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C3k - I just enjoy treating the stuck up JonS to argument on his own level. He thinks his sneering matters or constitutes an argument. It doesn't, it is mere ignorant slanging. So I pay him in kind. My comments about his remarks are at least as intelligent and reasoned as his earlier one about mine. All there is to it. Also, he is a tool.

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YankeeDog - 4 37mm AA guns in the immediate area is hardly "minimal air defense". Five high school drop out with Mosins, and one DP LMG maybe. 4 37mm is more like "ruin your whole day" air defense.

oh pish. You earlier discounted an entire carrier battlegroup's worth of AA. Compared to that what's four measly LAA guns?

BTW, there's a term for the macro/micro error you continually make on these fora; the fallacy of division.

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What was that ? :)

First Russian test of a hand thrown nuclear grenade, dropped from Pe-2 planes by Night Withes squadron ? ;)

Ah, I had some German air support as part of a scenario I am playing, and it dropped a similar payload. Quite impressive - haven't finished yet and not gotten to that part of the map so I'm not sure if it destroyed anything or simply scared the daylights out of everything nearby. Left a moon sized crater though.

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Rudel's supposed tank kills are even more dubious when you consider the strategic situation Germany was in in 1944-45. An army constantly on the retreat is not going to go through all the effort to determine whether or not that T-34 a pilot claimed destroyed 2 kilometers behind the front was actually destroyed.

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Rudel's supposed tank kills are even more dubious when you consider the strategic situation Germany was in in 1944-45. An army constantly on the retreat is not going to go through all the effort to determine whether or not that T-34 a pilot claimed destroyed 2 kilometers behind the front was actually destroyed.

You are still ignoring the other half of this equation, the effects of air power on morale Even if the physical damage is not that great there is still the damage to the morale of the unit hit. Sure this will be a temporary state and will wear off after a period of time. However, if that unit gets hi by a ground attack very soon after the air strike its' performance will be degraded. The attacker hopes it will be seriously degraded

An account albeit from the Battle of Kursk

"Once the 169th Tank Brigadse which was operating in gront, reached the line of the Komsomolets Farm, the enemy, firing a the tanks with artillery, heavy mortars and from Panzer VI tanks dug ino th ground, began to conduct massed air attacksy JU-88 bombers and by anti tank JU-87 dive bombers with three 37mm automatic cannon. The attacks intensified in step with the brigade's further advance, and by approximately 1800 8.07.43 these attacks turned into an uninterrupted assault from the air. It is possible to judge the ferocity of theJU-97 attacks from the following fact one JU-97 vulture, damaged by our anti aircraft gunners, flew directly towards a T-70 tank and struck it with all its mass. he tank was left burning , but the crew somehow survived. As a rule , the JU-87 aircraft attacked our tanks from the rear, strikng the engine compartment with their fire (the summary of combat operations of the 2nd Tank Corp's combat operations qouted on P331Demolishing the Myth: the tank battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk JJly 1944: an operational narrative" Valeriy Zamulin

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How long does it take for CAS to start doing their Work? is it totally Random? Anything mentioned in the Manual?

I am not sure of the answer to this one as yet but suspect the answer is likely to be "as soon as they see a decent target" In my initial test the attacks began within a minute or two of starting. To be fair a target parked on a road in a village is pretty easy to see from the ar. Most of us have, I am sure, travelled as aircraft passengrs. f you look out of the window i is pretty easy to see parked and moving vehicles. Obviously it would be far harder to see anything in woods for example due to the tree cover.

I suspect that air spotting would be a similar computational calculation to ground spotting although clearly not he same one :D

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Save your powder for a more important fight. IMHO, it's a silly test and not really worth arguing over.

If I understand the test conditions correctly, the closest real-world parallel would be if 4 Stukas were able to somehow surprise a company of static T-34s lined up on the parade ground with minimal AA protection.

You might be able to find an example of something like this happening in the early days of Barbarossa when Stukas attacked installations with almost total surprise, but otherwise it's a highly artificial test that tells you basically nothing about how tac air in CMRT compares to the real thing.

Pretty much. This experiment was to see what sort of results might be expected under ideal conditions in order to establish a baseline by which to judge performance under more realistic battlefield conditions. When we get on to later tests we need to know what happened under the ideal condiions in order to assess the results obtained from the more realistic "battlefield conditions" tests.

