Thorn in the Tiger's side?

[dieseltaylor]

As it is about argument

JonS

"Rudel may well have been the best CAS pilot to ever put up wings, and the Stuka may have been the best CAS vehicle ever to grace gods green earth, but I personally find it hard to credit that he destroyed more than a couple of dozen proper 'tanks' in his career. Regardless of his claims. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that most CAS pilots - like most fighter pilots - never KOd a single thing.

And that, of course, is the problem of yusing Rudel. Outliers make poor arguments. We might as well take a sample of men called Armstrong, Aldrin, Conrad, Bean, Shepard, Mitchell, Scott, Irwin, Young, Duke, Cernan, and Schmitt, and conclude that everyone has been to the moon"

Thank you for making the point. Despite the huge majority of people who have not been to the moon it does not make it impossible that some have. Lets call them Rudel et al

[dieseltaylor]

Bugger! mended

[dieseltaylor]

Somewhere posted in the thread was a link to the ballistic powers of the 37mm which with tungsten seemed easily able to penetrate Russian T34 top armour. The sight did account for slope of approach : )

Given the angle of approach and all things considered I think my preferred target might be the rear of the turret. It is angled at 30 degrees and 59mm becomes the equivalent of almost vertical. There is lots of good targets in the area for every penetration and there are claims of tanks exploding.

BTW all armoured tracked vehicles with turrets are tanks so lets allow that some were light armour also.

"The remaining German guns were all adaptations of ground guns. The first was the 37 mm BK 3,7, a modified version of the FlaK 18 AA gun firing the same 37x263B ammunition. This meant that it was bulky, heavy and slow-firing by comparison with the NS-37, for example. It also remained clip-fed, with a maximum capacity of just 12 rounds. It mainly fired Hartkernmunition ammo, capable of penetrating up to 140 mm / 100 m / 90 degrees although this was halved at a striking angle of 60 degrees."

[Andreas]

DT - unless the procedure for a confirmed kill for Rudel was that it would be confirmed after someone went out to look at the wreck, you will have a hard time convincing the doubters like me that he got 500 kills, if that is what you intend to do. I would not credit him with 500 hits unless that had been the case.

Rudel was a posterchild for German propaganda. German Luftwaffe claims verification for aerial victories is quite suspect, as I understand it. Put all these together and it goes a lot further than the many assumptions you have made so far to show that Rudel may really have gotten his 500+ kills.

Now this question is completely irrelevant to the question of whether tactical air attack was an effective weapon in WW2. I think from what I have read that the terror effect on the enemy and the positive morale effect on the PBI on the allied side when they got to witness attacks on the Germans, together with the effect on supplies, as well as the restriction on operational mobility imposed by it were quite effective. Much more so than the effect of going after specified targets.

[dieseltaylor]

I agree that 500 is a lot and that there were propaganda benefits. What I find surprising is that the ineffectiveness of the Normandy attacks leads to a general conclusion that killing tanks by plane was ineffective.

I would like to think that in breakthroughs where tanks were without AA and probably in open terrain that killing tanks was not ineffective. The chances of getting statistical evidence being remote, unless the Russians find some, we have to go on possibilities.

I think it is probable that a person flying many missions devoted solely to killing tanks will/can become very skilled at it. That in Western Europe in 1944 this was not seen does not make it impossible in the plains of Russia.

While scorning his score how do you explain his drive to be back at the front when he could have had a cushy number. Does rather suggest a man who really believed he was making a difference.

We then perhaps can consider if all those other tank-killers were figments of imagination or propaganda lies. The more in the lie the more likely it is that it is rumbled post-war. I suppose therefore someone can turn up anything about 87G pilots saying this?

In view of the acknowledged fact that virtually all forms of warfare tank, air to air combat, sniping we get exceptions. Why not tank killing?

I am content to believe Wittman did not get 10% of the kills claimed on the Eastern Front as I have not seen the Soviet corroboration. Sounds a little harsh?

I suspect in due course will we have a game where you can fly Stuka 87G's with realistic enough controls to see how difficult it really is. Is it not in IL2?

