Jump to content

Film of Stuka 87G in action


Recommended Posts

Originally posted by A.E.B:

Out of curiosity, how many of us here have seen photos or gun camera footage of FBs/CAS of any nation taking down armour.

A quick check of my books/videos turned up trucks (in one case a whole german supply column lost to IL2s near Kursk - although it appeared to be a chain-reaction of exploding trucks), trains, infantry, planes on the ground, ships, and even horses and carts.

A.E.B

Good point - I checked my books too for pictures and can only find 2 photos - 1 from M.K.Barbier's "Kursk" which is of soft-skinned targets only and another in "Wehrmacht" (edited Dr John Pimlott ) which shows the remains of a german column at Falaise - also all soft-skinned ( there might be a light tank there but it's hard to see ).

Nothing of proven anti-armour air kills.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 327
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

John I think you have the wrong end of the stick here. If it had failed the use of partroops may have been curtailed - the Germans as they had wiped theirs out and other folk 'cos it would look a higher risk option.

Of course we would have lost more ships trying to keep the worlds largest voluntary POW camp in operation. Obvious really. : )

The cock-up theory of warfare strikes again. A man of youe calibre will no doubt provide a summation of the political repercussions of the defeat. An interesting what if.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by John D Salt:

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

[snips]

The German paradrop on Crete if Maleme had not been taken and held. Alter the course of the war? Majorly I say.

Really? OK, we've wandered a fair way from the original point here, but would you care to state how exactly the German occupation of Crete caused major inconvenience to the Allies in the prosecution of the Mediterranean campaign?

All the best,

John. </font>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think it is more like looking at a weapon's effectiveness over the course of the war in order to arrive at its "true" relative effectiveness while in action....
Indeed, that is basically the issue.

I have some questions for all those here who are interested in this subject.

I will present a very simple scenario .

Let's follow the theory of using global statistics about the numerator and denominator in order to measure the true impact of the weapon in a specific place-battlefield or fight.

Say for example Soviet Union is in war with a Germany.

Both nations use only one type of weapon system to fight the enemy .

In addition both nations use the same type of weapon system-say it is a T-34 tank.

After the war we see some statistics.

So Soviet Union's overall production was 10000 T-34 tanks.

Germany's production was 6000 tanks.

In addition Germany's overall losses up to the end of the war was 5000 tanks.

Now i will use the idea of numerator and denominator to try to calculate the effectiveness of a Soviet T-34 tank and please correct me if i do it wrong.

So, the denominator is 10.000 of Soviet union tanks which do the "killing"

The numerator is 5000 tanks losses inflicted on germany .

Therefore we have a ratio of 2 shooters to one loss which lead us to claim that on average,each Soviet T-34 tank destroyed half of a German T-34 tank and has an effectiveness A.

We continue by examining a similar scenario where the type of weapons and German losses are the same again (T-34 and 5000 ) but the Soviet production number is different.

Say overall Soviet T-34 production is 20000 .

In this case numerator is again 5000 and denominator is 20000 .

Now the conclusion is that on average, a Soviet T-34 tank destroyed one fourth of a german tank and has an effectiveness B.

So in two different scenarios ,the same weapon system with the same technical characteristics have different effectiveness against the same german target.

Now assume i ask you to consider a specific scenario where a company of Soviet T-34s with effectiveness A engages a german T-34 platoon in a particular battlefield .

I also ask you to consider another specific scenario,where a company of Soviet T-34s with effectiveness B in the same battlefield engages the same german T-34 platoon.

Do you expect to see these two scenarios producing different results of attrition at this local level

based on the different effectiveness of the Soviet tanks?

I do not since technical characteristics and battlefield situation is the same.

The issue is that the conditions on the battlefield during an armor engagement do not represent average conditions and theoritical effectiveness of a system is related to many factors other than technical characteristics .

See for example the art of maneuver by Robert leonhard giving an illustration of the activities of a typical tank division and the percentage of time spent.

From fig.4-13

Moving on roads 15% of the time

In "close" terrain- 15%

Port operations 5%

Refit 15%

Rehearsing 5%

Planning/orders 15%

Lost/delayed 10%

Reorganization 10%

READY 10%

Although the numbers might be arbitary ,the idea that a military organization from a single tank to a tank division spends most of the time (90% according to the above) unprepared for combat activities holds true.

