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1:30 - 1:36 close miss on a target moving in a straight line

2:35 - 2:41 obvious miss on a target taking evasive maneuvers

21:33 - 21:43 obvious miss on a target taking evasive maneuvers

If i counted correctly, the video in total shows 4 attacks on moving ship targets, 3 of wich are misses. All attacks on stationary targets where at least within the designated target area.

The video explicitly states several reason for why dive bombing accuracy may vary under combat circumstances and for why dive bombing can be very, very accurate under ideal circumstances.

1) Weather. The video states that wind may decrease the accuracy of dive bombing to the point where it becomes practically impossible to hit anywhere near the target. However under ideal circumstances (no significant wind), the pilot will not have to take deflection due to wind into account at all.

2) Target movement. If the target is stationary, the pilot will not have to estimate the targets movement speed and adjust his aim accordingly, wich makes hitting the target much lmore ikely. If the target is not only moving but actively taking evasive maneuvers, this will further complicate the task.

So from the video we can tell that ideal circumstance are circumstances under wich there is no significant wind and the target is stationary and that under those circumstances, an experienced pilot is very likely to hit his intended target (the circle show in the video).

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So from the video we can tell that ideal circumstance are circumstances under wich there is no significant wind and the target is stationary and that under those circumstances, an experienced pilot is very likely to hit his intended target...

You don't think that having up to 12 flak guns firing at you would be good cause to call circumstances less than ideal for an experienced pilot?

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All this speculation based on computer games and training films is unnecessary; there is good actual combat data on dive bombing accuracy in WWII.

I am aware of several studies, but the one I find most useful is a study done by the U.S. Navy of Bombing accuracy in attacks by the 4th Marine Air Wing in the Marshall and Gilbert Islands in 1944.

A little background:

After the Marines captured Tarawa and a few other islands in very bloody fights, the remaining Japanese Garrisons in Marshall and Gilbert Islands were simply cut off and left to rot on the vine.

But the U.S. Navy wanted to ensure that the bypassed garrisons remained weak and unable to harrass the American logistics lines nearby. So the 4th Marine Air Wing, flying mostly SBD Dauntlesses and F4U Corsairs off of airbases at Tarawa, was assigned the task of periodically visiting the bypassed Japanese garrisons to bomb and strafe the crap out of them.

These were carefully planned attacks against known, well recon'd enemy targets. The pilots were well trained and very experienced. Further, enemy defensive air was virtually nonexistent and AAA defense was weak. Japan was occasionally able to get small shipments of supplies to the garrisons by submarine or small, fast surface ships, but the garrisons were cut off from consistent resupply so they quickly ran low on heavier ordnance like AAA rounds.

Under these conditions, this is what the U.S. Navy found the 4th MAW attacks were able to achieve:

  • 50% CEP for SBD Dive Bombers was 175ft./53m.

  • 50% CEP for F4U Corsairs was 195ft/59m.

  • The "Direct Hit" percentage (bomb impacts <50ft/15m from target point) was 5.4% for SBDs.

  • Direct Hit percentage (same conditions as above) was 4.5% for Corsairs.

Bear in mind the above results only measure how close the bombers came to hitting their assigned target point. They don't account for other miss causes (for example, attacks that hit the assigned target point, but the intel was faulty and the bomb was directed at e.g., a decoy target set up by the Japanese).

IMHO, this is a pretty good benchmark figure for what bombing accuracy should look like in CM: Under combat conditions but against light opposition, attacking a known target, dedicated dive bombers like the SBD should be able to get about 1 in 20 bombs to fall close enough that they might cause serious damage to a hardened target like a tank or bunker. A 220kg bomb detonating ~50 ft. from a tank might cause some damage, and would certainly rattle the crew, but would not be a guaranteed kill; so the actual "hard kill" % should be somewhere under 1 in 20. How much under is difficult to quantify.

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YD - Xactly, and incidentally 15 meters would not count as a direct hit if the target is a tank. You need to be a lot closer than that to KO a tank with the blast from a plain HE bomb.

As from Skwabies comments, not even remotely. First, A-10s are not going faster, so that excuse won't work. Second, a small weapon joystick is vastly easier to manipulate than the direction of the entire plane, going straight down at 200 plus miles an hour. Third, if hitting with dive bombers was so easy, why did most bombs aimed at entire aircraft carriers and battleships miss outright? Those are 27 meters wide by 270 meters long - but one hit in five counts as an outstanding success rate, at such targets.

