What german tank destroyed the most allied tanks ?

[MikeyD]

Back during the war (roughtly bulge timeframe) LIFE magazine had a cool photo spread showing wrecked US vehicles and armor at depot. They actually put a hard number to how many vehicles were getting KO's by wrecks. I can't recall the figure (I spotted that article in a library 30 years ago) but it was high - really high.

all this is very disillusioning for us non-grogs.

Disillusionment is CM's stock and trade. I recall back in CMBO days it was like posters were clutching their chests and reeling about the room in disbelieve over their assumptions being crushed. It was fun to watch!

[Magpie_Oz]

"I'd like to hear which WW2 SMG killed the most enemies. Note: only kills count, pls don't include the wounded."

I want to know which 9mm pistol, 9mm only, inflicted most grazing flesh wounds that caused a minimum of 4 days but no more than 1 month off from active duty.

[MikeyD]

If we were talking about the modern day Pentagon they'd have those stats, all done up into a neat Powerpoint presentation with charts and graphs and bullet points.

[zukkov]

no MD, i was referring to JC's posts. i was under the impression that allied aircraft were a big player in killing german tanks. that's apparently not the case, at least not to the extent i thought.

[Michael Emrys]

...i had heard from more than one source that rudel was the ultimate tank buster. so it's a lie?

The deal there is that after the war, a lot of Germans published memoirs in which they put forth various claims. In the absence of strong evidence to the contrary, those claims usually were accepted at face value and tended to get repeated in subsequent writings. It is only as more and more primary documentation became available and was assessed by historians that those claims were re-examined and sometimes shown to be impossible or at least unlikely. Meanwhile, the legend had already gathered its own momentum. A lot of writers working in popular media, such as magazines, are unaware of the more detailed examinations, can't be bothered to do thorough research of the available material, or simply do not consider it in their interests to challenge a popular and sensational image.

Michael

[Magpie_Oz]

"If we were talking about the modern day Pentagon they'd have those stats, all done up into a neat Powerpoint presentation with charts and graphs and bullet points. "

I scares me to realise that your are probably not that far from the truth.

[Michael Emrys]

I have a feeling that a significant number of AFV kills were actually immobilized sitting ducks.

Probably not the answer you are seeking, but in a number of cases, both in the later stages of Normandy and the Bulge, German tanks ran out of fuel and due to shifts in the front line were not recoverable. The crews, knowing this, abandoned and destroyed them.

Michael

[silverstars]

Whats I find interesting about the whole disparity between ATG kills claimed and the actual results found on the battlefield is that from hearing the reports of the Germans, from feldwebel to generalfeldmarschall, one would think the pilots claims to be the most accurate. The vexation and angst the Wehrmacht generated towards the Allied air force would almost have you believe they were the main reason they lost in the west.

So while I don't think Tactical Air provided much in honest-to-god destroyed AFVs, the existance of so much air power on an almost constant basis was I think had a very palpable effect on Wehrmacht morale, even down to the tactical level. I wouldn't be surprised if crews abandoned their tanks just to get away from the firepower directed at them, irregardless of how effectual MG and Rocket fire would actually be.

[Destraex1]

Er, I take it

'had a ball' = fighting for their lives

'stopped cold' = temporarily disrupted

Russian offensives= one prong of a larger strategic operation.

In which case, yes, you are right.

yes pretty much.

What I mean is for instance that a few tigers could for an entire day hold up entire russian tank columns. Causing massive bleed in the Russian army.

At least temperarily, they fought for thier lives holding one prong of a larger strategic operation on in some cases one of the main roads that offensive was using.

This means that the german big cats were indeed very effective tank for tank.

[Steiner14]

*sigh*

Yes, we've heard of them. That the German high command still felt the need to apply the 50% haircut in order to make the numbers even vaguely useful is rather telling though, no? Also, as has been pointed out, EVERY time that claims have been compared to losses, the claims have been shown to be inaccurate. And not just a little bit inaccurate, but wildly inaccurate.

Exactly the same thing occurred with air-to-air claims, and probably for much the same reasons.

Losses? Did the Red Army have losses at all, with one "victory" after the other?

Ofcourse, and because of invented kills, the involved German ground troops only dreamt, that Rudel's attacks were highly effective, while angloamerican wargamers know it much better...

And because of the incapability of the Germans, to validate the effeciency of their weapons, the enemies tried to get their hands on all the german ineffective weapons, engineers and scientists they could grab...

[Michael Emrys]

There was not much wrong with German science, Steiner, but there was quite a lot wrong with German management during the war. It's picked up a bit since.

Michael

[Other Means]

Losses? Did the Red Army have losses at all, with one "victory" after the other?

No. Nazis 0, Russians 1.

Nazis exit history as beaten, honourless obscenities.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

*snip*

Here we go again. A rant about how unfair we are being to those poor little Nazis, deprived of any substance, as per usual.