[Andreas]

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

I agree that 500 is a lot and that there were propaganda benefits. What I find surprising is that the ineffectiveness of the Normandy attacks leads to a general conclusion that killing tanks by plane was ineffective.

I do not find that surprising at all, given the difficulties at the time, and indeed today (cf the Kosovo air campaign).

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

I would like to think that in breakthroughs where tanks were without AA and probably in open terrain that killing tanks was not ineffective. The chances of getting statistical evidence being remote, unless the Russians find some, we have to go on possibilities.

Yes, but that involves not making too many assumptions, such as tanks being without AA in breakthrough areas, and breakthrough areas being in open terrain. I can assume lots of things too, such as fighter cover being prominent over breakthrough areas, mobile AA assets being concentrated there, and much reduced visibility, and all of these negate your assumptions.

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

I think it is probable that a person flying many missions devoted solely to killing tanks will/can become very skilled at it. That in Western Europe in 1944 this was not seen does not make it impossible in the plains of Russia.

Yes, possible, but that skill still does not mean he did get the kills.

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

While scorning his score how do you explain his drive to be back at the front when he could have had a cushy number. Does rather suggest a man who really believed he was making a difference.

That is beside the point. He may have believed lots of things that were not true, such that Nazi ideology was a good thing. An inflated belief in his own abilities fits right in.

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

We then perhaps can consider if all those other tank-killers were figments of imagination or propaganda lies. The more in the lie the more likely it is that it is rumbled post-war. I suppose therefore someone can turn up anything about 87G pilots saying this?

Unlikely - I think you are on to a hiding to nothing there. According to Luftwaffe fighter claims, 82% of Soviet aircraft losses in 1944 were inflicted by them. Does that sound likely to you? Not to me anyway, since it leaves 18% of Soviet aircraft losses to all other means of combating them. But I somehow have never seen German fighter pilots admitting that their claims were just inflated.

Discussion on AHF - scroll halfway down to my post

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

In view of the acknowledged fact that virtually all forms of warfare tank, air to air combat, sniping we get exceptions. Why not tank killing?

Rudel may well have been exceptional - but that does not mean that he got 500 kills. He would be exceptional if he got 100, in my view.

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

I am content to believe Wittman did not get 10% of the kills claimed on the Eastern Front as I have not seen the Soviet corroboration. Sounds a little harsh?

No - I have never looked into this, but I am sure there are overclaims there too. 90% sounds high, but maybe?

[dieseltaylor]

Thanks for the link. It will be interesting when someone does decipher the flak claims to compare. I always feel that flak claims will be suspect as several could fire at the same aircraft and the crash if it occurs may be miles away.

I think Rudel could well be overstated. It also could be true that he was an honest man and he did the kills.

It will need a great flight sim to bring the ease or otherwise of the kill to light. The more I think about the exploits of the WW1 pilots wh fought at similar speeds and the tales of the naturals who coned there sights at short range to guarantee the kill the more I think it possible for G's to get T34 kills.

I drive frequently at 100mph and to my mind if you are attuned to the speed and your vehicle you become very adept at anticipating, braking , slowing, steering etc. I think the brain can calculate well at these speeds and possibly towrds the 200mph. I have severe doubts that when close to earth the brain is anywhere near as good at handling all the information at speeds in the 300-400 range which might explain part of the poor results in W.Europe. Of course the rockets and bombs may not have been the ideal weapons either : ). And the terrain is a lot bumpier, there are more houses/woods etc to hide behind.

BTW not much feedback on ammo penetration and using the back of the turret as a target - I have scared the others off? Or is it bedtime : )

[Andreas]

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

I think Rudel could well be overstated. It also could be true that he was an honest man and he did the kills.

Just to make that clear DT - I do not think that doubting Rudel's kill claims is equivalent to doubting his honesty. I am pretty sure he attacked those 500+ tanks and that he and his wingman genuinely believed he got the kill.