Even when it is combat ready,the actual participation in combat will be a portion of that time and similarily the engagement against enemy armor will be a smaller portion of the actual combat participation of the unit.

On the other hand during an actual armor engagement , the unit will have some of its elements in combat mode for the whole duration of the engagement, trying constantly to spot and kill enemy tanks.

On average an element might destroy a single target per 100 time units equal with "its operational life", but it will be more accurate to say that most probably the element will destroy a single target during a very small portion of these time units.

Then we have the problem of actual ratio of forces during the engagement.

The more advantageous for the attacker the less targets per unit available which will affect at the end numerator and denominator .

The problem is that effectiveness in a case of high ratio of attacker to defender should not be relative only to the actual losses inflicted.

A higher ratio might score the same number of kills BUT WILL ALSO AFFECT THE TIME OF THE DURATION OF THIS ENGAGEMENT (the more shooters per target the more probability to kill).

In this case, theoritical efffectiveness is not relative only to actual losses.

A large portion of the actual effectiveness of the weapon is masked behind this accomplishment of "shorter durations of engagement".

A quicker resolution is also relative and indicator of better effectiveness .

This is a parameter that numerators and denominators do not consider at all ,leading to distorted conclusions about the effectiveness of the weapon in the battlefield.

There are also other issues,like the implications of Lanchester square law theory in relation to the effect of high attack ratio to the ability of the defender to score kills.

To put it simply ,theoritically an engagement of equal systems of equal numbers is expected to produce a mutual destruction.

That is a consequence of probability theory for aimed fire.

If we run a simulation of engagement between 10 Soviet T-34 tanks against 10 German T-34 tanks in an enviroment where noone has any kind of benefit, we will expect to see forces destroy completely each other.

So at the end we will have 10 tanks inflicting 10 losses.

If we run the same simulation with 20 Soviet T-34 tanks against 10 German T-34 tanks results will be different in an interesting way.

In this case the German side will lose but it is more interesting the fact that in this case the 10 German tanks will destroy less than 10 Soviet tanks .

The more we change the ratio in favor of the Soviets ,the less casualties for the soviets at the end of the battle.

So the "theoritical effectiveness" of the German system in the battlefield is relative to the ratio of attacker to defender forces.

If you want mathematical proof of this , i can provide it as long as you are familiar with basic principles of differential equations and integration but i guess since you seem to have an interest about operational research ,you are familiar with Lanchester square law.

There are other issues also and that is why i say

there is no point to try to compare overall effectiveness at the strategic level to actual battlefield effectiveness.

[ August 17, 2005, 12:13 PM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To put it simply ,theoritically an engagement of equal systems of equal numbers is expected to produce a mutual destruction.

That is a consequence of probability theory for aimed fire.

If we run a simulation of engagement between 10 Soviet T-34 tanks against 10 German T-34 tanks in an enviroment where noone has any kind of benefit, we will expect to see forces destroy completely each other.

So at the end we will have 10 tanks inflicting 10 losses.

Brings to mind the "Back to back they drew their swords and shot each other" nonsense rhyme...

"Perhaps the most critical problem for military simulations is the fact that the structures of combat processes and the interactions of these processes are essentially unknown.

For example, most combat simulations use the Lanchester square & linear models for attrition processes, despite evidence that these models don't match historical combat (Hartley and Helmbold 1995 and Hartley 1995b)"

VERIFICATION & VALIDATION IN MILITARY SIMULATIONS, Dean S. Hartley III

[ August 17, 2005, 12:40 PM: Message edited by: Wicky ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by Wicky:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />To put it simply ,theoritically an engagement of equal systems of equal numbers is expected to produce a mutual destruction.

That is a consequence of probability theory for aimed fire.

If we run a simulation of engagement between 10 Soviet T-34 tanks against 10 German T-34 tanks in an enviroment where noone has any kind of benefit, we will expect to see forces destroy completely each other.

So at the end we will have 10 tanks inflicting 10 losses.

Brings to mind the "Back to back they drew their swords and shot each other" nonsense rhyme...

"...most combat simulations use the Lanchester square & linear models for attrition processes, despite evidence that these models don't match historical combat" (Hartley and Helmbold 1995 and Hartley 1995b) </font>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another comment about how effectiveness is distorted by taking in consideration only the number of shooters and the number of kills.

I will use a scenario with arbitary numbers for easy calculations.

