As I’ve stated in the previous video, USAAF ground kill claims, particularly against German armor, were grossly over estimated. Post war research actually examining destroyed enemy AFV by aircraft demonstrated that such kills fell far below pilot claims. For example: in the German armor counter attack at Mortain, USAAF & RAF claimed 252 armored vehicles destroyed (122 USAAF & 140 2nd-TAF). However, large scale, highly detailed ground investigations after the conflict carried out by the British No.2 Operational Research Section in the claimed regions found that only 49 armored vehicle could possibly be attributed to aerial kills by USAAF & 2-TAF. Even out of that number, only 21 could be positively determined to have been knocked out by air-strikes - 6 Panthers, 3 Panzer-IV, 11 APC (Sdkfz-250 & 251), & 1 Armored Car (It should be noted that 15 of these were destroyed by rocket attacks, two by bombs and four [all APCs] by 50-cal & 20mm ). This comes to a kill claim inflation rate of about 450% if we include all possible claims --- with confirmed kills an inflation rate of about 1000%. Surprisingly, attacks against “soft” vehicular targets in the area examined didn’t fair any better. Of a 168 destroyed or possibly destroyed soft transportation vehicles claims by pilots, only 43 could possibly be attributed to aerial kills and of this a bare 12 could positively be identified as aerial kills, although there’s a much higher likelihood that abandoned, self-destroyed, or other soft vehicle losses were due to air-attacks compared to AFV with similar fates. The No.2 Operational Research Section’s study on the subject: “No.2 Operation Research Section with the 21st Army Group June 1944 to July 1945” also covers other aerial kill claims such as “The German Retreat from Normandy to Seine,” and “Air Attack on Enemy Armour in the Ardennes Salient.” Similar results are also found in these highly detailed reports. For example, the USAAF claimed 90 Tanks & other AFV destroyed over the examined Ardennes region, after an extensive ground examination only 19 were possibly destroyed by aircraft, and a mere 7 confirmed destroyed by USAAF (4 tanks, 2 SPG & 1 light armor). It should be noted, although the overall effectiveness of aerial strikes against ground vehicles were exaggerated, air-to-ground rockets WERE by far the most effective means of destroying enemy AFV & Transport. Details of the Study "Report No.4 “Air Attacks on Enemy Tanks & Motor Transport in the Mortain Area, August 1944” Allied Fighter Bomber Kill Claims: (pp.174 [Table I]): 2-TAF: Enemy Armored Vehicle Losses: 84 destroyed/ 35 possibly destroyed/ 21 damaged = 140 total IX-USAAF: Enemy Armored Vehicle Losses: 69 destroyed/ 8 possibly destroyed/ 35 damaged = 112 total [Overall total Armored Vehicles 2-TAF + IX-USAAF = 252] 2-TAF: Motor Transport: 54 destroyed/ 19 possibly destroyed/ 39 damaged = 112 total IX-USAAF: Enemy Armored Vehicle Losses: 94 destroyed/ 1 possibly destroyed/ 21 damaged = 116 total [Overall total Motor Transport 2-TAF + IX-USAAF =228] Results of Ground Investigation (pp.175 [Table II]) Total Armored Vehicles Destroyed or Abandoned: 78 Number destroyed by US Army (ie. ground units): 29, Destroyed by Crew (self-destruction): 4, Abandoned Intact: 9, Unknown Cause: 15. Number known destroyed directly by 2-TAF & IX-USAAF: 21 (6 Panthers, 3 Panzer-IV, 11 APC, 1 Armored Car). Total Motor Transport Vehicles Destroyed or Abandoned: 50 Number destroyed by US Army (ie. ground units): 7, Destroyed by Crew (self-destruction): 1, Abandoned Intact: 4, Unknown Cause: 26. Number known destroyed directly by 2-TAF & IX-USAAF: 12 (4 cars, 6 Trucks, 2 Ambulances, 1 Motorcycle).
