What german tank destroyed the most allied tanks ?

[JonS]

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

Was this sentence unclear?

No. Well, apart from the bit where you disregarded A10 attacks as irrelevant. That was a little odd and unclear.

Granted the methods - A10 vs Stuka - are very different, but the target is exactly the same. If the best an A10 can achieve, under essentially ideal conditions, is ~25%, then you'd have to be very far gone to continue to claim the Stuka could do better than that.

[JasonC]

We know how accurate WW II era dive bombers were. We have tolerably exact information from naval hits, where the distinction between a miss and a hit is extremely unambiguous, and hits are important and dramatic enough events that all are recorded and accurately so.

And all the evidence is that a dedicated dive bomber using the steepest angle of attack - which all evidence and contemporaries agree was far and away the most accurate bombing method with the weapons of that era, far more accurate than shallower glide attacks (though rockets helped, for one thing just by the shotgun effect of 6 or 8 munitions) - achieved hits only one out of six times, on average - not against a target the size of a tank, but against a target the size of an aircraft carrier.

5 out of 6 such attacks missed a target the size of an aircraft carrier.

A WW II aircraft carrier was 30-40 times as long and 9-10 times as wide as a Panther tank.

That means only one 270th to one 400th of those 1/6th that hit a carrier, were likely to hit a tank - if the hits were evenly distributed over the larger area. Which, considering 5 out of 6 landed outside of it entirely, isn't an unreasonable approximation.

That puts the hit probability for a tank sized target somewhere around one in 2000.

Now, maybe near misses close enough by, roughly double the effective size of the tank. We are still talking about something like one chance in 1000 of a hit or near miss, by the most accurate air to ground munition available.

Recall the 4% figure under firing range conditions for a Tiffie rocket pass - which fired 8 rockets to reach that figure. That is an upper bound not likely reached in actual combat.

Against a column of several trucks and other soft targets, putting the best 2-3 bombs out of the squadron in an aircraft carrier sized strip of road was undoubtedly effective enough. But against a fully armored tank - not so much.

Also recall the OR conclusion from their studies in Korea, on the effectiveness of napalm. A hit within about 20 meters (circle approximation) would splash the tank with burning fuel. The effective target size was really more of an oval (along the flight path) about 40 meters long and maybe half that wide. That is around 800 square meters - while the tank itself is only about 20 square meters, or maybe 40 allowing very near misses for high explosive munitions. Thus, a 20-40 fold increase in the likelihood of hitting near enough to matter.

The first ten fold increase in that respect is needed just to get up to percent changes to hit out of the basement of basis point chances to hit.

When these likely accuracy figures are accepted, results like 9 tanks at Mortain hit by air to ground munitions become comprehensible. The pilots are claiming hundreds because that is roughly the number they saw and shot at (many of them seeing and shooting at the same vehicles, hence the overcounting). But out of hundreds engaged, and thousands of individual rocket munitions leaving the wings, only on the order of 10 are actually hit. That result is quite consistent with the naval dive bombing evidence, etc.

As for Praetori's rather desparate spin that even all the kills claimed by the Heer wouldn't have made much difference, it is laughable. The Russians lost 102,500 tanks. They ended the war with a tank fleet only about 8000 vehicles larger than the one they started the war with. If the Germans had destroyed 30% more tanks the Russians would not have had a tank fleet left, and would not have been able to continue the advances they made - certainly not on anything like the schedule the did. (It would have set them back 2 years at a minimum).

But German kill claims exceed all AFVs made by the allies on all fronts, and exceed actual Allied AFV losses by a factor of 2. Just the ground forces. There is simply no way they can all be accurate. They aren't accurate. They never are, any army, any era, any war.

Claims are not kills. Full stop. Grok already.

[Dr.Jones]

Don't forget that the carrier was speeding at 30kts and zigzaging

br.

Dr.Jones

[Bastables]

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.

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.