Say for example that a unit breaks contact and withdraws from an engagement if it sustains losses of 50% of its original force.

Now let say that during a war we see that during an average tank engagement a Soviet tank force of 10 T-34 tanks is engaging a german tank force of 10 T-34 tanks.

Now there is no reason for both sides to stop engagement as long as the level of causalties does not reach the critical level of 50% of the original force.

They will continue to engage shoot and get supplies until someone reaches the "break point".

We are not going to consider special cases of units having ammo shortage.

With all these in mind, let say that on average 10 tanks inflict 5 kills after 100 volleys.

The number of average volleys per engagement indicates (is related) to a certain time .

The more volleys ,the more the duration of the average engagement.

Using the above, the numerator -denominator concept will "conclude" that if 10 tanks inflict 5 kills after 100 volleys which is typical for the average engagement,then the effectiveness is 50% probability per vehicle to score a kill in a typical engagement .The average consumsion of ammunition will be 10x100=1000 rounds

Now let's consider another type of war where an average engagement includes 100 Soviet T-34 tanks against 10 German T-34 tanks.

technical characteristics of individual weapons are the same and i do not see the reason why the probability of kill of a Soviet tanker in this case should be different than the previous scenario .

The most probable scenario here is that 1000 rounds will again result in 5 kills.

So a typical engagement will have a duration of 10 Soviet volleys which will result in 5 kills of german tanks and force germans to break contact and withdraw since they reach the critical 50% loss of their original unit.

Now in this case the result is shorter duration of average engagements.

Each Soviet tank uses 10 shells during an average engagement .Remember that in the previous scenario each Soviet tank used 100 shells.

Therefore it is not surprising to see that in the second scenario a single Soviet tank has less probability to score a kill.

Does this mean that it is less reliable than the vehicle in the first scenario?

Of course not.

So, although numerators and denominators will give a much less percentage of kills for each vehicle per a typical engagement, they reveal nothing about the actual effectiveness of the weapon.

For the numerator and denominator, a degraded model of T-34 in the first scenario which scores less kills per a typical engagement can be as much "effective" as an improved model of T-34 in the second scenario where it is part of a much larger force and scores also less kills as a result of this ratio of attacker per defender.

[ August 17, 2005, 01:44 PM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by Wicky:

Didn't 180 Israeli tanks see off 1,400 Syrian tanks in 1973 in the Golan...

Notice that the Lanchester equation mentions some conclusions related to force ratios considering that ALL ELSE IS EQUAL and does not affect positive or negative either side.

The problem in applying this in practice,is that we can not make easy evaluations and quantification of other factors like, training, dogma.leadership,surprise,moral, terrain advantages and so on.

[ August 17, 2005, 01:50 PM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am enjoying it. It is intersting to see someones analysis of warfare/effectiveness subjected to scrutiny. Especially when I am unable to argue with the big boys as statistically I would call myself pig ignorant. However I have during my life seen people disappear off planet earth with theories that hang together provided you do not subject them to reality comparisons.

Anyway it was still a great clip to watch : )

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by Wicky:

I bet the Syrians wish they'd read the small print ;)

The most interesting thing for wargamers like us is that it is more easy for us to use the conclusions of Lanchester equations since in our wargaming enviroment ,things are quantified .

This is especially true for board games when the player is aware of the mechanisms and quantifications that the designer uses to resolve conflicts.

Here is a small example.

Assume that me, as a designer make a very simple board game with a very simple rule of combat resolution.

I give a map and supply each player with 10 counters that represent units.

During an engagement between two opposite units ,the rule is that the players throw a dice simultaneously for each unit participating in the engagement.

Each time they throw the dice ,they will have 25% probability to score a kill against an enemy counter.

After each "volley" they remove killed counters and they continue to the next round of volley to resolve the engagement.

Now if both players have the same number of units and the same kill probability, they have equal chances to win the game.

Now suppose i choose to zalter the rule and approach a player making a proposal.

The proposal is the following

"I will double the percentage of kill probability of his counters from 25% to 50% making them more effective.

To counterbalance this ,i will double the number of units of the opponent which still have 25% probability to kill".

The question is the following.

Should the player accept this offer?

Does it give him more,less or equal chances to win the game?

The answer comes from some conclusions of Lanchester square law.

And the answe is a big NO.

The player should not accept the offer.