This kill v claim debate has been held a couple of times here, and the evidence brought forth in previous threads has unambiguously made the case that there was outrageous over reporting.

In case you missed it, the over reporting affected all sides. Rudel takes the biscuit, but we've had more then a few laughs at the American pilot "bouncing .50 off the ground in to the belly armour of Tigers." Fighter pilots, regardless of whether they are über, just aren't good at judging the effect of their guns on a tank as they wizz past at a few hundred kph.

[Praetori]

Whats I find interesting about the whole disparity between ATG kills claimed and the actual results found on the battlefield is that from hearing the reports of the Germans, from feldwebel to generalfeldmarschall, one would think the pilots claims to be the most accurate. The vexation and angst the Wehrmacht generated towards the Allied air force would almost have you believe they were the main reason they lost in the west.

So while I don't think Tactical Air provided much in honest-to-god destroyed AFVs, the existance of so much air power on an almost constant basis was I think had a very palpable effect on Wehrmacht morale, even down to the tactical level. I wouldn't be surprised if crews abandoned their tanks just to get away from the firepower directed at them, irregardless of how effectual MG and Rocket fire would actually be.

In areal fights there was at least gun-cams to help verify or write off a kill claim. I have no idea if the Ju-87 had cameras for the cannons and since most of their "kills" were with bombs during the first half of the war there's really no telling.

The only thing one can say with some degree of precision is that the German groundsluggers often over reported the kill claims of armored vehicles but that the numbers on corps and army level (after reductions were performed) have turned out to be not too far from the truth when compared to Soviet figures (as several pretty decent historians have pointed out the Soviets were also very lax in reporting casualties since not reporting meant that the survivors got to split the supplies).

The number of missions flown by Rudel could very well be accurate as some of the German pilots logged some amazing flight time. And even if you cut Rudels figures in half that's still some pretty impressive record.

[JasonC]

Specifics on overclaiming from the Mortain counterattack, often cited (e.g. D'Este's history of the Normandy campaign) as a classic case of air power success against heavy armor. The British 2nd Air Force claimed 140 German tanks destroyed, while the US 9th Air Force claimed 114 tanks destroyed - a combined total kill claim of 254 tanks destroyed.

This exceeded the number of German tanks used in the operation.

Actual German tank losses in the fight were 46. Detailed on site OR by British teams from No . 2 Operational Research section established that only 9 of them had been hit by air weapons (mostly rockets, presumably mostly from the British Typhoons as those fired most of them on that occasion).

The actual force accounting for the German losses included the majority of the ground AT weapons of 2 US infantry divisions, plus 2 self propelled TD battalions, plus a full combat command from a US armor division, plus corps level artillery fires over 3 days, by 2 IDs, the Priests of the combat command, and a corps level artillery group with additional 155mm howitzers.

The combined HE soft target firepower of all that artillery and all the air strikes was certainly crucial in stopping the offensive, but did so by striping the full AFVs of all combined arms support. German transport was also shredded. But the bulk of the actual tank losses came from direct fire by heavy AT weapons, tank SP gun or towed. Modest numbers came from air, infantry bazookas, and artillery fire (whether direct hits or immobilizing damage from near misses and the like).

Similarly, the movement of Panzer Lehr to the theater is often cited as a classic case of effective air attack on an armored formation as interdiction. It came under the heaviest attack while moving to the front of any of the German PDs. The attacks certainly delayed its reaching the theater and accounted for as much as 35 SPWs and up to 200 soft skinned trucks. But only 2 fully armored AFVs were lost by the division to air attack in the move to Normandy (one by a direct bomb hit, the other due to derailment of the train carrying it).

OR extended to the whole campaign estimated fully armored AFV losses to airpower in Normandy at 100 vehicles. This includes a fair portion lost to strategic bombers in the carpet bombings near Caen and of Lehr in Cobra; not all of it was due to tac air.

The US tac air supporting Normandy lost 897 fighter bombers over Normandy, the majority to light flak. The Brits lost another 829 fighter bombers in the battle. Obviously the "Jabos" were hitting many other targets, so it is not the measure of their full effectiveness - but they were being lost 17 times as fast as any tanks they were knocking out on the ground.

When British OR studied rocket accuracy, they found a stationary Panther on an open field on Salisbury plain, clearly marked, sitting there, no Flak around, could be hit by a Typhoon rocket pass only 4% of the time. If they had achieved even that objectively dismal hit rate in actual combat, they would have racked up large overall kill scores, considering the high number of sorties they were flying - but they clearly did not. Often for failure to find any such target, but also undoubtedly because that hit rate could not be achieved when the enemy on the ground was shooting back, targets were moving, etc.