A tank is a target 20-30 times harder to hit...

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YD - Xactly, and incidentally 15 meters would not count as a direct hit if the target is a tank. You need to be a lot closer than that to KO a tank with the blast from a plain HE bomb.

Agreed, but my SWAG is that 15 meters is a pretty good threshold distance for how close a bomb in the 220-440 kg range has to land in order to have a decent chance of causing at least some substantial damage to a fully armored AFV. IOW, excepting lucky flukes I wouldn't expect to see any outright KOs at ~15m impact distance, but I would expect to sometimes see incremental track/running gear damage, etc.

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Some more search on the net.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/intro-bombs.htm

At the outset of the Vietnam War, tactical aviation pilots were achieving a 750-foot circular error probable (CEP)....It took several years for the CEP to be lowered to a manageable 365 feet.

further down the page there's a CEP chart, showing accuracy for various delivery events by F-15E, F-16 and A-10. Most accurate is dive bombing, a CEP of 85ft. LALD (Low Alt Low Drag) is used most in tactical situations and the CEP is 100ft. Noting "event" indicates training range deliveries.

For Stuka's CEP:

http://books.google.com/books?id=HJLUAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA202&lpg=PA202&dq=stuka+dive+bombing+cep&source=bl&ots=aqoqMfDOLj&sig=HkbIa0tjYA8oI55GJGNykRsZg04&hl=zh-CN&sa=X&ei=vUJRU6WzCo7T8gHShIDQBA&ved=0CG8Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=stuka%20dive%20bombing%20cep&f=false

Studies of German Dive-bombing accuracy by Ju-87 Stukas under combat conditions found a circular error probable (CEP) on the order of 30 meters, or about 90ft
I doubt that is combat conditions, for:

http://ww2-weapons.com/Aircrafts/Bombers/information/Dive-Bombing-Tactis.htm

On the completion of their course at the specialist Dive Bomber school, crews were expected to be able to get 50% of their bombs within 25m (27yd) of the centre of the target

where it also notes the accuracy will be significantly worse in combat

Furthermore, against operational targets, which were usually defended by anti-aircraft guns, the errors for all types of bombing were two or even three times as great as those indicated on the training ranges.

So perhaps a x3 multiplier to all the above data since they're all training range values.

The CMx2 ww2 titles manual mention nothing about dumb bomb accuracies. Only the CMSF manual does and it lists the dumb bombs (MK82/83/84) in game have a CEP of 110 meters or about 360 ft. Which is about 3 times that of the CEP chart from the 1st link or the 365 feet CEP mentioned there.

PS also found this. Are we just repeating history?:)

http://ww.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=46789

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People do understand a 50 meter impact radius does not mean the bomb is guaranteed to land 50 meters away, right? It just means its as likely to land 50 meters away as directly on top of the target.

Actually, no. Directly on top of the target is a singular point. 50m is a ring around the target. As such, assuming even distribution of impacts, an impact somewhere around the 50m ring is considerably more likely than an impact exactly on the bulls-eye.

Of course, impacts probabilities actually aren't usually aren't evenly distributed but form a complex probability field, which ordnance and conditions dependent. But I digress...

Anyway, except for the "direct hit" the figures, everything I have been citing are a 50% CEP figures -- 50% of the ordnance lands < this distance from the target, 50% lands > this distance. Looks like most other people in this thread are using 50% CEP as well.

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Third, if hitting with dive bombers was so easy, why did most bombs aimed at entire aircraft carriers and battleships miss outright? Those are 27 meters wide by 270 meters long - but one hit in five counts as an outstanding success rate, at such targets.

Defensive fire, weather conditions, the target doing evasive maneuvers...attacking a stationary, undefended carrier during good weather would certainly significantly increase the hit ratio.

A tank is a target 20-30 times harder to hit...