If the dive bombing stuka was such a effective anti tank weapon, why did the Luftwaffe first strap on 3,7cm guns to it, then after experimenting with mounting 3cm guns of fw190 went with highly inaccurate rockets for anti armour work?

Allied Operational study teams found during normandy rockets although able to penetrate tanks were so inaccurate that they were attributed to even less tank kills than the laughably small number of panzers and stugs killed by 50cal, 2cm guns and bombs delivered by airpower. So the Luftwaffe in trying several weapon systems by the end of the war settled on rockets that had proven to be realistically ineffective under battle field conditions. The 40s resulted in no effective airborne anti tank weapon.

Kursk operational studies dealing with a battle that had the highest concentration of tank targets netted 1-2% losses attributed to air power. This is with the two airforces deploying rockets, large caliber AP cannons, cluster munitions and dive bombers to no great effect.

As an aside kill claims by any airforce weather anti air or anti ground should always be read while looking at the opposing sides reported losses. Kill claims are just that, rudels anti tank kills at best can be considered 500 tanks successfully attacked.

[Praetori]

As for Praetori's rather desparate spin that even all the kills claimed by the Heer wouldn't have made much difference, it is laughable. The Russians lost 102,500 tanks. They ended the war with a tank fleet only about 8000 vehicles larger than the one they started the war with. If the Germans had destroyed 30% more tanks the Russians would not have had a tank fleet left, and would not have been able to continue the advances they made - certainly not on anything like the schedule the did. (It would have set them back 2 years at a minimum).

But German kill claims exceed all AFVs made by the allies on all fronts, and exceed actual Allied AFV losses by a factor of 2. Just the ground forces. There is simply no way they can all be accurate. They aren't accurate. They never are, any army, any era, any war.

Claims are not kills. Full stop. Grok already.

Are you deliberately misinterpreting what I previously posted or didn't you even bother reading?

I never even claimed that the figures were accurate. On the other side I did claim that destroying armor on the open field was something that the Germans managed to do pretty well compared to the allies (then again finding and engaging a tank of the steppes of Ukraine or Russia is something else than the Bocage or Ardennes).

It was all meant in context to the thread and the question that popped up.

Granted the methods - A10 vs Stuka - are very different, but the target is exactly the same. If the best an A10 can achieve, under essentially ideal conditions, is ~25%, then you'd have to be very far gone to continue to claim the Stuka could do better than that.

Take every A-10 and every pilot that flies them and give them some 10missions a day for 4 years straight and I'm quite confident that those numbers would be substantially higher.

[Otrex]

I believe the 37mm Stuka to be highly effective at stopping Allied tanks given a high-quality pilot at the controls. A 37mm round, served at high velocity (and from a plane speeding straight down, no less) would be able to penetrate the deck armour of just about anything the Allies could field.

The only question is, with what accuracy is the Stuka attacking? Having had the chance to fly a Stuka in simulation, I found it's a VERY stable platform when the dive brakes are engaged. Suffice it to say, I'll bet a skilled pilot could put a 37mm round down a chimney if required.

I have no trouble believing high kill totals for certain Stuka pilots, and I don't think comparing the Stuka to the A-10 is a reliable method for determining what a Stuka pilot could accomplish (provided the skies were clear for them to do their work, of course).

[stikkypixie]

I believe the 37mm Stuka to be highly effective at stopping Allied tanks given a high-quality pilot at the controls. A 37mm round, served at high velocity (and from a plane speeding straight down, no less) would be able to penetrate the deck armour of just about anything the Allies could field.

The only question is, with what accuracy is the Stuka attacking? Having had the chance to fly a Stuka in simulation, I found it's a VERY stable platform when the dive brakes are engaged. Suffice it to say, I'll bet a skilled pilot could put a 37mm round down a chimney if required.

I have no trouble believing high kill totals for certain Stuka pilots, and I don't think comparing the Stuka to the A-10 is a reliable method for determining what a Stuka pilot could accomplish (provided the skies were clear for them to do their work, of course).