What the initial test tells us is what happens under ideal conditions. Perhaps that Soviet tank company had halted for a rest, to refuel or for a pre attack briefing when they were unlucky enough to have been spotted. And it could be argued that the company commander screwed up by halting where he did, neglecting the principles of air defence.

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How the hell would you independendly confirm air-to-ground kills anyway?

The rules were the rules. If the Luftwaffe was the only branch with eyes on the enemy, and if no other pilot claimed the kill, it needed another pilot who had seen the kill and testified it, in case cameras did not film it. Under rare conditions and only with the word of of honor, a claimed kill was accepted as confirmed kill. Otherwise it was unconfirmed and not counted.

Contrary to the Luftwaffe, the western alliied air forces allowed the claim of partial kills. The Soviet air force even had collective kills additionally to individual kills. Contrary to these armies the Luftwaffe used the strict principle of "One Pilot - One Kill".

How extraordinary strict the German rules were, can probably seen best, when it comes to sharpshooters. Their kills needed to be confirmed by an officer. Everyone knowing how German sharpshooters operated understands that their confirmed kills are a conservative number.

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YankeeDog - 4 37mm AA guns in the immediate area is hardly "minimal air defense". Five high school drop out with Mosins, and one DP LMG maybe. 4 37mm is more like "ruin your whole day" air defense.

Can't say as I agree with that assessment. Light & medium AA generally had to be deployed in multiple batteries covering an area have a good effect. Squadron-size low-level attacks on targets like airfields defended by literally dozens of light AA guns were often executed with just a few losses (sometimes even none) and a few more damaged.

For Soviet 37mm AA, the ratio was roughly 1,000 shells fired per shoot down claimed (and I'm sure you agree claims would be much higher than actual kills). A little math about the number of shots a 37mm gun would be able to get in on a dive bomber (which actually only spends a fairly limited amount of time in the 37mm AA's range envelope), leads me to conclude that 4 x 37mm tubes would not be a particularly strong light AA defense.

It would have some effect, to be sure, mostly in reducing accuracy of the attacking bombers than actually having a chance of shooting one down.

So 4x 37mm "Ruin you whole day", no. If this were the case, Essex class carriers, with as many as 72 x Bofors tubes (not to mention scads of 20mm and 5-in.), would have been downright invincible to air attack completely without defending fighters, which they most definitely were not, even before the Kamikazes complicated the equation.

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I'll just say air power is a formidable force on a mechanized battlefield there's no doubt about it. With its speed and firepower it decimates equipment and infrastructure hence crippling a fighting force on all aspects. AFVs and other land crawlers are hapless facing air threats, they are in a way... lower on the battlefield food chain. Even after the invention of SAMs, the biggest threat air power faces is still enemy air. So once the sky is controlled the opponent is at a major disadvantage.

Eastern front is a bit different it seems for neither side put the fight for air dominance on top of their list... But for you rusky lovers you should take comfort in the fact that the Il-2 is a much more efficient CAS platform than stukas and whatnot once the sky is controlled. The reds love their flying tanks. Whether emphasizing on CAS is the best way to utilize air power is another matter:rolleyes:

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The rules were the rules. If the Luftwaffe was the only branch with eyes on the enemy, and if no other pilot claimed the kill, it needed another pilot who had seen the kill and testified it, in case cameras did not film it. Under rare conditions and only with the word of of honor, a claimed kill was accepted as confirmed kill. Otherwise it was unconfirmed and not counted.

Contrary to the Luftwaffe, the western alliied air forces allowed the claim of partial kills. The Soviet air force even had collective kills additionally to individual kills. Contrary to these armies the Luftwaffe used the strict principle of "One Pilot - One Kill".

How extraordinary strict the German rules were, can probably seen best, when it comes to sharpshooters. Their kills needed to be confirmed by an officer. Everyone knowing how German sharpshooters operated understands that their confirmed kills are a conservative number.

If another pilot confirms it or not does not matter, you cannot reliably confirm an air-to-ground kill from the air exclusively, unless you see something blowing up in a huge explosion I guess.

