One thing I didn't know about until Sapper's account was the dominance of the RAF Hawker Typhoon over Normandy in providing what was probably the first on-call and organised airstrike cover of the war(?).

Armament comprised of:
4 x 20 mm Hispano MkII fixed forward fireing cannons, 140 rounds each, 8 x 60 rockets instead of bombs or 2 x 1000 or 500 lb bombs

We hear so much about the (IMHO) trumped up P-51 Mustang , were there any other planes which were as effective as the Typhoon in the airstrike role on those critical few weeks?

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Certainly. The P-47 proved an excellent ground attack aircraft too. The tactics were a bit different as the 47 usually carried 500 to 1000 lb bombs instead of rockets. In the Lorraine campaign P-47's making air strikes on German Panzer units attacking at locations like Luneville or Rambervillers these aircraft would fly just a few feet off the ground and literally toss a 500 lb bomb into the side of a Panther. They were generally called down on targets by L-4 Grasshopper spotter aircraft, much like the British version using the Typhoon "cab rank" system.

Remember what the intended role was for the P-51 Mustang ? high altitude for protection of US heavy bombers. The 354th Pioneer Mustang group out of Oregon was the first to be equipped. The men so loved the Mustang that when their a/c were taken and given to the 8th AF fighter crews, the a/c were replaced by the P-47's which the pilots loathed as they were ordered to take on ground attack duties in the fall/winter of 44 then replaced again by newer versions of the P-51. It was only after a/c protection duties that the P-51 pilot's were essentially 'allowed' to take out ground targets but this seemed to be the norm in the early spring of 45 as the Luftwaffe was not ever present in numbers........

~E

The Typhoon is synonymous with Falaise but many types of aircraft were involved in ground attack; the Mk IX Spitfires had quite a go too and one of these is generally agreed to have been responsible for attacking Rommel's car.

However, the Typhoon had the enormous punch ( 4 x 20mm alone were formidable enough...) and took such heavy losses to light flak over Normandy that they deserve considerable credit. The sound of the Napier Sabre engines also had a psychological impact on German troops similar to that of the Stuka on the BEF in 1940....

There is of course the famous painting by Frank Wootton ( 'Rocket Firing Typhoons At The Falaise Gap' ) and two superb memoirs : -

' The Day Of The Typhoon' by John Golley (PSL 1986 )
' Typhoon Pilot ' by Desmond Scott DSO DFC ( Leo Cooper 1982 )

And the memorial at Villers-Bocage : -

http://www.cpmac.com/~cmcgarry/photos/villerplaque.jpg

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That would be the Stukas in 1939....the Germans had forward control officers with the front-line troops, ready to call in Stuka support when needed.

The Allies took a long time to relearn the lessons of air/ground cooperation which they had forgotten after WW1. They finally got it going in the North African desert in 1942, These lessons were later transferred to NW Europe in 1944 and raised to a high standard of perfection.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and Discussion forum

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Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website

If you've ever seen one of the engines they had in the Typhoon not inside the aircraft, you'd understand that even more so!!! I do have some pictures actually [img]smile.gif[/img] .

A picture of the engine(my friend in the far right, hes studying aerospace so he has an interest in that stuff) :
http://www.fotopages.com/cgi-bin/show_photo.pl?id=63231

A non-orginal Typhoon done up in the colors of a RCAF fighter from the Battle of Britain.:
http://www.fotopages.com/cgi-bin/show_photo.pl?id=63229

The Typhoon was the plane that truly turned the Battle of Britain. Spitfires where good, but they didn't see as much action as the Typhoon did since they where less plentyful.

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The curious thing about the Typhoon and P-47 'tankbuster' operations in 1944 is that while they unquestionably had a severe morale effect on the Germans, and wreaked great execution among the Panzer supply lines, they didn't actually bust many tanks.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and Discussion forum

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Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website

I think that's a fair point, Tony. They certainly had the capability to 'bust' tanks, but aiming at such a small ground target can't have been easy.