An A-10 is the product of 30-40 worth of technological advance in terms of flight controls, fire controls and flight characteristics compared to a Stuka. It's the M1A2 to the Stuka's Panzer III. If an A-10 "only" achieves a 25% kill rate, what is the reasoning that a Stuka can get better or even comparable kill rates? The top armour of tanks haven't increased much so that can't be it, and I willing to bet a modest amount of money that an average A-10 pilot has more flight hours than a whole Stuka squadron combined.

[YankeeDog]

I believe the 37mm Stuka to be highly effective at stopping Allied tanks given a high-quality pilot at the controls. A 37mm round, served at high velocity (and from a plane speeding straight down, no less) would be able to penetrate the deck armour of just about anything the Allies could field.

The only question is, with what accuracy is the Stuka attacking? Having had the chance to fly a Stuka in simulation, I found it's a VERY stable platform when the dive brakes are engaged. Suffice it to say, I'll bet a skilled pilot could put a 37mm round down a chimney if required.

I have no trouble believing high kill totals for certain Stuka pilots, and I don't think comparing the Stuka to the A-10 is a reliable method for determining what a Stuka pilot could accomplish (provided the skies were clear for them to do their work, of course).

You can believe whatever you want. The fact of the matter is, the data don't support a significant number of tank kills in ANY theater by ANY aircraft weapons system in WWII.

To be sure, we don't know the cause of loss of every single tank in every single theater of the war, but for much of the war, pretty good data are available. The Americans, Brits, Germans and Soviets all kept detailed records of own tank losses, including cause. And combatants also kept records of verified kills (as in situations where ground forces were actually able to physically inspect KO'd hulks after the engagement). By cross-referencing these two, you can get a pretty good guess as to who knocked out what.

Granted, there are some holes in the data. For example, exact breakdown of Soviet tank losses in the first months of Barbarossa is difficult to determine -- large numbers of tanks were simply abandoned due to breakdown, lack of fuel, and/or operational encirclement, and these losses were not well documented. So it's difficult to determine how many BT-7s and T-26s were actually knocked out by German weapons, and how many were simply abandoned.

But in general, very detailed figures are available for Soviet tank losses for the second half of the war, and I can tell you that losses to 37mm AP don't even show up on the tables from mid-war on; any such losses are presumably so insignificant as to be grouped under "other." If Rudel or anyone else was flying around knocking out even a quarter of tanks they said they did with aerial gunfire, tank losses with 37mm holes in them would at least show up on the tables.

At any rate, in order to argue that Stukas (however armed) were taking out any significant number of T-34s and IS-2s, you have to argue that the loss data are somehow incorrect -- that a significant percentage of tank kills were incorrectly registered, or something like that. I haven't heard a solid argument for this, yet. Same goes for Allied F/Bs in the ETO.

Regards,

YD

[Sakai007]

There is gun camera footage from Rudel's Stuka available on YouTube. It is not of attacking tanks however, it is attacking barges the Soviets were using to ferry troops and equipment. These barges are not all that much larger then a T34, and he was very, very good with those guns. 37mm cannons don't leave large holes in a tank, and if I was riding along in my PzIV and saw a tank I would fire first and check to see if it was occupied second. Tanks knocked out or disabled by aircraft fire could very well be hit by a number of weapons before that guy that does reports for his unit gets a chance to inspect it, if he does at all. Do I think all his tank claims are legit? No. Do I think that he 'hit' a large number of armored vehicles? Yes. They may or may not have been knocked out, but I have no doubt he was making hits more often then the average pilot. The Hs-129 units in the Kuban had great success destroying tanks that had pierced the German line, and they were all confirmed.

[YankeeDog]

I can believe a few mis-IDd tank kills here and there. There is always some uncertainty and error in any human endeavor.

And these cut both ways. A pilot could also just as easily see a tank abandoned in an open field due to fuel exhaustion or throwing a track, and punch a few 37mm holes in what was actually an abandoned hulk. This "kill" might then get mis-registered as an aerial kill on a live, manned tank.

