Russian CAS Discussion

[Childress]

In short, both Soviets and Germans no longer have control over air strikes. Aircraft arrives on it's own, choses it's own targets, and attacks based on the type of aircraft and the ordinance it carries.

So... one assumes that air assets will arrive on their own timetable not necessarily at the beginning of a battle. Or they won't show up at all.

Will ground/air co-ordination expand for the Western armies later in the war?

[Sailor Malan2]

Michael Emrys,

British Jaguar losses against heavily defended Iraqi airfields were the highest, by aircraft type and absolutely, of the war. So high were they that NATO went into a kind of shock, since JP-233 runway busting strikes were planned to be conducted much the same way. Yet again, someone slept through the lessons of (military) history, causing the latest unfortunate students to pay in blood. While we can excuse the lack of knowledge regarding Il-2 strikes on the Eastern Front, there's no excuse for ignoring the savaging the Luftwaffe took from ground fire in executing Operation Bodenplatte.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bodenplatte

Regards,

John Kettler

The Jaguar does not now, and never has had any chance whatsoever of fitting a JP233 underneath it, let alone actually flying with one. You mean Tornado. The Jags took almost no losses IIRC. The Tornado losses were mostly because they were flying into heavy flak areas. The RAF at the time was a specialist bomb force (not having a fighter worth the name). At least 2 of the 6 losses were at medium alt! and most were 1000lb sorties not 233.

And Tornado on CAS (if it ever did) would not be using JP233 and would not suffer the same issue (assuming your average Battlefield does not have the air defence of a high value airfield or Air Defence site. 1000lb laydown, or loft attacks, or (very quickly in Gulf 1) smart weapons from medium alt. CAS is tricky, and not for fast jets on the whole - interdiction behind the lines is their bag... much more effective and less dangerous.

I think the Bodenplatte example is bogus - multiple a/c attacking airfields with tragically under trained crews is not the same as a pair or 2 on airfield or similar planned strikes.

Oh, and Tornado loss rate was 6 from c1400 sorties, or 0.4% - WW2 pilots would dream of such rates...

[Edit for added content]

[MikeyD]

While researching the Russian 37mm Bofors clone 61K AA gun (yes, its in the game) I ran across a line on the net that said it was responsible for 13,000 enemy planes shot down. That seems like a staggering number, if true.

[Tux]

I think the Bodenplatte example is bogus - multiple a/c attacking airfields with tragically under trained crews is not the same as a pair or 2 on airfield or similar planned strikes.

You took the words from my mouth. Bodenplatte was a poorly-executed waste of trained interceptor pilots in interceptor aircraft in the hope of buying some respite from allied Tac Air in Western Europe. Experienced RAF ground attack pilots, taking cover during the attacks, mention how they were willing the German pilots to 'jink' as they attacked, rather than get cut down by AAA as easily as they did.

There was nothing but the most basic of lessons to be learned from such an amateurish operation.

Incidentally I roughly remember reading an anecdote of a recently bailed-out Luftwaffe pilot being marched into the CO's office at the US airfield he had been attacking when shot down, and where he landed. As he stood there he gestured towards a group of burning P-47 wrecks and said 'how do you like that?'. The CO pointed in the other direction at a flight of brand-new replacement P-47s which were just landing to replace the losses, mere minutes after the end of the attack, and said 'how do YOU like THAT?' The German pilot shrugged and said 'That? That is why you will win the war.'

MikeyD, 13,000 sounds incredible in the proper sense of the word. As a rule I never believe kill claims in articles written about the 'claimant' unit. They often strike me as credulous acceptance of optimistic kill claims rather than properly researched stats - I'm sure you know what I mean.

[John Kettler]

Sailor Malan 2,

Clearly, I erred. This proves, yet again, that my relying on sometimes hazy memory can have a strong downside. Here's the core information, though. Excerpted from:

Military Jets Still Training For Obsolete Low-Level Flights (article at the bizarrely named Livestock site).

By J. Zane Walley

The Paragon Foundation

(Fair Use)

"The British Royal Air Force flew low-level missions in the Tornado aircraft during the early days of the Gulf war. Their contribution was clearly a costly effort, as the RAF lost four Tornados flying low during the first week of the war after having lost two Tornados and a Jaguar aircraft during low-level training before the war.

Later, the British commander in the Gulf, General Sir Peter de la Billiere, admitted that during the first days of the war he had observed: "The RAF are having a bad time, with heavy losses in percentage terms compared with the Allies. It could be they've got the wrong philosophy, ultra-low-approach for this sort of campaign. We approach at 900 kph, down to a hundred feet, while the U.S. comes in at 10,000 feet-plus and are above the Triple A [anti-aircraft artillery] and flying easy."

