Aircraft vs. Tanks - Current debate & Research (feat. Dr. Roman Töppel)

[Riekopo]

Aircraft vs. Tanks is an interesting subject, since there are quite many myths and misconceptions out there on the overall effectiveness. Current research indicates that the effect of aircraft was rather limited, at least when it came to actual "kills". Yet, the effect on morale is also crucial and harder to quantify. In this video Dr. Roman Töppel discusses these aspects.

My thoughts: this could be kind of a big deal to Hearts of Iron 4's simulation...

 

[Cavalry]

the IL 2 is consider "as essential to the Red Army as air and bread." Every side had try to improve their tank killer planes, so they knew something better than Youtubers or Desk Researchers.

I guess the tank in spreading attack formation is hard to kill but the planes can atack tanks in moving column...

 

[Riekopo]

the IL 2 is consider "as essential to the Red Army as air and bread." Every side had try to improve their tank killer planes, so they knew something better than Youtubers or Desk Researchers.

I guess the tank in spreading attack formation is hard to kill but the planes can atack tanks in moving column...

Those two men are both scholars.

 

[Cavalry]

Those two men are both scholars.

then they are Desk Researchers! Meaning their research can be good or bad.

 

[ThaHoward]

then they are Desk Researchers! Meaning their research can be good or bad.

That particular youtube channel often mention primary sources he have read, researched etc. so I guess that since he handle both primary and secondary sources he can't really be labeled as a desk researcher. Doesn't mean what he says is gospel and always accurate and not up to interpertation.

 

[Jos de trol]

isn't it accepted knowledge that the german panzer divisions in Normany got clobbered during deployment towards the landing/boccage areas

I distinctly remember something about the elite panzer lehr divisions being deployed there and, being used to eastern front style warfare, essentially being taken out of action by airpower before reaching the front

 

[Antediluvian Monster]

isn't it accepted knowledge that the german panzer divisions in Normany got clobbered during deployment towards the landing/boccage areas

I distinctly remember something about the elite panzer lehr divisions being deployed there and, being used to eastern front style warfare, essentially being taken out of action by airpower before reaching the front

I'm not familiar with Lehr's vulnerability to airpower, but as far as I know Allied (or at least US) wartime operational analysis supports the idea that the period airpower was downright terrible at actually knocking out tanks (which may or may not be what that video clip is about, didn't watch).

 

[Kovax]

Air power was only marginal at knocking out tanks (it did succeed on enough occasions to make it a real threat), but was devastating to the soft support vehicles and accompanying troops who were attached to the tank companies. Bombs rarely hit a tank, but could do damage to exposed systems (or flip the tank over) with a near-miss, and would shower soft transport vehicles and infantry with shrapnel and debris. The tanks were often repairable, the trucks and troops, not so much. Once you demolish the fuel and ammo carriers accompanying the tanks, the tanks aren't going anywhere for a while.

While most late-war tanks' front and side armor would easily repel most aircraft gun fire (there were a few planes with larger AT guns capable of doing penetrating it), a 37mm round fired at a steep downward angle could penetrate the top armor of almost any tank of the period. Machinegun rounds would be essentially useless unless the crew was exposed at the time.

 

[Cavalry]

We need more opinion of the ones who did the attacks, or the ones who received the attacks.

There is a ground attack pilot named Rudel:

During the war, Rudel was credited with the destruction of 519 tanks, as well as one battleship, one cruiser, 70 landing craft and 150 artillery emplacements.[3] He claimed 51 aerial victories (earning flying ace status) and the destruction of more than 800 vehicles of all types.[3] He flew 2,530 ground-attack missions exclusively on the Eastern Front, usually flying the Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bomber.[3]

 

[bz249]

We need more opinion of the ones who did the attacks, or the ones who received the attacks.

There is a ground attack pilot named Rudel:

During the war, Rudel was credited with the destruction of 519 tanks, as well as one battleship, one cruiser, 70 landing craft and 150 artillery emplacements.[3] He claimed 51 aerial victories (earning flying ace status) and the destruction of more than 800 vehicles of all types.[3] He flew 2,530 ground-attack missions exclusively on the Eastern Front, usually flying the Junkers Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bomber.[3]

And there was a coal miner called Alexey Stakhanov... never ever beleive a statistics if there is a good reason to lie and none can control it. E.g. battleship Marat was hit by two bombs and refloated a year after.

