Film of Stuka 87G in action

[ozi_digger]

A couple of points to clarify the data.

1. The 1000-2000m range of firing for the Typhoons was found to be the optimum range to achieve greatest accuracy. This is due to the ballistics of 3" rockets.

2. High stress versus low stress. High stress refers to firing in an operational sense with AAA, smoke, moving targets, etc. Low stress refers to practice runs at bomb camp.

3. All high-stress data is from ground-truthing in cases where it was possible to do so after the battle.

[ozi_digger]

WRT strafing.

Notice the 27% hit figure for 20mm involved 120 rds of ammo. As discussed earlier, this can take into account walking cannon shells onto target. Also, the RAF boffins also found that 20mm was next to useless against tank armour.

The rocket strafing is somewhat tricky, because all 8 rockets would have fired in salvo and as mentioned, any factors such as wind will upset your MPI disproportionately. I'd tend to steer away from any 'direct proportion' argument of hits-to-size and go with the data that pertains to my actual target type.

BTW, weapon data versus target type is not a function that is tied to our aircraft type. You will find that CEPs will not differ to a significant degree between similar types of ground-attack aircraft (e.g. Typhoon/Spitfie/Mustang). In fact, the same CEPs can provide a reasonable ball-park figure for an IL-2 or Stuka.

[Guest Mike]

I remember reading many years ago that eth standard 20mm ammo for British aircraft was APHEI-T - that is Armour piercine high explosive incendiary with a tracer base.

Unsurprisingly it was not particularly good at any of these ttasks, but agaisnt aircraft the round was fine - a thickened ardened nose gave it the ability to punch through typical aircraft armour plate, a small HE charge was enough to damage relatively fragile components, a small amount of incendiary would light up anything flammable in the immediate vicinity, and the small tracer load was adequate at the sort of ranges a/c usually shot at each other at.

If they were attacking AFV's with that sort of ammo then I wouldn't expect anythign except superficial damage to all but the lightest.

.50 cal AP probably had better penetratino!

I presume that dedicated ground attack aircraft had more suitable ammo for similar calibre weapons.

[ozi_digger]

Originally posted by Mike:

I presume that dedicated ground attack aircraft had more suitable ammo for similar calibre weapons.

Not necessarily. Most ground attack aircraft began life as interceptors, were found wanting in that department and used as ground attack. Some, such as the Mustang and Spitfire were used to do both.

I'm not an experten on 20mm ammo but my impression is that they basically lacked the muzzle velocity and ballistic stability, when fired from aircraft, to be fully effective. Most cannons in aircraft had shortened barrels which caused these effects (low velocity & wobbly ballistics at range).

[dieseltaylor]

"In fact, the same CEPs can provide a reasonable ball-park figure for an IL-2 or Stuka."

I am just a little cautious about this phrase, it may well be true but we do know that the Ju87G had a very different mode of operation to that of the allied Fb's.

As an aside I understood that the Stuka was THE dive bomber of WW2 in terms of accuracy and I assume it was sufficiently different from other bombers that extrapolation of performances to it or from it would have been rash.

[ozi_digger]

There are mixed reports on the efficacy of the Stuka. As dieseltaylor says, some claim it was THE dive bomber. Others claim the screaming klaxon was more effective that the bombs. Either way, the Stuka did change from pure dive-bomber to more conventional ground attack methods later in the war. Some of this can be attributed to its vulnerability to ground fire and AAA in the final attack profile. I was fairly careful in selecting my words, hence 'ball park figure'. I'd be interested in doing a bit more digging to see if Stuka-delivered CEPs are available.

[JasonC]

Point of information - US P-47s also used dive bombing approaches, sometimes from as high as 10,000 feet, and at quite steep angles.

[pamak1970]

Does anybody have available information and bibliography about the way strafing was executed?

(Typical range ,angle of dive and so on).

If you see the data about strafing ,the percentage of hits is very high.

A surface of 10 sq ft is very small for such concentration-nomatter if you "walk" the fire towards the target.

Imagine that a human six feet tall and 2 feet "wide"

projects an area of 12 sq foot size.

Even a MG on the ground firing automatically 120 rounds against such a small target at a distance of 1000 to 2000 meters (3300 to 6300 feet or 900 to 1800 yards) can not acheive such results regarding concentration.

It is possible that there is an explanation for all conflicting information.