After their heavy casualties, the RAF (as had the USAF in the months before the war) elected to prohibit further low-level missions. The Gulf War Air Power Survey, Volume IV, observed, "Low-altitude visual attacks against defended targets were and are inherently dangerous. If visibility is good enough for the pilot or bombardier to see the target, it is good enough for defending gunners to see and engage the attacking aircraft."

The Gulf War Air Power Survey authors implicitly criticize Tornado and other Coalition aircraft efforts in the following statement: "Generally speaking, training was focused on a NATO Central Region conflict and emphasized low-altitude tactics. In addition, weapons systems, aircraft, and munitions had been designed to complement this thinking. By contrast, the tactical realities of Iraqi defenses in Desert Storm required Coalition aircraft to drop a wide variety of "dumb" bombs from medium and high altitudes."

This assessment is supported by the Department of Defense Final Report to Congress of April 1992, which stated, "Perhaps the most significant tactical issue to arise in planning the air campaign concerned Coalition aircraft flying above the AAA and hand-held SAM's threat. Despite the strong peacetime emphasis on training for low-level delivery tactics, which exploit terrain to reduce aircraft detectability to radar and hence vulnerability to SAM's and to increase weapon delivery accuracy under the weather, the density of the Iraqi AAA and the dangers posed by un-aimed barrage fire to low-flying aircraft drove aircraft to higher altitude delivery tactics."

In short, low level attack operations produced almost half of all coalition aircraft losses in Desert Storm although they were abandoned early in the air war phase and only resorted to when weather forced planes down into ground fire zones, a tactic diligently avoided over Yugoslavia.

Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll, Jr., USN (Ret.), Director, Center for Defense Information, stated in 1994 that, "With respect to additional low-level training routes, the question to be asked is why continue low level training at all? I have flown hundreds of hours at low level when it was justified as necessary to penetrate heavily defended Soviet airspace with single aircraft on nuclear delivery mission. That justification no longer exists."

Admiral Carroll further notes, "As early as Vietnam, however, it was learned that low level operations placed attack aircraft in jeopardy from hand-held automatic weapons and mobile, high rate of fire light anti-aircraft batteries. Losses to these weapons became prohibitive and low level attacks in defended areas were discontinued."

J.K.'s note: The Paragon Foundation is a charitable organization dedicated to educating low income students. I suspect a grog there wrote this.

From The Independent comes this article. Yes, the Chris Bellamy here is the very same one who wrote the enormously expensive Red God of War. Not a link.

News

Britons died in Gulf war 'due to MoD interference'

CHRISTOPHER BELLAMY DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT Monday 01 January 1996

From the two articles and this, it's clear I confused RAF losses while flying on the deck with Jaguar losses. Here's the Coalition breakdown of aircraft lost and damaged.

Coalition Fixed-Wing Aircraft Attrition in Desert Storm

http://www.rjlee.org/air/ds-aaloss/

I can understand why you and Tux would object to Bodenplatte as an example, but I believe it to be fairly apt. Why? If you read the Il-2 pilot accounts I dug up for the Russian CAS thread, you'll find the Russian pilots were usually Green themselves. "Here's how the controls work. Got that? Now take off. You're ready. Report to (insert Assault Aviation Regiment and location here). That's the extent of transition training to the Il-2 from trainers. Again, this serves to illustrate why Il-2 losses were astronomic. The reckoning, per one of the pilots who flew them, was the crew was good for 7-8 missions and then was killed. Doesn't exactly build tactical proficiency.

MikeyD,

Am not familiar with the GRAU designator for the 37mm AAG you mentioned. To us, in my military analyst days, it was the M-1939 37mm AAG AKA Jane Fonda's gun. This is the weapon seen in period footage blazing away atop North Vietnam's dikes during the Vietnam War.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/row/m1939.htm

As for what it took to down a plane using this sort of weapon, the US Navy's 40mm Bofors guns, operating using very high quality optical directors, coupled with sophisticated predictors--local control if director KOed-- (1944), required 2364 rounds to kill one enemy aircraft (Ammunition Performance, 40mm column). By 1945, the figure had significantly improved to 1508 rounds per kill. Understand, though, that by then, the 40mm mounts had their own radar fire control (over and above the 1944 capabilities)! Aggregating across the entire war (see Totals for War), it took 1713 40mm rounds to get one aircraft kill.