All claims are exaggerated to some extent, it's one of the classic problems analysts and historians have to grapple with, but focusing too much on destruction ignores the reality of suppression. While there is very little chance of actually destroying a tank by strafing it with a machine gun, it does force the tank crew to react to the attack in ways that make them less effective. For example, forcing the tank commander to button up reduces his situational awareness. Convincing the crew to "go to ground" takes away their initiative, Even if the effect is purely psychological (even the Germans thought fighter bombers far more effective then they actually were) the real measure of effectiveness isn't the number of enemy tanks destroyed, it's the number of enemy actions interrupted or prevented. It's true that the tank crews were far safer than everyone assumed, but being safe and feeling safe are two very different things. Most people would tell you roller coasters are scary even though they're actually in far more danger driving to an amusement park. As for the low numbers of soft skin vehicles destroyed, the Germans didn't have that many soft skinned vehicles in the first place and in the real world strafed vehicles rarely explode and will keep running if nothing vital is hit. I can envision 5 or 10 pilots all strafing the same truck and claiming it as destroyed. And depending upon where it was hit I can also envision the driver climbing back out of the ditch where he took cover and driving it away, full of superficial holes but still in running condition.
@@danielstickney2400 I've commented elsewhere in this video that the greatest effect the Allied fighter-bombers had against the Germans was physiological and logistical. As seen in this report, these aircraft weren't particularly effective at destroying German AFV (or to some extent, soft vehicles either), but it did degrade the German's morale dramatically. Additionally these aerial attacks seriously disrupted German logistics, which greatly hindered the potential effectiveness of their motorized & mechanized units, and daytime movement, which lowered their ability to counter Allied attacks into German territory. So the USAAF & RAF were very effective fighting forces against German ground units, just not in the manner in which this video portrays it.
Could you provide a link to the original report? Detailed reports such as this are not easy to locate without the correct search terms. Edit: I've discovered Terry Copp and the Laurier Centre, but unable to locate "Report No. 4" relating to actions in Mortain.
@@jefferyroy2566 Sorry, I should have made my sources more clear. You can actually find it online as a free PDF book called: "Montgomery's Scientists: Operational Research in Northwest Europe - The Work of No.2 Operational Research Section with the 21st Army Group June 1944 to July 1945, by Terry Copp (editor)." It's simply a modern reprint of the complete original study. It actually covers a large number of broad topics about the effectiveness of allied weapons including Air Support, Artillery, Tanks, Infantry, ATGs & other miscellaneous topics . Report No.4 is under Part-I Air Support: Chapter 3 "Fighter & Fighter Bomber Attacks on Tanks and MT" pages 173 to 180. Appendix B (pp-176): describes in detail claimed air attacks in the area vs the actual ground kills found (or not found).
That 50-60% accuracy rate is just based on what the air crews said. If you compare it to actual German losses, you´ll find that rate to be about 10 times smaller.
My father served in ground crew support for P-47s and had a friend in my home town who worked at the air force base with my dad. He was a P47 pilot from his group; when I was growing ups who was quite the story teller. He claimed to have flown over 100 missions and that he would fly so low to the ground the German AA guns couldn't get him. He said he was a terrible shot with rockets aiming at tanks, as were most of the pilots but a. few were very good, and they did most of the rocket fire and other pilots flew cover or straffed.
@@ondrejdobrota7344 According to German WWII tank veterans the rockets were pretty inaccurate, the .50 cals did little or nothing to harm a tank, 20mm shells could cause more damage but that was mostly limited to mobility kills. According to one of these guys a tank was one of the safest places to be during a fighter bomber attack. What they had the hardest time with was convincing the greenhorns of this because they would often panic and abandon the tank which is where the .50 cal DID actually do some serious damage by mowing the fleeing greenhorns down. A Bundeswehr tanker I talked to who claimed he had been in a tank that was being machine gunned told me that it was scary as hell even if you knew for an absolute fact that a 7.62 mmm round does not stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting through the armour of a Leopard tank so the psychological effect of being in a tank being strafed is still pretty great.
@@guaporeturns9472 claims in NW Europe were assessed in 1944 or 45. From memory, against tanks, based on claims versus actually destroyed tanks, accuracy was probably closer to 5%.
Joint Report No3 - Rocket Firing Typhoons in Close Support of Military Operations, and this can be found on p.176 of the link. It can be seen at Table II that the report assessed that 140 rocket projectiles (RP) would need to be fired at a Panther to achieve a 50% chance of a hit. This was the stationary one, painted white, in the open, no AAA fire. In combat conditions, and assuming all rockets fired, you are probably talking a 1-2% success rate per attack, not 50% from a P-47. And this is success measured as HITTING it, not destroying it.
