Allied fighter-bomber effectiveness

Looking through my harddrive, I found this table in an article by Ian Gooderson called Allied Fighter-Bombers Versus German in North-West Europe 1944-1945: Myths and Realities regarding the accuracy of Typhoon rockets:

Code:

Target               Size                  For 50 per cent chance of a hit
                                           Rockets required   Sorties required
Small gun position   5 yds diameter                     350                 44
Panther tank         22ft 6in x 10ft 9 in x 9ft 10 in   140                 18
Large gun position   10 yds diameter                     88                 11
Army hut             60ft x 30ft x 20ft                  24                  3
Large building       120ft x 54ft x 50ft                  7                  1

 

Which roughly boils down to saying that if a single rocket actually hits something which isn't a building its basically a fluke.

Which seems reasonable. On the other hand if a Typhoon bounced a convoy or train the chances of hitting something are far better.

 

Should i suppose that Wittmann had a bloody unlucky day at Normandy??

 

Yes, he ran into a Sherman Firefly

 

Ebar
A column would be an easier target, but the individual tank would be able to feel quite safe. This can also be seen from the fact that only 15 vehicles, or 1,7 % of the total, were lost due to rockets.

 

If you read accounts by Typhoon pilots you will often see statements like
"fired rockeets at the lead vehicle of the column. Missed, but hit the second vehicle"

Similarly, a book about minesweepers records an unfortunate 'friendly fire' incident where 2 squadrons of typhoons attacked 3 minesweepers - less than 10 rockets actually hit the boats.

 

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Did the rockets got fired in salvoes or individual shot , if the former it
is a question of setting a good pattern and trust to percentage .

.

 

Presumably there was significant damage caused on the minesweepers - let's not forget that overwhelming numbers where a major allied advantage in Europe - stats start to look more favourable then - just fire loads of rockets.

 

Either. You could fire all at one or in pairs.

 

Yes. I'll need to check the book, but at least one was sunk, and the others were very badly damaged. Of course, they also suffered a fair bit of superficial damage from the 4x20mm cannon each plane carried.

 

I suppose one could extrapolate that the German and Russian tank-busters fared no better than Typhoons and T-Bolts in destroying enemy tanks?
Or is this line of reasoning specific to the use of unguided rockets against armor?

Tim

 

Let's put it this way - out of the 507 destroyed Tigers (of both types) on the Eastern Front where we know the cause of destruction, only two were destroyed by fighter-bombers (Il-2s, as I recall) (it should be noted that the Germans managed to destroy five Tigers themselves through friendly fire air attacks).

I don't see any good reason why the Germans should have fared any better.

 

German and Russian tank-busters *might* have fared better:

1) they generally used guns rather than rockets, which were more accurate. How well did the 40mm-armed Hurricanes do in North Africa?

2) The terrain out East would (generally) offer less concealment than the terrain out West.


So they had a more accurate (but far less powerful) weapon, and arguably more chance to see their target. I have no actual stats or knowledge on this, I'm just making assumptions.

 

Guns were very much more accurate than rockets. In practice, the Hurri IID scored about 25% hits on tanks, the Tsetse 33%, and the Hs 129 with the 30mm MK 103 claimed a phenomenal 60% (the high velocity would have made aiming easier). These scores would have reduced in combat, of course, for the usual reasons, but to nothing like the extent of RPs.

RPs achieved 5% hits in practice, 0.5% in combat. The problem was that the RP had a very odd trajectory and was very sensitive to such matters as the the plane being precisely lined up. So aiming required lots of concentration and mental arithmetic. Not easy to do in the stress of combat. Guns were much simpler - you basically lined up the sights, waited until the target looked the right size, then pressed the tit.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

Accurate or not, the tactical value of having hundreds of virtually unchallenged fighter bombers raining rockets down at any German target that shows itself in daylight must have been considerable regardless of hit rates. The message is quite obvious - we have control of the air and we will try to destroy you whenever you pop your head up - regardless of actual hit rates this would restrict German operations and planning; and effect morale on the ground.

Also, consider the intelligence that can be gathered (pre-satellite) from having hundreds of aircraft constantly searching for the enemy.

 

I agree entirely - the Jabos had a huge morale effect on the German Army, as well as destroying the supply train, including fuel tankers, on which the Panzers depended.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

 

Air to ground attack specifically against fully armored vehicles was systematically and hopelessly ineffective in WW II, all fronts, all dates.

For the planes lost doing it and the investment in men and materiel, you could have fielded extra tanks instead and knocked out vastly more.

Tac air was effective in WW II, but it was effective against soft skinned vehicles, trucks and railroad cars, with a net effect of reducing enemy logistic ability and supply and disrupting daytime movements of large mechanized units over roads. It may have even had some significant effect on actual AFV losses by this indirect route - creating traffic jams, blocking bridges, destroying fuel supplies, and the like, occasionally leading to abandonment of vehicles that could not be moved or recovered. Though that effect would depend on the front moving against the victimized side, with the real responsibility for loss mostly a matter of whatever ground action mades such movements of the front possible.

Operations research on the matter is emphatic and completely unambiguous. The first truly effective air to ground tank killing munition was napalm, and none of the weapons used for it in WW II were effective. Including all the guns, including the specialized tank buster aircraft, including the eastern front.

