JU-87 Stuka, Hawker Typhoon, P-47 Fighter bombers

I am talking about a bomb, landing on or nearly missing a ship not a tank. As you stated the size is substantially different. I will look up the numbers, this evening. Lunch break is only so long.

 

Ok, so here are a couple of things on the fighter bomber accuracy.

"A study on of fighter-bomber attacks on bridges over the Savio River in Italy during the spring of 1944 found a sharp drop-off in bombing accuracy directly correlated with the intensity of flak fire. With no flak, P-47s could put half of their bombs within 180 feet of their target and required 30 bombs to score one hit. With medium flak, accuracy dropped to 300 feet, requiring 84 bombs per hit; with heavy flak, it was 420 feet and 164 bombs."

"Later research found that it took an average of 3,500 bombs or 800 rockets to get a single tank hit. ... After the Normandy fighting, the Operational Research Section of Montgomery's 21st Army Group combed the battlefield and examined 301 tanks and self propelled guns left by the retreating Germans. Only 10 were found to have been hit by air-to-ground rockets. On close examination, many of the vehicles proved undamaged." Air Power, Stephen Budiansky

Clearly the method of attack was the key to being able to destroy a tank. Bombs and rockets were too hard to get on target, guns were the answer, which is why the Ju 87 G was a good tank hunter.

When preparing for the Pearl Harbor attack the big question was how to be destructive enough on the Americans to warrent the loss of one or two carries and hundreds of plains. They had 3 types of attacks available, torpedos, dive bombing, and horiztontal bombing. Torpedos were not supposed to work in the harbor and this was ruled out (we know that it was solved later), dive bombers were the most accurate but could not carry enough of a punch to sink capital ships, they were deemed enough to hit carries but not the battle ships (this was also resolved with a knew 550 lb bomb and new release mechanisms.), and horizontal bombing was only 10% accurate. With all this in mind the plan was put on hold until somthing could be developed to solve one or all of the problems. As it turned out all of them were and the attack was a success.

 

Good points Tik. The slowness of the Stuka is what contributed to its accuracy. Why is there any doubt as to its success against tanks when the facts are there that it did indeed hit the tanks.

Obviously, more so than the fighter bombers of the West. High speed plane flying horizontally will approach its target at a higher rate of speed limited the time to target and fire on. The Stuka or any dive bomber has more time because of the dive.

It was good at the time but with the advent of the smart bombs in the post war era, the dive bomber became obsolete.

 

Generally they wouldn't even dive on their targets but pick the best approach and come in on it. Smart bombs particularly JDAM are sweet, the Germans were using similar tools in WW2, see the Fritz X. While these smart munitions are great, they are not the best infantry support tool out there the AC-130 gunship is the incredible.

 

Some "hard data" from Japanese early ops (D3A1 Val with highly trained crews) that are the easiest reference I can access seem to prove I underestimated the dive bomber's precision. My impression was from the Med where some pretty big Ju87 strikes failed to achieve much.
36 Val attacked Sims and Neosho for 10 hits (light AA, 30% hits)
53 Val attacked Dorsetshire and Corwall for 19 hits (medium AA. 35% hits)
32 Val attacked Hermes and Vampire (light AA and fighters) Hermes was sunk by multiple hits and Vampire suffered 3 near misses an a hit that broke her back, if we assume a third of the planes attacked the smaller ship we have 37% hits/near misses.
19 Val attacked Lexington for 2 hits (heavy AA, fighters 10.5% hits)
14 Val attacked Yortktown for 1 hit (heavy AA, fighters 7% hits)

So it looks like heavy AA affected dive bombers as much as fighter bombers but fighter bombers are inherently a lot less accurate, >30% hits are possible agaist light opposition but the chances decrease drastically agaists heavy AA.
Even late war armoured columns with a dozen or so AA vehicles would qualify as "light" AA compared with what a naval force could do.

 

Not only that, but the dive bomber equipped with guns will tend to hit the top armour of the tank, which is usually thin and vulnerable. A fighter-bomber attacking from the side will be facing thicker armour.

 

Heavy bombers hit tanks as well but were not generally considered particularly effective against them. The question here is though could the "average Stuka pilot easily hit a moving tank"? So far there is little evidence that this is correct.

In a larger sense P-47 may have been more effective vs German armor than Stuka's were. They just accomplished it indirectly by attacking support vehicles as well as the tanks and disrupting their tactical movements.

 

Well the same could be said of Stukas against French and Soviet armour, most French tanks were lost due to lack of fuel and spares not because they were destroyed in combat and the same is true for the huge Soviet 1941 tank losses.

IMO dive bombers were sufficiently accurate to knock out a tank but this was an exceptional event, operationally it's a lot more effective to go for the soft skinned support units, tactically you may have a need to knock out a paricular tank or tank unit and that is best done by heavy cannon armed planes with dive bombers as second choice and fighters a bad third. Still I don't have many instances of tanks knocked out by bomb armed Ju87 though if Ruddel's claims are accurate before he got Ju87G he must have used bombs, the 7.92mm MG of the Ju87 are practicall worthless against armour.

