadly speaking they always missed. Staying with the tank was the best course. In fact, the same rockets almost always missed U-boats, too. Empirically the target needed to be the size of a ship and the attacking aircraft to be in squadron strength. @ mkenny Are you suggesting that H-UR did not destroy 800 vehicles, 519 tanks, 70 landing craft, 150 artillery emplacements and 51 enemy aircraft in the air? Even if these are Nazi lies and the real score was only 10% of that (which would make the allies much bigger liars), he probably still destroyed more ground targets from the air on this own than did the entire allied ETO / MTO close air support effort put together. And he wasn't the only effective Stuka pilot. So the question really is, why was German air support so much more effective given its small numbers, lack of air superiority and dated aircraft compared to the allies? It may simply be that a winning army gets strung out, detached from its supports and thus presents targets of opportunity to the likes of Rudel. This still isn't a great explanation because the same situation should arise when an army routs. The damage done by air attack in the retreat from Alamein, the Falaise pocket, the collapse before Market Garden etc should have been comparable to the German record, yet wasn't. Most of the observed losses were breakdown, fuel outage and self-destruction. A conundrum no? |
Martin Rapier | 26 Jan 2023 9:11 a.m. PST |
Reams of ink have been spilled in OR on the effectiveness of air power in WW2 (and beyond). Once you factor out inflated claims, cannon are by far and away more effective at actually hitting and destroying AFVs from the air than rockets of bombs (apart from cluster munitions) as they can be hosed onto the target. Similarly rockets are more effective than bombs, yet Stuka dive bombers were surprisingly useful against armour early in the war. I guess rockets and bombs make a great big bang and are a lot more scary than cannon fire. As Napoleon siad, in war the moral is to the physical as 3:1. Air power was also a lot more effective against armour massing in forming up areas in in road march columns than deployed for battle, just the same as artillery, and it may be that in the East the force density and prevalence of rail movement (and loading/unloading) made such targets of opportunity more readily available. As for the allies preference for rockets (and bombs) – it is much easier and safer for the pilots in a dense Flak environment to loose off a rocket salvo or dump their bombs than stooge around trying to aim repeated cannon passes at tanks. The Russians didn't have anything like as much AA, particularly mobile AA, as the Germans did. |
Marc33594 | 26 Jan 2023 9:16 a.m. PST |
An interesting study which highlights some of the commonalities and some of the differences: link The western allies, as a whole, tended to put more emphasis on battlefield interdiction then direct support. Daylight movement of logistics by road and rail became near suicidal by the Germans. While the Germans may have had a higher "body count" they never paralyzed the allies to the extent they themselves were paralyzed in this regard. |
Bill N | 26 Jan 2023 10:02 a.m. PST |
It has been a while, but as I recall Soviet studies said 3% of their tank and SP losses were due to air attacks. The Soviets lost a ton of tanks and SPs, so the number lost to air attacks are not small. If Rudel's numbers are accurate though he is responsible for inflicting a fifth of the total Soviet tank and SP losses due to air attack. Another factor is that some Soviet tanks carried external fuel tanks. A hit on that tank is going to produce a spectacular effect for German pilots to see, but the tank may survive. The critical factor is whether the tank is rendered unavailable for immediate combat. Air attacks can do this without destroying tanks. Inflict a couple of casualties on crew caught outside the tank and the tank might not be available. Take out a fuel truck and you might immobilize a platoon of tanks. |
Wolfhag | 26 Jan 2023 11:16 a.m. PST |
This is a good discussion of Air-Ground attacks and their effectiveness: link Wolfhag |
Andrew Walters | 26 Jan 2023 11:38 a.m. PST |
Rudel's book Stuka Pilot is worth reading, if you can steel yourself for a peek inside the brain of a rhymes-with-yachtzee. It's a little creepy, but enlightening. I'll only add this to the solid comments above: the Ju-878 was a spectacular effective use of the technology available. While it's a '30s design and in many ways falls short of the late war aircraft, it was just the perfect thing to fly against tanks on the steppes. It might have been near useless elsewhere, but right there, right then it was just right. Survivable, and it could put just the right ammo in just the right place. Some people would say that some countries are careful with their troops, and do everything possible to bring them back. Other societies seem to take the opposite view. Sorry to tip toe around it, but you know what things are like today. So it's possible that certain armies didn't protect their troops or tanks the way you think they would want to, and basically let them get slaughtered. |
