The Bouncing .50 cal - can it kill a tank?

[Broompatrol]

Do you think that the percieved threat from aircraft against ground forces was over overblown in WW2?

[Guest Mike]

Not really.

Aircraft could decimate supply units - trains, trucks, wagons.

And they apparently caused a considerable fear factor among tankers who were used to feeling pretty good behind their armour.

Other troops also suffered fear/intimidation in the presence of enemy air superiority, and such effects had real enough consequences.

[Soddball]

Guderian's book on 116th Panzer and another one I'm reading called 'It never snows in September' (about Arnhem from the German point of view) both continually raise the problem of doing anything - moving vehicles, getting supplies, launching attacks - due to 'jabos'.

Whilst Jason's point that planes rarely killed tanks is probably true (it's hard to get any accurate figures but it seems likely), they wrought havoc amongst everything else.

[ParaBellum]

Originally posted by Soddball:

...'It never snows in September'...

Brilliant book IMO.

[JasonC]

The rocket warheads were plain HE.

On interdiction, I have maintained for years on this forum that "armed recce" going after trucks and trains, and to a lesser extent infrastructure effects like KOing bridges or damaging rail lines and roadways, was the primary effect of tac air on the war. And that it reduced operational mobility and slowed units down. Also reduced "thruput" of supplies to front line units already in contact.

But it did not destroy them. Look at the German divisions marching to Normandy, under the heaviest tac air of the war. They get there, and they get there will minimal losses to combat elements. Some transport losses and plenty of delays, that is what one actually sees.

They do not arrive reduced in AFVs, beyond a portion in short term repair (which a road march would do), whereas ground combat rapidly does reduce them. They do not arrive deprived of their heavy artillery - air gives a generalized counter-battery effect that reduces their rate of firing, which interacts with supply reduction, that is all. They do not arrive with a third of their infantry shot up - all of that has to be KOed in attrition fighting on the ground.

The reason the losses are minor is the side under tac air can adapt by moving at night, using terrain cover, dispersing divisions into regiment sized columns, and the like. When they pulled out, on the other hand, losses were higher because they all moved at once, and did so through a narrow corridor created by ground action. But the driver is inability to hold or restore a line, because armor theater wide and infantry at the point of attack have been ground to powder in sustained ground fighting.

As for the "net havoc" caused by air, the average FB may have accounted for a handful of trucks or railway cars over its operational life. Which might stretch to 50 missions for the western allies - it was more like 25 missions for the Russians. Because rates of loss among the planes themselves were quite high - a few percent per mission qualifies as "high", since missions are repeated endlessly etc. The impression that the planes are invulnerable and smash whatever they like with impunity is an illusion. (USAAF casualties for the war came to 120,000).

[ February 14, 2007, 06:28 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[JasonC]

Actually, there were a variety of rocket types. The standard 5 inch rocket in US service was plain HE, and was what I was thinking of. But there were other types.

The Brits used 3 inch rockets with no explosive at all as armor piercing projectiles. The warhead was basically a 25 pdr solid shot. These could penetrate 33mm if they hit - the relatively low figure comes from the modest velocity compared to a shot fired from a cannon. First use was against submarines, a much larger target than a tank.

US 3.5 inch rockets were basically copies of that idea. Used for shipping strikes early on, but soon superceded by the 5 inch.

US 5 inch rockets had a warhead made from a 5 inch AA shell, and carried about 3 kg of explosive. Initially they used the same rocket motor as the smaller earlier ones and got low velocity and poor accuracy as a result. By mid 1944, improved types with larger rocket motors were available, with velocity back up. There were plain HE types with 3.5 kg of explosive and a semi AP variety that was rated to penetrate 38mm of armor, with a much smaller explosive charge.

Brit 5 inches came in HE and HEAT varieties, and have to be considered more advanced weapons than the plain US 5 inch rockets. The payload weight beyond the motor was 60 pounds. The HE had 6.4 kg of explosive, and the HEAT had almost as much (5.8 kg), and was rated to penetrate up to 85mm of armor with a perfectly flat hit. (That is comparable to a bazooka, despite the much larger HE charge). In practice they were said to be adequate against Panther sides and rear, Pz IVs or lighter any aspect.