 

Another tactic which was obviously effective was to "aim at" the tank, and if your bomb hit close enough it would "flip" the tank on its back. There are miles of movie film showing German tanks lying on their backs as allied troops march past. One can only assume these were from "near misses", either bombs or arty. I would suspect bombs over artillery since the shells would be of less explosive power than say a 250 pound torpex loaded gravity bomb.

Didn't exactly "blow 'em to hell", but on their backs they might as well have been.

 

Yes but precious few of those picture show the largish crater I would expect in that case, I suspect most of those vehicles were abandoned then pushed out of the way either with dozers or by using small explosive charges.

 

I'm sure that if you send out a flight of heavy bombers with several 500 pounders, they are bound to hit a tank. Now, is it efficient? Whereas, a single Stuka can hit a tank either with a bomb or cannon and that has been proven.

 

What proof are we supposed to give showing that the Ju 87G could hit a moving tank.

I suppose that if the tanks were dumb enough to sit still the deserved to get blown up either way.

 

My impression was that the reputation of the Ju-87 was really gained in 1939-40. Whilst a Ju-87 squadron and a Hs-123 squadron for that matter was a sturzkampfstaffel or dive bomber squadron, afaik the pilots were still referred to as schlachtflieger or ground attack pilots because of the rather unique German close army support doctrine at the time, and this is a key point (the anti-shipping role of the Ju-87 was secondary).

The Ju-87 in 1940 represented two things: the Blitzkreig strategic doctrine, in direct contact with command tanks by fitting high quality UHF radios to both and Luftwaffe radio operators in the lead tank crew; and as what is often termed Hitler's first terror weapon, with fitment of the "trumpets of Jericho" to add psychological warfare to the mix.

So the effectiveness of the "stuka" in the early years I guess must be considered largely due to a revolutionary tactical emphasis on strategic warfare practised alone by the Germans.

It effectively turned a Panzer force mostly made of light models (Pz35 and PzII) into a hard hitting and very mobile armoured spearhead. Find a pillbox? Call a stuka. Meet some Char-B1 French heavies on the Front? Call a stuka. Concerned about that reserve force being brought up from the rear? Call a stuka.

Allied air forces didn't really practise dedicated army close support doctrine until late in the African campaign, and then it was finally included in the US military manual of 1943. Ground attack operations (whether tactical or strategic) previously operated independently of army organisation.

It is natural the aura of Wehrmacht success would be attributed initially to the stuka, after all that was what soldiers saw diving on them when they were being cut to pieces. But it was really a tactical superiority rather than a technological one. The Ju87 required air superiority to operate successfully, and when this could no longer be guaranteed by late 42 emphasis had passed on to the schnellbomber and finally schlacht squadrons of multirole fighter-bombers (ie. Fw190) replacing stuka formations in the close support role.

To be honest and fair the Tempest/Typhoon and other fighter-bombers used by the Allies ought to be regarded schnellbombers or schlachtflugzeug, and compared to the Ju88, Me410 and Ta152C (A-20, B-25) or Fw190A and D (Typhoon, Tempest).
The Curtiss Helldiver and SBD are a fair comparison to the stuka. The British cut back on dive bomber orders due to the losses witnessed of the Ju87 during BoB.
The Soviet Pe2 Peshka is probably the best dive bomber of the war, even the Me109F had severe difficulties trying to catch one, it had powerful defences and was loaded as well as a Ju88, plus operated in a wide variety of bomber/attack roles and was even converted to a successful long range interceptor operated by naval aviation regiments (Pe3 bis).
The A-36 looks like a neat little specialist diver bomber too.

 

But how much of that was due to Stukas taking out support vehicles? My impression is mostly it was due to them being cut off by exploiting German ground forces.

The few references I've seen to heavies taking out tanks the tanks were not the point targets of the attack. The units they were part of were being carpet bombed and the result was the whole unit was rendered ineffective for some period of time. Now how efficient it was is another matter.

A single Stuka could also miss completely and my impression is did so more often than not.

 

I haven't asked for proof of that. What I've asked for is proof that the "average Stuka pilot could easily hit a moving tank"? That's the concept that some here have promoted and the one I take issue with.

 

Well ok, what proof can be given that "average Stuka pilot could easily hit a moving tank"?

Then there is the whole debate about could or did. I see what you are getting at, I just think it is all too uncertain to prove.

 

I understand the ability to hit a target as small as a tank or pillbox at all with an aerial bomb was considered quite a feat in 1939. The Ju87 was made quite well for this task, its dive was extremely stable and well beyond the capabilities of any immediate contemporary, and the aircraft was virtually invulnerable during this phase. The klaxon warning system was a technological advance and later an automatic dive recovery was included. German aircraft in general were quite advanced in terms of aircraft management systems.