What if the smoke coming from the 'burning tank' was a smoke grenade thrown out of the hatch by the commander (I don't know when the Soviets started installing smoke generators in their tanks?)? What if the observed hit only damaged minor parts of the engine (cooling circuit) and the tank was back in action two hours later?

[JasonC]

No flight sim will tell you the first thing about it. In every first person shooter ever made, it is entirely trivial to hit man after man with a single shot rifle, and run up large scores before being shot oneself, or without being shot oneself, in a single engagement.

But the average rifleman did not take out one enemy with his rifle over the entire war. (Because most losses were from other causes, vehicles and arty and MGs, the war took years, and the whole numerator can't be bigger than the denominator).

If weapons regularly performed with the effectiveness we see in sims, wars would be over in a few days with the losing side wiped out and trivial losses to the winning side, as each effective weapon took out multiple equivalent enemies without loss. That has happened in the history of warfare - but only in very lopsided cases, recent ones all involving modern smart weapons, earlier ones less extreme and still involving vast differences in fielded weapon technology.

What I find surprising here is how apparently counterintuitive the simple cross check of asking for the target side report seems to be for some people. There is no a priori reason to believe anything the shooter side says. There is no lack of reports from the shot side, about any of it. They are much more realistic and readily available, but for some reason people don't do the obvious thing and simply consult the targets about their experiences.

Apparently because the conclusion seems so unbelievable - that air attacks were visually and emotionally impressive events but actually hit very little. But this is completely unsurprising. The same is true of artillery barrages, where everyone knows very large numbers of large rounds were fired, inflicting significant causalties, but not remotely just annihilating things, nor taking out any meaningful amount of heavy armor.

Air attack without smart weapons is inherently as dispersed as artillery fire; it is completely unsurprising they have similar uses and results.

[dieseltaylor]

"What I find surprising here is how apparently counterintuitive the simple cross check of asking for the target side report seems to be for some people. There is no a priori reason to believe anything the shooter side says. There is no lack of reports from the shot side, about any of it. They are much more realistic and readily available, but for some reason people don't do the obvious thing and simply consult the targets about their experiences. "

If the information is available from the Russians please post accordingly. I am always a great believer in the facts.

"But the average rifleman did not take out one enemy with his rifle over the entire war."

I assume you are admitting then that some men killed plenty then. Therefore we both agree that there will be people who are above average and rack up good scores. What is your view on Wittman ? Has his efforts beem checked on the Eastern Front?

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Andreas:

Rudel may well have been exceptional - but that does not mean that he got 500 kills. He would be exceptional if he got 100, in my view.

He would be exceptional if he got 20, in my view.

Michael

[Andreas]

Well, yes.

[JasonC]

dt - it is an answerable question, though of course it involves significant assumptions. The kind of statistics you expect the distribution of successes to follow depends on how important luck is compared to skill - not just luck as to the actual shooting, but having the opportunity to take the shot, living that long, etc.

With rifles, supposed we estimate out of 50 million casualties they inflicted 5%, with the idea HE and shells got 3/4 and MGs got most of the bullet wounds. Then if luck were all that were involved you'd expect the best shooters to run up scores of 15-20 hits. If skill were important it could run as high as 225-350. I'm taking the log of the number of successes and squaring the result if skill matters (expecting skill based distributions to be more like Pareto than like normal distributions, which I'd expect for occasion based luck).

With air to ground fighting you'd have to estimate how many KOs you think they actually got. But the range we can tell just from the number of tanks KOed overall, and awarding only some modest percentage of those to air attack. You get expectations like 6-8 kills if skill did not matter, and 40-60 if it did. Maybe as high as 80 if the total number KOed was at the highest end of the believable range.

These are reasonable estimates for weapons that were not above average in effectiveness, with sizable populations using them. Small populations using effective weapons might run up higher portions of the total score, individually, for the best instances. But I see no reason to think rifles were effective (particularly without scopes, in which case chance rather than skill probably dominated, too), nor to think attacking tanks with AC was.

Indeed, I have strong reasons to think the opposite. So those are the sorts of figures for outlier individuals I'd find believable. The average FB pilot failed to take out a tank over the whole war. Lucky ones might get a handful. Exceptionally skilled ones might get a few score.