@billd2635 the difference is one is an actual study under somewhat combat conditions, and the other is based on pilot testimonies. No hate to pilots, it's basically impossible to see preciselg was your results were from a plane mid attack, and it's natural to kinda assume the best.
@@kirotheavenger60 and the RAF test was in pretty ideal conditions too. They tested with cannon too, IIRC, and hit percentages were also pretty low. It was a tough task for pilots to achieve. I can see why they might want to be optimistic about their hit chances to make the risks they were taking seem worth it. It would be a natural human reaction.
Yep, the Germans also gave up on equiping FW 190 with the powerful MK 103 30 mm cannons for tank hunting, due to poor results. The MK 103 is not be confused with MK108. Both fire a 30 mm shell, but the MK103 has a much higher mussle velocity and thus recoil.
Excellent episode about one of the overlooked aspects of the ETO. My dad was in the 99th Infantry Division during WWII. The division had landed at Le Harve, France in October of 1944 and moved into “the quiet sector” of the northern Ardennes forest. The 99th, along with other adjacent US forces, endured the longest artillery barrage on the Western front at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. The 99th pulled back west to consolidate their front during the initial days of the German attack. They ended up on the Elsenborn Ridge where US artillery helped stop the German advance. In the early days of 1945, the 99th began attacking east from the Elsenborn Ridge, attempting to recapture ground lost to the Germans. As the weather improved, US fighter-bombers began attacking exposed German units. In the snow, the German vehicles stood out in sharp contrast. While dad told me there were several different aircraft involved in the ground attacks, the P-47s stood out. One thing that the US and British fighter groups began using were forward observers. Usually pilots, assigned to different infantry units, they had radios that allowed them to directly communicate with pilots of attacking aircraft. The results were devastating to the German vehicles. Dad told me, that he was glad the P-47s were on our side! Close air support is still a vital element of US military doctrine.
Excellent. I was surprised how accurate rockets were. As you said, by the second half of the war, starting with the British - I believe, rocket-firing fighter-bombers had largely replaced dive bombers - both in tactical support and anti-shipping/ anti-submarine roles. My father lived near RAF Acklington in NE England during WWII; and a vivid and exciting childhood memory was watching the Typhoons in 1943 on exercises, trying out their new experimental rocket armaments in exercises against tank decoys. Dawning of a new era...
It's noteworthy though that fighter-bombers attacking tanks had a reputation far outweighing their actual effectiveness. British testing showed that even under ideal combat conditions, rocket accuracy was in the 5% range, and battle damage assessment of German tanks showed that the great majority were destroyed by ground based gunfire, not air attack. Aircraft, of all nations, overclaimed tank kills by about 10-1 compared to how much they actually destroyed. It is notable though that the vulnerability of German engine radiator grills to strafing and airburst artillery was mentioned in multiple places. It's easy to believe many German tanks founs themselves immobilised following a strafing attack, but a replacement radiator would not take them out of the combat for long.
I agree with what you have said here. My thoughts were that rockets were terribly inaccurate and that Fighter Bombers were relatively ineffective against ground targets, but the evidence presented in this vid is compelling, and they may have been more effective than I thought. It is so difficult to know conclusively the truth.
Have you heard the story of how one radiator in a Tiger I being punctured led to the loss of the whole Tiger platoon? Short version is that trying to tow the Tiger I back to the repair shop overloaded the drivetrains of the other three, resulting in the Germans having to blow up all four themselves when forced to retreat. So no, losing a radiator might not be a small thing after all.
The effectiveness should be gauged by how the combat readiness was affected, if they never arrive or arrive late then the fighter bombers were very effective....
These are theost tecnical vids about any subject. To he fair there very dry so i have to be in the right mood so i save them up. Thanks doing exceptionally good work
CabRank system, based on FOAs and radios. The impression that there was no CAS for Market Garden is a common misconception. There were some hiatuses during airdrops but the big issues were undertrained FOAs with the troops and failures in radio equipment (not of the type shown in A Bridge Too Far, which is nonsense in this regard). Due to failed long distance radios, sometimes commands had to ve relayed through three or four networks, before they got to USAAF or RAF to then call in aircraft. There were 11 squadrons of just Typhoons assigned
@@Roddy556 as i understand it, the cab rank system was shared in the chain somehow in a way I don't fully understand. So you might use your forward air observer to call in a mission and get a P-47 or a Typhoon depending on what was available. Market Garden flew (for some reason I remember the number) 238 sorties on the first day, but I'm not sure how many resulted in contact as they couldn't stooge around the battlefield all day. Targets were marked with smoke and friendly fire could and did occur if units used the wrong smoke colour for concealment. Yellow might be all they had for concealment, but if a fire mission was called for two miles away and yellow was the target indicator colour of the day then in the days before GPS, Allied troops could and were attached. There was also a free fighter element in designated areas and a D-Day reconnaissance unit drawn from the legal profession was wiped out as it advanced to well and far and into such an area.
