Kineas

They also stated each Eastern Front game is going to span about one year, from June to June, since June is when the mud period usually ended which both armies used for reorganizations.
 
So
Red Thunder: June 1944 - May 1945
Kursk Game: June 1943 - May 1944
Stalingrad/Blau/etc: June 1942 - May 1943
Barbarossa: June 1941 - May 1942

Joch - the RM was highly overvalued, and most economists use 4.2 RM to 1 dollar, not the official exchange rate, to convert them to dollars.  That is the purchasing power parity number.  The VIIC class sub price was 1.9 million to 2 million RMs, depending on the year.
 
Subs were much less expensive than the much larger merchant ships they were sinking.  1200 ton subs take out multiple 5000 to 10000 ton merchant ships.  The price of the sub is higher per ton of displacement, to be sure, but not by enough to make up that 4-8 to 1 size ratio, let alone that ratio times the 2.5 plus to 1 ratio of items sunk.
 
On the GDP way of measuring cost of the air war, the point is the US and UK were spending about equal shares of their much larger combined economies to inflict on the Germans about the same percent of GDP cost.  They have 3 times the combined economy early and 4 times later (after US expansion).  If they and Germany each spend about the same percentage of GDP, the Allies are spending 3-4 times as much absolutely, to accomplish it.  
 
The Allies also aren't really making any great headway that way.  The Allies as a group certainly were able to use their larger total economies to defeat Germany, which means they achieved an average rate of economic attrition well under the ratio of their economies - closer to unity.  That is precisely how they were able to destroy all of Germany's war power while losing only a portion of their own, leaving them with remaining forces in being after Germany's were destroyed.  
 
Therefore, any process or weapon system or campaign that traded resource only *at* the ratio of the rival economies, was under-performing the average strategic exchange efficiency of the whole Allied war effort.  And by a considerable margin, since the Allies ended with large military forces etc.  So not only was the strategic air campaign way less efficient that submarine warfare, it was at least marginally less effective than the rest of the Allied war effort.  Including the ground war above all.  

JonS - I can agree that it is the likely source of the discrepancy, if other sources accounted for 20% of Allied shipping losses.  Seems high to me, but possible.  Mines might be miscounted in that division either way, since most of them are fairly attributed to the u boats that laid them, but weren't around to see the result  At any rate, I don't think it changes the conclusion.  If a u boat got 2.5 merchant ships instead of 3.3 merchant ships, on top of the cost of fielding equal number of escorts to drive them off, it was still costing the allies many times what the u boats cost to field.
 
As for people discussing the relative cost of u boats and merchant ships, a type VIIC (2/3rds of all the boats and the standard model) cost a little under 2 million reichsmarks, or about $450,000.  That is about the price of 2 strategic bombers.  A liberty ship (on the large end of the merchant fleet, but quite numerous etc) cost $2 million, or about the price of 10 strategic bombers.
 
The economic exchange between investment in u boats and the cost and damage they inflicted may be 5-6 times in favor of the u boat (expecting a liberty ship to be about twice as expensive as an average ship sunk by the u boats, in line with the tonnage difference, and perhaps adding 1 times the u boat cost for the escort counters, damage etc).
The economic exchange between investment in strategic bombers and the damage they inflicted may be 3-5 times against the strategic bomber (looking at GDP shares spent etc).
The relative efficiency of the two forms of economic warfare might be somewhere between 15 and 30 times in favor of the u boats, with a figure around 20 times the most likely.
 
There is high confidence that the u boats were at least an order of magnitude more efficient than bombers at costing the enemy resources.
 
Certainly the Germans couldn't continue to get that exchange ratio after mid 1943 and the loss of the campaign against allied ASW techniques etc.
But they still inflicted megatons more damage than they cost - meant literally.  And the Allied strategic bombing campaign against Germany emphatically did not.
 
To Michael - amusing, thanks for that...

Steve pretty much nailed it.