For example, strafing maybe much more accurate but on the other hand it is not easy to use it often ,especially above the battlefield cluttered with all kinds of AA and small arms fire from enemy deployed formations in defence-not to mention friendly shells travelling towards the enemy area.

I expect to see the plane flying really low and with a very shallow angle of dive (not the 45 degrees mentioned in the first case),coming really close to the target which does make the plane very vulnerable.

On the other hand strafing could be used much more often behind the enemy lines against targets of opportunity and generally during cases when units could not be protected adequently with aa fire ,like during marches .

[ August 31, 2005, 09:37 AM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

As an aside I understood that the Stuka was THE dive bomber of WW2 in terms of accuracy...

Footnote: If the numbers can be found, it might be interesting to do a comparison between the Stuka and the Vultee A-31 Vengeance. Very few of the latter were employed, briefly by the RAAF (in Papua NG?) and two squadrons by the RAF in Burma only. But like the Stuka, they delivered their bombs in vertical or near-vertical dives, which renders the greatest accuracy, and the claims I've read for the Vengeance are very good.

Michael

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Michael Emrys:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

As an aside I understood that the Stuka was THE dive bomber of WW2 in terms of accuracy...

Footnote: If the numbers can be found, it might be interesting to do a comparison between the Stuka and the Vultee A-31 Vengeance. Very few of the latter were employed, briefly by the RAAF (in Papua NG?) and two squadrons by the RAF in Burma only. But like the Stuka, they delivered their bombs in vertical or near-vertical dives, which renders the greatest accuracy, and the claims I've read for the Vengeance are very good.

Michael </font>

[ozi_digger]

Originally posted by pamak1970:

Does anybody have available information and bibliography about the way strafing was executed?

(Typical range ,angle of dive and so on).

If you see the data about strafing ,the percentage of hits is very high.

A surface of 10 sq ft is very small for such concentration-nomatter if you "walk" the fire towards the target.

Imagine that a human six feet tall and 2 feet "wide"

projects an area of 12 sq foot size.

Even a MG on the ground firing automatically 120 rounds against such a small target at a distance of 1000 to 2000 meters (3300 to 6300 feet or 900 to 1800 yards) can not acheive such results regarding concentration.

It is possible that there is an explanation for all conflicting information.

WRT first comment. Yes, I've seen it in the library. I will endeavor to 'get around to it', but the problem is the more I research this subject, the less work I get done. Will post as info comes to hand.

Um, there seems to be a little confusion over the 10 sqft target. Apologies to pamak because I should have been more clear. The table heading in the text is actually "Hits on 10 feet square normal to line of flight per attack per aircraft". This suggests to me that the target is not a point one but is linear. The RAF boffins were simply measuring the number of hits in a 10'x10' area along a gun run.

[JasonC]

75 SBDs attacked the carriers and obtained 13 hits, about 1 hit in 6. (There are higher reports from US pilots, but some conflate hits by their smaller bombs with additional hits, others confused ship-board explosions with hits, etc). The Akagi and Kaga were around 750 feet long and 100 feet wide. The Hiryu and Soryu were about 725 feet long and 75 feet wide. Considering the number of hits, those sizes have to be considered a full standard deviation tighter than the a 50% CEP.

[Guest Mike]

How about the Skua? Shot down the first german a/c by a British plane in WW2, and sank the 1st major warship ever sunk by air attack in anger - http://freespace.virgin.net/john.dell/sinking_of_the_konigsberg.htm

Skua accuracey: http://freespace.virgin.net/john.dell/Memories.htm#shunned

[JasonC]

No comparison or other plane type is going to help very much. If a realistic dive bombing attack (by one of the best models of the war at that task) only hit a target 1-2 CM tiles wide by 12 tiles long, one time in six, how likely can they be to hit a target far smaller than a single tile?

[jacobs_ladder2]

Originally posted by JasonC:

No comparison or other plane type is going to help very much. If a realistic dive bombing attack (by one of the best models of the war at that task) only hit a target 1-2 CM tiles wide by 12 tiles long, one time in six, how likely can they be to hit a target far smaller than a single tile?

There are other considerations here. How well-protected were those carriers? I'm thinking, judging by the number of escorts, they were very well-protected. I wonder from what altitude those pilots were forced to bomb from. My guess is that those pilots were releasing from altitudes from which even spotting a tank would be impossible. And remember that despite its size a carrier is a target moving at around 20 knots.

