Air Strikes

[Apocal]

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'.

Some of us have been referring to historical accounts of aircraft attacks on armor, there just aren't very many well-documented successes from which we can infer things. So we go back on onto overall numbers and try to work back to establish an upper limit (we're 100% sure Rudel is a bull****ter, for example) on effectiveness. Those accounts of successful air attacks that exist are usually pushing right up against the extreme edge of CMx2's scope e.g. a full battalion of infantry assisted by two platoons of armor, getting forty-eight fighter-bombers overhead. Obviously that has a severe impact on the battlefield, but its not something you're likely to see in CMx2 ever, for the same reason BFC has tended to shy away from depictions of massed bombardments with multi-kilometer impact areas.

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.

Buy Panthers. There are very few situations where the equivalent points in AFVs would not be worth more.

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.

There are already plenty of units that are non-viable from a points standpoint in H2H play and even as it stands now I wouldn't take air support over large caliber (105mm or bigger) modules with deep ammo reserves. Artillery is worse at knocking out tanks, but it also won't bomb my troops unless I'm very stupid.

[JasonC]

civdiv - nope, not just counting sorties. Counting sorties, and bombs expended, and individual attacking aircraft sometimes down to the pilot's name (every single pilot who pushed over at Midway, we know where his bomb went, for example).

But on totals, here is one for you - 500 lb bombs expended specifically by US tac air in the ETO - 350,000.

As for the fellow saying that anything within 30 meters would kill a tank, um, no not even remotely. Moving an inch of dirt off the surface at that radius doesn't kill a tank.

[JasonC]

500 lb bomb lands 15 meters away from a sandbagged US position in Afghanistan, by mistake.

http://www.mrconservative.com/2014/02/33943-breaking-video-500lb-bomb-mistakenly-dropped-on-u-s-soldiers-in-afghanistan/

No casualties.

[poesel]

If someone would be learning English from these videos they probably would wonder why American soldiers go mute every second word.

[Sailor Malan2]

The other thing that hasn't been pointed out is the issue of proximity of targets attacked to the actual front line (whatever that is in mobile warfare). People have a totally misleading view of where aircraft on CAS attacked (from e.g. A Bridge too Far or Saving Private Ryan). If you are flying a CAS FB at say 5000' to avoid all the light flak, what is 'below' you. Say 45 degrees down is 'below'. That means that 'below' you is a circle of a mile radius. Thus you can easily be attacking (and would be) something off a CM map... CAS is not a super AT gun, it is not a direct fire weapon. Thus, whatever the stats say about hit effectiveness, this shouldn't be read as applying to a CM battle. If you are a dive bomber at 2 miles up, a mile on the ground is tiny (it subtends the 28deg right underneath you, and less if it is away to the front or sides). Thus the chance of a DB attack on anything smaller than a village (or an aircraft carrier ) in the front lines is tiny (not least because a tank would be difficult to see and impossible to identify).

There is a fundamental tension here - some of us (like me) are historical realists and want aircraft so we can (occasionally) recreate battles with them (not too bothered by balance), some are chess players (the power to points ratio of the Panzer VIII Z is 0.00453 less than an infantry squad, so why would you buy one? Some are the KT, 155mm, tactical nuke brigade (why would anyone want to play 1941, the tanks have such silly guns?).

I think CM has already said the realistic implementation of CAS is to have no CAS... I think the current levels sound too effective, although I would accept the reports I have seen if 37mm etc were much more effective at aborting attacks (or rendering them wildly inaccurate).

And please can we have no more use of other games as primary source material? I have invented a game where a 32lb Napoleonic muzzle loader has a CEP of 1.25" at 27 miles and will punch clean through 6 IS2s in a row! But I am not going to use it as reference material...

[JasonC]

I agree with a lot of Malan's comments, but not the part about it being hard to see a tank from 10,000 feet. It is hard to see a well camou'ed, stationary tank from 500 feet, even from the ground, but that is just the camou. A tank on a road is easy to see from the air. Look out the window of your airliner, watch the cars on the road, not hard.