And just because something is regulation does not mean it is actually followed in reality. There were rules in the German army against rape, yet only a complete moron (or neo-nazi ignoramus) would use that as evidence that no rapes were commited by the German army, and in fact thousands rapes were commited by members of the German armed forces, especially in the East and even if they went noticed there rarely was any punishment.

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I'll just say air power is a formidable force on a mechanized battlefield there's no doubt about it. With its speed and firepower it decimates equipment and infrastructure hence crippling a fighting force on all aspects. AFVs and other land crawlers are hapless facing air threats, they are in a way... lower on the battlefield food chain. Even after the invention of SAMs, the biggest threat air power faces is still enemy air. So once the sky is controlled the opponent is at a major disadvantage.

Eastern front is a bit different it seems for neither side put the fight for air dominance on top of their list... But for you rusky lovers you should take comfort in the fact that the Il-2 is a much more efficient CAS platform than stukas and whatnot once the sky is controlled. The reds love their flying tanks. Whether emphasizing on CAS is the best way to utilize air power is another matter:rolleyes:

Airpower was still used quite a lot and by both sides. Sometimes both sides would have air over the same battlefield at the same time if the area was judged important enough. In George Nipe's Drcision in the ukraine for instance we find that is what happened during the SS counter attack against the Soviet bridgehead o he River Mius.

However, though the Soviets had not gained air dominance even at this point they could do so locally. Having said that the Luftwaffe were still quite capable of mounting their own strikes and did so certainly until the end of 1944

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However, though the Soviets had not gained air dominance even at this point they could do so locally. Having said that the Luftwaffe were still quite capable of mounting their own strikes and did so certainly until the end of 1944

Gotta love the strategic strikes. The toll on resources comes from many aspects come to think of it. The homefront defense forced germans to produce fighters geared towards high altitude performance while the russians could comfortably continue those LAs and Yaks that don't have to worry at all about how they floated above 20k feet. Meanwhile the jerries could never master turbo chargers even at wars end... they're the complete underdog in this fight, it's a feat they lasted to 45 and pulled off stuff like operation bodenplatte as I see.

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An account albeit from the Battle of Kursk

"Once the 169th Tank Brigadse which was operating in gront, reached the line of the Komsomolets Farm, the enemy, firing a the tanks with artillery, heavy mortars and from Panzer VI tanks dug ino th ground, began to conduct massed air attacksy JU-88 bombers and by anti tank JU-87 dive bombers with three 37mm automatic cannon. The attacks intensified in step with the brigade's further advance, and by approximately 1800 8.07.43 these attacks turned into an uninterrupted assault from the air. It is possible to judge the ferocity of theJU-97 attacks from the following fact one JU-97 vulture, damaged by our anti aircraft gunners, flew directly towards a T-70 tank and struck it with all its mass. he tank was left burning , but the crew somehow survived. As a rule , the JU-87 aircraft attacked our tanks from the rear, strikng the engine compartment with their fire (the summary of combat operations of the 2nd Tank Corp's combat operations qouted on P331Demolishing the Myth: the tank battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk JJly 1944: an operational narrative" Valeriy Zamulin

I'm not sure how this proves your point; the only tank described as being destroyed was a T70 by the German plane crashing into it, and the Sov crew still survived...

Does Zamulin go on to provide actual figures for Sov tanks destroyed by German aircraft (other than via crashing into them) or accounts of Sov tanks fleeing before such an "uninterrupted assault from the air"?

This is not to say that German airpower was ineffective, it seems to have been very effective in earlier period of the war, for instance, but that doesn't mean that by Kursk every Stuka sortie resulted in a demoralized, much less destroyed, Sov tank formation.

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I guess, if by "pulled off" you mean "failed to accomplish any of their objectives and lost most of their remaining fighter strength." :rolleyes:

bah I think we've established that i'm not the best master of the english language.

As for failures and the losses, yep the Nazis were pretty stupid to launch an all out offensive against all the big powers in the first place. ok yes yes they're nazis, evil as they were, that's what they do, pretty sure everybody knows that. However doesn't mean the bf109, fw190 and their descendents are not fine fighter aircrafts for their time.