Although he has double probability kill, the counteroffer of making double the size of the opponents force is more advantageous for the opponent.

We can ask more specific answers.

For example, what should be the probability kill in order to keep the balance intact when i double the size of the opponents army?

Thsi is also adressed by mathematical formulas extracted from Lanchester square law.

The basic rule is that

"In order to compensate for the other side's numerical advantage, the killing rate of the technology must advance in proportion to the square of the number of opponents it is meant to kill."

As Dr. Paulos put it, it takes an N-squared-fold increase in quality to make up for an N-fold increase in quantity.

In common language this means that if i make the opponent army two times larger, then the quality superiority of the inferior side should be 2.2=4 times more than the quality of the units of the larger unit.

If i make the size 3 times larger ,then the quality superiority should be 3.3=9 times larger for the other side and so on and so on.

IMPORTANT NOTICE.

Although i mentioned at first probability rate, the quality increase is not always a function of making four times or 9 times bigger the probability kill.

This might be true if i have for example an initial probability kill of 3% for each player and at the end of my offer i boost this to 3.4=12% for one side to fight the double amount of enemy units which retain the original 3% probability kill.

Of course ,if you consider an initial probability kill of 25% or 50%, it does not make sense to say that you will offer a new probability kill of 100% or 200%.

This is not probability at all.

In such cases, the increase to the desired quality effectiveness comes through the increase of "rate of fire".

So you give a rate of fire such as a unit of the inferior in quantity force will be 4 times more effective than an enemy unit.

That means that a SINGLE UNIT engaging an enemy one in a series of confontations of one against one,it will win 4 times more often than the enemy.

If you think that the above things are irrational, you can test them in some simple scenarios.

use a unit with 50% probability kill against 2 enemy units of 25% of probability kill.

Make a tree-diagram for the single unit with all possible combinations and see the probability of having it scoring two kills in two volleys.

The probability is 25% to score two kills in two volleys,therefore 25% in order to win the engagement.

Note that two volleys is the minimum required number for the single unit .

Considering that only ONE enemy unit is capable to create a 25% probability to win the engagement in ONE volley (since it needs to kill only one target) and is very obvious that the chances of two units winning the engagement in two volleys are much more.

( note that one enemy unit at minimum will survive the first volley under any circumstances) .

P.S each volley is one exchange of fires between the opposite units.

if they have the same rate of fire they exhange the same number of shots against each other.

Note also the expression i used about a SINGLE UNIT 4 times more effective than a single enemy one.

To put it differently although the quality of this unit is 4 times more than an enemy one ,

if this unit is part of a force which is half the size of the enemy, its actual perfmomance under this ratio of forces will be only 2 kO enemy units,according to the theoritical expectations of Lanchester square law.

[ August 17, 2005, 03:43 PM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

John I think you have the wrong end of the stick here. If it had failed the use of partroops may have been curtailed - the Germans as they had wiped theirs out and other folk 'cos it would look a higher risk option. [snips]

I was under the impression that the German use of airborne forces was, indeed, dramatically curtailed as a result of their Pyrrhic victory at Crete. What reason do you have for thinking otherwise?

Possibly if the Germans had failed to take Crete the Allies would not have invested the effort they did in airborne forces, it's true. I'm not convinced that that would have made such an enormous difference to the outcome of the war, making the Normandy landings more difficult, but avoiding the fiascos of Sicily and Arnhem, and leaving a lot more high-quality junior leaders in the line infantry.

All the best,

John.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Boy this has got a bit essoteric!!

But some points to consider:

1/ Stuka G's were not new builds IIRC - they weer conversions of existing airframes. Presumably someone thought the AT G's were more useful than the D's they were made from, and the D's were originally built because they were considered effective at hte time.

So the "value" of a G is not that of a new airframe, but the value of the conversion. The alternative is to have a LESS effective airframe that probably has to be scrapped for little value in return.

2/ the 37mm might have been the same calibre as the door knocker Pak 36, but it was not the same gun - it was the 37mm AA gun, probably about as effective as the 40mm bofors, and much more capable than the Pak 36.

3/ I still like Mike D's post back on page 2 where he proposed that air support should be more random, more suppression/morale oriented, and bought in more realistic groups of 2 or 4 a/c at a time.