In general, I think it's best to apply Occam's razor here: Aerial AT weapons being largely ineffective, and pilot kill reporting being wildly optimistic, is the simplest and most consistent explanation for the data at hand. Until new information indicates strongly otherwise, that's my conclusion.

Regards,

YD

[Michael Emrys]

I believe the 37mm Stuka to be highly effective at stopping Allied tanks given a high-quality pilot at the controls. A 37mm round, served at high velocity (and from a plane speeding straight down, no less) would be able to penetrate the deck armour of just about anything the Allies could field.

Except I don't believe that is the kind of attack that was employed. It's been quite a while since I read Rudel, but my memory is that he and the others who flew the cannon armed Stuka attacked from low level in a very shallow powered glide. I think that in most cases they attempted to strike the rear hull or turret where the armor was also thin, but any shot hitting the deck armor would likely have ricocheted off.

Michael

[Magpie_Oz]

It is disputed that air attacks on tanks was anywhere near as effective as claimed.

http://operationbarbarossa.net/Myth-Busters/Mythbusters4.html

" In the Goodwood area a total of 456 German heavily armoured vehicles were counted, and 301 were examined in detail. They found only 10 could be attributed to Typhoons using RPs (less than 3% of those claimed)."

That link goes on to mention that air power was grossly over rated in terms of direct attacks on AFV

[Praetori]

Except I don't believe that is the kind of attack that was employed. It's been quite a while since I read Rudel, but my memory is that he and the others who flew the cannon armed Stuka attacked from low level in a very shallow powered glide. I think that in most cases they attempted to strike the rear hull or turret where the armor was also thin, but any shot hitting the deck armor would likely have ricocheted off.

Michael

A pretty nice clip claiming to be from a Stuka.

[Praetori]

It is disputed that air attacks on tanks was anywhere near as effective as claimed.

http://operationbarbarossa.net/Myth-Busters/Mythbusters4.html

" In the Goodwood area a total of 456 German heavily armoured vehicles were counted, and 301 were examined in detail. They found only 10 could be attributed to Typhoons using RPs (less than 3% of those claimed)."

That link goes on to mention that air power was grossly over rated in terms of direct attacks on AFV

True true. I was following discussion a couple of years ago where Niklas Zetterling frequented the thread. According to his, then, latest figures the total claims of the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffes attributed to less than 10% of the total claims.

The deduction made by OKW to get a reasonable figure usually turned out pretty close to Soviet figures of actual losses.

I belive that the conclusion of the thread was that some 2-5% of all armored losses could "possibly" be attributed to Luftwaffe aircraft but that it was not know if a 50% reduction of the claims was accurate or if the percentage could even be calculated.

Regarding Rudel, Zetterling meant that his claims should be taken with a grain of salt and that a reduction of three quarters was probably closer to the truth. This was some 8 or 9 years ago so I have no idea how it holds up with current data.

[JasonC]

If any pilot killed any tank from the air in WW II, then he was dramatically outperforming all other pilots. Because most never killed a tank over their entire operational careers.

Rudel did not fly 10 missions a day for 4 years - that would come to 14000 sorties and he actually flew 2530. He claimed 2000 targets destroyed, or 80% kills per sortie. A-10s with Mavericks actually killed maybe half that, counting softer targets. There is no chance whatever that Rudel actually killed 2000 anything. His specifically anti tank claims are undoubtedly the most overblown, because all evidence tells us that pilots get that one wrong by the largest margins. His claims about large ships can be believed (lol).

As for "if unopposed", Stukas operating in Russia were losing up to 30 aircraft per month in 1943. That is why most of them were replaced by FW-190s. A large, slow, purpose designed dive bomber was doubtless more accurate than a small maneuverable FB with twice its speed, but the latter was survivable and the former was not.