Those explosive amounts put the Brit versions near a US 155mm shell, and US versions comparable to a 105mm shell - bit more actually.

Nevertheless, against anything but soft targets they must all be considered ineffective, because they just did not get direct hits. The first effective air to ground AT weapon was napalm, which works because a hit within about 25m of the target is effective. The coverage you get of 25m disks on the ground compared to 2m disks on the ground gives you a couple of orders of magnitude, and will more than make up for going from an 80% to a 40% kill chance when that close, etc.

[RockinHarry]

Everything said already (JasonC). Only thing that comes into mind, is that fighter bombers can have different armamant, not just small guns (13 to 20mm) and rockets, but also 50 to 250lb bombs. The latter surely will seldomly have direct hits on anything, but a near miss can turn even a heavy tank upside down!

What btw was the most effective "tank hunting airplane" of WW2? Don´t know, but guess the HS-123, as well as 37mm armed Stuka were quite successfull in this role, as were probably the Il2 Sturmovik. Germans had to fear anything coming "from above" if one considers the vulnerable to less vulnerable vehicle ratio in combat formations. A trashed maintenance or supply unit (mainly composed of trucks, towage vehicles ect.) could be as good as any amount of true combat vehicles disabled. The point is these don´t reach the combat lines in sufficient numbers, due to bad maintanance, lack of fuel ect. How many (german) combat vehicles were destroyed by their own crews due to these reasons? If a single FB wrecks a supply column, causing a dozen tanks or so to be wrecked by own troops for lack of fuel, I would have no problem to acknowledge the FB pilot to claim those kills (indirectly).

Fear of allied aircraft by germans was not limited to FB alone! A lone allied spotter/observation plane could mean a terrible artillery barrage on friendly positions in shortest of times! The presence of a single allied spotter plane very oftenly caused whole german artillery units to silence at once. Thus in the latter half of the war, bad flying weather was the best friend of germans in every case.

[John Kettler]

RockinHarry,

Don't you mean the Hs-129? The Hs-123 was a biplane used for CAS during the early years of the war.

Regards,

John Kettler

[JasonC]

RockingHarry - there is no evidence whatever that the JU-87 with 37mm was actually effective as a tank killer. No, pilot claims don't count as evidence, any more than other fish stories. As for IL-2s, the Russians lost more of them than the Germans built tanks, so we can safely conclude the average IL-2 had a remarkably poor chance of ever accounting for a single German tank. (They flew 25 plus missions, 90-95% of German tanks lost were to other causes, ergo...)

As for killing a dozen tanks by destroying a supply column, it overstates the case. What actually happened in the OR case cited is bombs took out a *bridge* the tanks needed to cross, and cross rapidly, to get away from pursuing, superior ground forces. Yes, acting through logistics is the way aircraft had an effect on tanks (also changing when and how they operated). But no, it doesn't mean they were effective tank killers even by that indirect mechanism. They simply weren't effective tank killers at all.

A fighter bomber represents a much larger investment of technology and resources than a simple tank destroyer or other upgunned AFV. There are any number of things it might do better. But kill tanks is not one of them. They can't even be considered more survivable, when the number of sorties they need to accomplish anything is taken into account.

Killing trucks or railway boxcars from the air is reasonably efficient, if you can get something on most sorties and fly many sorties before losing the plane. Trying to kill tanks wasn't, using WW II weapons. You simply had to fly too much and expend too much effort and lose too many, each much more valuable, aircraft, to get anything, and the total numbers reached were insignificant.

The German tank fleet had to be killed on the ground. This really doesn't change even with napalm in Korea (though the NKs had so few tanks and the US so much air, it was approximated). It only really changes with smart air to ground weapons like TOW, Maverick or Hellfire.