Still, 'Typhoon vehicle convoy busting' doesn't have quite the same cachet , does it ?

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Thank you Martin! I'd come across those books a few months ago in Waterstone's, but hadn't the money to buy them, and neglected to get the titles and couldn't find them later. Cheers for the info!

Huh? There were no typhoons in the Battle of britain! Don't you mean the Hurricane in which the typhoon was based on!

I like that engine pic though, your mate's head really brings it into perspective!

And yes guys I completely forgot about the P-47 a truly earnt nickname "Jug"! I had the fortune of seeing one near Birmingham last year and it was amazing that thing could get off the ground let alone do so well in dogfights!!

I have no real grudge against the P-51, it just seemed to get all the limelight though when there was so much armor in the way of the Allies that could not really be taken out by the mustang. Yet you see it almost exclusively in just about all ww2 movies in the european theater.

I say that but I guess it would be a practical thing, the amount of surviving mustangs far superceeds the amount of P-47s or Typhoons...

[ 29. December 2003, 02:48 PM: Message edited by: BratwurstDimSum ]

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Yes - you've got your Hawkers in a twist, BkB !

The Typhoon was supposed to be a replacement for the BofB Hurricane; but was too big and unwieldy to hack it in air-to-air combat. But then it came into it's own as a ground attack platform...

Pic no. 1 of yours is most certainly the truly awe-inspiring 24-cylinder Napier Sabre of the Typhoon and Tempest, but pic. 2 is the good old Merlin-engined Hurricane.

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Those 2 are my favorite planes[along w/ the Mosquito] but dominate? A Sopwith Camel would have been dominate.They may not have "busted" many tanks but they had the Germans moving at night with the exception of Falaise.What a waste,musta been a turkey shoot!Just my opinion though. FramerT.

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[quote]Originally posted by Tony Williams:

Quote:

That would be the Stukas in 1939....the Germans had forward control officers with the front-line troops, ready to call in Stuka support when needed. The Allies took a long time to relearn the lessons of air/ground cooperation which they had forgotten after WW1. They finally got it going in the North African desert in 1942, These lessons were later transferred to NW Europe in 1944 and raised to a high standard of perfection. Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and Discussion forum

So did the Germans. During the early WW II campaigns Flivos (ie., air cooperation officers) were found at army level commands. There were no flivos riding forward with the panzers. This didn't occur until about the middle of 1943. Even then, outside of Richtohfen's VIII FleigerKorps ground support missions were rather thin and not the norm.
The British and US both set up similar systems about the same time as did the Germans. However, by 1944 there was no comparison. The Western Allies had perfected a system the Germans could only dream about. Forward air controllers were found both on the ground and in the air. For most operations there were dedicated ground support aircraft available in large numbers. This is something the Germans never had at any point during the war.

Well, according to Peter C Smith's 'Dive Bomber', writing about the invasion of France in 1940:

"The advanced troops had wireless contact with the Stuka control near HQ and by reference to a map grid any strong point could be neutralised within a short while and then the troops would press forward once more."

In another book; 'Impact: the Dive Bomber Pilots speak' he quotes a Stuka pilot, Helmut Mahlke, on the 1940 campaign as follows:

"Target descirption by telephone, based on maps, was used. This of course caused quite a lot of delay, which was not acceptable for a quick operation. Beginning in France therefore a special organisation was set up. A Stuka UHV wireless set was mounted in a tank of the Panzer force involved in the main battle. Luftwaffe UHV operators in these tanks participated in the main ground attacks, as close as possible to the commander of the Panzer force. Where this system was in operation the Stuka unit was directed overhead and got exact targeting by wireless. In addition, the ground troops would shoot coloured flares near the target."

Sounds like pretty good cooperation to me!