LL was 7% of Soviet wartime output by value. The mix helped too, filling weak spots and relieving bottlenecks in Russian production, notably nitrogen fixing shortages that limited total explosives production, and providing communications gear (both radio and land line, infrastructure like switches etc) that it was hard for the Russia economy to produce in volume. Everyone knows about the trucks and most about the prepared food, which made it possible to draft a much larger portion of the peasantry - though in the worst period 42 etc the rear areas were still starving.

But the scale of the other major effects needs to be understood. The Germans physically occupied territory responsible for 40% of prewar industrial output. Some was evac'ed to be sure, but that number is over 5 times the scale of the LL contribution. Retaking lost ground was more vital than LL, basically. Similarly, mobilization produced year on year changes in narrow armaments output around 40%. Being one quarter faster on that trigger matched LL. Of course it didn't raise capacity, it used it and diverted income from other uses (some of the former, lots of the latter). But the point again is the scale of the changes from economic management decisions and operational ground control, was bigger than the scale of LL.

The biggest things the Russians had going fir them were German hubris as Steve says, and the bare fact if the western allies being in the war. The latter helped not just through LL but by keeping German divisions in the west, by engaging most of the Luftwaffe, by straining the German war economy to produce planes and u boats and bomb repair and aid to Italy etc, that would all have been pointed at Russia instead in a one front war. Both were vital, LL was a modest part of the second.

But no, to the original poster, the early Russia counterattacks aren't really evidence of the conclusion. The outcome of the 1942-3 winter campaign yes, the small 1941 local stuff no.

On amatol, 80/20 gives about 90 of the effectiveness of TNT, while 60/40 gives about 80 of that effectiveness. If the point is to stretch nitrates into overall explosive power that is worth it. If the point is to pack explosive power into each shell it is not. The US used 100% TNT for most arty rounds throughout the war. Some common rounds went to 80/20 amatol. The Germans used 60/40 as a matter of course.

This combines with filler weight differences to make for quite a difference in the explosive power of otherwise similar rounds. Both the US and the German 105 rounds weigh 33 lbs. CM gives them the same blast rating. But in reality the German round was something like 10% 60/40 amatol while the US was 14% TNT. Meaning 4.6 vs. 2.65 lbs TNT equivalent, or more than 50% higher for the US round.

If the CM blast rating of the US 105 were up to a third higher than the German, it would be perfectly realistic. Similarly, a US 81mm mortar round could easily have as high a blast rating as a German 75mm tank round, instead of the half it has in CM. But CM blast ratings contain only minor corrections for shell characteristics besides overall weight.

Heres an interesting passage from a German FO...

(13) On October 13, the Canadians were pounding us in preparations for their attack. Our observation house (10) was shot into rubble, leaving only the chimney. However, we stuck it out in the cellar. At dusk it was my turn to go up on watch. With a field telephone and binoculars, I climbed up the chimney and saw what seemed to be several officers looking over this bunker with binoculars and having maps before them. I called (whispered) for a single high velocity artillery round. (A straight shot that gives nobody time to duck). It was right on target and I saw a steel helmet flying like a Frisbee. A few minutes later a van came and men ran towards the bunker. It was getting dark and I couldn’t tell who they were, but I assumed they were medics and thus I refrained from further shelling of the area. - In the book 'Semper Paratus, The History of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry', page 278, the author writes "On Friday the 13th, the Black Watch of the 5th Brigade went in, east of Woensdrecht, against the center of the isthmus. Joe Pigott watching through his binoculars from the RHLI positions near Hoogerheide, saw them cut to pieces by machine-gun fire (all four of their company commanders were killed) and their attack, too, failed." - I believe that my one 105-mm howitzer round killed these four officers.

Notice that the velocity of the 105mm shell, giving no warning, led to its effectiveness This is similar to direct fire from many weapons.

http://members.shaw.ca/calgaryhighlanders/knolle.htm

[ November 05, 2003, 12:52 PM: Message edited by: Mr. Tittles ]

First on John's numbers - if you examine the chart I think you will find the "25 pdr equivalents" measure is tracking not weight, but the square root of the ratio of filler to that in the 25 pdr shell. Thus the US 75 with essentially the same filler weight is rated as 25 pdr equivalent. Shells with 1.1 lbs of filler get 1.1/1.75 ^ .5 = .79 x 25 = ~20 lbs rating. It tracks for all of the rest, pretty closely, until you get to the largest aircraft bombs, where it remains within a factor of 2.