The issue is not seeing targets. It is not that planes don't see them or don't attack them - we have gobs of expended ordnance and acres of pilot kill claims to prove they saw and they attacked. What we don't have is dead tanks on the ground to show they actually hit anything.

That's the whole point. It was and it is vastly harder to actually hit a small point target with an unguided bomb or rocket than the pilots think it is, and vastly harder to get that to happen than to get a photon to bounce off the target and enter the pilot's eye. That is kind of why laser guided bombs are more accurate than the unguided kind - they are about as easy to hit with as it is to see things. (Not really, but a heck of a lot closer than unguided anything).

They flew, they saw, they attacked --- and they missed.

[c3k]

500 lb bomb lands 15 meters away from a sandbagged US position in Afghanistan, by mistake.

http://www.mrconservative.com/2014/02/33943-breaking-video-500lb-bomb-mistakenly-dropped-on-u-s-soldiers-in-afghanistan/

No casualties.

15 meters my ass. Sorry for being so blunt, but I just watched the clip. Other than being an indictment against whichever coalition member was on CAS duty, the bomb landed on the OTHER side of that outcropping lower down the slope.

These guys (thankfully) had a lot of solid rock between them and the impact. Plus, they were very well protected by their dugout. My estimation is that the impact was more like 100m away. Or more. That's based on looking at the footage as opposed to listening to the verbiage.

................^..U

...............|

..............|

........||...|

.......|..|_|

._X_|

ASCII art. The "X" is the bomb impact. The "U" is the US mortar position inside the ^ dugout. Solid lines are rock. Periods are space fillers for artwork.

The horizontal distance X->U is ~100m. Check the video.

The vertical distance is also on the same order. Again, check the video.

This was not a 15m close hit with survivors. The :40, 1:05 and 1:13 mark show the terrain relationship and bomb impact.

[Michael Emrys]

If someone would be learning English from these videos they probably would wonder why American soldiers go mute every second word.

But the funniest thing was once after one such attack a meek voice piped up asking, "Does anybody have any toilet paper?"

Michael

[YankeeDog]

My estimation is that the impact was more like 100m away.

No way; the impact point is in the rocks right at the base of that gun tower. Maybe not 15m, but a heck of a lot less than 100m from the closest guys manning that .50 BMG at the top.

But I do agree the vertical separation, as well as all the rocks and sandbags, is what saved their asses. Note that the two guys closest appear to have been short-term combat ineffective due to stunning from the concussion; probably yellow "injured" status in CM terms.

[c3k]

Nah. Look at the wind direction: it is blowing the plume towards the position. The dirt coming over the top of the lower outcropping is from the near edge of the effects. The darkest part (visible in camera) is still on the far side.

And this is why anecdotes are useful in a qualitative sense, but not often trustworthy quantitatively.

(I was under a SCUD path, once upon a time, in a land far away. Patriots were firing to intercept from nearby. (Within a klick.) We were under no danger whatsoever. Later I heard some of my guys talking about being targeted by SCUDs and how close they came to death. Yeh. It would've been okay if they'd been talking to some fair lasses after many a brew, but that was not the case. They truly believed it. Shrug.)

[sburke]

It would've been okay if they'd been talking to some fair lasses after many a brew, but that was not the case. They truly believed it. Shrug.)

Any chance they mistook you for the fair lass?

A lifetime ago I was walking along this road..back when I had hair. It was the early 80's and mine was fairly long. As this car passed some guy was leaning out the window whistling and carrying on like a dips**t until they passed me....then he saw the beard. Priceless.

[JasonC]

You watched but didn't read. The article says the impact point was indeed 15 meters from the soldiers' position. Yes it was a bit lower, and also they had sandbags. Tanks are not made of tissue paper either.

I've read the detailed OR studies from US artillery officers concerned with the effectiveness of artillery fire missions on enemy armor.n cold war era, they wanted to know if 6 or 18 SP 155s chucking shells over the horizon could help deal with hordes of T-72s. So they studied it pretty carefully. The basic conclusion was without ICM, the 155 shell had to hit the tank to kill it - physically intersect its cross section on the fly. That hits within 1 meter would typically cause immobilization. 1 meter, not 15.