Also, a miss on the ocean is not the same as a miss on land. On land, with a soft target, you don't have to score a direct hit with a 1,000lb bomb. To what distance is such a weapon lethal? That I could not say, but I think it would end up compensating greatly for the small size of the target.

Of course, hard targets are a different story altogether. Getting a bomb close enough to a medium or heavy tank for, at the very least, a disablement, was probably not an easy thing to do.

Cheers

Paul

[ozi_digger]

After a bit more research today, hopefully I can make the picture on the Stuka a little clearer.

First - looks like dieseltaylor may have a very valid popint about the increased accuracy of dive-bombing. Second - jacobs_ladder - be careful when thinking bout near misses in water because you have hydrobaric blast effects. From Mike Spick Luftwaffe Bomber Aces: 'The area where a near miss might do considerable damage was at sea. In a dense medium such as water, blast effect was greatly multiplied, often causing lethal damage...'

MD brings up a valid point about the SDB hits on japanese ships at Midway, but it comes back to JasonC's comments - IIRC weren't the losses in SDBs about 90%? (More on this below) Also from what I can gather, SOPs for attacking ships was to attack diagonally accross the ship, therefore it is a semi-linear target. By looking at the RAF Typhoon data I presented earlier, we can see that accuracy of attacks against linear targets increases quite dramatically vis a vis attacks on point targets.

Both Mike Spick and Dr Alfred Price The Luftwaffe Data Book have similar claims about the accuracy of dive bombing but offer no source of empirical data to back their claims. Dr Price: 'In a dive-bomber a well-trained pilot could place half his bombs inside a circle with a radius of 25 yards...' Mike Spick also claims a Stuka CEP = 25 yds. This is from a standard release height of 2300ft. I'm sure these are low-stress figures.

This brings me back to JasonC's comment about loss rates. Dive bombing is more accurate but it means you're a sitting duck to ground fire and AAA. You can't sustain the loss rates of aircraft vs tanks. Another text I skimmed was IIRC Efficiency of German Forces which had anecdotes from two German pilots. The first said that the loss rate of aircraft:tanks during the initial stages of the Russian campaign (before dive-bombing was phased out) was 1:1! The other pilot relates a story as the leader of a ground attack where his entire squadron 'spears-in' behind him. These sort of attrition rates are not cost-effective.

[dieseltaylor]

I would imagine the impetus for carrier strike pilots to do a good job would be helped by the knowledge that success was enormously important to the war effort. Ground targets are there tomorrow and not as of great importance. Twenty, forty dead planes for a dead carrier is good results.

The Skua accuracy report is very interesting - 8 out of 8 in a test on a light cruiser. Admittedly low stress but it seems to me - given Taranto - that FAA pilots always seemed to go target first and then if we survive lets try and get home.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by ozi_digger:

The first said that the loss rate of aircraft:tanks during the initial stages of the Russian campaign (before dive-bombing was phased out) was 1:1! The other pilot relates a story as the leader of a ground attack where his entire squadron 'spears-in' behind him. These sort of attrition rates are not cost-effective.

Quite apart from what it does to the morale and willingness to make the extra effort of those who are witnessing it.

[JasonC]

"How well-protected were those carriers?"

Quite poor. There was no CAP, all of it having been pulled down to deal with the preceding torpedo plane attacks. Flak was weak on Japanese ships at the time, and they were focused on low altitude for the same reason as the previous. The SBDs pushed over before a round of heavy flak was fired at them. There was significant flak at low level, and a fair number of SBDs were hit exiting the fleet. Most were damaged.

"I wonder from what altitude those pilots were forced to bomb from. My guess is that those pilots were releasing from altitudes from which even spotting a tank would be impossible."

Not at all. They pushed over from high altitude certainly, but released at 2000 to 3000 feet. You can see cars clearly out the small side windows of airplanes at altitude, let alone down at 2000-3000, which are the heights you may be used to from landing approaches.

"a carrier is a target moving at around 20 knots."

Irrelevant to the hitting difficulty, as the plane itself is going hundreds of miles per hour in any case, which sets the relative velocity of the "shot", and the carrier does not appreciably change its velocity vector in the time period of a dive. (Carriers turn when under air attack, but that helps more against torpedos, which are quite slow in the water - 30 mph - but little against bombs).