When attacking with cannon instead, the attack profile is the much less accurate glide angle rather than true dive bombing. And the gun is not a 30mm gatling firing 50-70 depeleted uranium penetrator rounds per second. More like 5 rounds per second (both guns combined), with only 6 rounds per gun carried. An A-10 carries 1150 rounds. 10 times the ammo load fired 10-14 times as fast. But even A-10s kill more tanks with TV guided missiles than with the gun.

For ground AT kills, claims to actual run around 2 to 1 and so the claims can be used as a rough indicator of actual performance with that kind of haircut applied. But for air to ground, claims to actual run 10 to 1, 25 to 1, 50 to 1 - all the time. There isn't any recorded case of a suppose major armor kill under that 10 times figure. Because the portion is so low and the range so wide, claims basically don't tell us anything about actual kills in that case. Maybe Rudel was average in claiming and killed 10 tanks. Maybe he was more scrupulous than most (though all the evidence is the opposite), and he killed something like 50. But he didn't kill 500.

It is moreover quite revealing that pilot claims nearly track missions one for one. If anything like that were true, then FBs that make 50 to 100 sorties over their operational lives would be killing 25 to 50 times the scale of their own losses, in overall targets KOed on the ground. Or maybe only 10-15 times for high loss rate types and periods. OK, are dead things on the ground killed from the air 10-50 times as numerous as dead aircraft? With a quarter or so of them being dead tanks?

No. Not even remotely.

The Russians lose 40,000 IL-2s flying ground attack missions on the eastern front. Do they kill 400,000-600,000 ground targets? The Germans only build a tenth that many full AFVs over the entire war. There is a dead IL-2 for every dead tank - and the tanks are not dying principally to the IL-2s; there are 3 dead Russian tanks (and 1 live one) for each German AFV sent against them.

Basically, the scale of the airpower effort matches the scale of the ground armor effort. If air power were ten times as effective (and a dead anything per sortie, or 80% of sorties, or anything remotely like that, implies as much) there wouldn't be any live tanks around - and they also wouldn't have mattered for the outcome of the war. Any more than battleships mattered for the outcome of the war in the Pacific. The air war would have decided everything and the side that lost it would rapidly lose every other major weapon system they possessed.

But this isn't what we see. Not until occasions like the first gulf war, when such accuracy rates *are* achieved using smart weapons - very much for the first time. And the entire war runs very differently as a direct result.

[MrSpkr]

A pretty nice clip claiming to be from a Stuka.

If you watch the slowmo carefully, it appears all three "kills" are strikes on the rear of the tank -- at least one clearly impacting a reserve fuel tank stored on the rear of the vehicle. Not sure any of those were actual kills. One MAY have torn up the engine -- I think the other two hit external fuel tanks, which would not necessarily have prevented the tank form continuing operations.

Steve

[Praetori]

If you watch the slowmo carefully, it appears all three "kills" are strikes on the rear of the tank -- at least one clearly impacting a reserve fuel tank stored on the rear of the vehicle. Not sure any of those were actual kills. One MAY have torn up the engine -- I think the other two hit external fuel tanks, which would not necessarily have prevented the tank form continuing operations.

Steve

Indeed. That begs the question if people count mobility kills as a "kill" or not.

In my book a tank put out of action is a casualty, no matter if it's repaired within a day or a month (just like casualties counted for soldiers and material).

The point of tactical air strikes and CAS was/is to influence the battle on the ground, not the long term strategic targets (even though the former is a requirement to achieve the latter).

If by "kill" from jabos or other aircraft means a total writeoff then I can understand why people seem to think air attacks vs armor was ineffective.

Being on the offensive or defensive makes a world of difference in this case as enemy casualties while you're advancing often equals POWs or captures.

I can also imagine that the pilots reported a kill if there was any visible damage on the target (even a broken tank going up in flames due to spare fuel would look like a kill from the air).

As Paul Werner Hozzel said about dropping bombs on Soviet tanks causing tracks to dislodge and wheels to break I can imagine that those were reported as damaged or even kills even though they might have been fully serviceable by the end of the day.