Of course those figures were for mere 100 pound artillery shells, not for 500 pound bombs, which carry more HE per unit of weight, as well. But we don't have to just guess how equivalent distance goes. It goes as the square root of the delivered HE. A 500 pound bomb might have 16 times the HE of a 100 pound artillery shell - the shell is roughly 15% HE payload and the bomb more like 50%, on top of the weight difference. That works out to all of 4 times the distance for equivalent blast pressure. Or near misses 4 meters away bring effective.

A tank might be 4 by 2.5 meters. That puts the effective target area at a rectangle about 12 by 10. Side misses are likely more effective than front ones, so we can be generous and raise it to 12 by 12. You can miss a perfect point of aim by 6 meters and get an effective hit, by that estimate.

That is one part in 54.5 of the area of a 50 meter circle. If that is the 50% zone, even smearing of that probability over the area puts the "close enough" chance around one chance in 109. If the true CEP under battle conditions is more like 70 meters, that goes up by a factor of 2 (49/25ths, close enough to 2).

See why I estimated above you need to roll 3 6s to hit a tank with an unguided bomb?

[c3k]

Any chance they mistook you for the fair lass?

You have just insulted the entire fair lass-dom!

A lifetime ago I was walking along this road..back when I had hair. It was the early 80's and mine was fairly long. As this car passed some guy was leaning out the window whistling and carrying on like a dips**t until they passed me....then he saw the beard. Priceless.

Reminds me of a story involving a transvestite. But we won't go there.

[c3k]

You watched but didn't read. The article says the impact point was indeed 15 meters from the soldiers' position. Yes it was a bit lower, and also they had sandbags. Tanks are not made of tissue paper either.

I did not see anything to read. Just the link to a youtube video. I base my conclusions on the video.

I've read the detailed OR studies from US artillery officers concerned with the effectiveness of artillery fire missions on enemy armor.n cold war era, they wanted to know if 6 or 18 SP 155s chucking shells over the horizon could help deal with hordes of T-72s. So they studied it pretty carefully. The basic conclusion was without ICM, the 155 shell had to hit the tank to kill it - physically intersect its cross section on the fly. That hits within 1 meter would typically cause immobilization. 1 meter, not 15.

Of course those figures were for mere 100 pound artillery shells, not for 500 pound bombs, which carry more HE per unit of weight, as well. But we don't have to just guess how equivalent distance goes. It goes as the square root of the delivered HE. A 500 pound bomb might have 16 times the HE of a 100 pound artillery shell - the shell is roughly 15% HE payload and the bomb more like 50%, on top of the weight difference. That works out to all of 4 times the distance for equivalent blast pressure. Or near misses 4 meters away bring effective.

A tank might be 4 by 2.5 meters. That puts the effective target area at a rectangle about 12 by 10. Side misses are likely more effective than front ones, so we can be generous and raise it to 12 by 12. You can miss a perfect point of aim by 6 meters and get an effective hit, by that estimate.

That is one part in 54.5 of the area of a 50 meter circle. If that is the 50% zone, even smearing of that probability over the area puts the "close enough" chance around one chance in 109. If the true CEP under battle conditions is more like 70 meters, that goes up by a factor of 2 (49/25ths, close enough to 2).

See why I estimated above you need to roll 3 6s to hit a tank with an unguided bomb?

Bolded part above: there was an interesting link to a cold war study showing just the opposite: using Soviet fire techniques how effective 150mm-class artillery was against armor. I'll see if I can find the link. Regardless, the tests showed many mangled T-72's (etc.) from near (and not so near) misses. The used REAL guns firing REAL shells agains REAL tanks. Funny how that kind of test gives results at variance to computations. Modern artillery was found to be far more effective than the US models had showed.

That's taking us far afield from air support.