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and Discussion forum

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Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website

Indeed it wasn't. This is from 'Flying Guns: World War 2' by Emmanuel Gustin and myself:

"In contrast, one direct hit with a bomb or 60 lb RP meant certain destruction for the heaviest tank. However, their accuracy left a lot to be desired. Even under practice conditions, the hit rate for the RPs against tanks was no better than 5%. This was graphically illustrated by a demonstration put on by Typhoons against a captured Panther tank placed in the middle of an open field, helpfully painted white with large red crosses on it to make sure the pilots could see it. Of the 64 RPs fired (launched in a typical steep dive at ranges of 750-900 m), only three hit the tank. In battle, RP accuracy was considerably worse than this, with the official British calculation of hit probability against a single tank being 0.5% (in other words, 200 RPs had to be fired for each hit). Furthermore, some 20 – 30% of RP warheads failed to explode.

This fall in accuracy experienced in action may be attributed to the curious trajectory of the RP, which first dropped below the line of sight and then accelerated as the rocket motor took effect before it dropped again. Because of this it was generally desirable to fire them at a range of between 900-1,800 m. They were also very susceptible to side winds, with a mere 15 km/h wind being enough to miss the aiming mark by nearly 5 m, and the aircraft had to be absolutely steady at the instant of launching. This meant that a pilot needed a very cool and calculating head to ensure reasonable accuracy, something that was difficult to achieve in the heat of battle. It is worth noting that high-velocity cannon did not suffer from this problem, so would have experienced a much less significant fall-off in accuracy under combat conditions. RP accuracy was helped to some extent late in 1944 by the introduction of the modified Mk.IID gyro sight with calibrations suited to the RP. This presumably accounted in part for a measured improvement in the average RP miss distance between 1944 and 1945, from 57 m to just under 40 m."

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and Discussion forum

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Luftwaffe doctrine on ground support during the first half of the war, to include the Low Lands Campaign in France and early Russia, was for the Nahkampfführer (close combat officer) at the Luftwaffe FleigerKorps assigned to that sector of the front to make the actual decision for assigning close air support to ground forces.
Initial requests originated with Flivos assigned to various field formations, sometimes travelling in armored vehicles with panzer units, up through the army's chain of command to Corps level where the request was passed over to the Luftwaffe for consideration. Flivos at this time were nothing but liasion officers and didn't have direct contact with the aircraft being used. Their vehicles were generally borrowed from the units they supported.
The standard Luftwaffe process upon receiving a request for close air support was for the Nakafü (Nahkampfführer) to review the request and then order the support mission (if warranted in his opinion) as part of the next day's operational briefings. Richtohfen's VIII FliegerKorps often (in contrast to just about every other Luftwaffe unit) managed to process the request the same day.
At Sedan and in battles where the front was relatively static this system could work adequitely. The Luftwaffe generally would establish with the ground units a Sicherheitsline (safety line) that ground units were to stay behind while the strike occured.
The problem was once the battle became moble this system was completely inadequite. Air support for fast moving mechanized columns was virtually non-existant.
Following the French campaign the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht were in agreement, for example, that direct radio contact between ground and support aircraft was an essential next step in the support process. This had not been acheived by the beginning of the Russian campaign, let alone earlier in the war.
Jeschonnek's own Operativer Luftkrieg was: Successful air operations require coordination with, not subordination to, the activities of other services.
The Luftwaffe was not about to allow itself to be subordinated to the whims of the Wehrmacht and considered close air support a minor mission to be accomplished when it didn't conflict with other needs.

In other words, no cab ranks of Stuka eh? Interesting that the Germans put into practice the world's most radical change in battle doctrine ever during 1939 but by 1943/1944 it was already obsolete. [img]graemlins/no.gif[/img]

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The Hawker Typhoon was a good aircraft but it did have some problems of note. I have read that only one pilot survived a water ditching in a Typhoon. All the rest died trying to ditch in the water due to the the huge air scoop at the front. The aircraft hit the water and went stright down.

The other problem was carbon monoxide in the cockpit. The pilot always had to were his mask, not matter what alitude he was flying at.

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I seem to remember reading about similar problems with the P-51's large air intake.