Misses damage ships especially if the bomb is large and the ship is small. But it was the direct hits that did the damage at Midway, and especially the secondary burns they set off, from aviation fuel, planes aboard ship, and aircraft ordnance stowed in hangers or actually on planes in flight prep, etc.

The lethal radius of a 1000 lb bomb certainly helps for men in the open. But if we are talking about tanks, or a dug in gun position, the lethal radius is quite small, certainly smaller than an aircraft carrier.

What the SBD examples shows is that (1) effectiveness does not in fact depend on high accuracy per weapon or engagement, quite low values being quite sufficient to inflict serious damage through numbers sent and repeated strikes (2) the actual accuracy of even dive bombing was low, with the bombs probably falling within 1000 feet of the intended aim point in any direction, somewhat concentrated on the middle 500 feet radius. The size of a CM rocket FO fire mission, not the (silly) pinpoint accuracy of CM strafing that hits a vehicle sized target twice on the same firing pass.

When instead dropped from alitude by level bombers, the effective aim point was a city. AAR studies by the strategic bombing survey after WW II found only small percentage of level bombs managed to hit a target the size of a large factory.

Note that consideration (1) above will also account for the overall destruction of soft targets achieved by fighter bombers conducting "armed recce". The comparison of fighter sorties and tonnages dropped with soft vehicles (trucks and railroad cars, not counting locomotives) probably destroyed, fits the SBD style of effectiveness. The average fighter bomber dropped its bombs or fired its rockets without hitting anything. But entire squadrons would get some hits close enough to vulnerable soft vehicles to inflict significant destruction overall. It is when such individually inefficient strikes accumulate over whole squadrons that the get hits at all. And it is when those modest hits per large strike accumulate over weeks of strikes by entire air forces of hundreds of squadrons, that the overall damage becomes operationally important.

[Baneman]

The most popular thread in a long time

Just thinking based on something mentioned above about aircraft in CM causing Pinned and Shocked results.

Maybe ( due to the small scale of the battles modelled in CM ) when one side buys aircraft, the other side has its ammo reduced somewhat ( 10-20% ? ). If both sides buy, no effect. If opposing side buys flak, effects are offset somewhat. Thus simulating rear-area interdiction without necessarily having on-board interventions ( and their attendant arguments regarding effectiveness etc. )

OTOH, I've had tanks strafed by a/c twice in one battle and both times the commander was killed and the tank was Shocked - neither was destroyed. That seemed pretty realistic.

Just thinking out loud ...

[pamak1970]

Um, there seems to be a little confusion over the 10 sqft target. Apologies to pamak because I should have been more clear. The table heading in the text is actually "Hits on 10 feet square normal to line of flight per attack per aircraft". This suggests to me that the target is not a point one but is linear. The RAF boffins were simply measuring the number of hits in a 10'x10' area along a gun run.

First there is no need for any apology .

The second thing is that i do not understand what you are saying.

I am not sure how you envision the shape of this type of linear target or the definition you give to the term "linear".

The size of the surface of the target is a definite number,in this case 10sq ft.

Now this may have the shape of a square with each side being around 3,2 feet or it might be a different shape -2 feet wide X 5 feet long ,or 1 foot wide X10 feet long for example.

The concentration is large in any case.

Now if the results of the table were given in feet instead of square feet, then i could give a different interpretation.

For example if there was 25% of hits inside an area of 10 feet wide along the path of the strafing , that is certainly different.

In this case we know how the rounds spread "left and right" of the strafing path but we do not have a complete picture of accuracy cause we do not know how they spread along the strafing path.

In my view the phrase "Hits on 10 feet square normal to line of flight" has the same meaning with the phrase we see in the first example

"horizontal projected area" which is affected by the angle of dive.

[jacobs_ladder2]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Quite poor. There was no CAP, all of it having been pulled down to deal with the preceding torpedo plane attacks.

They really caught them with their pants down, eh. That's a shame.

Not at all. They pushed over from high altitude certainly, but released at 2000 to 3000 feet.

That surprises me. I would have thought that suicide, but I forgot about the torpedo bombers.

The lethal radius of a 1000 lb bomb certainly helps for men in the open. But if we are talking about tanks, or a dug in gun position, the lethal radius is quite small, certainly smaller than an aircraft carrier.

What do you suppose the lethal radius is for a 1000lb bomb?