[Apocal]

...there was an interesting link to a cold war study showing just the opposite: using Soviet fire techniques how effective 150mm-class artillery was against armor. I'll see if I can find the link. Regardless, the tests showed many mangled T-72's (etc.) from near (and not so near) misses. The used REAL guns firing REAL shells agains REAL tanks. Funny how that kind of test gives results at variance to computations. Modern artillery was found to be far more effective than the US models had showed.

I assume you mean this one (page 8).

"An M109 155-mm howitzer battery using Soviet fire direction and gun procedures fired the test. The targets were manikins placed in fighting positions, US trucks, M113 and M557 armored vehicles, and M-48 tanks. Several different computer models were used to predict results. The test was fired three times using 56 HE rounds with point-detonating (PD) and variable-time (VT) fuzes.

The resulting effects on the trucks and personnel were close to model predictions. However, the effects on the armored vehicles and tanks were significantly higher than model predictions. The model predicted 30 percent damage to armored vehicles and tanks; however, 67 percent damage was achieved. Fragmentation from the HE rounds penetrated the armored vehicles, destroying critical components and injuring the manikin crews. (See an example of such damage in Figure 1.) In addition, the HE fragmentation damaged tracks, road wheels, and tank main gun sights and set one vehicle on fire. Interestingly enough, none of the damage to the armored vehicles or tanks was the result of direct hits—all the damage was caused by near hits."

The "REAL tanks" you speak of consisted in large part of aluminum hulled M113 variants and almost certainly make up the majority of the damage taken.

[agusto]

I have an idea how to quantify the accuracy of CMRTs model of dive bomber attacks in a way so it can be compared with real life statistics. Lets say we know that statistically a real dive bomber of a certain type could put X% of its munitions within an certain circle with a diameter of Y meters. Why not recreate the target circles we have seen in the pilot training videos in CM? We know an action spot is 8x8 meters in size, an that is all we need to know in order to statistically quantify the accuracy of CMRTs dive bombers. Build a map with nothing on it but a 40m (5 actions spots) radius circle marked by a texture of a type, put single hard target for the bombers in the center of the circle and let them attack it. After the attack, make a screenshot of the map from exactely above the center of the circle and mark the centers of the craters and draw line through the centers of the action spots that mark the circle. If it is a circle with a radius of 5 actions spots, the radius of the line you have just drawn will be 36 meters. Now you know how many planes scored how many hits inside the 36 meters radius circle and how far they were away from the intended target. Run the test a couple of hundered times you have a statistic that you can compare to statistics about how dive bombers performed IRL.

[Skwabie]

As for the fellow saying that anything within 30 meters would kill a tank, um, no not even remotely. Moving an inch of dirt off the surface at that radius doesn't kill a tank.

... that I didn't say, I just measured the diameter in the CMRT game.

to compare the 301mm Nebelwerfer 42 creates a crater of about 10m in diameter in cmrt. wiki says the rocket has 45kg of HE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/30_cm_Nebelwerfer_42

In RL, max crater size of the Mk82 is about 10m. it contains 87kg of HE.

http://www.ordtech-industries.com/2products/Bomb_General/Mk82/Mk82.html

and the 301mm rockets kill tanks too by near misses in the test i did. i'd guess it probably all follow the same internal calculation mechanism bombs or rockets or artillery in CM.

[JasonC]

Yes 155mm artillery is effective vs light armor, IFVs and APCs. The reason is that does not depend on blast - a shell fragment from a 155mm HE detonation will actually penetrate lightly armored vehicles, to more like 10-15 meters distance. A dense FFE can put the rounds close enough that a significant fraction of the total area is in the penetration distance for fragments.

But that is for light armor, and it is for full barrages not single shell near misses.

Killing full tanks with single unguided bombs is very hard. That is why even when delivered tac air munitions run up into the hundreds of thousands, enemy tank fleets numbering only in the thousands are still alive and effective.

[JasonC]

Skawbie - how big is a hole? If an inch of topsoil is moved at 20 yards, is the hole 40 yards wide? What if it is 6 feet deep only for 4 feet of diameter, and 4 feet deep for 10 feet of diameter, and so on?