CM blast values, on the other hand, do not reflect filler weight differences. Any correction for those differences is second order and minor; the basic determinant of CM blast is simply shell weight. Thus 7 lb 81mm mortar rounds have half the blast of 75mm gun HE, when the filler weight is essentially the same for the two rounds. In CMBO, the 4.5 inch gun, which had very low HE filler weight to shell weight, and in fact had no more filler than a 105, still has much higher blast than a 105, tracking its higher shell weight.

This simplification tends to favor the low filler and low quality filler shells, and the heavier tube artillery shells, while penalizing the high filler and high quality filler shells, and mortar bombs. Mortar bombs have more HE to weight because their low velocity allows much thinner casings (the same is true of aircraft bombs).

US shells tended to have higher HE loads to weight, particular the US 75, 105, and 155. And US shell, to a lesser extend also UK, had higher quality filler - much more likely to be pure TNT when most German filler by mid to late war was 60/40 amatol (due to nitrate shortages in Germany). The quite common Russian 120mm mortar is also quite strong looked at in pure HE filler terms.

As for the relative importance of splinters to blast, testing vs. exposed targets always shows splinters as the essential element. But WW I experience was that shrapnel rounds (with less HE filler, and balls carried inside the round like shotgun pellets) was singularly ineffective against men with any cover.

This was unexpected. On examination two things were found. One was that the size a splinter needed to be was much smaller than expected. Even quite small ones were lethal or could cause disabling wounds, if moving fast enough. There was little point in bringing along sizable "bullets" when tiny fragments of the casing served adequately as secondary projectile. More HE drove fragments at higher velocities and was more than sufficient compensation for no pre-made shrapnel ball, against men in the open.

The other finding was that blast is what mattered against men in cover. Men actually in the open are so vulnerable to arty fire that increased efficiency against them is quite secondary to increased overall lethality. Those truly in the open get whacked regardless. But cover has enourmous effects on arty effectiveness. Even lying prone reduces lethality not by a few tens of percent, but by a full factor of 10.

The men it is hard to hurt are those protected by earth from the direct path of fragments. Earth stops fragments very effectively. But it transmits blast more effectively than air does. The universal experience of WW I was that arty effectiveness depended on HE delivered, and the obvious reason is that the fragment component of the threat is typically "saturated", while continued additional increments of effect remain available via increased blast.

This fits with the notion of calculating 25 pdr equivalents by square root of HE filler weight, as shown in the British planning table. (It was, incidentally, a planning table based on such analysis, not an independent measurement of actual results seen).

The reason for the square root is simply to account for more numerous smaller shells having a smaller "closest distance" than the same weight in fewer, larger shells. That is, the impact of any one shell is assumed to track its HE filler weight. But 4 x 1.7 lb filler will also put the nearest shell half the distance to be expected from 1 x 6.8 filler.

It is possible this estimate, which the Brits used for planning, is overly kind to many-small vs. few-large barrages. Because practical experience against dug in troops was that the heavier the caliber used, the greater the expected effect. The better coverage of many-small might be as useful as the Brit analysis thought against men in the open, I suppose.

Note also that the Brits were using quite a small round for their standard div arty, in HE filler terms, compared to other powers. The Russian 76 and the Brit 25 pdr are both quite limited in HE load, compared to a German 105 even corrected for its 60/40 amatol, let alone compared to a US 105 (14% HE by weight) with 100% TNT.

Also complicating matters is the problem that the effect of increased explosives is also not linear. With regard to causing casualties, the effect is sublinear. I'm not sure exactly what the relationship is (Rexford, John Salt?), but having twice as much TNT in the shell does not cause twice as many casualties -- but rather less than twice as many.