The first thing to understand in the matter is that no air to ground kill claims made by the pilots themselves has ever withstood on the ground scrutiny. By anybody. When I say ever, I mean including cases with actual gun camera footage and contemporary bomb damage assessment by objective third parties. Still wind up high by factors of 2 or 3. And when you listen to the pilots, the error factor is more like 50. Not occasionally, typically. When it gets as low as 10 times overclaiming, it is a good day.

Systematic operations research verified in Korea that napalm accounted for 80% of the actual AFVs killed by air attack, although it accounted for only 20% of the claims made by the pilots. The reason napalm was effective while other weapons were not, is that it only needed to land within about 50m of the vehicle to be effective (and was actually effective about half the time, within that radius).

Pilots overestimate the effectiveness of weapons in line with their accuracy. Guns are regarded as so accurate, pilots claim to have hit things every time they pull the trigger. This is known to be completely false on the ground. They also think whenever they have hit something they have destroyed it, pretty much, when this is very far from being the case on the ground.

It is entirely typical for pilots to claim a mass air attack has destroyed an entire enemy armor brigade in an afternoon, and to find in the objective records of the other side, that it lost fewer than 5 AFVs that day to all causes.

Simply put, no own side claim from a pilot is worth diddly squat.

The average fighter bomber did not manage to KO a single enemy AFV over its entire operational life. More, the factor by which it failed to do so is at a minimum, 50. Not in one pass, not in one sortie, in all the sorties it manages before it is lost itself or the war ended.

(AC are a trivial portion of lost AFVs as whole - order a few percent at most - and aircraft outnumber tanks).

In fact the average performance of a fighter bomber doing armed recce was more like a few trucks or railway boxcars over its service life.

Fighter bombers only manage multiple kills over the course of a war after the creation of smart weapons with specific AT capabilities. The effectiveness of A-10s firing Maverick missiles at stationary targets in open desert runs about one in three. F-111s dropping laser guided 500 lb bombs at the glowing IR signature of a tank on the cold desert floor at night, around one in four. Maximum.

To expect anything even in the range of a percent for entire salvos of unguided rockets is nonsense. Entire armor fleets would have evaporated to air attack alone in a matter of months if that were regularly achieved. (Planes are in the low thousands, sorties per month per plane are in the low double digits, total tank fleets are in the low thousands. Ergo, low double digit accuracy - even high single digit, actually - implies no tanks in one month. Instead they get a few percent at best). They didn't, it wasn't.

 

...what about the vaunted soviet "circle of death" where the sturmovics attacked astern the engine compartment of german tanks from a high angle and shot through the relatively thin top plates over the engine ? ..this was claimed to be quite effective and useing guns should be fairly accurate....

 

The Russians fielded as many IL-2s as the Germans fielded tanks. The main causes of German tank loss were direct fire by AP on the ground, from tanks and ATGs, and mechanical failure or abandonment after damage, from the two previous combined. All other causes of loss combined are an order of magnitude smaller (arty, infantry AT, mines, and air). Ergo, the entire allied air force western or eastern failed to KO a single tank per plane, and the IL-2 in particular cannot have accounted for more than 1 AFV per 40-50 IL-2s. And they lasted 25-40 sorties each, themselves, so the per sortie success rate was between 0.1 and 0.05% (5 or 10 basis points), maximum.

The average weapon system fails to ever take out enemy forces equal to its own input cost, over its entire service life - that is a theorem. (Meaning, it can be rigorously proven from first principles, as a piece of math). I like to call it the fundamental theorem of operations research.

The reason air to ground was not more effective in WW II is the stuff that had any appreciable chance of hitting anything - MG and very light caliber, rapid fire cannons - also had precious little chance of hurting a real AFV. And the stuff that might actually hurt them if it hit (bombs and rockets) had precious little chance of hitting anything.

In addition, though, only a portion of sorties were effective for reasons besides engaging and missing. Weather, navigation errors, intel and targeting errors, interception - all reduce actual ordnance delivery. Remember that a fighter-bomber only lasted 50 missions (for the west) down to half that (Russians at midwar), itself, before being lost or rendered unservicable. Only a faction of those deliver ordnance, etc.

And in addition, such ordnance as it delivered, was usually spent on softer targets as much more likely to actually be hurt. Most of the German army was infantry force type (including its guns of course), and the armor showed up along with much more vulnerable and valuable soft skinned transport. The infrastructure, transport, command, and artillery target sets are all more promising than a tank company, and more frequently met. The average IL-2 might conceivably have paid for itself in damage inflicted on these - but it is distinctly unlikely, since the average Allied weapon system did not (they outproduced the Germans, fielded far more in the way of weapons, but suffered higher aggregate losses, the Russians especially so), and Russian air was not a standout in relative effectiveness terms.

OR is brutally unforgiving of romantic pictures of invincible prowess, in warriors or weapons. If they typically neutralize their own opposite number in a single outing, wars would end by annihiliation in a matter of days. Which is only seen in practice after smart weapons exist...

 

Rudel made quite a reputation for himself flying a Stuka Ju87-D with 37mm gun-pods. The number of Russian tanks/armor he was credited for destroying was remarkable.

Was Rudel's success a fluke, or an inflated, overstated claim?
Did other like-armed Ju-87 tank-busters and dedicated He129 squadrons wreak havoc on Russian T-34s in great numbers?
Or didn't they?

Tim