Best Tank Killer of WW2 continued

[kool kitty89]

THe engines of the Hs 129 were also not that relable and (for radial engines) not very resistant to battle damage, however I agree that the 129 was a good design. (and the engines were a huge imrovement over the Argus ones)

And were still probably tougher than the the Stuka's liquid cooled engine. (which was a good deal slower with cannons than the 129) And the Il2's radiator and engine were placed in such a way and with such armor that they were not at a disadvantage to radial engines. (though the oil cooler was vulnerable, something solved on the much improved Il-10)

In fact I'd say the Il-10 was the best dedicated ground attack a/c of WWII, but it came too late to be of any significant consequence. (and if developed more with better engines I think the Hs 129 would still be better)

The Hs 129 is similar in many ways to the A-10 though, just an interesting note. (the "bath tub" armor plate surrounding the pilot, twin engines, heavily armored canopy heavy caliber centerline armament)

[Kruska]

Hello kk89,

NO, No, you got it all wrong: the A10 is similar to the Hs129 not the other way around

Regards
Kruska

[kool kitty89]

Well yeah...

I think the best wording would probably have been something like "the A-10 shares some notable feateres with the Hs 129"

But still in interesting note. (particularly the 'bath tub' armor)

[Kruska]

Hello kk89,

Yes you are correct about the “bathtub” idea, but somehow I do find more resemblance between the Northrop A-9 and the Hs129 then to the A-10.

The A-10 to me is a very unique a/c which no one had or ever designed to be so extremely effective in supporting CAS. I just loved to watch this destroyer during maneuvers, almost standing in the air whilst making a turn – really incredible
.
Regards
Kruska

[kool kitty89]

Yep.

[lesofprimus]

Gotta agree with everyone here except buzzard.... The P-47 was NOT a great tank killer, nor was it an accurate one... People uneducated on the topic usually pick either the Tiffy or the Thunderbolt...

[parsifal]

I agree that none of the Allied FBs were great tank killers, but they were still excellent ground attack aircraft. An awfull lot of soft skinned vehicles were destroyed by the allied FBs in 1944, which greatly reduced the combat effectiveness and mobility of German mobile formations. For example, I believe Lehr lost more than 100 soft skinned vehicles in its approach to Normandy in 1944, and that its mobility was reduced to about half.

Allied FBs might not have been great FBs in a direct sense, but as part of an all arms team, they were excellent, because they applied indirect inhibitors to the combat formations containing the enemy tanks

[Tony Williams]

Definitely: the P-47 and Typhoons were good ground attack planes, as I've said, and scared the daylights out of inexperienced Panzer crews, as has also been said. They made an important contribution to the general disruption of German army effectiveness, including Panzer units. But good tank killers....not.

[renrich]

Thanks for your very informational posts, Tony. I suspect that there are a number of myths about WW2 that don't hold up to close scrutiny. Fighter bombers may not have been effective against tanks but they sure were hard on the horses.

[plan_D]

It would be more accurate to say that the RAF and USAAF fighter-bombers were effective against the Wehrmacht's armour in a roundabout way. The destruction of communications and supply by the U.S. 9th and 2nd TAF caused severe disruption to the movement of German armour throughout the entire North-West Europe campaign.

I've always said that destroying enemy armour on the field is a last ditch effort; being able to prevent that armour reaching the field is the real success. The amount of tanks abandoned by panic stricken crews, or destroyed on their train journey, or left for lack of fuel, or out of position because of reduced mobility is really uncountable. The Allies should consider themselves lucky to have such brave men flying those vicious and deadly sorties into immense flak barrages on their side. And thankful that the Germans did realise how little affect the fighter-bomber really had on a tank itself.

Interesting note in Panzer Leader is Guderian accusing Rommel of being afraid of the Allied air forces. It seems that Guderian recognised the inability of Allied air power to destroy his armour in 1944... and it's taken 60 years and 20/20 hindsight for most other people to come to the same conclusion.

[kool kitty89]

P-47's fitted with HVAR's though would be pretty good. As a dive bomber or with the poor tube launched 4.5" rockets, not so much.

The F4U, being a particularly accurate dive bomber, was better in this, and as it was USN/USMC, it was using HVAR's much sooner than the AAF a/c.

renrich, was the F4U-4 the first production Corsair to have (main gear) dive brakes, or were earlier ones using them.

[plan_D]

I'm no expert on Korea but I believe the Allied forces recognised the failures of the current technology when it came to attack armour from the air. It's only logical to attack the supply routes to prevent several tanks from moving and shooting, rather than spending masses of energy on destroying one tank.

[kool kitty89]

True. (on the importance of the suply lines)

But the Corsair did perform anti-tank duties in Korea though.



And another nore on the P-47 was it did have some advantages ovet the Corsair in ground attack, considerable less vulnerable oil cooler(s), somewhat more damage resistance with all metal structure (in most circumstances) on F4U-4 and earlier.

However overall the F4U had better overall low-medium altitude performance than contemporary P-47's (particularly in maneuverability, and in climb)
And could carry a heavier payload (on -1D and later models).
And was a very accurate dive bomber. (perhaps the P-47 may have been with dive brakes, but probably not as accurate as the F4U, which was apparantly about as accurate as a SBD)

(use of Napalm and HVAR, are circumstancial advantages of the Corsair in WWII)

[JoeB]

Originally Posted by plan_D

I'm no expert on Korea but I believe the Allied forces recognised the failures of the current technology when it came to attack armour from the air.

The fighter bomber aerial weapons, tactics and results in that case were somewhat similar to 1944-45 in NW Europe: rocket/bomb/napalm equipped fighter bombers knocked out a pretty small fraction of what they were credited with, but in that case it was a fairly high % of all the NK tanks knocked out. However it was also similar in that attacks against other motor transport (including direct support vehicles for tanks) were a lot more effective, those support vehicles which quickly mostly wiped out. And, even if the planes overclaimed a lot, tanks moving around in any concentration in reasonable weather in daylight would still be overwhelmed. In sum, large-scale NK armor operations pretty much ceased about a week and a half into the US/UN intervention in the war.

The planes were probably somewhat more effective than Allied WWII fb's, using the HVAR (plus quickly deployed shaped charge versions of same), but circular error probable of such rockets were still pretty big compared to a tank. Napalm was used relatively more often than in WWII v tanks and that was pretty effective.

On other side, the Il-10 was only briefly used by the North Koreans in daylight against airfields and a couple of cases v UN ships: it just couldn't survive against the opposing fighters, and apparently didn't get any opportunities to attack UN tanks.

A lot of the foregoing stuff on WWII is very well gone over, though doesn't hurt to bring it up again. In the same somewhat redundant vein though, it doesn't seem as if there was the same level of operational analysis about the effectiveness of mainly gun-armed tank killing planes on Eastern Front, the type of analysis according to which we can fairly accurately criticize the real accomplishments of western Allied fb's as pure tank killers. A lot more of the German/Soviet accounts seem to come from claims of pilots. OK their heavier guns may been more capable of hitting tanks than rockets or of penetrating them than .50cal/20mm but doesn't mean they didn't also vastly overclaim (perhaps) fooled by the dust stirred up by near misses or by decoy smoke, or attack already dead tanks multiple times (that was clearly a big factor in UN v NK tanks case in Korea).

Joe

[buzzard]

I don't have time to make a reply, but I think this link may be of interest in relation to the accuracy of German aerial tank-kill claims.

Tank Busting Aircraft at Kursk - The Dupuy Institute Forum

JL