Interesting post and thread, btw. A fairly accurate picture of airpower in WWII. Lots of planes buzzing around taking potshots at whatever moved. Sounds about right.

Cheers

Paul

[dieseltaylor]

"German Ju 87 Stuka aircraft of St.G 2 made their first raid on 10th January 1941 when they attacked and damaged HMS Illustrious, which limped into Valetta's Grand Harbour after six hits from well-aimed 500 kg bombs. (The carrier's aircraft had been lured away by Italian SM 79 aircraft of 32nd Stormo, allowing the 26 Stukas attacking flight access to the aircraft carrier). Than attacked the Illustrious with many near misses again in the Grand Harbour but with great destruction to the buildings in the nearby villages. "

Not a bad strike rate for the Stuka's ?

[pamak1970]

"I wonder from what altitude those pilots were forced to bomb from. My guess is that those pilots were releasing from altitudes from which even spotting a tank would be impossible."

First i think we have to take in consideration that there are various scenarios.

For example things are different when a plane is directed by an air-liasion officer towards a ground target compared to when a plane has to spot and engage a target without any type of help.

I saw an interesting piece of information regarding target aquisition in the latter case.

It is remarks from Rudel which i do not have any reasons to question in this case.

From

http://www.geocities.com/equipmentshop/a10cactusairforce.htm

Target Acquisition

Rudel states repeatedly, and most emphatically, that this is the most difficult aspect of anti-tank operations. The pilot must be completely free to concentrate all his attention on tank hunting. Therefore, if the enemy has air-superiority over the battlefield, this distraction will make it impossible to find tanks. Enemy air defenses also make acquisition much more difficult. Most important, high speed "is poison" for finding tanks. Rudel was adamant that even though high speed might be desirable, under "no circumstances" should you sacrifice low speed performance to get high speed performance. His reason is simple: you can not find tanks at high speeds. (Comment: There are several reasons why Rudel's comments should be taken very seriously on this crucial point: He was the most experienced and effective combat pilot in the history of anti-tank warfare. Tanks look pretty much the same from the air today as they did in World War II. He was describing the difficulties of finding tank in the relatively open steppes of the Ukraine as opposed to a much more cluttered environment in Central Europe. Finally, he was relating to the top speed of the slow and clumbsy Stuka.)

Generally, you had to be within 400-500 meters slant range in order to determine if a carefully camouflaged moving vehicle was a tank, determining if the tank was an enemy often required that you get much closer. Recognition problems were toughest during breakthroughs because friendly and enemy tanks became intermingled; however, air defenses were weaker because the enemy had outrun his flak.

Now i do not see the above comments unreasonable.

Maybe it is much easier to spot camouflaged vehicles moving along roads but it is not so easy when they are located outside of a road ,even when terrain is open.

Even if you spot a vehicle it is difficult to distinguish a camouflaged tank from a truck or recognize friend from enemy during breakthrough operations.

The use of "air recognition panels" is not sufficient to give a solution for air recognition.

For example i have read in one of the wwii soviet manuals i have , that ground commanders were reluctant to use these panels unless the Soviet air force acheived and maintained air superiority,which makes sense.

I think that especially for Rudel and generally tank buster pilots it was important to identify a tank from a truck since their mission was more narrow .

On the other hand regardless of what was the actual effect of typhoons against tanks, they were not dedicated tank buster models and they were not restricted in their choices of targets.

[pamak1970]

information about german ground attack tactics

From

http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/ge_af_apr43/

Report on two topics related to the German Air Force, "Tactics against Ground Troops" and "Flying Discipline," from the Intelligence Bulletin, April 1943.

[Editor's Note: The following article is wartime information on enemy tactics and equipment published for Allied soldiers. In most cases, more accurate data is available in postwar publications.]

GERMAN AIR FORCES

1. TACTICS AGAINST GROUND TROOPS

German air attacks against ground troops consist primarily of two types of action—low altitude strafing and dive bombing—and are usually made by air units closely supporting an infantry or armored force. Their chief purpose is to hinder troop movements and destroy communications, thus preventing effective reinforcement and deployment of opposing troops. That the Germans have attached an increased importance to such raids is shown by the fact that special ground-attack units (Schlachtgeschwader) were organized during 1942, equipped principally with the new Hs 129, an aircraft designed especially as a tank destroyer and antipersonnel weapon.