It is not like if the earth is moved, any tank to that distance is dead. Bombs and shells are not black hole generators from an old sci fi story...

[Skwabie]

Skawbie - how big is a hole? If an inch of topsoil is moved at 20 yards, is the hole 40 yards wide? What if it is 6 feet deep only for 4 feet of diameter, and 4 feet deep for 10 feet of diameter, and so on?

It is not like if the earth is moved, any tank to that distance is dead. Bombs and shells are not black hole generators from an old sci fi story...

In RL yes. In CM the crater size is for me a measure of the bomb/rocket's blast radius. There're no other visual cues. In tests if the tank is inside/on the outside edge of the crater it's dead. Otherwise it lives.

[76mm]

While slightly OT, this thread reminds me of something I saw during Desert Storm. Actually, just after operations ended we were stationed near some kind of oil facility. In the middle of the facility was a deep crater about 15 yards across. At the bottom of the crater was a flattened T-55.

I don't know what hit it, presumably some kind of laser-guided bomb, but it was pretty impressive.

[c3k]

I assume you mean this one (page 8).

"An M109 155-mm howitzer battery using Soviet fire direction and gun procedures fired the test. The targets were manikins placed in fighting positions, US trucks, M113 and M557 armored vehicles, and M-48 tanks. Several different computer models were used to predict results. The test was fired three times using 56 HE rounds with point-detonating (PD) and variable-time (VT) fuzes.

The resulting effects on the trucks and personnel were close to model predictions. However, the effects on the armored vehicles and tanks were significantly higher than model predictions. The model predicted 30 percent damage to armored vehicles and tanks; however, 67 percent damage was achieved. Fragmentation from the HE rounds penetrated the armored vehicles, destroying critical components and injuring the manikin crews. (See an example of such damage in Figure 1.) In addition, the HE fragmentation damaged tracks, road wheels, and tank main gun sights and set one vehicle on fire. Interestingly enough, none of the damage to the armored vehicles or tanks was the result of direct hits—all the damage was caused by near hits."

The "REAL tanks" you speak of consisted in large part of aluminum hulled M113 variants and almost certainly make up the majority of the damage taken.

Thank you.

From that article:

The model predicted 30 percent damage to armored vehicles

and tanks; however, 67 percent damage was achieved. Fragmentation

from the HE rounds penetrated the armored vehicles,

destroying critical components and injuring the manikin

crews. (See an example of such damage in Figure 1.) In

addition, the HE fragmentation damaged tracks, road wheels,

and tank main gun sights and set one vehicle on fire.

Interestingly enough, none of the damage to the armored

vehicles or tanks was the result of direct hits—all the damage

was caused by near hits.

This test confirmed that US Army models did not accurately

portray artillery effectiveness. Direct hits were not required to

damage tanks and other armored targets.

Now, let's see what they tested:

Test 1: The targets were manikins

placed in fighting positions, US trucks, M113 and M557

armored vehicles, and M-48 tanks.

If we stopped reading right there, you would be correct about the old stuff. (By the way, why isn't an M-48 tank being targeted by 155mm shells a good indicator of WWII effects?)

Test 2: The second test was conducted over a period of seven

months. It was designed to provide updated fragmentation

damage data for modern armored fighting vehicles and tanks.

An M109 howitzer fired 155-mm HE ammunition with PD

and VT fuzes. One round was fired at a time, and a detailed

analysis was completed on the effects of a direct or near hit of

each round.A direct hit with an HE round with a PD fuze consistently

destroyed the various target vehicles. Near hits damaged or

destroyed road wheels, tracks, main gun sights and vision

blocks. Aerial bursts of HE rounds with VT fuzes damaged or

destroyed gun barrels, vision blocks, antennas, sights and

engines and destroyed anything stored on the outside of the

vehicle. (See Figure 2.)

My bold. Hmm, no direct statement of vehicles used, but Figure 2 shows a modern IFV. (Aluminum armor basis.) Other figures show T-72's.