By this I mean a Ju87B would do better than a Blenheim attacking tanks, not that it was gilded tank killer.
As far as I can see the Ju87G was more a measure of necessity, even desperation than any kind of superweapon. You've got a production line of Ju87D that are all but useless, but they can carry twin Bk3.7 which is good enough to take out a T-34 (forget anything heavier). According to some research however, claimed figures of Ju87G tank busting successes are ridiculously exaggerated probably for propaganda purposes. Even Rudel's anti-shipping successes have been brought succinctly into serious question.

 

Very interesting thread, just to chuck in a slightly uneducated 2p on a few issues.

Firstly, re-hitting a moving tank easily, I think we can pretty much write off the term 'easily' as we can be pretty certain there is nothing 'easy' about it. I have engaged moving tanks at 1000m with a 30mm cannon from a static vehicle and hitting them reliably is far from easy even with modern sights and so on. The idea of trying to hit one with a bomb, from above (i.e. you aren't necessarily moving in the same direction as the vehicle), from a moving platform with a rapidly decreasing time to 'pull the toggle' is clearly never going to be easy. I think the professor concerned was simply being very sloppy with his terminology.

As for whether a comparison between dive bombers and fighter bombers is possible, I would say it certainly is, after all they were pretty much the two options when it came to small, relatively fast strike aircraft. Obviously fighter bombers won in the end which leads to the question why were they favoured in the end if they were so much less accurate than a dive bomber? Again, this is clearly because whilst they may be less accurate, they were capable of defending themselves and so ultimately could put more ordnance on target (i.e. you have a stuka which can hit a target 50% of the time but only survives 2 missions compared to a Typhoon which can hit the target 25% of the time but survives 8+ missions, the Typhoon is clearly the most useful, these stats are made up on the spot btw but you take my point). Something else to remember is that the Typhoon can go back for more when it's ordnance has been expended, the Stuka has one shot.

Something else to chuck into the pot, people have talked about destroying the support vehicles that keep tanks in the field etc. I can't help thinking about Normandy and the fact that German tanks could hardly move during the day because of fighter bombers, now clearly this has a lot to do with total allied air superiority and the number of aircraft the allies could field. However there are a few things that occur to me about tanks (based largely on experience) which make them vulnerable to attack from the air:

1. When static they tend to attract other troops etc, be they support troops, infantry and so on. You also find that drivers tend to use any stops to perform quick maintainance, checking tracks and so on. Hence even if it is just a straffing run aircraft are going to do a lot of damage to a static squadron of tanks.

2. People keep talking about moving targets etc, just a few things to remember about tank mobility. Firstly the fact that the off road speed of a Pz 4 is just under 10mph, keep in mind that this is a maximum but I would suggest that it is with the commander at least, possibly the driver too, hatch open and looking around, as soon as the commander and driver batten down visibility is reduced to next to nothing and speed has to come down too. Hence we aren't talking about trying to bomb/shoot at fast moving targets but relatively slow ones and therefore I think it is the speed and movement of the aircraft which is going to be the significant factor.

3. If the crew of the vehicle decide they are going to try and make a dash for it, a burst of MG or cannon fire is going to make life very exciting for any exposed crew members and is going to be just as good a way to disable the vehicle as a bomb. Obviously a man is a difficult target but an exposed crew member is going to be just as vulnerable as the vehicle itself.

4. People have talked about top armour vs. side armour forgetting that any attack on a tank fron the side is just as likely to hit the tracks which could render the vehicle immobile, hence disabling it until a recovery vehicle could be provided. I reckon trying to hit a vehicle from the side, particularly when moving, is likely to be easier than from the top because aiming off is likely to be easier (again, guesswork but generally side movers are easier to hit than back or front movers on a range, not the same thing I know but a similar principle).

 

That's a good question and I don't have an answer. However if I were defining easily hit I'd say that means hit over half the time but I can see smaller percentages being reasonable as well. However from the CEPs I've seen posted I doubt the average Stuka pilot could hit a stationary undefended target the size of a tank with a bomb more than 10% of the time. Even if that probability is as high as 50% hitting a defended moving target is much harder.

Obviously they could and I'm pretty sure there are a fair number of documented cases where they did.

Well if one can't make a good case for it then one shouldn't be affirming it as the truth.

 

Good points, but I have to ad my own guesswork in favour of top shooting.

(1) The top of a tank is a larger target than the front or the side -- at a guess, the top would be three times the area of the front, and twice the area of the side.

(2) While side attacks with a 37mm gun may temporarily disable the tank by severing its treads, penetration of the armour would do much more severe damage, especially by causing crew casualties. Top armour is very thin compared to side armour -- the Tiger I had only 25mm on its roof. Lighter tanks had even less.

(3) I have no experience with shooting, but since fighter aircraft are able to hit other fighters moving at high speeds and dodging rapidly, it seems to me that hitting a slow-moving tank on the ground from a slow-moving gun-equipped dive bomber would be feasible.