The principle behind it is that overkill in the immediate vicinity of the impact is wasted. One person can only become a single casualty, no matter how much explosive power is used to blow him up.

Reiter - don't use slow.  You aren't trying to spot him *while* you are moving, you are trying to get the movement itself completely over and done with as soon as possible.  All the real action happens after you halt.
 
On covered arcs, yes they have to be wide enough.  The enemy will move, and if he is outside of the arc when you halt, you will ignore him until he drills you.  Still can't do without them, however.  Armored arc is needed to avoid distraction by nearer infantry targets before you have LOS to the enemy tank.  They also let you "train" the turret to the desired bearing without restricting your tank to driving straight in that direction - which would set up no side angle (worse protection) and generally require more fiddly tank rotation (and thus delay) before the movement.  You want the movement itself to be in a completely straight line that makes sense on your local terrain, to be clean and fast and involve no slow rotation movements.  The desired effect is just - he physically can't see anything, he physically can't see anything, then you are clear into LOS moving briskly and already halting, you have stopped a split second later, unbuttoned, and turret trained directly at him.  That still won't *ensure* you get first shot.  But especially if he is pointed elsewhere, has any other targets to look at, or is buttoned - it maximizes your chances.

Oh, I think it is terrific good fun. I think the most fun I ever had in BN was obliterating an entire German company on turn #2 with a three battery rocket attack. Must have been hell for the pixeltruppen, but I smiled and laughed and felt good all over. Easy victories, that's the ticket!
 

 
Michael

Well, he posted a Russian link. Neither he nor I do speak Russian I assume since he quoted the very same Google Translation, so what should I have done?
Also, I merely responded to what I percieved as a condescending tone.

Well, if you're going to give someone (who was trying to be helpful) a hard time, best not to rely on Google translate... Actually the meaning is completely different from your "translation":
 
"За это время в общей сложности было обучено 428335 отличных снайперов, которые существенно усилили боевые порядки пехотных частей."
 
"During this time, all in all 428,335 excellent snipers were trained, which significantly strengthened the combat formations of infantry units."

Rokko - that is too small an action to form an opinion from, in my estimation.  
 
On the wooden bunker (which may be a related matter since you say you didn't notice where the sniper got his 6), a few logs will not stop a 7.62x54 round (or a Mauser 7.92, or a 30-06 etc - any full caliber rifle round).  But real log bunkers are not a pile of wood, and the game underrates them if it treats them that way, which it sounds like is happening.
 
In a real military log bunker, the logs are building material that is used to contain the actual protective walls.  Which are not wood, but sandbags or rammed earth.  The process is that a trench like hole is first dug to put the men below ground level with a planned firing slit at or not far above ground level (depending mostly on lines of sight, elevation of the terrain and such - they need to be able to see).  The exterior of the hole is lined with two layers of logs, one forming an outer wall (which below ground serves to hold back the earth sides to e.g. prevent collapse from artillery fire nearby), and the second, an inner wall, with typically a 2 foot gap between them (sometimes only 18 inches if the logs themselves are stout enough etc).  That gap is then filled in with rammed earth or sandbags, all the way around the bunker.  A ceiling of logs is next constructed, and then topped off with another 2 feet of earth (typically), which serve as camo as well as protection from overhead hits.
 
The armies of all the major combatants knew what was required to protect such a shelter from a direct hit by a 105mm HE shell, and that was the standard typically applied.  Heavier artillery 150mm and up could KO with a direct hit but only with a direct hit, and the most common weapons - small arms, HMG fire, light and medium mortars, light and medium field artillery - it was meant to be and generally was proof against.  Heavy armor piercing fire could penetrate such a bunker, but normally with little in the way of "behind wall effect".
 
It is not remotely a pile of logs, which would not serve as cover against anything but pistols, SMGs, and light splinters from shell misses...

According to Frank Ellis' book The Stalingrad Cauldron (p 268), the Soviets trained and deployed 428,335 snipers between 1941 and 1944 (including 1,885 women).