The way air power took out the most tanks, actually, was probably by destroying bridges or knocking out trucks hauling gasoline and thus making it occasionally impossible for this or that group of tanks to get out of a tactical disadvantageous position, leading to abandonment. With the former mattering more in the retreat from Normandy, and the latter mattering more in the Bulge period - but both probably exceeding direct kills by a factor of something like 2 to 5.

Naturally in such cases air power is not the only cause of loss; it gets only an "assist". But again it underlines the point that the right way to use tac air in WW II was to send it after a target soft enough that it might actually do something...

[JasonC]

Praetori - nope, sorry, there isn't the slightest chance that claims like Rudel's are remotely accurate. They imply that entire Russian tank armies should be evaporating in days wherever a 37mm Stuka group is operating, but this is not seen in any of the operational narratives or Russian side losses. You can find any number of cases of a single weakened Tiger battalion of 30 runners showing up and fundamentally altering the progress of units on the ground. You can even find cases of 1-2 weak PDs pulling off similar operational consequences with just 30-50 Panzer IVs (and can readily find them whenever those PDs start with more like 100-150 runners). But you can't find any where the unit stopping the offensive was the attentions of one Stuka Gruppe.

Simply did not happen. They found targets fairly rarely, they hit them very rarely indeed, and they frequently didn't do more than scratch the paint when they did.

Luftwaffe histories sometimes claim (absurdly) that the Orel counteroffensive was "stopped" by air attack, or that it was instrumental in blunting the later offensives over the Dnepr near Kiev. Some also falsely claim they mattered in Kursk (offensive) stage, where they weren't even fielded yet. But the detailed operational histories of the ground arms completely bely these claims. In every case, it takes multiple panzer divisions sliding in front of the Russian armor to slow or halt it. In every tactical case of specific air to ground armor kill claims, the reports of the same period on the supposed receiving end show losses from all causes only a fraction of what the pilots are claiming from the air, and only a small fraction of those due to enemy air. Exactly like the western pilots at Mortain.

In the first Gulf war, 144 A-10s flew 8100 sorties and fired 5300 Mavericks (many missions used cluster bombs instead, usually vs. softer targets than full tanks). 66 F-111s flew 4000 sorties, mostly using 500 lb laser guided GBU-12s for "tank plinking" with IR sites at night. A-10s claimed 2900 "military vehicles" of which only 900 were full tanks; the F-111s claimed 1500 "military vehicles". Post war BDA reduced these claim figures about 50%, putting the vehicle kill rate between one in six and one in three per sortie, with full tanks only about a third of those figures. The specifically A-10 and Maverick combo was at the upper end of effectiveness against full tanks, but assigning the known dead tanks over causes of loss produces the one in four figure I gave earlier, as a best estimate for that best case.

210 operational aircraft in dedicated tank killing roles with precision munitions, producing average hit rates only that high, still resulted in the most lopsided war in history and the practical evaporation of a huge tank and armored vehicle fleet in about one month. Did anything comparable happen in the east in WW II where 184 Ju-87s operated? No.

Baron Munchusen has nothing on ground attack pilots...

[LongLeftFlank]

Yes, if I want to set a medium tank on fire, I suspect I'd have a better chance spraying its exhaust system and engine louvers from behind and above with 8 x .50cal than with a single shot of 37mm.

Plus a P-47 is one hell of a lot more rugged than a Stuka.

[JasonC]

LLF - lol hardly. If I wanted to set a tank on fire, I'd send a 10 pound solid shot through its hide at 3 times the speed of sound and set off its own ammunition. Either that, or bury it in 500 pounds of jellied gasoline then toss in a match. Those are the only effective tank killers you'll find in the era (the first meaning, of course, a 76mm anti tank gun, and the second meaning napalm). Only the second can be delivered by an airplane, and wasn't until Korea, against armored targets. Oh, or I'd put a 300 pound shaped charge warhead into its side guided by computer control like a video game.

Dreams of instead killing full tanks with machineguns are just that - dreams. Even the tanks killed by A-10s in the gulf were killed by Maverick ATGMs, not its cannon. Which is the only moderately effective anti armor "machine gun" ever fielded - and is *still* overrated compared to any of the other items above.

[Otrex]

... Otrex - same kind of error. Own side claims are always wrong and always in the same direction - high. Ground AT claims aren't as inflated as air to ground claims, but they are always high and by meaningful amounts. During the war, German staff officers routinely gave all own side ground to ground armor kill claims a 50% haircut when trying to estimate remaining enemy armor strength. Doesn't mean that was the average figure, we don't know the average figure, but it is the right ballpark.

And with anything like that haircut, StuGs killed less than 2 enemy AFVs apiece. They may have only killed 1 apiece, average. There are 8600 StuGs on III chassis, 1100 more on IV chassis, and 1200 more StuHs in the same organizational force, plus another 800 early models with short 75 guns. That is 9600 heavy AT types and 11600 total AFVs. They claim 20k, but claims are not kills, they are probably only half-kills. Putting the kills per StuG somewhere between 1 and 2 with closer to 1 much more likely. Not in an afternoon, their entire service lives until lost, which all eventually were.