Dive bombers have been employed extensively against ground troops and fixed defensive positions, often producing panic among troops who were facing them for the first time. Troop movements have been critically hampered by accurate bombing attacks on strategic roads and crossroads, followed by strafing of personnel. Primary objectives of dive bombers, cooperating with ground forces, are the opposition's lines of communication, which are systematically attacked to disrupt movements of any kind, and to prevent effective counterattacks.

The Germans believe that a patrol of four planes is the most effective ground-attack unit, since it is both maneuverable and sufficiently strong to neutralize such targets as artillery positions and small columns of troops. The number of such dive-bomber units normally employed on one raid has been 8 to 10 (30 to 40 aircraft); these are escorted by about 10 fighters flying 1,000 to 2,000 feet above them. Formations approach at 14,000 to 17,000 feet in the sun. When they are near the target, they descend to about 6,000 feet. From this altitude they dive at a steep angle, one after another.

Bombs are released during the pull-out, at altitudes of approximately 250 to 500 feet. The leader drops his bombs at about 300 feet; the others, at 300 to 500 feet. Usually each aircraft releases one large (550 lb.) and two or four small (110 lb.) bombs. The bombs form no pattern, and the large bomb usually overshoots the small ones, all generally falling within 50 to 150 yards of the target.

If antiaircraft fire is intense, aircraft fly in staggered formation, maintaining extended intervals. Since very few aircraft will dive through intense antiaircraft fire, the bombs are usually released above the barrage, with consequent loss of accuracy and diminished effect. On strongly defended positions, only one run over the target is made per sortie.

If antiaircraft fire is light, dive bombers often fly four in a single line. When they reach the objective, all attack the same target, or else the formation separates into pairs, each of which attacks a previously designated target. The pairs also may subdivide, and dive on the assigned target from different directions. They may repeat the attack if all bombs were not released during the first dive. In this case they climb in a big arc to dive again.

Most of the dive bombers shot down by ground defenses are hit by light antiaircraft guns just as the planes are pulling out of their dives. Since at that time the entire belly of an aircraft is exposed to fire, the pull-out is the bomber's moment of greatest vulnerability. Although aircraft have been engaged by artillery during the actual dive, very few hits have been scored. However, the bombers have been forced to take evasive action, thus making accurate bombing impossible.

The effect of small-arms fire on the morale of pilots is considerable. Ground-attack aircraft undoubtedly have been hit by it, and tracer or armor-piercing ammunition, fired from the ground at close range, has a deterring effect. However, low-flying raids have been very successful, both against troops and lightly armored vehicles. Bomb splinters have been known to penetrate armored cars from 30 yards. If the driver's flap or the car doors have been carelessly left open, "near misses" may also cause damage.

Attacks by cannon-firing aircraft are carried out at an angle varying from 20 to 70 degrees, depending on the type of target. No particular part of an armored vehicle seems to be aimed at, but roofs are hit less often than are other parts of the vehicles. Pilots open fire at about 200 yards, continuing to fire until they are past the target. Although high-explosive, armor-piercing high-explosive, armor-piercing, and incendiary ammunition are used, the belt loading is 75 percent armor-piercing when the aircraft is to attack armored vehicles.

Units created for ground attack have been equipped chiefly with the Hs 129, built with special protection for this type of attack. The heavily armored cockpit makes action possible at low altitudes. These aircraft take off in echelon, by sections, flying to the target in close echelon formation if there is danger of attack by enemy fighters. They avoid antiaircraft defenses as much as possible by using cloud cover (if it exists), by approaching from the sun, and by changing course frequently. The attack is made by individual sections of the unit. While one section is attacking, another is moving away from the target, and the third is approaching it. Each section flies in close formation, diving directly at the target at about a 45-degree angle. When leaving the objective, the planes fly in line ahead or in echelon formation, strafing the area as they depart.

Fragmentation bombs are dropped on a target from an altitude of 60 to 100 feet during the pull-out. After the bombs are released, the guns are fired at the target. In place of bombs, the aircraft may mount the Mk 101 30-mm cannon, which is for use against tanks and armored cars.

As in the case of dive bombers, all operations by ground-attack aircraft are usually escorted by fighters. The method of escort depends on the number and type of enemy fighters which are likely to be encountered en route to, or in the vicinity of, the objective.

It must be emphasized again that the weakness of attack aviation lies in the vulnerability of low-flying aircraft to rifle and machine-gun fire.