Sorry Rokko, not nearly enough information in that comment.  Are your platoons getting 6-8 kills and the sniper 2 of them?  Are your platoons getting 30 kills and the sniper 10 of them?
What losses are they taking themselves?  What were their engagement ranges?  What enemies did they face?
 
I find that squad infantry can vary from the lead platoon in the heaviest action inflicting 30 casualties, to every other platoon on the field, only lightly engaged, getting only about 5.
But range makes all the difference, for that result.  Ordinary infantry inflicts its heaviest losses at under 100 yards.  If a platoon never gets that close, if will be in single digits at the end of the engagement.
 
Snipers are much longer range weapons.  They are effective to 400 yards and quite effective inside about 250.  They don't want 100 yard engagement ranges - it gets them spotted and killed.
 
I would consider it perfectly normal for my scoped rifles and my HMG teams to account for the majority of the casualties I inflict with infantry, if the enemy stayed at 250 yards or farther throughout the engagement.  Not even 1/4, more like 3/4 (but counting the MGs).  The total would also be low for the whole platoon.
 
If on the other hand a platoon wades in to 100 yards then assaults through an occupied enemy infantry position, after suppressing them enough to close to point blank, then I expect that platoon to wrack up 20 plus kills and maybe twice that.  A lot of them fleeing or cowering enemies already defeated in the knife balance firefight portion, to be sure.

I don't see how that's constructive. Combat Mission, or indeed any long running game series, wouldn't be where it is today without people diligently discussing areas they perceive to be lacking functionality.
 
 
I just want to make a small clarification, and point out that it's not the middle of the night. The battle started at dusk, so at best it would be 20 minutes into nightfall. The horizon was still pink (e.g. sunset/twilight) for me, and you can see that in the screenshots. An issue with graphical representations of night, perhaps, but regardless.

I've been outside at night during varying conditions of visibility many of which are far, far worse than haze (as I'm sure most others have, of course), and have never been so completely blind that I wouldn't notice an 11 ton tracked AFV screaming across an open field, heading directly for me, so close I could hit it with a rock, and furthermore still not notice it after it had fired a burst of cannon fire into a nearby vehicle. I just simply can't rationalize this idea that anyone, especially 20+ trained and alert soldiers, could be so blind as to not notice something like that.

And none of this even touches on the fact that clearly the system is functioning sporadically, because the SPAA made a B-line for the armored car and broadsided it. How can it see so well that it can move 150m straight at an unbuttoned, stationary scout vehicle which is facing it, and then engage it from less than 10m, all the while the stationary scout vehicle (and stationary and hunting infantry) can't see it?

So to be clear, I am not debating that night and haze impedes vision, but I am contesting that it could not possibly impede it so drastically as to offer a scenario as ludicrous as this.

BTW, "committed" has two "m's" in it.
 
Having seemingly erred twice, does this count as one sin or two? Who, then, will spank me?
 
As this is Combat Mission, you could argue that one is a sin of Omission, while t'other would be one of Commission. And why is it that "Omission" only has one "m" in it? Or even the word "Mission", for that matter?

I found something out using Windows 8 on a Phenom II X4 975 and a Radeon HD 6870. The CMBB Demo was running really slow, you could see the tanks haltingly move forward rather than moving smoothly turning turn play back.
This MAY be due to the way that Windows 8 utilizing multi-core CPUs for programs and most Windows 8 users will probably have a multi-core CPU. If you can get the game to run on just one core, the performance may speed up (in my particular experience).

To do this (and you have to do this every time you play the game, unless you find an utility to set the 'affinty', like Process Lasso), launch the game and go through the 2D menus to select the options for your battle, operation or QB. Once you get to the 3D screen Alt-Tab to minimize the game. Now perform a 'Ctrl+Alt+Del' and select 'Task Manager'. When the Task Manager comes up click on the 'Details' tab and look for the game executable ('Barbarossa to Berlin.exe' for CMBB) and right-click on it. Select "Set affinity" from the popup menu. Here you will be presented with a list of check boxes for all of the cores (and one to select all of them), uncheck them ALL and then select just one, perhaps the 'CPU 1' if you have a dual core CPU or 'CPU 3' if you have a quad core CPU. Click 'OK' and then close up the Task Manager. Now maximize CM and it should hopefully run a little faster.