 

[Acheron]

Direct hits by dive bombers surely were deadly to a tank, if these could be achieved. Otherwise, at what bomb weight was a near miss still deadly to a tank or its crew?

 

[Henry IX]

Airpower was effective at destroying tanks in compact formations, in exposed situations. By 1944-45 when the Allied military scientists were measuring the success rate of air attacks on tanks the Germans had worked this out and kept their formations dispersed and hidden, only conducting movements at night. As such the success rate of air attacks was very low.

On the Eastern Front, particularly in 1941, the Red Army was very poorly handled at every level, meaning that massed formations of tanks were used extensively and moved on road by daylight. In this situation, the Red Army lost many vehicles to German air attacks. In addition, the Germans used dive bombers to knock out tanks, which were significantly more accurate than the level bombing prefered by the Allies. Even in 1943, the Germans were able to stop a flank attack by airpower alone during the battle of Kursk. In this instance, the Soviets lost several tanks to air attacks after they were seen moving out of a wood and had to withdraw.

Air power was only marginal at knocking out tanks (it did succeed on enough occasions to make it a real threat), but was devastating to the soft support vehicles and accompanying troops who were attached to the tank companies. Bombs rarely hit a tank, but could do damage to exposed systems (or flip the tank over) with a near-miss, and would shower soft transport vehicles and infantry with shrapnel and debris. The tanks were often repairable, the trucks and troops, not so much. Once you demolish the fuel and ammo carriers accompanying the tanks, the tanks aren't going anywhere for a while.

Whatever the actual effects of air attacks on destroying tanks were, Kovax is absolutely correct on their impact on the support structure of armoured units. As such, air attacks forced the dispersal of armoured forces and reduced their mobility significantly. Given that the key role of armoured vehicles in German tactical-operational thinking was to mass forces at a schwerpunkt and then rapidly exploit through the penetration achieved, the dispersal of forces to avoid air attack and the reduction in mobility effectively neutered the Wehrmacht's armoured formations in offensive operations, as was clearly seen at the conclusion of the German Ardennes offensive in 1944, when the Allied airpower crushed the offensive after the skies cleared.

 

[Acheron]

Airpower was effective at destroying tanks in compact formations, in exposed situations. By 1944-45 when the Allied military scientists were measuring the success rate of air attacks on tanks the Germans had worked this out and kept their formations dispersed and hidden, only conducting movements at night. As such the success rate of air attacks was very low.

In terms of destroyed tanks, but as you yourself have pointed out, this can already be seen as air power successfully slowing down tanks by enforcing dispersal and night marches. Out of curiosity, do such night movements lead to a significant increase in accidents or is the effect marginal?

 

[Henry IX]

In terms of destroyed tanks, but as you yourself have pointed out, this can already be seen as air power successfully slowing down tanks by enforcing dispersal and night marches. Out of curiosity, do such night movements lead to a significant increase in accidents or is the effect marginal?

As always the answer is 'it depends'. With well trained crews and good traffic control planning, units seemed to be able to do night movements with only a couple of percent attrition. When you consider the general reliability of most tanks during the war this is comparable to some daylight manouvers. However, when you are talking about poorly trained crews making hurried movements the rates could increase hugely. I have seen attrition rates of up to 15% for a single night's driving which is enough to make a unit combat ineffective for the next day when combined with all the delays and dispersal of forces that this can cause. Imagine what happens when a tank loses control on a narrow track in a forest and hits a tree or bogs in mud. Nothing can get down that track until a recovery vehicle comes to haul it out of the way, but the recovery vehicle can't get down the track due to the traffic jam caused by the crashed tank... chaos. And the enemy bombers will be stalking the column come daylight...

 

[Acheron]

As always the answer is 'it depends'. With well trained crews and good traffic control planning, units seemed to be able to do night movements with only a couple of percent attrition. When you consider the general reliability of most tanks during the war this is comparable to some daylight manouvers. However, when you are talking about poorly trained crews making hurried movements the rates could increase hugely. I have seen attrition rates of up to 15% for a single night's driving which is enough to make a unit combat ineffective for the next day when combined with all the delays and dispersal of forces that this can cause. Imagine what happens when a tank loses control on a narrow track in a forest and hits a tree or bogs in mud. Nothing can get down that track until a recovery vehicle comes to haul it out of the way, but the recovery vehicle can't get down the track due to the traffic jam caused by the crashed tank... chaos. And the enemy bombers will be stalking the column come daylight...