Sorry, I don't mean for you to read too much into the exact numbers posted, but rather that I was just answering the OP's title question. The StuG (in its various forms) killed more Allied tanks than any other German Armour. Agreed, the final tally is debateable, but the StuG IS indeed the correct answer to the original "subject line" question.

I know the debate sort of shifted from there to other related questions, but since nobody hd bothered to answer the OP I thought I could take it.

[LongLeftFlank]

Oh, I didn't say it would likely do anything either. I just said MG would be more likely to actually hit a WWII era medium tank, and if I was very lucky knock some bits off. An open-topped AFV is of course another kind of beast entirely.

[akd]

Praetori - nope, sorry, there isn't the slightest chance that claims like Rudel's are remotely accurate. They imply that entire Russian tank armies should be evaporating in days wherever a 37mm Stuka group is operating, but this is not seen in any of the operational narratives or Russian side losses.

While I agree that Rudel's claims are likely inflated, you cannot argue against them on these terms. That is like saying it is not possible a single sniper killed 20 men because there is no way the sniper's battalion killed 10,000 men. Clearly skill and luck can play a role. Not everything is an average.

[Vinnart]

From my Cmx1 game experience it would be the HETZER for German, and HELLCAT for Allied.

[Praetori]

While I agree that Rudel's claims are likely inflated, you cannot argue against them on these terms. That is like saying it is not possible a single sniper killed 20 men because there is no way the sniper's battalion killed 10,000 men. Clearly skill and luck can play a role. Not everything is an average.

This.

And making comparisons with A-10s operating several thousand feet higher than a Ju-87 says little. Now I'm not trying to say that the A-10 pilots suck but I wouldn't use them as an example either.

The early stuka pilots were required to hit within a 10m diameter circle with their bombs during practice (often starting with concrete bombs). And this had to be repeated in order for them to be cleared for front-line service.

The Ju-87 was not a very good airplane compared to others during the war but it had amazing precision, for its time, in its dive attacks (with maximum precision obtained when the bomb was released from 500m which was the lowest safe altitude in the dive).

I've spoken to the granddad of a friend on occasion (though that was a decade ago). He served as a staff officer or NCO I believe in a "russian" tank brigade somewhere north of the Don during Stalingrad. His account of stukas and "luftwaffe planes" decimating the tanks (T-34s) actually turned me around (I was a firm non-believer in the Ju-87 up to that).

Sure it was mostly open terrain that made this possible (he said that they soon learned to always spread the tanks out and park in the shadows of houses and under trees).

I've read an article from a post-war lecture involving Paul Werner Hozzel, a stuka pilot, who claims that bombs that didn't land ON a tank could still rip the treads from the wheels and was therefore counted as a "kill" (since it couldn't be used).

I've also seen a written interview with a german FOB claiming that they were talking directly to the stukas over radio (a Luftwaffe pilot was assigned to them with a radio) and often confirmed kills on Soviet tanks or asked them to take another pass if they were still in working order.

Now this says little about Rudel or the effectiveness of the Stuka but the notion that German air attacks had little or no impact on Soviet tanks is just silly.

[JonS]

The Ju-87 ... had amazing precision, for its time, in its dive attacks (with maximum precision obtained when the bomb was released from 500m which was the lowest safe altitude in the dive).

Is that more or less than a TV guided precision munition?

the notion that German air attacks had little or no impact on Soviet tanks is just silly.

No it isn't. It's the bald truth.

If you believe something else, go find the cases and tell us where Soviet attacks were stopped by air, and Soviet tank units decimated by air. It should be easy, since the Stuka was such a precise weapon

[Praetori]

Is that more or less than a TV guided precision munition?

I'd argue that it's a lot less since a TV guided munition can be dropped from several thousand feet if the weather permits while dive bombers had to get as low as 500m.

"it had amazing precision, for its time, in its dive attacks"

Was this sentence unclear?

I'm not even Trying to compare a 1940's dive bomb tactic with a modern aircraft.

If you believe something else, go find the cases and tell us where Soviet attacks were stopped by air, and Soviet tank units decimated by air. It should be easy, since the Stuka was such a precise weapon

I don't believe, and never even claimed, that a Soviet brigade would be stopped cold by the loss of a platoon or two as they clearly weren't stopped by similar losses inflicted by German AT or armor.

Even hundreds of destroyed tanks makes little difference over the course of a whole war. The Soviets employed tens of thousands of tanks during the war and even all the "claimed" kills by the Luftwaffe and the Heer combined wouldn't have made much of a difference in the end.

edit: As a clarification in my previous post I meant the impact of air against tanks as a weaponsystem and not the armored force as a whole.