So lets assume 1 hit per 5 bombs dropped vs an aircraft carrier would be a good ratio and hitting a tank would be 25 times harder. This would mean that for each tank killed in a dive bombing attack at least 125 bombs would have to be dropped. Ulrich Rudel is claimed to have destroyed 519 tanks. Lets assume he destroyed all of them during dive bombing attacks (wich we know he didnt, but for now, lets assume it anyways). This would mean that he dropped at least 64,875 bombs between 1939 and '45 or at least ~30 bombs per day, assuming he was in the air during every single day of the war flying attack missions. During the war, Rudel flew 2,530 combat missions. Given the 519 tanks he destroyed, he must have dropped at least 25 bombs per mission just to get all the tanks killed. If Rudel destroyed only half of his accliamed kills during dive bombing attacks, this would require him to have dropped at least 12,5 bombs during each mission, much more than any single seated german dive bomber could carry at once.

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We have already established that the ratio of claimed vs. actual kills with aircraft vs. Heavy AFV is well below 2:1, probably more in the ballpark of 10:1.

And well over half of Rudel's claimed AFV kills were cannon kills while flying Ju-87G, making his numbers rather worthless for discussing bomb kills.

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Rudel didn't kill 519 tanks. Claims are not kills, and pilots overclaim by a factor of 10, when estimating the effect of unguided air to ground weapons (including guns), and by a factor of 2-4 even using air to ground weapons that are actually effective against the target type.

The only valid sources for a bomb damage event are (1) that the side that was hit by it reports that hit, or (2) that an objective OR team surveys the aftermath in detail with all the time they need and can physically verify the specific cause of damage to the specific item damaged. Claims by the side supposedly inflicting the damage are worthless.

Operationally, we see delivered air on ground munitions on the 100,000 bombs scale with air to ground losses to full AFVs on the targeted side in the 10s. Tactically, the pilots *claim* things like 50 to 100 tanks taken out in a few hours in one large air strike. But on the ground, the attacked formation reports tank losses in single digits.

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A carrier is a strawman, JasonC. You know better.

A carrier was almost ALWAYS in the middle of a battlegroup. It was formed to PROTECT the carrier. They used massive amounts of AAA. They manuevered at 30 knots (or so). They also (sometimes) had fighters around trying to shoot down the incoming flights.

Now, if you want to simulate something like that on land, look at the flak that the Soviets ringed around Moscow. The German pilots were awed by the amount they ran into.

Using carrier hit/miss ratios to extrapolate hit/miss ratios at the forward edge of the battle is totally inappropriate for that purpose.

The amount of flak at the front lines was minimal. Germans kept most of III Flak Corps well behind the lines in Normandy...for their own survival. The batteries of 88's encountered around Caen were almost without exception unable to fire on ground targets. They were ensconced within small bocage fields. Their survival against ground weapons was not good enough to be front line weapons. (Dug-in 88's.)

The mobile flak were limited in numbers and employment. A panzer division would only have enough to accompany a single kampfgruppe, or guard a single bridge.

Given the rarity of effective AAA on the battlefield, I don't think that the accuracy of Stukas was all that bad, operationally. They were far more accurate against point targets than any of the horizontal bombers of the period.

Now, is the game treating Air Support with the fidelity it could? Perhaps not. But, it is within the correct order of magnitude. Or so.

Carriers? Pshaw.

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my personal experience and testing (admittedly limited) is showing them to be a lot less effective. I am also testing on an actual map with other forces involved (Studienka) as opposed to a flat small map with limited units. I think that may be skewing the accuracy perspective in terms of actual in scenario effectiveness versus testing scenario effectiveness.

Overall the bombing runs don't faze me, the strafing runs however are brutal. Mobile flak guns seem to be the preferred target and once targeted, they are dead. The aircraft do not miss.

However like Wodin, I still jump

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Actually the bomb crater diameter of a SC250 (or SD500? dunno which weapon is modelled in the loadout) in CMRT is about 30 meters. The smaller craters are about 15 meters wide (so maybe they're the SC50s). Everything inside that crater, and on the outer edge of it is dead, including tanks.

Considering the training accuracy of 30 meters CEP they do seem to have a good chance to kill.

Agreed, but my SWAG is that 15 meters is a pretty good threshold distance for how close a bomb in the 220-440 kg range has to land in order to have a decent chance of causing at least some substantial damage to a fully armored AFV. IOW, excepting lucky flukes I wouldn't expect to see any outright KOs at ~15m impact distance, but I would expect to sometimes see incremental track/running gear damage, etc.
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my personal experience and testing (admittedly limited) is showing them to be a lot less effective. I am also testing on an actual map with other forces involved (Studienka) as opposed to a flat small map with limited units. I think that may be skewing the accuracy perspective in terms of actual in scenario effectiveness versus testing scenario effectiveness.