4/ item 3 notwithstanding, even AFV's undamaged by air attack were apparently often abandoned by their crews out of sheer fear.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by John D Salt:

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

John I think you have the wrong end of the stick here. If it had failed the use of partroops may have been curtailed - the Germans as they had wiped theirs out and other folk 'cos it would look a higher risk option. [snips]

I was under the impression that the German use of airborne forces was, indeed, dramatically curtailed as a result of their Pyrrhic victory at Crete. What reason do you have for thinking otherwise?

Possibly if the Germans had failed to take Crete the Allies would not have invested the effort they did in airborne forces, it's true. I'm not convinced that that would have made such an enormous difference to the outcome of the war, making the Normandy landings more difficult, but avoiding the fiascos of Sicily and Arnhem, and leaving a lot more high-quality junior leaders in the line infantry.

All the best,

John. </font>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Germans never made a significant airdrop after Crete..... and they "won" the battle.

I suspect the same would hold had they "lost"!!! So no change in that respect.

However whether that would have discouraged the allies from using para's is another question entirely.

Para's/airborne were self-evidently useful in a variety of situations, and a failure by the Germans at Crete may have led to nothing "more" than a more cautious approach by the allies - ie they seek to learn the "lesson" of such a failure and avoid the problem in the future - possibly Arnhem doesn't happen, but little else changes.

Just one possibility of course.

However could the allies have held Crete? with all the airfields on the Nth side open to attack from Greece perhaps the allies would have evacuated?

Or alternatively the Germans get the Italian fleet to escort a "proper" invasion, there's a decisive naval battle with many casualties on both sides - the German infantry gets caught in their transports or the RN gets pasted.......Crete is held, the Germans have to retain several more divisions in the Aegean/Adriatic area to guard against allied threats, the allies have to send precious resources to hold Crete and Al Alameain doesn't happen.........hell, anything is possible.....

what's this got to do with AT aircraft??!! smile.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by Mike:

The Germans never made a significant airdrop after Crete..... and they "won" the battle.

I suspect the same would hold had they "lost"!!! So no change in that respect.

No, sorry - I was reading it as "what if they had never landed on Crete at all" - and were not dissuaded from further airborne operations.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

No, sorry - I was reading it as "what if they had never landed on Crete at all" - and were not dissuaded from further airborne operations.

Ah, ok. I read it as "drop takes place as it did, except they lose at Malame, causing the entire invasion to fail, and meaning para cas are even higher than actual"

Taking your line: if they decide not to do Crete, why owuld they then do any of the others? The only major difference would probably be that the stock of Ju-52s and tpt pilots would remain larger for longer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's an interesting question tho - where might the Germans have used the para's? I have no idea.

However I think my other comments on hte potential results of hte allies holding Crete remain - it's a major "what if", and I suspect there was no way the Germans could afford to leave the island in allied hands - hence the question of not using the German para's at all is not a realistic one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by JonS:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

No, sorry - I was reading it as "what if they had never landed on Crete at all" - and were not dissuaded from further airborne operations.

Ah, ok. I read it as "drop takes place as it did, except they lose at Malame, causing the entire invasion to fail, and meaning para cas are even higher than actual"

Taking your line: if they decide not to do Crete, why owuld they then do any of the others? The only major difference would probably be that the stock of Ju-52s and tpt pilots would remain larger for longer. </font>

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just to throw one more "what if" monkey wrench into the Crete scenario: The original reason that Hitler insisted on taking Crete was that he feared British bombing against Ploesti from there. How realistic was that fear? Could a large enough bomber force, plus whatever it took to protect it, including lots of interceptors to resist harassment from the mainland, be maintained there? And at what cost? This was at the same time that Rommel had thrown the Brits out of Libya (save for the besieged garrison of Tobruk), and Churchill was screaming for a British offensive to get back in. The battle for Ethiopia was just finishing up. A month later they would also be fighting in Syria. Middle East Command was very busy fighting a war on a shoestring. So where exactly would the air and other assets have come from for this strategic bombing campaign?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Originally posted by Mike:

It's an interesting question tho - where might the Germans have used the para's? I have no idea.

Malta. The Italians were urging it and even though the Germans seem to have rejected out of hand nearly anything the Italians recommended, there was some consideration of this. And given the state of the Maltese defenses at the time, it might have worked. And success there at that time would certainly have eased a lot of Axis problems later on. I suspect you can rack this one in the "Axis Strategic Blunder" column.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


×
×
  • Create New...