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

I find it fascinating that when the U.S. was desperately searching for a solution to 50,000 Soviet MBTs via Pierre Sprey's Blitzfighter which later evolved into the A-10, out of all the western pilots with tank killing experience, it chose Hans Rudel as the keynote guest at the conference. Are you really asking me to believe that the entire upper echelon of the Pentagon, DARPA, and the Air Force was so stupid as to believe him accomplished at that task when, in fact, he was nothing but unrepentant Nazi hot air and self-promotion?

If you're right, then all those notes taken based on Rudel's discussion of actual combat tactics used, to include target acquisition, open fire ranges, attack aspects, dive angles and the like,

should've resulted in a weapon system which didn't perform worth a hoot. Instead, we got the A-10, tank eater par excellence.

If you want to argue that combat performances in both Gulf Wars and since was only anecdotal, I have live fire ammo acceptance trials against 10 combat loaded M-47 tanks simulating a Soviet tank company. I quote from Unclassified report (later ones were upgraded to Confidential) May 1980 report from the Naval Postgraduate School's Combat Damage Assessment Team against Array 20 on 19 September 1979, Table 1 of NPS-56-80-006

"3 K-Kills, 2 M- and F-Kills, 3 M-Kills, 1 High % M and F degradation, 1 Light M and F"

This was done from 1-5 degree dive angles and slant ranges of ~3100-4100 feet, simulating efforts to avoid air defenses.

Clearly, Rudel must've known something about killing tanks, for the A-10 was the flying distillation of what he learned doing just that

on the Eastern Front-- in a slow, unarmored, overloaded, draggy dog of a plane to fly, not the highly maneuverable, heavily armored, multiply redundant purpose built tank killer called the Warthog as a term of affection.

In closing, you might also want to ask yourself, why General Von Schoerner, a throroughly pragmatic type who turned down a regimental CO's Iron Cross application on the grounds that personally leading a counterattack to recapture his own regimental CP

was part of his basic duties, would consider having Rudel's unit worth more to him than a regiment of ground troops--at a time when German infantry period, let alone a regiment, was dearer than gold (late war in the East)?

Regards,

John Kettler

[ February 20, 2007, 10:47 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[John Kettler]

From a review of Rudel's biography, compiled by someone with wide experience talking to pilots on both sides. Notice not just his combat kill credits, but look at the number of sorties he flew, distance flown, fuel consumed and ordnance expended.

Even if you put a 90% tank kill haircut on this ultra experienced veteran, he still personally destroyed virtually an entire U.S. WW II tank battalion equivalent by himself!

http://www.powells.com/biblio?PID=28513&cgi=product&isbn=1125967641

Here's an interview, originally in MILITARY HISTORY magazine, with another Stuka tankbuster pilot by the name of Neumann. Note particularly what he says about how close the open fire ranges were, 400 meters vs. T-34s, later adjusted down to a mere 100 meters vs. Stalin tanks. Note also that the Russians apparently were plenty concerned

about these planes, otherwise, why would each tank be towing a flak weapon, likely a 14.5mm ZPU-4? Thought his comment on not bothering to count tank kills was of considerable interest.

http://www.tarrif.net/wwii/interviews/hermann_neumann.htm

Regards,

John Kettler

[ February 21, 2007, 12:01 AM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[JonS]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

"3 K-Kills, 2 M- and F-Kills, 3 M-Kills, 1 High % M and F degradation, 1 Light M and F"

Way to quote out of context. Given the heroic assumption that you've managed to even transcribe correctly, let's see if Mr Uber-Analyst can figure out why the above is meaningless.

As for Rudel - yes. He's a liar. Maybe not intentionally, but a liar nonetheless. In addition he quite probably has the largest individual score of targets destroyed in a CAS role. The two points are not incompatible. Sure, he probably had some useful things to say about how he went about attacking Soviet armour in 1944/45, but you do the US designers a gross disservice if you think that had a major impact on the final design of the A-10.

Rudel might have had some influence on doctrine, but even that is doubtful. And doctrine != design.