[dieseltaylor]

http://www.acepilots.com/usaaf_eto_aces.html

Ace Meyer got 24 kills in 200 missions. Imagine how many he might have had if he had flown 2500. Probably an unbelievable figure : )

[dieseltaylor]

Sorry Jason my post despite seeming to be 7 minutes later than yours was actually for Michael and Andreas.

I follow the methodology and the logic. And I can understand that if we are thinking of Rudel then your figure would give a marker as to the extent of reasonable maximum kil score. I have no problem with that at all then.

Any revisions would depend on subsequent tests as to the likelihood of hits on small targets dead ahead from a plane travelling at approx. 100m.p.h.

If that pans out the deadliness might then become more refined if the light of penetration figures. etc.

BTW I have posted on the other thread re. the bomblets which opens a new can of worms.

Incidentally my belief that some men are just naturally gifted with high degrees of hand eye coordination makes it easy for me to believe that some people can achieve the seemingly impossible. Snipers being one area, professional dart players another, champion stunt pilots. If you consider say all the people who play tennis, all the professional players and then Federer you can easily believe a huge gap between the average and the outstanding. It would be interesting to see on the basis statistics how far you can prove him a statistical freak : )

[Sirocco]

I wonder whether the real contribution of air in a tactical role was to disrupt the point of the spear while damaging it's shaft.

A tank skulking around in cover with it's crew scanning for aircraft is a less effective unit.

[sturmelon]

Those are not baffles but louvres on the back of the T34. Any aircraft attacking the rear of the tank would have a clear shot into those louvres. They could be drawn down by a lever but are basically plates on hinges. Hardly as robust as true multi-baffled armor.

The fan seems to blow air out of the louvred area and it is therefore drawn in through the single baffled area behind the turret. Under that area is the engine and radiators.

Spall and fragments could possibly also go through the baffled area. The louvred area is directly vulnerable to gunfire from an attacking plane. Especially given its way of opening.

The exhaust pipes have some covering, but again, the way the rear armor is angled, ricochets from hits directly below the pipe exhaust would enter directly into the armored envelope.

The whole rear armor piece is bolted on and those bolts could fly off when strock and become projectiles within that compartment.

[Soddball]

Weren't you banned?

[sturmelon]

The Soviets had total write off of 40-50K AFV? That surely means they also had knock-outs that were repaired? Maybe 80K AFV that were completely destroyed and also knocked out but repaired?

What is the total German tank claims from aircraft? A few thousand? For every German pilot for the whole war?

As I said before, Rudel may have actually had as many successes as he claims, but many were just knock outs that were repaired. Changing the radiators alone in a T34 looks like a real nightmare.

[Soddball]

Go away, Lewis. Can't you take a hint?

[sturmelon]

Rudel may have flown many of the available aircraft in his unit. In other words, he had rank and he glommed up the planes as soon as they were available. He certainly was fanatical enough.

But even if a Stuke could get a tank per sortie (well maybe Rudel might have--see earlier math), the fuel and other resources may not justify the expense.

They were basically a rare weapon type.

[stoat]

Could this just be a case of refusing to admit that your weapons technology is inadequate because it would take to long to retool your industries to produce something that worked?

Much like the British 2 pounder, there may have been too many Stukas already in service to declare them obsolete( at least as tank-hunters), and thus combat units struggled along with inferior equipment.

In the case of the Germans, when a designated tank hunting airframe was ready for production, even if they produced many planes, it was to late to turn the tide and air superiority had long been lost.

[sturmelon]

Just to prove the operation of the louvres. Note that an attacking plane shooting up the rear of the tank has a direct LOS into the rear of the engine itself.

http://www.gjames.com.au/chris/t34/service.html

A good website to bookmark.