CONFIDENTIAL [DECLASSIFIED]

Information Bulletin · No. 29

Antiaircraft Action Summary · World War II

October 1945

Headquarters of the Commander in Chief

UNITED STATES FLEET

http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/antiaircraft_action_summary_wwii.htm

There is simply no way the Russians, under field conditions, could've gotten anywhere close to the Navy's 1944 level of AAA effectiveness, not to mention our 40mm guns were in armored tubs, whereas the M-1939 had a flimsy shield on just the front.

Regards,

John Kettler

[JonS]

This proves, yet again, that my relying on sometimes hazy memory can have a strong downside.

It's not just your wonky memory, John. But, chin-chin; you've never let that bother you before, eh?

[JasonC]

The 37mm was basically the Russian's sole light AA gun for the whole war, so I find the figure perfectly plausible. 76mm and 85mm medium AA and heavy MGs got some each, no doubt, but the former was mostly useful against medium bombers at altitude, and the latter was mostly too light to reliably take down aircraft with the handful of hits you can expect from ground mounts. One 37mm hit would take down anything, pretty much.

The war was long and the eastern front vast, the Russians deployed those 37mm everywhere, typically 108 guns per army, etc. I can look up the number, but I am sure they fielded more than the claim figure, so they are saying less than one kill per gun over their entire operational life. On the German side, they routinely report loss rates of 7-10% of air strength *per month*, and the war last 47 months in the east. Peak lost rates run up to the 25% level for single months.

[Sailor Malan2]

Sailor Malan 2,

I wasn't challenging the RAF losses in Gulf 1, I was commenting on its invalidity as a reference for WW2 CAS losses.The RAF were attacking fixed installations with heavy emplaced AA. WW2 CAS is neither. And RAF lost very low rates relative to WW2...

The low vs medium alt debate is has been well gone over - the RAF could not bomb accurately from medium alt at the start of Gulf1 - they needed to use buddy tactics with Buccaneers to designate for LG bombs. Thus it is a sterile debate. You want low level bombing or nothing?

As I say, well OT and not useful for WW2.

BTW, Tornado can now self designate 5 LG bombs in one pass (different targets), a feat unequaled by any a/c IIRC

[JasonC]

On review I do think the 17K figure is high. 25-35% of that number I consider more likely.

First on what they had - about 4000 lighter 25mm AA, nothing like as effective, and 8500 quite capable 85mm heavies. Domestic 37mm AA production was 15000 guns, to which should be added 5400 lend lease 40mm Bofors of equivalent capability. I would expect the mediums account for 3/4 of the kills from that park, maybe 80%, and the domestic 37s 3/4 of that portion. That is the AA killing portion.

On the target side, the Germans produced 86000 aircraft and lost most of them. Some in the west and Med before the ETO opens, most in the air war over Germany itself. That still leaves 15-20K likely lost in the east. AA probably got more than fighters, but that still puts the 37mm portion more like 5K than 17K. It also amounts to a believable operational KO rate around 1/3, rather than 1:1, complete weapon lifetime.

FWIW, obviously loose back of the envelope stuff, YMMV etc.

[tdogg]

All this talk of Russian cas and il2s has me ready to jump in to the new il2 battle for Stalingrad sim, looks like they have it flyable for prepurchase while in alpha stage of development.

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

I never ceased to be amazed by the stuff you know. Do you have a time machine and count these weapons as they come off the production line?

On a more serious note, the 37s aren't going to be covering the frontoviki per se. Rather, they'll be protecting HQs, supply dumps, bridges, choke points, defiles, key transportation assets, and similar. Again, this is exactly the way they were used in the Cold War, and the doctrinal writings also emphasize flak traps, surprise fire and orientation on expected axes of attack. Mobile assets on halftracks will have similar priorities, but will move with the protected formation. I say this having done threat laydowns for everything from a Lead March Security Detachment to all of East Germany at the start of a conventional war.

A nation which still uses linear artillery deployments is going to do the same thing then that it does now. It's simply a matter of qualitative and quantitative improvement. Flak coverage probably will extend past the FEBA/FLOT, but that's a side effect, rather than a deliberate choice. AAA assets are limited, and commanders ruthlessly protect only the essentials--starting with themselves. It starts with troops firing rifles, MGs and ATRs into the air and goes up from there, clear to the radar-directed 85mm KS-12s and 100mm KS-18s defending the Kremlin. Every unit has some sort of air defense, and when you start plotting all those weapon range circles on a map, it starts to get ugly for any intruding aircraft.

Regards,

John Kettler