Thorn in the Tiger's side?

[The_Enigma]

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

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?

cant kill sod all in il2 with an 87g unless its a light tank and by the time you get an 87g the reds are using mostly t34s ... damm game

[dieseltaylor]

Thanks sturmelon. It is good to see some extra opinions relating back to data. It does seem to make a large hole in the claims figures. It would be nice to see some more info on the effectiveness of the 37mm, compared to the 30mm, and the bomblets. Strange in a sense that this is not covered in the thread.

The more the info comes out the better overall information can be collated.

[sturmelon]

Here is a piece of an interview of one of the earliest Stuka pilots to serve in a specialized tank-destroying Staffel....

His name is Hermann Neumann.... In an interview with Ed McCaul, Neumann described some of his 368 combat missions, during which he was credited with destroying 68 Russian tanks and was recommended for the Ritterkreuz (Knight's Cross).....

I N T E R V I E W

TANK-BUSTING STUKA PILOT

By Ed McCaul

MH: How much danger was there at 100 meters if the tank would blow up? Would you not have to fly through the debris?

Neumann: After we fired out cannons, we would go to the right or left, but we did not directly fly over the tank. One time a Sergeant Ott was shooting at a Russian Klimenti Voroshilov KV-2 heavy tank that was in between a farm house and a barn. The KV-2 had a big square turret and heavy armor. Ott went down and shot but nothing happened. So he said, "OK, if it does not explode I will make so many holes in it that it will not be any good anymore!" So he went down again and when he was very close to the tank it exploded. The turret flew over his canopy. When we got back to the base he was shaking and kept saying, "I saw the turret over the top of my canopy!"

MH: How low would you have to fly to destroy a tank?

Neumann: For the Stalin we had to fly at 20 or 30 feet...(at) about 300 kilometers per hour. We would be flying that low for maybe five to 10 seconds. If you got them in your sights you only really needed a second or two. Remember, for the Stalin, our guns were adjusted for 100 meters. So, we had to get close to them.

MH: How many tanks did you destroy?

Neumann: I got 68 tanks. I got about 30 with bombs and the rest with the cannons.

MH: How was the morale in the unit when you arrived in December 1943?

Neumann: It was fine. We knew for what we were fighting. Ever tank I destroyed was one less tank that could possibly get to Germany. It was a fight to the end.

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

[ August 13, 2005, 04:39 PM: Message edited by: sturmelon ]

[sturmelon]

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

Thanks sturmelon. It is good to see some extra opinions relating back to data. It does seem to make a large hole in the claims figures. It would be nice to see some more info on the effectiveness of the 37mm, compared to the 30mm, and the bomblets. Strange in a sense that this is not covered in the thread.

The more the info comes out the better overall information can be collated.

I think real info might balance out all the arm waiving and self important opinion declarations.

Certainly factors of 20 reduction are silly and baseless. It would be nice if the doubters could add some meaningfull data at some time.

[Wicky]

So are 35 -68 vehicle kills from 368 missions from one of the better pilots good or bad?

Alfred C. Kinsey would have a field day with all these self-declared claims of penetration

[ August 13, 2005, 04:46 PM: Message edited by: Wicky ]

[sturmelon]

You are assuming that all his missions are antitank? He says that he had regular bombing missions in the interview. I think he also flew other planes besides Stuka also.

[Wicky]

So we don't know how many times he claims to have 'killed' a vehicle to when he was specifically hunting them...

[JasonC]

Sirocco - or perhaps the real contribution of tac air to the tip of the spear was to fly around irrelevantly far away from said tip, shoot up the countryside, make silly claims about what had been accomplished, get their asses shot off more often than they actually hit anything, and suck up resources that might have gone into tanks or AT guns that actually took out all the enemy tanks on the ground.

Tac air was useful doing armed recce over soft vehicles, because that reduced their overall logistical support and mobility. The cost was very high. Trying to kill the most heavily armored targets was a waste of their abilities. It is not obvious most of the things they did weren't a waste of their invested resources, but certainly pretending they could take out entire tank corps from the air, was.

I don't know why it is apparently so hard to grok that the fly boys were pretty irrelevant to the real war on the ground. Maybe half the people on the thread want to marry a pilot, I don't know.

[sturmelon]

From the interview, and other sources, its pretty clear that these pilots were well aware of the tank types they were hunting. The unbelievably short range at which they are attacking, combined with the slow approach made this unavoidable.

They also seem to differentiate between blowing up AFV and merely just hitting them (example: KV story in interview). I would lend credence to the fact that they are decribing destroyed vehicles in many cases. Either that or severally damaged ones. Much more so than fighter-bombers pickling off bombs at higher speeds.

From Rudel's ammunition usage numbers, it can be determined that about 25% of his missions were 37mm specific. I would think it safe to assume that this pilot probably flew a likewise number. Perhaps 38 AFV killed/damaged for roughly 90 missions specifically flown in a 37mm Stuka.