[sturmelon]

http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000016.html

Worth a read. Seems to have actual data (as opposed to this forums fascination with opinions).

quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Originally posted by Darrin:

You said in your kursk book that the ger reduced air craft tank kills by 50% from proven claims for planning puposes.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The OKH used such a rule of thumb. It also used (usually) a 30 % reduction of ground forces claims. This procedure enable the German high command to arrive at overall Soviet losses that were quite close to Soviet losses (complete write-offs) as they are presented by post-1990 Russian publications. However, as less than 10 % of all claims were made by air units, it is difficult to tell whether the 50 % "rule of thumb for air claims" was good or not. Since the air units claims were so small they have little influence on the overall accuracy of OKH figures, regardless of whether they were realistic or wildly exaggerated.

In any case, Rudel's 500+ "victims" have not been subjected to the OKH reduction.

[ August 13, 2005, 01:55 PM: Message edited by: sturmelon ]

[pamak1970]

I would like to give some more information regarding the subject of this thread.

First ,look at the following site and its links

It has relative information guns, ammunition and penetration.

http://homepages.solis.co.uk/~autogun/index.htm

Another one which i saw from a wargame site.

Although i have not studied it and i have reservations about the actual numbers given, i give it cause i agree with some general comments.

For example ,the claim that you can not make generalizations based on the calibre of a gun and that there are different results of penetration based on different ammunition types and other variables.

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:PjV4WQZtJTsJ:www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arena/5096/upgchart.htm+Tungsten+penetration+armor&hl=en

As a last i will give information found in one of my books regarding the Kursk battle.

I have the Soviet General staff study for the battle of Kursk, translated and edited by David Glantz.

isbn 071464493-5

Thisn was a classified study published in 1944

table 24 -page 233 (at least in my book)

tank losses by type of weapon -irrevocable losses

For the 2nd tank army

72.5 % burned as a result of being hit by

artillery shells

15.3 destroyed by artillery

6.5 put out of action by air attack

5.0 put out of action for other reasons

0.7 blown up by mines

for the first tank army

72 % burned as a result of being hit by

artillery shells

13 % destroyed by artillery

2 % put out of action by air attack

13 % put out of action for other reasons

0% blown up by mines.

Now i have to point that we should be careful when we try to translate numbers.

Notice for example the very low percentages of casualties by mines.

remember that these are irrevocable losses and this certainly is one explanation about such low figures.

Anyway in the next paragraph after this table the study comments

" the effectiveness of air attacks against tanks deployed in a positional defence is minor".

On the other hand this seems to be more relative on the general situation and enviroment and does not imply that an assault aircraft is incapable to engage a tank.

In another paragraph the study claims that "

on July 7th enemy tank attacks were disrupted in the Kashara region 913 Army).Here our assault aircrafts delivered three powerful assaults in groups of 20-30 ,which resulted in the destruction and disabling of 34 tanks".

Of course in this case the argument that it is difficult to make battle damage assesment and rely too much on pilot's reports hold true.

In another paragraph

"According to the judgment of our forces and statements from german prisoners ,our air operations against ground forces inflicted heavy casualties.

Assault aircrafts armed with hollow charge bombs were particular effective.........

In individual instances small assault groups destroyed 15-20 tanks each in a single sortie".

A comment from my perspective regarding air attacks.

I think that when we survey the battlefield after the battle in order to estimate the results of air attacks we have to take in consideration some things.

For example, during a tank battle the winner and owner of the battkefield will claim many hits of enemy tanks which were disabled and abandoned.

For the air attacks this is not always the case.

Since aircrafts do not occupy the ground they attack ,it is possible that a good percentage of tanks hit by the attack will be evacuated or repaired.

We do not know details and i guess it is possible to have a case to see pilots claim they hit 10 tanks and be accurate in their estimation and surveying the battlefield the next day to see much less abandoned vehicles.

I guess that a significant number of these air attacks will be executed some distance away from the forward line of troops.

recognition problems during the battle are significant inspite various panels and the like carried by ground forces.

Weather smoke and the like is a big problem for aircrafts to distinguish friend from foe.

Adding the fact that AAA is heavier in these areas,i would not be surprised to see assault aircrafts execute attacks farther away from the line of contact and this is important in our case since the enemy has generally better chances to restore disabled tanks.