[ February 21, 2007, 12:44 PM: Message edited by: JonS ]

[Guest Mike]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

Here's an interview, originally in MILITARY HISTORY magazine, with another Stuka tankbuster pilot by the name of Neumann. Note particularly what he says about how close the open fire ranges were, 400 meters vs. T-34s, later adjusted down to a mere 100 meters vs. Stalin tanks. Note also that the Russians apparently were plenty concerned

about these planes, otherwise, why would each tank be towing a flak weapon, likely a 14.5mm ZPU-4? Thought his comment on not bothering to count tank kills was of considerable interest.

http://www.tarrif.net/wwii/interviews/hermann_neumann.htm

His interview is so full of rubbish as to be worthless.

The Russians didn't have a 4-barreled AA gun in WW2 after 1941 when they had 4 maxims mounted on trucks. The ZPU-4 wasn't accepted into service until 1949.

He mentions a KV-2 - which went out of service early 1942, but he didnt' start flying until 1943 by which time KV-2's had long gone....

Quote interviews all you like, but it would be more useful if they were credible.....

[Michael Dorosh]

Rudel's book, which had so captivated me as a teenager, turned out on a repeat reading a couple of years ago to be such a thoroughly National-Socialist work of self-worship that I could have believed Joseph Goebbels had ghost-written it were it not for the fact I've seen the pictures of his burned corpse.

Then again, it was so devoid of historical fact that it could very well have been written before the end of hostilities; could have been written any time for all the resemblance it bore to reality.

As mesmerizing as it was when I was fourteen to read about him flying over waves of subhumans, or barely lamenting the loss of his rear gunner after crash landing (it was, after all, his duty to die for the Reich), kind of turned me off of his "heroic" antics.

I don't know why Canadian authors spend so much time ripping to shreds the reputations of guys like Billy Bishop (VC and 72 kills in the First World War as a pilot) or Guy Simonds (Canada's best battlefield commander), but surely there must be someone, somewhere with access to Soviet archives willing and able to deconstruct the Rudel myth?

Granted he had guts and insisted on flying despite explicit orders from Hitler not to (and not so incidentally the fact part of his leg was missing!), and in obsolete aircraft to boot (though he graduated to Fw 190s apparently), but he comes off to me now as little more than a National Socialist automaton. My toaster does whatever I tell it to, also, with no thought for its own life; that doesn't make it brave.

[John Kettler]

Stalin's Organist,

Was unaware the ZPU-4 was first deployed postwar. This leads me to wonder, though, whether the weapon described by Hermann Neumann might've been the towed version of the Maxson Quad .50 mount on the M16 GMC.

After all, we did supply a version of the M16 GMC to Russia in considerable quantity under Lend-Lease.

The KV-II thing definitely got my attention, so I dug out Milsom's RUSSIAN TANKS 1900-1970 to see what he had to say about the KV-II. According to him (p. 216) , "...and shortly after the beginning of the war production of the KV-II stopped."

The picture grows a little confusing thereafter, for on page 122 we're sequentially told (quoting another source) "The KV-2s disappeared after the first summer of the German attack; they were never reported in action again. Right below that, we read that the KV-IIB entered service in 1940 and was based on the newer KV-IB chassis. No withdrawal from service mentioned.

For evidence that keeping AFVs in service past their prime wasn't that unusual, take a look at what Loza has to say in his FIGHTING FOR THE SOVIET MOTHERLAND about the units which fought at Khalkin Gol and then sat out the war in the backwater that was the Far Eastern Military District until August Storm was launched in Manchuria. Per p. 172, 30% of the 2359 tank & SUs

which came from Mongolia consisted of BTs and T-26s. Very few survived the high speed advance, but the point is that they were used. Also, did you know that the Americans fought a captured KV-II in the ruins of the Krupp Werke in 1945?

Michael Dorosh,

I've seen a post in one of the WW II forums in which someone says he's seen an actual Russian reward poster for killing/capturing Rudel. Believe the amount was 100,000 rubles. If that's true, he must've been a major pain in Stalin's tush. What I'd really like to see are the German

signal intercept logs, since Rudel quotes them as to what the Russian ground units were saying when their fighter cover skedaddled ("Cowards!" was one of the nicer remarks ISTR), leaving them naked to Rudel and friends, and any credible Russian records from units hit by Rudel in locations we can identify. Did his logbook survive the war?