Hey guys,
 
I created an account just to respond to this thread.  Thank you so much for your advice regarding the multi-threading, Schrullenhaft!  I'd been so upset that I couldn't run this classic game on my new Windows 8 laptop.  Your suggestion regarding changing the "affinity" for the EXE did the trick.  As an addition, I was able to start the game, ALT-TAB out and set the affinity (while still on the menu screen), and then go back into the game and it worked.  I didn't have to wait for the 3D part to load.  I am so excited about finally being able to play the "To the Volga!" campaign!

Many thanks,
 
-Chris

if i am not mistaken, every kill needed to be proven either by a witness or gun cam film. when a pilot thought he might have just gotten a kill he called for others to check it out. when he landed he would file a report on the kill and witnesses would file their reports. then an officer would either accept or reject the kill claim based on the reports (i.e. do they prove that the enemy target was indeed destroyed). of course such a system does not remove "human error", but it does set some limitations for it.

The above is a typical reply (not intending to start an argument here)in that people 'know' the Germans had a strict verification system. Everyone 'knows' it but no one knows what it was or how it worked!
The situation in the East was that the kill claims were so high that an automatic 33% (rising to 50% in 1944) reduction was applied when collating the figures for intelligence use.
The Germans did that to their own figures.
In Normandy we can check German claims against fairly accurate Allied losses and guess what?
No more multiple kills (i.e.kills not claims) by single lone Tigers!
Hate to keep repeating this narrow point but Wittmann is by far the single most quoted example of a German tank ace in Normandy and it can be proved that the numbers cited in his award claim for Villers Bocage is at least out by a factor of x2, maybe even more.
The second most famous claim is by Will Fey in August when he claimed 15 Shermans in a single engagement. The corresponding War Diary of the engaged Unit shows they were not in action that day!
Barkman on 27/7/44 has a high profile as well but a recent reply to me from Steve Zaloga states that the 3rd AD losses that whole day were just 3 Shermans.
The Germans overclaimed like everyone else but it seems no one takes this into account when recycling unverified Unit claims as actual confirmed kills.

After all there was a given procedure to "claim" kills of any sort, incl. tank/vehicle kills in the various nations air forces. The german army and those involved in promoting, as well as granting medals for combat performances had to made use of guidelines, regulations and procedures for their final decisions in the matter. They didn´t do promotions or granting awards without a good reason, not considering any secondary "morale raising" ones. Additionally it also was a matter of honor not to make unjustified claims, which could bring the false claimer before the court martial in many cases. Claiming "kills" did not had the (self-) purpose to raise a particular air force or army members ego and to grant him medals, it was rather part of the common after battle procedure to evaluate battle performances and combat results for the purpose to plan further (combat) actions.

What I mean to say, is that the numbers are not pure fantasy and pulled out of the hat light handedly just for propaganda reasons. Any of you know any of the procedures/regulations used for aknowledging "Kill claims"? I guess that individual "Claims" are multiple times higher just after any combat mission and that the "debriefing" procedures and staff/intelligence works lead to the final approved "claims" we see in those reports and biographies nowadays.

With regard to german army procedures and combat doctrines, I have no doubt that most figures reflect individual kill claims and combat performances pretty well. If some light would be shed on the matter (what is a "kill" and who decided it was credible?), I also think that Rudel´s claims would look less fantasy like even when considering that his person was heavily (mis-) used for Nazi propaganda. So were Erwin Rommel and other german peronalities who are known to be non-Nazis or involved in the resistance.

I also would be interested to know how individual tank/AC kill claims were handled in the soviet and western allied armies during WW2.

Now having read most the sources (internet links) in this thread, as well as digging a little bit myself I believe that the Ju-87 G was a capable tank killer in experienced hands, even if production numbers were comparatively low. Same counts for other dedicated (german) tank hunters. Having air supremacy or at least parity at many times on the eastern front surely helped much, since the majority of the kills/claims were made in the east.

