Couple new CMBN videos cropping up....

[Elmar Bijlsma]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abg29p1fKz4

Watch that an tell me revisionist are unfairly questioning the truthiness of TacAir claims.

[LongLeftFlank]

In the last thread to go on at length about effectiveness (or lack thereof) of "tank busting" aircraft, I noted that in WWII just about any armoured or gun-mounting vehicle would very likely be referred to by a pilot as a "tank". This takes in all kinds of thinly armoured and open-topped AFVs such as halftracks, prime movers and SP guns whose interiors and crews would readily be chewed up by .50cal or 20mm cannon shells.

Also, for those who insist that German MBTs, especially Kittehs cannot be knocked out by anything but a "fluke" direct bomb hit, consider the following....

Looks like an engine fire to me, ignited by .50 cals or maybe a rocket punching through the comparatively thin engine grill cover. And a caption on another edition of that photo that I can't find identifies these kids as pilots from a specific P-47 squadron inspecting their own handiwork.

A "probable" outcome of a strafing or rocket attack, no. Impossible, also no.

[Battlefront.com]

When you say revision, it isn't clear what you are directing that at. I think actually no one so far has disagreed with the above and no one has said the Germans shrugged off the air offensive (or maybe I missed that). I think the only disagreement is the impact directly on armored vehicles has been found to be very overstated. The overall impact on German operations however I think all would agree was severe. Everything from transport and supply columns, artillery batteries, supply dumps, HQ units, bridges, crossroad towns etc was at the mercy of TAC AIR.

I think that sums things up nicely.

Per sortie, against tactical targets, Tac Air wasn't very effective in terms of stuff destroyed. Plans disrupted, fear, general hinderance... yup, probably quite a lot of that. But the facts do speak very strongly that the armored vehicle kills claimed by Tac Air in Normandy (in particular) were greatly exaggerated for a variety of reasons. Even the Allied air forces, conducting their own investigations, had come to this conclusion before the war was even over. I don't understand why this is being disputed.

And I don't understand why this is such a foreign concept. The NATO air strikes on Serbian forces in Kosovo were wildly overestimated, despite far better bomb damage assessment capabilities, vastly superior weapons platforms, and amazingly accurate munitions. Kills by Coalition air forces in both wars in Iraq were also exaggerated, but OIF I think it was probably pretty close to reality from what I remember. Finally, anybody paying attention to Libya will notice the limited success achieved thus far.

Bottom line... Tac Air is extremely important for what it does, but killing individual armored vehicles in a tactical environment is not the biggest thing it does. Not even today, with the modern weaponry, in a desert environment.

Steve

[sburke]

Also, for those who insist that German MBTs, especially Kittehs cannot be knocked out by anything but a "fluke" direct bomb hit, consider the following....

See this is how myths get started - I saw this tank. This pic was actually taken in East LA. If you look from the side you'll see the blocks they left it on after stealing the bogie wheels.

[JonS]

Looks like an engine fire to me, ignited by .50 cals or maybe a rocket punching through the comparatively thin engine grill cover.

It looks to me like an engine fire, ignited by the crew with a thermite grenade after Gefreiter Numbnuts popped a track with some careless driving.

It also looks to me like an engine fire, ignited by an AP round penetrating from the right side after the first round had broken the track and immobilised the Panther.

And it also looks like an engine fire to me, ignited by a bazooka round penetrating from the left side after a handgrenade had broken the track and immobilised the Panther.

In other words, that photo could look like anything you wanted it to.

[Dadekster88]

To be honest what I find interesting is the ground all chewed up around the track when compared to the rest of the road.

[womble]

To be honest what I find interesting is the ground all chewed up around the track when compared to the rest of the road.

That looks to me like an HE near miss stripped the track. What started the engine fire? That was Numbnuts cooking his breakfast on the engine manifold while waiting for the recovery vehicle... slipped with the cooking oil.

[Peter Cairns]

Odd question to ask, but there isn't a cannon run camera option is there?

It was something I always wanted to have in CMx1, a pilots eye view of an attack.

Not that bothered to see it from a shells point of view, that struck me as a bit daft, but from the cockpit would be nice.

[dieseltaylor]

And as for FoW Peter?

[sburke]

Honestly I think this is just begging for a best caption thread.

"What the hell do you mean you think you wrapped your lunch in the assembly instructions. You stupid git!"

[ChrisND]

Honestly I think this is just begging for a best caption thread.

"Yep, that's your problem right there."

[MikeyD]

Something interesting about that burnt-out Panther. Notice the open rear turret hatch is badly skewed. Its at an angle I don't associate with open rear Panther turret hatches. Also the cupola hatch is tilted upward, though that hatch is supposed to lift/rotate flat. Something really catastrophic happend to that tank.

[DaveyJJ]

"Honey, are you sure you packed the lunch basket?"

[Dadekster88]

"I told you not to text and drive at the same time...but NOOOO!"

[Battlefront.com]

"Hell yeah we can fix it up for you! Skeeter will get right onto it just soon as we fix up that Mercedes over yonder. Oh, and you do know we charge by hourly shop rate, not by the job, right?"

Steve

[undead reindeer cavalry]

claims are one thing, the other is how the opposing side credits their own losses. for example Soviets credit about 5% of their total tank write-offs to German air. divide it by the number of days in the war and multiple by a temporary : permanent ratio, and you get something like 10-20 Soviet tanks lost per day to German air.

perhaps antique divibombers operating without airsuperiority were 100 times more effective than Allied CAS in Normandy, but i highly doubt it.