Regards,

John Kettler

[ February 21, 2007, 05:17 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[John Kettler]

JonS,

Since your default setting is to reject anything I post, I merely tried to anticipate your next such act by showing that assertions of A-10 lethality didn't depend solely on combat accounts. If I had to guess, though, you're probably jumping on me because these results aren't single shot kill probability or per pass lethality, but rather, are aggregated over a number of passes. If so, it's because my intent was merely to show what the gun/ammo combo could do against a representative target array. I have much more detailed info than what I presented.

Turning now to your assertion regarding the relatively small contribution by Rudel to the eventual A-10 design, the plane was built around the gun, and the gun was there specifically to kill tanks. The design was heavily armored as a direct result of combat experience not just in CAS

but what happened historically when attacking Russian tank concentrations, for that was the mission. The combat redundancy aspects came about from looking at the frequency of hits both historically from ground fire and the likely effects of introducing such an aircraft into a modern low level air defense environment dense in ZSU-23/4s, with heavier threats including 37mm and 57mm, hence the armored bathtub protecting the pilot. The maneuverability requirements, bubble canopy and the relatively slow speed are also the products of combat insights gained from hunting and killing tanks while under heavy ground fire in an unarmored plane. If you're going very fast, you can't see the tank in time to shoot it (Rudel said they're hard to spot on the battlefield), and maneuverability is good for getting into firing position, reattacks, and for hit avoidance. By contrast, per Jim Steuard of AFV-G2 who studied German tank busting in great detail, had the manuals, etc., the Ju-87/G, even w/o oxygen system, was so overloaded and draggy that it could barely weave to avoid ground fire. Certainly, it couldn't rapidly jink.

I think that your disdain for Rudel and his Nazi politics may well be blinding you to the very real impact discussions with him had on the plane which ultimately became the A-10.

Regards,

John Kettler

[JonS]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

JonS,

Since your default setting is to reject anything I post

That'd be because your default setting when posting is delusional nutbag.

[ February 21, 2007, 07:24 PM: Message edited by: JonS ]

[JonS]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

... these results ... are aggregated over a number of passes. ... my intent was merely to show what the gun/ammo combo could do against a representative target array.

Well, heck. I can get exactly those same results firing a .303 SMLE out the side window of a Cessna 152 if I can "aggregate over a number of passes".

Turning now to your assertion regarding the relatively small contribution by Rudel to the eventual A-10 design, ... [snips]

So, what about all the experience accumulated by the USAAF and USAF in Italy, NWE, Korea, Vietnam? Nah - flag that ****. Let's just listen to some self-aggrandising bloke who flew a few missions and then created a post-war career by furiously gilded the lilly.

You seem to have no respect for US designers. I, on the other hand, feel pretty confident that they are - as a group - a pretty smart bunch of guys. I'm sure they could and did wade their way through US and UK OR reports - even the big words - to tease out important variables. I'm sure they could and did talk to US and UK pilots who'd flown in Italy, NWE, Korea, and Vietnam to figure out what was important to pilots flying CAS. I'm sure they could and did figure out what sort of weapon(s) they'd need in order to defeat the armour on then-current and future Soviet tanks. I'm sure they could and did think about the threat environment posed by then-current and future Soviet VLLAD systems. I'm sure tehy took all that into account and designed their plane accordingly.

Finally, I'm sure they could and did identify Rudel as the 'rock star' of CAS; a readily identifiable brand name, able to lend credibility to their project.

What I'm fairly sure they didn't do is think "hey, we need a new plane. Let's just ask that Rudel bloke what he thinks we should do."

I think that your disdain for Rudel and his Nazi politics may well be blinding you to the very real impact discussions with him had on the plane which ultimately became the A-10.