I wondered if we civilians tend to underestimate the difficulties and outright dangers of moving a military unit at night, but 15%?

 

[Henry IX]

Turns out if you try and shove an armored force down inadequate roads, in the dark, with poorly trained crew and leave all the fuel tankers and logistical support at the back of the column then stuff breaks and can't be fixed. A significant majority of those tanks would have been entirely recoverable - broken down rather than written off, but a poorly planned operation could wreck an armored force, at least for a few days, without any enemy contact needed. Simple things like a a bad road and a lack of track pins could stop tanks dead for hours. The 15% attrition is a measure of how much of the force failed to turn up in operational condition the next day rather than actually destroyed. Even things like getting lost and running out of fuel is a real problem.

 

[George Parr]

the IL 2 is consider "as essential to the Red Army as air and bread." Every side had try to improve their tank killer planes, so they knew something better than Youtubers or Desk Researchers.

I guess the tank in spreading attack formation is hard to kill but the planes can atack tanks in moving column...

That's just ignorant in so many ways...
There was research done in the field immediately after battles, and none of them remotely support the claims made by the pilots. All this data is available to researchers now, so spare us these rubbish insults towards those who actually research the facts instead of believing absurd propaganda-claims from those who benefitted a ton by presenting themselves as the heroes.


All airforces made ridiculous claims about kill-counts that went worlds beyond what they actually accomplished. The effects on softer targets and general disruption of movement and organization was far more important than the actual damage done to AFVs.

Going by the data from the Research and Analysis teams that checked the battlegrounds after a battle, the Allied kill-counts in Normandy hover around 3% of the number of kills claimed by the pilots. There were days in which the pilots claimed more kills than the number of AFVs Germany lost during the entire Normandy campaign. All in all, the Allies lost more fighter-bombers during that period than Germany lost AFVs.


Of course you get claims like the IL-2 being "as essential to the Red Army as air and bread" when pilots are continuously lying their butts off when it comes to kills. Making grand claims that make you look good is bound to have an effect on others. Getting Stalin to belief that this plane is so important is what the airforce wants, because that means more resources for them.
During Kursk, Soviet claims regularly exceeded the number of tanks the respective German unit even had available multiple times over. Someone should have told all those German Panzer divisions that they were destroyed completely multiple times during those days, because their reports of available vehicles don't show any noticeable impact like that at all, and the units didn't get pulled back to replenish during that time either, which definately would have happened if they had run out of tanks. There are no reports of significant tank-losses due to air-attacks during this period, yet Soviet pilots went wild with their claims. And again, far more IL-2s were destroyed than German AFV, and while those obviously weren't destroyed by the AFVs, you could point out that this ground-support role was more dangerous to the planes than it was for the tanks.

The same is true for German claims, though they weren't quite as excessive as the Soviet ones. But here they also seem to have a similar range of kills-to-claims as the allies had in Normandy: somewhere around 3%.

Ground-attack planes of that time were very far away from being the tank-killer they were presented as. They were essential in disrupting the combat capabilities and organization of a unit, especially when working alongside ground-units, but that is something vastly different from being a tank-killer. When it comes to HOI, they would be better represented as heavily targetting organization, while not having all that much impact in terms of strength.

 

[Cavalry]

There was research done in the field immediately after battles, and none of them remotely support the claims made by the pilots. All this data is available to researchers now, so spare us these rubbish insults towards those who actually research the facts instead of believing absurd propaganda-claims from those who benefitted a ton by presenting themselves as the heroes..

Is there any creditable links about research made by the military? By the way they continue to make flying tank buster till now.

 

[bz249]

Is there any creditable links about research made by the military? By the way they continue to make flying tank buster till now.

Yep armed with guided missiles... though typically its a mission for the helis, because well a fighter plane is way to expensive to endanger it for such a mundane target unless there is absolutely nothing else to fight.