Originally posted by JasonC:

An attacking Stuka is going around 100 m/s, maybe 75 if not in a steep dive. So the engagement time at those ranges is a second and a fraction.

How do you calculate that ? Or are you assuming they acquired the target a second before they opened fire ?

Really the shot might start as far away as 400m and the pilot might pull out after getting to half of that, 2-3 seconds later.

Did you actually bother to look at the vid showing the engagement method ?

The firing rate would burn all 12 rounds in 2 1/4 seconds anyway, using both guns.

AFAIK the BK-37 had single shot capability. In fact, how smart would it be to go full auto with a 12rpg ammo load out ?

Oh, I get it. You are still hung up on the A-10 Gatling gun with a ****load of DU ammo comparison.

Stretching that into 2 passes would have been rare.

If they did full auto. Which I am certain they did not.

The point blank claim is again not very credible, and is probably giving the force something to aim for rather than actually routinely done etc.

I doubt that. With a high speed FW-190 that would be plausible. With the slower Ju-87 I'd have to say you would have to go for point blank shots just to minimize the risk of getting shot down by the flak if you had to do more than 2 passes at the same target. Rudel reportedly (supposedly, whichever you like) wrecked 7 machines in his worst day. The FLAK/CAP loss ratio would indicate they were not doing high angle highspeed full auto passes on a regular basis.

As for bomb accuracy and CM, consider SBDs at Midway. It was a war changing outlier on the achievement side. But the number of hits compared to bombs dropped ran about 1 in 8. The target sizes are, in CM terms, 11 to 13 tiles long and 1 to 1.5 times wide. The hits actually achieved against targets that size suggest the 50% circle is more like 8 tiles across, or in other words only about half dropped can be expected to land within 80 meters of the aiming point. And that is for dive bombing, which was inherently far more accurate than the shallower glide bomb approaches typically used by fighter bombers.

More than a few flaws in that comparison:

The accuracy rate should not calculated in this case from the target center point but the aiming center point. This because it was not the same bomber on the same dive vector doing all the bombing but separate machines on parallel dive vectors on the same target.

There is no 50% circle since every single bomb (and impact point) is an individual. Each also had a separate aiming point so your 80 meter radius from aim point propability is out the window.

Most of the dives were doomed to miss before the dive started because the dive start point determined the aim point. If the aim point was off the pilot could do only so much to alter it or to try to use the chosen one by altering the release point.

There is a reason they sent out entire squadrons at a time.

Yep. So that more than (even) one would get even a fair statistical chance of surviving the CAP and the FLAK to the ordnance release point. There were instances where the entire squadron was plucked down or blocked way before they reached the target. Or were entire squardons made it to the attack point and they all missed.

And in my opinion WW II is a bit different from Desert Strom, therefore the silly comparison.

Cheers, Hetzer38.

"the Ju-87G was rather "experimental""

Definitely. They made 5700 Stukas and all of 174 of them were purpose built G-2 models. There were more with 37mm than that, because some Ds were converted (the G-1), but the whole gun force was a twentieth the size of the fleet that dropped bombs.

As for the HS-129s, a tad under 1200 of those were produced, dwarfing the number of 37mm Stukas. They also just dropped bombs half the time. The 30mm they carried had 4 times the ammo load and more than twice the rate of fire.

But this still wasn't the route the Germans actually went with ground attack. The bulk of their ground attack planes over the war as whole were F and G model Fw-190s, with well over 5000 built, some sources say over 6000. Think 4 high performance FBs using bombs and 20mm cannons plus 4 Stukas dropping bombs, for each attack plane using bombs and 1 30mm cannon - and four of those for each modified dive bomber using 2 37mm.

Rudel flew bomb only Ju87s, the earliest Gs, then switched to FW-190 ground attack versions, and reverted to flying the Gs later. His unit was the only one still flying the G model Stukas in late 1944. The bomb carrying ones had moved over to night missions only and daylight ground support was pretty much all Fw-190 by then.