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Not debating the quality of the airframes at all. The BF-109 was probably the best fighter airframe in the world in 1939 when the war broke out, and it's a mark of just how good it was that it was still pretty competitive in 1944. The Fw-190 was a match for anything the Allies had. Rather, I question the wisdom of Bodenplatte from a tactical viewpoint.

The goal of Bodenplatte was to hit the forward Allied airfields hard enough to at least temporarily paralyze allied fighter and tac air operations, thereby providing German ground forces a window of time during which they could operate with reduced risk of interference from Allied Air Power.

It failed miserably at this goal; the Bodenplatte sorties generally went in during the morning, and most of the Allied Tac Air missions scheduled for that same afternoon went off more or less as planned. The airfields hit were mostly able to re-establish operations within hours, and many of them barely experienced a hiccough. The Germans vastly underestimated the firepower it would take to actually put an airfield out of operation for any period of time.

The Germans did manage to destroy quite a few airframes on the ground, and technically the exchange in airframes was in the Germans' favor: something like 3:5 or thereabouts; there is some debate as to the exact numbers as it depends a lot on how you tally the damaged but technically recoverable airframes. But since most of the German losses were in-air shoot downs over enemy territory, and most of the Allied losses were airframes parked on the ground, the exchange of pilots was vastly in the Allies' favor and this was much more important.

It was, overall, a poorly thought out and poorly executed operation, a last gasp from the fatally wounded bird the Luftwaffe had become.

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snip

YankeeDog, as it appears is all that we've got a difference in interest. To quote something from someone famous (SunTzu?..) "the result of war is decided before it's fought", and my personal view is the Nazis lost the war the moment they started it they could have failed left and right and up and down. Operation bodenplatte is just another one of those. I'm more interested in equipment and the technical/tactical aspects of it, like the Bf109's supreme climb performance or the Fw190's astonishing roll rate. Or the 109's poor high speed handling and the 190's sub-par performance at altitude and as a pilot, how you would use those in a tactical situation. Or today my wingman is Hans and how does he re-act when contact is made and in which formation do I place him?

So how the Germans failed strategically is just the same old story for me but its armed forces remained formidable and short lived as they were is quite fascinating to some. And the majority of those served would agree I'm sure that once on the battlefield when the balloon goes up, the political ideals go out the window but your loyalties lie with your armed forces and those beside.

Handing it off to you historian grogs now....

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YankeeDog, as it appears is all that we've got a difference in interest. To quote something from someone famous (SunTzu?..) "the result of war is decided before it's fought", and my personal view is the Nazis lost the war the moment they started it they could have failed left and right and up and down. Operation bodenplatte is just another one of those. I'm more interested in equipment and the technical/tactical aspects of it, like the Bf109's supreme climb performance or the Fw190's astonishing roll rate. Or the 109's poor high speed handling and the 190's sub-par performance at altitude and as a pilot, how you would use those in a tactical situation. Or today my wingman is Hans and how does he re-act when contact is made and in which formation do I place him?

So how the Germans failed strategically is just the same old story for me but its armed forces remained formidable and short lived as they were is quite fascinating to some. And the majority of those served would agree I'm sure that once on the battlefield when the balloon goes up, the political ideals go out the window but your loyalties lie with your armed forces and those beside.

Handing it off to you historian grogs now....

Fair enough. FWIW, I'm not sure the eventual outcome of the war was *completely* predetermined right from September, 1939. If you remove the guy with the funny moustache at the head of the whole fiasco, replace him with less pathologically insane head of state, but with similar expansionist ambitions, and then assume a wiser diplomatic strategy to complement Germany's early military successes, I do think there was an opportunity early on in the war (definitely before the USSR and USA entered) where Germany could have ended up with hegemony in Western Europe and a negotiated peace with the U.K.

How long such a hypothetical "German Empire" would have been able to maintain this status quo is debatable... a while maybe, but probably not indefinitely. Conquered peoples have a way of rising up and casting off their Conquerors. It sometimes takes a few generations, but it usually happens, sooner or later...

But yes the technical stuff is interesting, too. I used to love digging into the performance minutiae of various airfames. I was never very into flight sims, but I'd love a good new operational-level game that treated the air battle with the same attention to realism and detail as CM. There have been a few games on this subject that I've played like this over the years, but nothing that has really stuck with me like CM.

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