There really is/was no way of knowing unless you actually occupy and hold the ground where the destroyed armor is located (given that the enemy hasn't had time to tow the useful vehicles away before that).

Now I've never believed that pilots like Rudel had a track-record in accordance with reality. But the sheer amount of witness accounts (amongst them an old Russian veteran I've spoken to with the scars and medals to prove it) of how aircraft wrecked havoc with armored forces hints that there are at least a shred of substance to some of the claims.

[Melchior]

The problem was no one was about to tell the pilots of their Air Force they weren't really accomplishing as much as they thought. Every side during the was notorious for inflating kill counts due to the difficulty of verification and for plain ol' propaganda.

The R&D divisions of every side almost certainly knew what was going on, but they weren't about to march to the nearest airbase and say "Yeah remove a couple of those kill tallys from your fuselage."

In terms of cost efficiency i'd honestly every Tank Destroyer the Wehrmacht ever fielded except for pointless ones like the Jagdpanzer IV pretty much got them the bang for buck they needed more of. The StuG III and Hetzer deserve special recognition paticularly for allowing the Germans to effectively extend the lifespan of the very outdated Mk. III and 38(t) chassis.

[Praetori]

The problem was no one was about to tell the pilots of their Air Force they weren't really accomplishing as much as they thought. Every side during the was notorious for inflating kill counts due to the difficulty of verification and for plain ol' propaganda.

The R&D divisions of every side almost certainly knew what was going on, but they weren't about to march to the nearest airbase and say "Yeah remove a couple of those kill tallys from your fuselage."

In terms of cost efficiency i'd honestly every Tank Destroyer the Wehrmacht ever fielded except for pointless ones like the Jagdpanzer IV pretty much got them the bang for buck they needed more of. The StuG III and Hetzer deserve special recognition paticularly for allowing the Germans to effectively extend the lifespan of the very outdated Mk. III and 38(t) chassis.

Yeah. When it comes to armored vehicles my guess would be the Stug. For arms in general I'd say the Pak 75 or 88 (if I get to include the AAA ones as well).

[JonS]

The R&D divisions of every side almost certainly knew what was going on, but they weren't about to march to the nearest airbase and say "Yeah remove a couple of those kill tallys from your fuselage."

No.2 ORS tried that exactly in Normandy. The RAF had a massive hissy fit.

[JasonC]

Praetori - At Mortain, only 9 knocked out German tanks on the ground were *hit* by air launched weapons. 254 kill claims, 9 actually hit. It can't be spun. It isn't an accounting category issue. They fired thousands of five inch rockets at scores of targets and they hit all of 9 of them. Grok.

The only havoc that Jabos wrought on "armored forces" was shooting up the soft transport components of the parent formations. That wasn't nothing and it had a definite effect on their operations. But that effect was not, "attrite the AFVs themselves". Didn't happen. And oh yeah, hundreds and hundreds of fighter bombers were lost doing it. Light flak on the ground was in fact an above average weapon system routinely destroying more than its own input cost. In fact, probably a way more effective weapon per unit of input than the flashy Jabos they were shooting at - and hitting.

[argie]

Yeah. When it comes to armored vehicles my guess would be the Stug. For arms in general I'd say the Pak 75 or 88 (if I get to include the AAA ones as well).

I remember reading somewhere that the guns that killed most tanks in the Eastern Front was the 105mm field guns and howitzers. Easy to believe giving them were far more ubiquitous than other kind of guns and in early years (and even in late years) of the war very few AFVs could withstand a shell of that size without at least suffering a M-Kill. Even a near miss could have easily dispatched a T-26 or BT.

[JonS]

ARGIE!

(padding)

[argie]

Hi, Jon.

How are things in the antipodes?

[JonS]

Antipodal. Winter is rapidly approaching, but then so is the RWC. All in all, things are pretty good.

You?