[Brent Pollock]

For what it's worth to this debate, the designers of Avalon Hill's mega-boardgame "The Longest Day" went with a FB mechanic that caused no damage, but inflicted a higher movement cost.

Here's the design note :

-----

Contrary to popular belief, the fighter bombers were so successful at interdicting German reinforcements and supplies because they were capable of interrupting movement and disorganizing the road marches of units. They really did not destroy a great deal of equipment and men (Reference #129 is particularly enlightening in this respect.) That is one reason why fighter bombers do not have attack strengths like the tactical bombers.

----------

Ref#129 is an US Army historical document:

A-903 Panzer Lehr Division (15-20 Jul 1944) . By Genleut. F. Bayerlein. 16 pp. Operations in Normandy.

I only just realised that there is no provision for AA to moderate this effect...I smell an Optional Rule in the making

[JonS]

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

What I find surprising is that the ineffectiveness of the Normandy attacks leads to a general conclusion that killing tanks by plane was ineffective.

That's probably because on the Western Front we have a number of scientifically conducted studies carried out at the time that tried to answer exactly this question. A small number, with limited resources, and no access to the other side of the hill, it is true, but they do exist.

On the Eastern Front we have the claims of the poster boy for nazi propaganda and a cone of silence.

I know which I find more credible.

[Battlefront.com]

Hmmm... seems I didn't completely flip the ban switch on sturmelon. I've flipped it again. If anybody sees our old friend (Wartgamer/Rex Man and probably Lewis with 15 other names in between) back again, kindly drop me an email. He's annoyingly persistent, but so are we

Steve

[dieseltaylor]

JonS.

Do you owe me a turn? : )

My difficulty is that we have two different forms of attack in the west and east. The Typhoon would cruise at 530kph and top speed was 670kph. I have not yet found details of its attack speed but suspect it was near its top speed or even above it during a diving attack.

Against this we have a Stuka attacking at 160-180kph with limited ammunition and slow firing rate.

It is almost saying that Bren gunners, having a higher rate of fire, kill rate should be better than a snipers kill figures.

Then we need to consider the terrain. I am familiar with the terrain of Normandy and believe I have a fair grasp of terrain in Eastern Europe though only having been to Rumania. Also consider the density of troops in Normandy and the actual area of combat.

What I am saying is that I believe Normandy to be flak dense and also given the small area the overlap of flak would be common. The terrain is not hugely rolling and taken into account the small fields and wooded nature of the area it must have made long low approaches difficult to line up targets particularly given flak attention.

Fortunately for the allies of course the major roads are dead straight : )

In eastern Europe their are vast areas of fairly flat country with gentle rolling nature to the land. Given the scale of terrain overlapping flak and generally flak density was probably lower. I refer back to Rudel saying that he would avoid flak rich areas and try to attack tank spearheads without AA support. Hermann Neumann article is very useful in this respect - tanks towing AA!

Next it is said that the rockets were particularly inaccurate so that in a sense we would expect the success rate to be low. The 37mm if fired at ranges from 200- 100 metres could be relied upon to be extremely accurate!

So not only do we have different flight characteristics but completely different weapons and I find it hard to do the extrapolation from Western success rates to Eastern rates.

I am not saying that Rudel may not have been a fantasist but I do not accept that the extrapolation is necessarily valid. If you can tell me why with such different attack models that the success of one is precluded by the failure of the other .....

The question of Soviet silence is an interesting point. Though we have figures for an action showing considerable over statement it was using a different plane to the Stuka. I have no doubt the overclaims would have occurred if it had been Stuka's but the question would be would the 37mm tungsten rounds been more effective than the 30mm cannon.

The silence may be that:

1. the effects were negligible

2. or the Soviets did not like to tell its enemies what was effective or ineffective

3. They really did not have a handle on the causes of losses.

None of those reasons being particularly strong. But then again why allow a staunch Nazi get away with blatant lies? Curious.

With greater access to military records and the plotting 87g's on the front perhaps this can be ascertained further : ). By Russian speakers.

Incidentally I can find nothing much on the hollow charge bomblets so if anyone knows.....

[Wicky]

A-903 Panzer Lehr Division (15-20 Jul 1944) report

If in CM you only choose aircraft with MGs, which would cause distruption to vehicles, knock out soft skinners and shock or cause abandonment of heavier armoured vehicles (and not necessarily the enemies). Ops with the provision of recovery in the parameters (Poor to Excellent) seems to cover it.

I always in ops knock out abandoned enemy vehicles/equipment because of the recovery factor. Good scenarios I've played with CAS which give AA and emphasise keeping them along for the ride as a shield. If they were mobile easy but if they were towed then you'd have the hassle of repeatedly setting them up and getting all vulnerable vehicles into cover - depending on if it's verdant in Normandy or the wide open steppes in winter;).