Overall the bombing runs don't faze me, the strafing runs however are brutal. Mobile flak guns seem to be the preferred target and once targeted, they are dead. The aircraft do not miss.

However like Wodin, I still jump

How do the results compare with the "baseline" test data?

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How do the results compare with the "baseline" test data?

With Apocal's? Very very different, but that isn't surprising. Apocal is trying to verify their accuracy specifically. I am trying to understand their overall effectiveness in a CM battle on a decent size map with a fair amount of units. Different goals, different tests.

3 heavy IL 2 flights have accounted for one Pz, a halftrack and 4 mobile AA tracks and some odds and ends of pixeltruppen hit by shrapnel (the mobile tracks were all hit by strafing runs). This is after about 15+ bombing runs and a number of strafing runs. I watched 3 attacks on a PzIV platoon all miss for example. It is a lot of watching and turn running for something I rarely use so I don't know how much more I'll invest in it. I don't know how to gauge the effectiveness of AAA. I have tried running without it and I can't say the results are much different, but statistically my data pool is woefully inadequate to reach any real conclusions.

However if I was going to buy air support I'd more likely go for strafing units which are pretty cheap and very accurate versus expensive bombing aircraft which seem far less effective. Just a gut reaction at the moment. To counter that I'd buy cheap mobile flak as they will suck up the strafing runs. Overall no I am not likely to really utilize airpower in games much. :P

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With Apocal's? Very very different, but that isn't surprising. Apocal is trying to verify their accuracy specifically. I am trying to understand their overall effectiveness in a CM battle on a decent size map with a fair amount of units. Different goals, different tests.

I actually used a QB map (admittedly a somewhat flat one because I didn't want to fuss with pathfinding and traffic jams lead to outlier kills) and your results are within the low-range of mine, especially since you're using one less aircraft.

And it remains that IRL, knocking out even one tank was an outlier success for three or four aircraft flying close air support during WW2...

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And it remains that IRL, knocking out even one tank was an outlier success for three or four aircraft flying close air support during WW2...

The whole situation is an outlier. In a tactical fight like we are playing how often would an aircraft ever intervene? Our forces are usually far too close and the communications net didn't really allow for that kind of coordination. Hell reading a book on Operation Anaconda and with all the technology at hand the fog of war and communication issues lead to a few friendly fire incidents.

Basically I agree with folks that the most realistic use of CAS in CM is simply not having it.

Within all that I agree with you and the strafing aspect is even more extreme.

This is one aspect of CM I could accept never having been included at least in the WW2 game families. So I don't use it. Problem solved :D

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While I agree that from the tests done CAS seems over modeled, one thing has failed to be mentioned. Most of these 'stats' and 'data sets' being thrown about are for total sorties. The tests in the game are for 'planes that actually showed up and spotted tanks and attacked'. These historic macro stats do not reflect engine problems, bombing trains, buildings, positions vice tanks, getting 'bounced' on the way to the tgt, not finding the tgt or not being able to communicate with the supported unit leading to aircraft abort, etc. So if we are talking 'half a truck' or 'half a tank' or '5% hits with bombs' overall, historically, given the scope of the game I would say you give CAS a 'bump' to reflect they actually showed up and started attacking. Maybe that is doubling the the actual effectiveness of CAS, IDNK.

But given that this is a game I think the goal is determining how effective CAS is, as it currently is, so I know whether to buy a flight of Stukas instead of a couple of Panthers. But I do not want to spent 2000 points on CAS and have them a) frequently not show up, or B) never hit anything. I want it to be semi-realistic, but if your average flight of Stukas is going to kill three guys, cause two squads to cower, and kill a truck (as they would historically) I am spending the points on AT guns or Panthers or PZ-IVs rather than something expensive that will not aid me. And then we will just plain not use CAS. In head to head matches noone will waste the points. In scenarios, results will ping pong between extremes because every once in a while the Stukas will roll snakeyes three times in a row and destroy a platoon of T-34/85s.

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