Yeah, that's it

What you seem to have trouble with is

1) grasping that his experiences in WWII are at least 50% fantasy

2) realising that what ever he had to saw is so badly distorted by his politics as to be wholly unreliable

3) understanding that despite all that he was a fairly singular pilot, one by definition at the upper end of the bell curve. And because of that, a design based on What Rudel Said™ would be wholly unsuitable for the vast majority of the pilots in any airforce.

[ February 21, 2007, 07:23 PM: Message edited by: JonS ]

[JasonC]

JK - you are joking, right? The A-10's gatling fires 70 to 100 rounds per second, with 5 mil accuracy to over a km. The JU-87 carried 6 rounds per gun total, and would be lucky to fire 2 per gun on a single pass, the ROF was so low. And still most A-10 tank kills were made with Maverick, not the cannon.

[JasonC]

As for the idea that low and slow and long loiter for CAS was inspired by JU-87s, hardly. Try "Spads" - A-1 Skyraiders. They were the naval air and marine corps CAS platform of choice in Korea, where they had much longer loiter times and larger bomb loads than the early jets. They continued to be used right through Nam, despite having only 240 mph top speed, because 8-10 hour endurance and carrying the kitchen sink was quite valuable, and when then enemy can't put anything in the air (over SVN that is), the drawbacks are irrelevant.

[Tero]

In

clip a Stuka is seen making firing passes as described by Neumann. With more than 2 shots per gun fired to boot.

[JasonC]

The link is down. Give us a count of shells fired.

[Tero]

Can't. Scheduled maintenance downtime.

[John Kettler]

JonS,

I went back and looked at the firing pass breakdown.

The damage listed was caused by two A-10s, each of which performed a total of five firing passes. No reattack pass on any tank in the target array.

Turning now to what I'll charitably call understatement by you, by your math, 1000 combat sorties flown by Rudel between 10 February 1943 and summer of 1944 somehow magically = "a few sorties." After these "few sorties" he flew another 530, mostly in Stukas.

I never said that U.S. and British experience killing tanks via CAS wasn't factored in. I said that since the mission was to destroy Russian tanks, the U.S. not unreasonably sought out the best at it who could be found.

You seem to think I'm slamming U.S. designers, but I'm not. I've worked with some of the best, on projects as diverse as the Advanced CAS Aircraft, the AC-130U, and the National AeroSpace Plane (NASP) Derivatives. Did the threat laydowns for all three. You know what's really strange? The aircraft designers considered the threat definition to be a fundamental input to the entire design process! Weird, isn't it, how closely that matches what I'm saying about how the A-10 came to be?

Just so we're clear, I welcome an OBJECTIVE, all source, comprehensive reassessment not just of Rudel's achievements, but of German tank busting aerial units. Period. I'd love to know the truth.

JasonC,

I'm well aware of the differences among the guns, projectiles, ROF, etc. I cited A-10 effectiveness against a combat loaded simulated Soviet tank company because I knew that if I didn't, anything I said about A-10 combat effectiveness would likely be dismissed as anecdotal.

I am also perfectly aware of the wonder that was/is the Skyraider, just as I am aware that it was dive bombing Marine Curtiss Hawks which inspired the Stuka's attack profile in Udet's mind in the first place. Am also cognizant of the fact that the Stuka design is an outgrowth of a WW I period all metal trench attack aircraft design.

As for the Maverick, I worked on a whole series of studies of that missile family. If you look at the tactics used with the A-10 in Desert Shield/Desert Storm and OIF, am pretty sure that you'll find that Maverick was employed to minimize

exposure to ground fire, but especially manportable SAMs. The Maverick provided enough standoff range, and in most versions was fire and forget, that once lock-on was obtained, the pilot could launch and leave. We also successfully demonstrated a multiple launch against multiple targets per pass capability. I've seen the live fire footage.

Tero,

Thanks! Will have a look as soon as YouTube gets done with maintenance.

Regards,

John Kettler

[JasonC]

Now here is a little OR reality check on air to ground with armor, under the most favorable possible conditions and with modern smart weapons.

