Hans Ulrich Rudel, Tank Destroyer...

[BF109F]

This is RG Lunatic - I need to get a life

[Njaco]

Does there need to be any question as to how good the Admins and Mods are here? Why I love this site.

Back on track.

I don't know about Rudel's claims or not or about a bounty but here is a question. There seems to be contention that the Soviets or anybody else didn't know about Rudel. Well, if German propaganda was so effective, wouldn't the Allies know about him? And how good he was?

[FLYBOYJ]

There were a lot of first party witnesses to verify many of Rudel's achievements. I guess his last rear gunner Ernst Gadermann went on to become a famous medical doctor and wrote a lot about Rudel.

[parsifal]

Earlier someone said that the Ju87G was less vulnerable than the IL-2. I'm going to be the dummy and say how can you say that? You would need an awful lot of proof like the number of cannon shells needed to shoot each aircraft down. if you try to use any other measure, the results are too easily distorted. Like maybe the german fighters were more efficient, or Russian pilots are hopeless, or something.

I just cannot believe, or accept that the Russians would build 37000 of these f*ckers, because they were easy to shoot down

[Njaco]

I don't think numbers produced necessarily reflects how good something is. The Luftwaffe constantly needed better or specialized aircraft and until and if those were made available, they had to make do with what they had on hand. IMHO thats the reason for so many Bf 109s and Ju 87s.

Does anybody know if - when equipped with the Panzerknacker - Stukas need to dive-bomb onto tanks or was there another tactic used?

[comiso90]

Originally Posted by parsifal

Earlier someone said that the Ju87G was less vulnerable than the IL-2. I'm going to be the dummy and say how can you say that? You would need an awful lot of proof like the number of cannon shells needed to shoot each aircraft down. if you try to use any other measure, the results are too easily distorted. Like maybe the german fighters were more efficient, or Russian pilots are hopeless, or something.

I just cannot believe, or accept that the Russians would build 37000 of these f*ckers, because they were easy to shoot down

IMO, If you were an excellent pilot and marksmen, the IL-2 was easy to take down with a few well placed shots to the cooling system. If you were just "Spraying and Praying", a novice pilot or unable to target the desired part of the plane, I think the IL-2 was more difficult to shoot down then the Stuka.

.

[Udet]

Originally Posted by parsifal

Earlier someone said that the Ju87G was less vulnerable than the IL-2. I'm going to be the dummy and say how can you say that? You would need an awful lot of proof like the number of cannon shells needed to shoot each aircraft down. if you try to use any other measure, the results are too easily distorted. Like maybe the german fighters were more efficient, or Russian pilots are hopeless, or something.

I just cannot believe, or accept that the Russians would build 37000 of these f*ckers, because they were easy to shoot down

Parsifal, the IL-2 pretty much followed a pattern similar to most soviet war hardware: let´s produce it in the biggest numbers possible to make up for the huge losses endured in combat operations.

Wise, efficient style of conducting military production affairs one might think; that, however, does not make the IL-2 the alleged superb plane depicted by them Soviets.

Would you agree with the notion USAAF fighter pilots did receive far better training than the Soviet pilots? I mean, the sole question seems silly...

Apart from propaganda outbursts infested with ridiculous claims of "hundreds of German panzers destroyed in a few hours" in battles like Kursk, Soviet data in this regard is rare... so why not to check on USAAF/RAF data that is available with regard to ground attack missions carried out by Tempests, Typhoons and P-47s in Normandy?

Upon examination of abandoned and/or destroyed German panzers and AFVs it was concluded British and American fighter-bomber pilots claimed about ten times as many tanks as they indeed managed to destroy.

Authors such as Niklas Zetterling too had covered this aspect of the war, with nearly identical conclusions: fighter-bomber pilots of RAF and USAAF managed to destroy a ridiculously low number of German panzers, and not just that, their losses during such missions were high due to Flak. In the end, it seemed such missions were a bit more dangerous for the Allied pilots than they apparently were for Panzer crews.

Ten times? With way superior training and equipment...

Also Parsifal don´t you get tired of the typical arguments oftenly launched to downplay the Stuka? What about that one affirming "without proper fighter cover, it was a sitting duck" -or something for that matter-; the argument , albeit correct to a high degree, is used in a very selective manner...let´s think of the present-day aerial warfare; if an American pilot flying his A-10, or, say, helicopter in combat finds himself being intercepted by the latest MiG fighter, his situation definitely will get utterly nasty. So, 63 years later, no significant changes have occurred with regard to defencelessness of ground attack planes if caught by enemy fighters.

[parsifal]

I happen to think the Stuka was vulnerable, although not as vulnerable as the popular accounts would have you believe. Why then did the stuka enjoy a low rate of attrition on the eastern front. My opinion is the Soviet tactics and operational policy more than anything. It is a misconception that once the Soviets won the initiative, they tried to maintain constant air superiority over the whole front. Just not true. There were large sections of the front totally devoid of air cover. The Soviets smashed the Germans in their great offensives, by taking their already impressive advantage in armaments, and manpower, and concentrating that advantage on one or more sections of the front. Thus, if the overall advantage in a particular category was say 3:1, for the entire eastern front, this advantage might balloon out to an advantage many times that at the point of breakthrough. It was not unheard of for the Soviets to enjoy advantages of 20:1 or more at those points where they wanted to a chieve a breach in the german defensive line. people seem to view that as somehow unfair, or proof of the inferiority of Soviets capability. I think it was a mark of good Soviet generalship that they could achieve such concentrations of power, and the germans could not

Whilst the Germans held the initiative, it was possible for them to shift their rather meagre air force assets around the front, to deliver critical support at the point of attack. Once the Soviets wrested the initiatiive from them, it became much harder for the Germans to do this. .

Now, because the Soviets esssentially viewed their air assets as a support element of the ground force (even moreso than the germans in fact), and because they could run up and down the front attacking with greatly concentrated forces, it was not all that important to them to shoot down a lot of German aircraft. the primary mission, was to deliver additional firepower to the point of breakthrough, not so much to kill things, but mostly just to keep the defenders heads down, whilst the attacking forces on the ground went to work on them. The Soviets did this with great success after Kursk

I also believe that the Soviets exploited the strengths of their types to the maximum. IL-2s had a weakness on the underside of the fuselage (cant rememeber what, but I think it was something to do with the oil cooler....the more technical people here will no doubt correct me), so their tactics were to use the Sturmoviks at zero altitude, to prevent the German fighters from hitting them in that direction, Of course this had the unfortunate side effect of meaning they were more exposed to LAA fire....meanwhile, Soviet fighters tended to mill around at altitudes below 5000 ft, because they knew this was where they could obtain maximum advantage over the German fighters.

The Germans had no answer to this strategy, which was employed in the air and on the ground. The reason is simple, once they had lost the initiative, they could no longer concentrate their forces to deliver the decisive blows needed.