sturmelon

http://www.luftwaffe.cz/tank.html From the link provided above by dt.. Clearly Rudel was an outlier. But knowing how many missions others flew would be critical information. Not everyone oin this list is flying Stukas either.

Excellent post dieseltaylor. From the footage I have seen, the Stukas are coming down like gulls, swaying from side to side. As has been stated, they have no air brakes. The angle is not too pronounced and some reports say they attacked side armor also (canceling out the sloped side armor afvantage by hitting it square). The tunsten rounds probably had enough penetrating ability against this side armor anyway. I find it hard to believe they would only have the 37mm and rear firing MGs. Apparently, this is the case. A single tracer firing MG firing forward would seem to be a natural. The 37mm seem to be direct fire sighted and using the high velocity flat trajectory to score hits. Quite remarkable. I would assume Rudel to be an oulier and perhaps other Stuka pilots would not have his numbers. He may have only averaged 1 'kill' per sortie (if you followed the math earlier). His initial success could have been that the tanks did not take measures like those in diesel's post. They could have been a tank column all lined up on a road. But Rudel and others would fly multiple missions in one day. They clearly needed a larger feed for the 37mm. I assume both cannons fired at the same time single shot. This is only six shots per sortie. [ August 09, 2005, 03:49 PM: Message edited by: sturmelon ]

Excellent discussion and I must say that this forum often comes up during research. I would like to address the point about Rudel's claims being inflated or otherwise innacurate. Supposedly he flew about 2000+ Stuka missions total. He also flew 400 or so other non-Stuka missions (FW?). He supposedly used 5000 rounds of 37mm ammunition. Each full load-up of a twin 37mm Stuka (6 rounds each gun) gives about 400 or so 'tank-buster' missions. About 25% of his Stuka missions may have been with the 37mm armed Stuka then. He claims to take out 4 tanks during his very first mission against tanks (he used the experimental versions against boats of some sort IIRC). That means an average of 3 rounds to take out those first 4 tanks (actually he would get 2 tanks with one burst and two tanks with two bursts). I assume that both 37mm had to fire semi-auto and at the same time. My personal belief is that he may well have had 500+ successful 'attacks' against armor. This may also include bomb and 20mm success as well as the majority being 37mm. But many 'kills' may have just been TKO's that holed the engines, radiators and transmissions of many T34s. These 37mm Stukas specifically targeted the rear engine area IIRC. I recently saw History channel footage of these attacks BTW. His rear MG gunner certainly could see the effects of the attacks on the pull out. In cases where there is catasphrophic damage (turret blown off/large flames/brew-up), then an air-to-ground 'kill' (total write-off) is evident. In cases where abandonment and large white smoke (radiator emission or diesel fuel sloshed on hot manifold) are seen, I would not count that as a kill. Its most probably just taken the tank out of the picture for days to weeks. Its clear that they had much more precision than rocket firing or non-dive bombing ground attack aircraft. I would not lump them in with fighter-bomber stats without a closer look. Does anyone have any data that supports that he did not have these succeses? My presumption is that these Stukas with 37mm were used against breakthroughs predominately (especially later in the war). They would be attacking armored formations that had broken through and would not have adequate AA defense (which Stuke were vulnerable to). [ August 09, 2005, 11:08 AM: Message edited by: sturmelon ]