In Desert Storm, the Iraqis lost an estimated 4000 tanks and 2500 more lightly armored vehicles. A solid half of these were lost to ground action or abandoned. Air killed maybe half of it, or 3750 vehicles, certainly a very significant number. What was used to do it?

4 principle means, in which air to ground cannon fire hardly even rates.

Method one in importance was Maverick missiles, mostly fired by A-10s. 5400 of these were expended, 90% of them fired by A-10s. Roughly a third were TV guided models used in daylight, two thirds were IR and used at night.

Method two was 500 lb laser guided bombs, GBU-12s, mostly dropped by F-111s at night, using FLIR to scan for targets standing out by their heat retention in the cooler night air. 4500 of these were expended, over half by the F-111s.

Method three was Hellfire and TOW missiles from army and Marine helos. I've found the marine subtotal and it is around 500 expended. Far higher for the army of course. Low thousands the right order of magnitude.

Method four was duel purpose ICM cluster bombs, dropped in 1000 lb units. 10000 of these were expended on all types of targets, by F-15E, F-16, F-18, and A-10.

There were other weapons used against other target types primarily - acres of dumb bombs dropped by B-52s for example, also heavy 2000 lb laser guided bombs used mostly on infrastructure and C3I targets. But we can safely leave those out, and probably allocated 80-90% of the cluster bombs to non-tank targets. They probably did account for a portion of the lighter armor, though.

Simple math says the numerical average kill chance of the above weapons was under one in four.

Own side claims for the A-10s are 3000 armored vehicles. For the F-111s, 1000 to 1500 depending on the source. These are both undoubtedly high, as the Apaches also clearly scored, the CBUs etc less so but some, and losses to the air war were only on the order of half of overall Iraqi losses.

The claims deserve at least a 1/3rd haircut by the above math, and might deserve a conventional 1/2 haircut. This means

3000 or more 500 lb laser guided bombs KOed 500-1000 armored vehicles, or a specific kill chance of 1/6 to 1/3. The average F-111 expended 30-35 LBU-12s and may have accounted for 5-10 tanks.

5000 A-10 fired mavericks KOd 1500-2000 armored vehicles in the A-10 total includes nothing for guns or cluster munitions, or a specific kill chance upper bound of 0.3 to 0.4. The average A-10 fired 35 mavericks and may have accounted for 10-15 tanks.

If 1/3rd of A-10 kills came from guns and cluster munitions combined, maverick kills might be as low as 1000 and the specific kill chance as low as 1/5 or 1/4. If guns got 80% of the remainder (unlikely) that would mean 400-500, and it took over 8000 sorties to get to that figure.

It is more likely that mavericks account for 80-90% of A-10 armor kills, specific kill chance in the 1/4 to 1/3 range, and that the A-10 kill chance per sortie with the gun was single digit percent. This mostly reflects not engaging that way at all.

Note that the A-10s flew nearly 60 sorties per aircraft in theater, and took heavy ground fire. The head of the air campaign restricted their target areas and attack profiles because damage was so heavy. Basically, it was a bad idea to expose an A-10 to light flak in sustained low level attacks, if the loss or damage rate was going to hit even 1.5% per sortie doing so. Especially since they were far more valuable delivering mavericks from medium altitude or at night.

Although an A-10 can readily carry 4 mavericks per mission, mixed loads with only 2 were more typical (carried some CBUs etc). Since they flew 60 sorties each and expended only 35 mavericks each, they often went out without mavericks, or did not deliver them.

A plane that can carry 2-4 smart weapons each with a 1/4 to 1/3 chance of a clean vehicle kill (operational - on a test range mavericks kill 90-95% of the time), still only managed an average of 0.2 to 0.25 armor KOs per sortie. And that made it the most effective tank killer in the force. In the most successful air to ground armor killing campaign of all time. Using space age weaponry.

It is silly to pretend a few dozen pilots with 37mm flak guns under their wings were doing the like without the benefit of guided missiles with HEAT warheads sufficient to destroy anything they hit.