Aircraft against tanks

[JasonC]

It isn't the sharp end of the war that the average IL-2 sortie in CM KOs a couple of tanks as well as hitting a dozen infantrymen. It is a comic book based on a popular flight simulator intruding into an otherwise reasonably accurate tactical wargame.

[Guest Mike]

Of course not.

by definition the sharp end of the ear isn't average anything at all - it is way out on 1 end of the distribution.

[JasonC]

I was speaking of the average airstrike in the game of CM. Which are just utterly wrong, and the solution is (1) not to take them, ever or (2) to use them very sparingly, one at a time and rarely, to represent strikes by much larger numbers of AC (whole squadrons etc). With AA for the other side, as well.

[pamak1970]

I was speaking of the average airstrike in the game of CM. Which are just utterly wrong

I will agree on that.

My objection was about the way the statistical figure was used initially to back up this statement.

It isn't the sharp end of the war that the average IL-2 sortie in CM KOs a couple of tanks as well as hitting a dozen infantrymen. It is a comic book based on a popular flight simulator intruding into an otherwise reasonably accurate tactical wargame.

Why you say that CM is otherwise reasonable accurate tactical wargame?

Although i agree again,i do not understand why you do not have similar strong objections about tank engagements.

The statistical figure is similar here with the one on ground attacks.

An average tank kills about one enemy tank during its operational life. For Soviets the figure is less ,for Germans is more.

[ July 14, 2006, 07:15 AM: Message edited by: pamak1970 ]

[BlackVoid]

CM is a game and players do not really care about losses. In CM you will carry out your task of defending or attacking even if you suffer losses beyond 50%. Real life commanders rarely did such a thing.

Real people are also more cautios than digital soldiers....

Airpower is a pricey gamble in CM anyway, so simple just ignore.

[mav1]

So what happened in the Falise pocket? Did tanks get knocked out by aircraft or did they run out of fuel and abandend.

[JasonC]

Most of the tanks were already KOed before the breakout - that is what let the breakout succeed in the first place. There were only about 500 runners left in the theater, a quarter of the strength originally sent.

Over half of the remaining runners in the theater where then thrown into the Mortain counterattack, which shoved them as deep as possible inside the forming pocket. They were stopped there by an armored division, 2 infantry divisions, and several extra SP TD battalions, as well as a strong corps artillery group and air power. They lost heavily in the attack phase and then they had to retreat a long way just to get to the center of the forming pocket.

Which, being a forming pocket in which a mostly leg infantry and horse drawn arty army was attempting to get away, was chaos. Jabos shot up the infantry and rear area service force columns along the roads. They were blocked by truck wrecks everywhere. Medium stuff went after the bridges over the Seine and any west of it. Since the supply guys were bugging out and the roads were all spoken for by east bound traffic, regular supplies of fuel did not make it west into the pocket.

Most of the tanks that lived through the Mortain counterattack were therefore abandoned somewhere along the line of retreat for blocked roads, downed bridges, and lack of fuel. All the wrecks that would otherwise be recovered, likewise. The stocks of vehicles "in repair" after the attrition fighting in July, all became total write offs because they could not be moved away in time.

This left less than 300, perhaps as little as 200, runners in theater. Those fought to hold open the neck of the pocket, or up north of it withdrawing along the coast. They lost themselves because they fought the Allied spearheads, because they were moving every day and some would fall out for maintenance reasons, and because damaged vehicles could not be recovered or serviced etc.

So by mid August the remaining tank fleet had pretty well evaporated. Air directly KOing tanks had little to do with it, despite the claims pilots made. They claimed air to ground kills at Mortain equal to the entire force involved, for example, when only a third or so were actually lost directly and most of those were lost to direct fire from TDs and tanks. In the whole period air probably KOed no more than 50 tanks directly.

Along with the pocket (main cause) and German stupidity (the Mortain fiasco), air helped KO perhaps 300 more logistically, by gumming up the pocket and preventing easy withdrawal and easy delivery of fuel. A generous division of those over the causes that led to it, might award 150 of them to the role of air power.

The Germans lost over 2000 full AFVs in Normandy and air only accounted for a tenth of it even on generous awards of the causes of logistical loss. Even of that tenth, most was indirect and logistical not directly hitting the tanks. Most of it had to be KOed in hard direct attrition fighting on the ground. Half of it was KOed in the British sector in their unsuccessful straight ahead offensives.

The other half was split between early counterattack attempts in the US sector (17th SS StuGs, Lehr in early July), grinding stuff in the St. Lo and breakthrough periods, the breakout fight itself (in which the US 2nd Armored defeated reserves sent to stop it, like the 116th PD for example) - all combined accounting for about half what the Brits got - plus Mortain.

[mav1]

Thanks JC, your full of knowledge.