donlowry | 26 Jan 2023 11:51 a.m. PST |
From what I've read, the German's could not move on the roads (or railroads) in daylight in the West in '44, for fear of the Allied Jabos (fighter-bombers). So, if they didn't move until dark, that would explain the low kill totals by Allied air. I might also add that, while the Luftwaffe was an independent service, it was heavily committed to ground support, whereas both the RAF and USAAF were bomber-oriented. |
emckinney | 26 Jan 2023 12:08 p.m. PST |
1. The Soviets employed a lot more light tanks than the Germans did, so there were far more "M&M" targets (a hard, but brittle, shell). 2. The Germans had relatively few tanks on the Western front in 1944-1945, so the WAllies couldn't run up the score in the same way. 3. The Germans were extremely wary of WAllied air power, moving formations only at night. The Soviets did not have this luxury because they faced crisis after crisis in the first phase of the campaign, and were on the offensive in the third (and final) phase. 4. Rudel lied. It's possible that he was simply wildly optimistic and believed what he said, but … 5. The Germans were unable to study the effectiveness of anti-tanks attacks rigorously. WAllied studies showed that many attacks were made against tanks that were already knocked out or had been abandoned, so they weren't hiding. It strains credulity to believe that German pilots were so good that they never attacked, and claimed, tanks that were already out of action. |
advocate | 26 Jan 2023 12:50 p.m. PST |
Concentrating on armour losses may also be a problem. Destroying soft skin logistic vehicles can prevent the armour getting to the battlefield at all; and rockets would presumably be quite effective in that role. This would support the point above about interdiction v direct support. |
Thresher01 | 26 Jan 2023 4:32 p.m. PST |
Very ineffective, despite some/numerous opinions to the contrary, from what I've read. Still, that doesn't mean a lot of vehicles weren't knocked out, and personnel killed by the air attacks. Rommel was wounded in one such air attack while riding in a staff car in France. That's part of the reason he was away from the front when D-Day occurred (that, and the poor weather which was believed to be so bad as to preclude the possibility of an invasion at the time). |
Marc33594 | 27 Jan 2023 8:35 a.m. PST |
Not to be a nit picker but Rommel was wounded on 17 July, well after the Normandy landings. |
Raynman | 27 Jan 2023 11:52 a.m. PST |
The number of sorties by pilot or group may be a factor as ell. The Germans in the East flew multiple sorties each day because the front was literally just beyond the horizon. The west many of the early sorties were sent from England based airfields. Much time spent going to and from the combat zone. That may impact counts too. |
Thresher01 | 28 Jan 2023 1:36 p.m. PST |
Thanks for the info on Rommel. I'd heard the opposite. |
Wolfhag | 28 Jan 2023 3:05 p.m. PST |
For the Allies, a significant advantage of air power was its tactical use with FOs coordinating closely with infantry and tank units because of almost total air superiority. Even if the German defenders were not knocked out they were spotted for artillery or other attacks and could be forced to fall back. The disruptive effects of air strikes and their constant harassment had a significant effect on the initiative, logistics, morale, and movement despite what their claims were. That's not something that games really reflect in the bigger picture. Wolfhag |
DBS303 | 29 Jan 2023 10:31 p.m. PST |
Ian Gooderson's book is the definitive study of western tactical airpower 1943-5, especially the very thorough operational research to which Martin Rapier refers. Yes, rockets produced far far fewer panzer kills than Typhoon pilots believed they were achieving. But both the Typhoon and P-47 excelled at destroying the logistic support for the panzers – no fuel and they ended up being abandoned. Plus the morale effect on tank crews in close proximity to eight 60lb HE rockets; they may not hit the tank and simply shower it with earth and shrapnel, but a damned unpleasant experience nevertheless. The RAF actually rated the 40mm S gun as the most effective AT weapon it had available. Problem was that the Hurricane IV, which could carry either the S gun or RPs, was obsolete by early summer 1944, so were withdrawn from NW Europe service just before D-Day. Both the RAF and USAAF wanted fighter-bombers that could look after themselves against enemy fighters, such as the Typhoon and P-47, not dedicated tank busters like the Il-2 and Ju 87. Fighter-bombers were just far more flexible against a wider array of tasks and targets, and arguably more survivable against most threats. Worth remembering that the RAF trained each Typhoon squadron to be either an RP unit or a bomb unit, and not try to expect the pilots to be experts with both types of weapons. Taking out trains and bridges was as important, if not more so, than taking out tanks, since the best way to beat the tank on the battlefield was to stop the tank getting to the battlefield, something at which 2TAF and 9AF excelled. |
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