Originally posted by Brent Pollock:

----------

Ref#129 is an US Army historical document:

A-903 Panzer Lehr Division (15-20 Jul 1944) . By Genleut. F. Bayerlein. 16 pp. Operations in Normandy.

I only just realised that there is no provision for AA to moderate this effect...I smell an Optional Rule in the making

[ August 14, 2005, 01:45 AM: Message edited by: Wicky ]

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by JonS:

[snips]

That's probably because on the Western Front we have a number of scientifically conducted studies carried out at the time that tried to answer exactly this question. A small number, with limited resources, and no access to the other side of the hill, it is true, but they do exist.

On the Eastern Front we have the claims of the poster boy for nazi propaganda and a cone of silence.

I know which I find more credible.

PRO document WO 232/24, "German weapon development", produced just after the end of the war, mentions the career of the Hs 129 tankbuster.

The achievements of II SG 1 during 1942 are summarized as:

6508 sorties (average of 17 to 18 every 24 hours)

3138 sorties by Hs 129, 1532 by Hs 123, 1838 by Me 109E.

1386.5 tons of bombs released, 52 Soviet aircraft shot down and 55 destroyed on the ground.

Casualties in Gruppe: 20 Hs 129, 5 Hs 123, 16 Me 109E.

Claims of destruction for 91 tanks, 1081 light MT and 273 vehicles.

(No, I'm not sure how "vehicles" are different from "light MT").

That's over four and a half thousand sorties by the ground-attack types in the Gruppe to obtain under a hundred tank kills for the loss of 25 ground attack types, and no allowance made for over-claiming.

It will probably cause you little surprise that the figures utterly fail to support the imaginings of the Rudel fanboys.

All the best,

John.

[Wicky]

(No, I'm not sure how "vehicles" are different from "light MT").

Possibly easy prey like horse-drawn carts, bicycles, hand carts, trailers etc.

[Andreas]

Further to Pamak's post, if someone could check the total number of losses for 1st and 2nd Tank Armies at Kursk (I am away from my books), we'll probably find that the number is 30-50, if not less. In a battle with a high concentration of air assets, to all types of air attack (bombing, tank busting, strafing), with open ground, and an embarassment of riches in terms of targets available.

[Andreas]

Oh, and if then someone could go and total the claims for all German flyboys during the first few days at Kursk (i.e. before 5th Tank Army was introduced), I think we maybe on to a winner

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by dieseltaylor:

Against this we have a Stuka attacking at 160-180kph...

Neumann in the interview says that he flew at 300kph, which I find much more credible than the figures you've been spewing out. DT, in all your arguments you have made a lot of assumptions, all giving the best case (and often a lot more) for your side and expecting us to buy them. You would have a lot more credibility with me if you would stop doing that and stick to figures for which there is some hope of being able to prove.

The reason I say this is that we are talking about the design of a wargame here. And while CM can and should be able to allow exceptional cases, they should remain exceptional, i.e. rare. You—or if not you personally, then some others who have argued from your position—seem to be advocating that Stukas should be able to fly all over the map, shooting up tanks as they go...every time. Now if I have misunderstood your actual position, then please tell me what it is.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by John D Salt:

(No, I'm not sure how "vehicles" are different from "light MT").

Horse-drawn perhaps? There were a lot of those used by the Soviets as well as the Germans.

Edit: Oh, Wicky beat me to it. Fast move there, Wicky.

Michael

[dieseltaylor]

MT is curious but the precedence in which it is posted suggests to me it might be Motorised? Tracked. A guess, but I reckon a good one : )

JOhn D. Salt Thanks for the info. I imagine that these figures reflect the same sort of attack as the Typhoons but at lower speeds. All useful though.

[Sirocco]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Sirocco - or perhaps the real contribution of tac air to the tip of the spear was to fly around irrelevantly far away from said tip, shoot up the countryside, make silly claims about what had been accomplished

While I'm in agreement with most of your comments, I do think tactical air had, if nothing else, a psychological impact on German front line troops, affecting mobility which in turn affected operations. I don't think I've read a single first hand German account of Normandy that didn't bemoan the effect of Allied tactical air.

[Sergei]

But then in turn it probably had an impact on Allied nerves as well. For example, in one Finnish account, when German Stuka's started their attack, everyone sought cover - Russians, Finns, Germans. Which CM reflects - if I'm told in a briefing that I have air support, I dread to bring my AFV's near the front until own FB's have stricken.

[dieseltaylor]

ME

Neumann in the interview says that he flew at 300kph, which I find much more credible than the figures you've been spewing out. DT, in all your arguments you have made a lot of assumptions, all giving the best case (and often a lot more) for your side and expecting us to buy them. You would have a lot more credibility with me if you would stop doing that and stick to figures for which there is some hope of being able to prove.