[Battlefront.com]

claims are one thing, the other is how the opposing side credits their own losses. for example Soviets credit about 5% of their total tank write-offs to German air. divide it by the number of days in the war and multiple by a temporary : permanent ratio, and you get something like 10-20 Soviet tanks lost per day to German air.

perhaps antique divibombers operating without airsuperiority were 100 times more effective than Allied CAS in Normandy, but i highly doubt it.

War wide statistics hold no value when looking at any one specific period of time. Especially when calculating several years of war on pretty much every type of terrain imaginable with armor concentrations that were at times incredible. Therefore, your calculations aren't very useful.

And let's not forget... for the first 2 years of the war the Germans had air supremacy. In 1943 it turned to something like spotty air parity. It was only in 1944 and 1945 that the Germans definitely didn't have air superiority.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Oh, and I meant to add that I don't understand where you came up with 10-20 per day anyway. By my math that would mean the Soviets lost 600,000 tanks (4 years x 365 Days x 20 = 29,200. If that's 5% of total losses then...). Me thinks your math is wrong

Steve

[undead reindeer cavalry]

War wide statistics hold no value when looking at any one specific period of time. Especially when calculating several years of war on pretty much every type of terrain imaginable with armor concentrations that were at times incredible. Therefore, your calculations aren't very useful.

And let's not forget... for the first 2 years of the war the Germans had air supremacy. In 1943 it turned to something like spotty air parity. It was only in 1944 and 1945 that the Germans definitely didn't have air superiority

the percentage remains constant thru the war, even to the very end. i think it's fair to speculate (and the army/front reports i have seen support it, as does the German practice on the use of the air arm) that most of the losses went to large tank formations (armies, corps) of active Fronts. in that way i think it's comparable to Germans in Normandy, as both cases have high tank concentrations.

the 10-20 figure is the loss figure, not the total write-off figure (so not just 5% of 89 000). that's why your number is different. i think i used 4 as the multiplier. you can use other multiplier, but the scale of losses is still very high and IMHO implies tactical relevancy (just like German reports do).

[Battlefront.com]

The Germans lost about 2200 AFVs in Normandy in total prior to the end of August. So if we take 5% of that is 110 knocked out by air. There were about 115 days in the campaign so that is a loss of 1 AFV per day, average. The Allies lost about 4000 planes, or roughly 3.5 per day. Interesting statistics

Now, when you consider that a large chunk of those 2200 AFVs lost in Normandy were in very good running condition (i.e. abandoned), or only lightly damaged, the number of AFVs knocked out by air would be much lower. So we should only be taking 5% of that lowered number. Oh, let's say 1500. That's 75 AFVs taken out by Air for the entire campaign, which is far less than 1 per day. Reduce this even further when you take out Strategic Air, such as the action around St. Lo.

In short, if you want to compare Soviet 5% loss number to Normandy, it comes out to be pretty close to the revised numbers of the assessment teams.

Steve

[MikeyD]

To be fair to the poor flyboys they had a target-rich environment down there. There weren't just heavily camou'd tanks to go for, there were locomotives and horse drawn wagon, river barges, air fields, trucks, carts, sedans, flak towers, artilley emplacements, foot infantry, entrenchments, etc. etc. The Alies lost 3.5 planes per day to Germans losing 1 tank per day - but the German didn't lose just tanks. If CM:BN is anything like CMSF I suspect the air cover will actually prefer straffing empty trucks and already abandoned vehicles to Panthers!

[undead reindeer cavalry]

In short, if you want to compare Soviet 5% loss number to Normandy, it comes out to be pretty close to the revised numbers of the assessment teams.

i don't want to compare Soviet numbers directly, but i had the same thought that the numbers might get quite close to the assessment teams numbers.

on the other hand i have never looked at the total numbers gathered by those teams. for example if you look at the numbers gathered by the operations research teams around Mortain (as quoted earlier in this thread), of all found panzers the CAS was the cause of loss in 19.6% and 23.5%. :eek: for ground fire it was 43.5% and 35.3%. so the ratio between CAS and ground fire was 1:2 and 2:3. :confused:

of course Mortain would be an exceptional case, because of the high number of CAS sorties etc, but those numbers are still very high and i don't understand why they are used as examples of CAS ineffectiveness vs tanks.

[dieseltaylor]

of course Mortain would be an exceptional case, because of the high number of CAS sorties etc, but those numbers are still very high and i don't understand why they are used as examples of CAS ineffectiveness vs tanks.

I think I can see an element of confusion. Firstly as pointed out previously averages can only take you so far. What is BF and players are most interested in is what is the likelihood of a single CAS mission destroying a tank and given the Mortain sortie rate the answer must be vanishingly small - but not impossible.

There are a couple of other points. The OR was a collated report from two teams one for the Army and one from TAC airforce and one cannot but help wonder what training there was, and if vested interest in the results was a factor.

One only has to look at the death of Wittman to see how "easy" it is to establish the facts.

One thing I can be fairly dogmatic about is that the TAC would not be understated as the damage would be different from ground force kill. It is possibly overstated as rockets may well hide evidence of prior kill by a penetrating round.

[dieseltaylor]

http://www.battleofnormandytours.com/photos-op-luttich.html

Nice photos. Note pavement, widths of roads, etc

[scottie]

Nice photos. Note pavement, widths of roads, etc

lol

(that character limit is frustrating)