His claims are never specific enough as to time place units numbers etc to allow anything like the breakdown you want. He was also hardly a credible man in any other respect, but that is another matter. (Hitler youth to unrepentent post war Nazi etc).

"what was the most "effective" tank hunter/FB version with regard to armament?"

The F4U Corsair carrying napalm. Didn't have many tanks to go after until Korea, though, and not all that many then. Napalm is easily 10 times as effective as anything else available in the era, as an anti-armor weapon.

At the time, the allied pilots thought their rockets were the most effective anti armor weapons. But OR simply fails to back up their claims. This persisted even when there werer better weapons - in Korea, 80% of pilot kill claims were ascribed by the pilot to rocket or cannon, but 80% of the actual dead tanks had been hit by napalm.

The pilot tends to think he has hit the target with rockets if the rocket blast obscures it, and thinks his cannons have destroyed the target if the fire stream walks across it with visible hits. When neither is true.

A few cannon hits were common enough but generally ineffective, while the rockets and bombs got near misses, but it essentially took a contact hit and a clean one in the case of the rockets, to actually KO. And they were quite rare. Napalm works because the near misses become effective - over 50% of tanks within 25m of the strike point are typically burned out.

"How much of that is implemented in Combat Mission?"

In CM, the strafing is ridiculously over modeled and absurdly effective. The bombs are somewhat overmodeled as large HE. They are marginally more accurate than they should be (compare the number of hits SBDs got on aircraft carrier sized targets with the typical distance from aim point you see in CM - CM is very generous), but the real issue is all very high blast ratings in CM have too extreme an effect in the inner half or so of their blast radius. The rockets are about right in effectiveness, which is to say, not very. They readily bracket a target but typically have to significant effect. They are probably a bit too effective against light armor.

In CM, the greatest effect comes from cannon armed planes that get a high number of passes, especially if they have good chances of penetrating the armor of what they attack.

The single biggest benefitor of the overmodeling is the standard model IL-2s with twin 23mm guns. They can fire twice per pass on up to 6 strafing passes. Those have a very high chance of damaging any vehicle with 30mm or thinner armor. Tigers they won't hurt too much, though they can immobilize with track hits, and 12 shots makes 1-2 of those rather likely.

In CM, it is entirely typical for a single IL-2 strikes to kill or disable 2-3 armored vehicles, in a single sortie. In reality, the Russians fielded something like 40,000 of the things, flew them for 25 missions apiece in midwar and more like 40-50 late, and probably didn't KO a 4000 armored vehicles (probably not a 2000, in fact, unless you count the halftracks and such) using them. So the real KO chance per sortie was a fraction of 1%. Not all of them arrived on target, many went after things other than armor, obviously. That'll get you from one in five thousand to one in a hundred maybe, but not to 2 or 3 each.

JU-87s on the other hand, are somewhat limited by having only 3 passes (still generous, 2 is more likely), very high hit chance per pass (when in reality there are very few rounds being fired, making a clean miss overwhelmingly likely). They typically get one each, damaged or killed. Cost a lot less too. But the IL-2s with twice the passes and 2 shots per pass and bombs and rockets too, are vastly more effective.

As for the cheap FBs, types with multiple passes with cannon armament, and a decent bomb or two, are also effective. They tend to be incapable of hurting real tanks (20mm guns etc), but hurt light armor readily. The bombs hit or miss, and are usually aimed at something other than infantry. But their main effect is usually on infantry nearby. A lot spottier coverage than a fire mission, though. 100 point FBs pay for themselves, when they do, by KOing light armor. If the bomb is effective, that is an upside bonus but not something you can count on.

Incidentally, besides the large bombs having large effective, the bomb loads are also overstated, particularly for the allied AC. They represent maximum loads rather than typical ones. P-47s practically never actually carried 2 such heavy bombs, for example. A single 500 lb bomb was a much more common load. 4000 lbs is more like the bomb load a B-24 carried into Germany.