The reason I say this is that we are talking about the design of a wargame here. And while CM can and should be able to allow exceptional cases, they should remain exceptional, i.e. rare. You—or if not you personally, then some others who have argued from your position—seem to be advocating that Stukas should be able to fly all over the map, shooting up tanks as they go...every time. Now if I have misunderstood your actual position, then please tell me what it is.

Michael

I think you are being a little disingenuous here. Until we had Neumann's quote I was relying on Rudel statements and a fellow forum members calculation. I take it from your tone that we can believe Neumanns memory of his airspeed but not his description of tank-busting. Are you not being a little picky then.

You might note that when attacking Stalin's they changed the way they attacked and that maybe because they were , apparently, flying so low they wanted to get the pass over quickly. That is pretty much the Stuka's max. level speed

As for "spewing" out figures do you not find the term curiously emotive for a serious discussion. I have only ever said I did not think the figures could be extrapolated in toto and have given my reasons.

" DT, in all your arguments you have made a lot of assumptions, all giving the best case (and often a lot more) for your side and expecting us to buy them.

I think you misunderstand. I put up a hypothesis which if duly shot to pieces I discard. There is a possibility that whilst doing this that I and any other reader learns something new. For instances the hollow charge bomblets, how J87G's attacked etc. I am not asking anyone to buy in to my best views - I take best views as that is a far bigger target to expand the discussion on.

In some respects my first tentative suspicions of how they would attack have been borne out by other people's helpful additions. That Rudel may have been a fantasist I rate a reasonable possibility. Please do not decide I am on side or the other I have no side I am just trying to tease all information and possibilities out so on a balance of probability the figures may be adjusted for claimed kills.

If we look at Neumanns other statements we find the curious statement about the Stalin:

"On top of its regular armor it had some metal studs with some light armor plate attached to it. Our ammunition would not actually hit through but melt through. Thus, when it would hit the light armor it would melt through it but would not be able to melt through the main armor. "

That strangely sounds like hollow charge effect - is he talking about the bomblets and when talking about the other tanks killed by his bombs is this what he is talking about.

With regard to CM I posted very early in the thread that I thought regardless of the actuality on the ground I thought Battlefront got it spot on for the game effect and I still believe it

[Bigduke6]

Well I for one disagree, I don't think CM got it spot on. (Although once again it sure is an outstanding game, I love it to death, I want to buy the sequel, rah rah rah!)

Like JasonC says, the idea of a single fighter-bomber showing up over a battlefield where two mech forces are going at it, and that single fighter-bomber destroying 3-4 armored vehicles (and more) is not what happened most of the time in RL. In the RL war all armies, including Rudel's, needed strikes by dozens of aircraft to get that effect.

If you want to rationalize the fighter-bomber buzzing around when you run CM as a taxi cab rank of Typhoons or a series of pre-planned Il-2s, then ok the simulated effect maybe - and maybe not even - approximates the historical results.

But if that indeed is a single airplane attacking on the CM battlefield, and the targets are armored vehicles, then 80-90 per cent of the time it should hit nothing. That's what the post-war statistics support - look at all the numbers Andreas has trotted out, and he wears a monocle so how can you argue with him?

As to this remark of yours "In eastern Europe their are vast areas of fairly flat country with gentle rolling nature to the land."

I remind you that the northern half of the Soviet Union is thickly wooded, and the further north you go the more you get evergreens. Further, the southern half of the Soviet Union that saw the bulk of the fighting is far from endless, featureless steppe. Certainly the Kuban (until you get to the Caucauses foothills of course) and the Volga basin - but in Ukraine the right bank of the Dnieper is very densely populated, and has been heavily cultivated since about forever. There are fields but there are plenty of forests, woods, orchards, villages, and so on to hide vehicles. Also, rural roads are almost inevitably planted with trees. This is not even considering terrain that could (and did) make whole Tank Armies invisible from the air, for instance the Carpathian mountains. There is a lot more, an awful lot more, to East Europe than the North German plain and the Black Earth steppe.

If we take Rudel's account of his exploits, and factor in the way the terrain and cover was on the Eastern Front, and then add into the equation the fact Soviets were pretty durn good at camoflage, that they tended to shoot back, and all the dusk and smoke prevalent on the battlefields Rudel supposedly made all his kills - if we do all that, I start having trouble believing Rudel even SAW all of those Russian tanks he talked about in his book, never mind destroyed them.

My experience, if a fighter-bomber shows up in CM, and there is no AAA to keep it way, it is going to find a target about 70 - 90 per cent of the time, and if it finds a target it will hit it about at the same rate - per pass.

So per sortie, on average, a CM fighter bomber destroys at least one armored vehicle.

Maybe in Rudel's book that was possible, but for sure, not in the actual Second World War.