Test 3: The third test was against a simulated US mechanized

infantry team in defensive positions. The target area consisted

of a forward defense area with a tank ditch 250 meters long,

minefields and wire obstacles. The infantry was dismounted

and had prepared positions with overhead cover. The fighting

vehicles and tanks were in supporting positions, dug in with

both “hull down” and “turret down” positions.

For this test, a 24-gun 155-mm battalion was used to achieve

the Soviet criteria of 50 percent destruction. To accomplish

these effects, the fire plan for each of the three iterations of the

test required 2,600 HE rounds with a mix of PD and VT fuzes.

In each iteration, 50 percent of the infantry fighting positions

were destroyed and about 50 percent of the personnel

were wounded or killed.

My bold, above. Images include the aforementioned IFV (Seems like a Bradley, to me.), a BMP 1, two different T-72's, and a totally demolished M-48. Of interest would be the statement that near misses destroyed the vehicles' fighting ability, not that steel penetrated the fighting compartment. Tracks ripped off, barrels snapped and bent, optics destroyed, etc., all were the result of blast and splinter effect. Great article. Thanks for the link.

If nothing else, I'd direct your attention to page 10, figure 5. That's a T-72. I consider that a REAL tank. Do you?

For a given weight, air bombs have far less splintering than an artillery shell. If the above test has splintering as the primary damage mechanism (as I think it does), then for a given weight, air delivered ordnance would be less effective than an artillery shell. A 100 lb shell has more steel and less filler than a 100 lb bomb. The blast effect of an air-dropped bomb would be greater, for a given weight. Of course, 250 and 500 lb bombs don't have ready artillery comparisons. (Ignoring such beasts as Anzio Annie, et al.). Then we can get into the 1,000 and 2,000 lb class. They produce a LOT of blast effect. The splintering effect is good, especially with modern bombs and metallurgy, but less so than the SAME weight artillery shell.

The bombs don't have to be a direct hit to knock out tanks.

[c3k]

I'd like to add a clarification to the above use of "REAL" tanks.

It was not meant in the sense, "The Pzkpfw I is a girlie tank. Now, take the Panther. That was a REAL tank!"

It was meant in the sense that a LOT of debate is based on theoretical work. Whereas theory and academics are a good starting point and can often point in the right direction, they fall woefully short of real world experience and testing.

Listing them in order of closeness of prediction:

Actual use with all conditions exactly correct.

Actual use with most conditions correct.

Actual use.

Testing with actual units/devices.

Academic theory regarding the units/devices.

As an easy example, take the Panther. How many of those were SUPPOSED to catch on fire during road marches? The theory (design/paper plans/etc.) did not predict that. Oops.

Despite many predictors about artillery or airpower against armor, the reality is often different.

It takes REAL tanks being tested against REAL artillery or REAL air support to find the truth. Even better if it is not a test, but the real thing. (Of course, by then it is too late to modify the operational use or weapons fielded.)

Ken

[JasonC]

You are so wrong about what testing is. It is a physics and engineering research project, not one firing range exercise.

Example - http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a125824.pdf

There are many military contractors running bomb ranges blowing stuff up to design the next underside of a truck to withstand IEDs, or to design the right kevlar sandwich. They model, they calculate, then they test to learn very specific things, then they do it again.

(They also use my company's software, part of how I know...)

[John Kettler]

I'd like to add something I dug up for the earlier Russian CAS thread to the discussion. This concerns dive bombing accuracy. One of the deans of aviation writers, Barrett Tillman, reports in his book Corsair as follows.

In the Marshalls, three SBD-5 Dauntless dive bomber squadrons, attacking Japanese targets day after day as small as 15m diameter gun pits while under fire, averaged 53.4m! There was also some information about tasking fighters for ground strike, after which they immediately reverted to air-to-air and strafing targets of opportunity. Finally, combat experience showed Corsairs could handle the same dive bombing tasks as the dedicated Dauntless squadrons, albeit with a 30% CEP increase.

Info above taken from my #16 here.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=113499&highlight=russian+cas&page=2

Regards,

John Kettler