More consideration might be given to the question. How much more effective would the P-47 have been, if the USAAF had used Napalm as extensively in the European theatre, as much as in the Pacific theatre.
@downunderrob, I think napalm would have made fighter bombers more effective,p. I read thanapalm was the most effective weapon by planes against tanks in Korea.
my understanding is that by the time napalm became a usable weapon, the war against the big h was in the endgame phase. at that point most of the combat was taking place in cities and towns, and setting those on fire would have been verging on counterproductive. most of*(edit) the napalm in the Pacific was used on IJA fortifications on islands.
Yes, the P-47 with 8x .50 guns fireing at an average rate of 800rpm (13.3rps) per gun! delivers 107rps (rounds per second) on the convergence point. Likely quite noisey for the 1 or 2 seconds its on target. so- more than twice 50hz electrical line frequency.
It's for exactly this reason that I sometimes strafe enemy tanks with a machine gun in Battlefield 1. Although the bullets don't penetrate, the sound of them hitting the tank walls is annoying/distracting/deafening, depending on the level of volume used by the tank driver. In a fast-paced game where you're already nervous, the constant clatter of bullets hitting your tank is far from helpful. And the weapons and magazines available to Supply players in BF1 allow you to fire for much longer than 1-2 seconds. Tank drivers who are already being attacked by other players will sometimes freak out and literally drive right into danger.
If shooting at say a pillbox seeing the rocket hit next to the pillbox does not necessarily mean said pillbox is destroyed. This does not mean the people inside the pillbox are having a great time. Each rocket was the equivalent to a 5 or 6 inch inch artillery shell. The most effective use of rockets in WWll was likely in pre landing bombardment during amphibious assaults. One LSM(R) could lay down hundreds of rockets in one salvo. Later LSM(R) ships had 40mm Bofors mounts converted to fire spin stabilized rockets. The converted 40mm mounts were tied into the vessel's fire control system. Some of these vessels were still in-service in the 1960s. First with 10 mounts firing 2 rockets per mount. Later ships had 20 mounts. Each mount capable of firing around 20 or more rockets per minute iirc.
I've read that USAAF pilots claimed they could destroy a Panzer by shooting .50 calibre machine gun bullets onto the ground underneath a Panzer, so they would ricochet upwards "and go through the unarmoured floor"! I can only suggest that those who believe this myth study the spec. of German tanks; ALL of them had at least 25mm / 1 inch thick *armour plate* forming the floor of the tank - in order to give the crew a chance to survive if the tank ran over a land mine. If anyone sets up a demo to prove that a copper-jacketed lead bullet can ricochet off the ground, and hit 25mm armour plate at a very shallow angle, and *penetrate it* I will happily and publicly eat crow! Of COURSE Browning 50 cal bullets wouldn't penetrate a bloody tank; FFS, they probably wouldn't even work against a FIRST World War tank, let alone a Panzer. Even 20mm cannon shells wouldn't work, which was why the RAF converted some Hurricanes (the Mk.IID) to carry a pair of semi-auto 40mm cannons in wing pods; these worked well enough against the Panzers of the Africa Korps, but despite having extra armour, the pilots suffered heavy losses from light anti-aircraft fire from ground forces.
I agree but 50cal can definitely kill WW1 tanks. They had much thinner armor, and besides that the front has about as much armor as the roof of WW2 tanks. This makes a shallow angle easier to penetrate. And most WW1 tanks used inferior steel than those seen on WW2. Also IIRC, the M2 browning was designed with WW1 tanks in mind. Granted it was considered anti-armor in a ground based role but is still worth considering.
There were often a number of hatches on the underside of WW2 tanks that were supposed to be secured in theory; but were often left unsecured in actual practice.
Excellent video as always, man! It's funny... I was shocked when I found out that 'Panzer' did not mean 'Panther' in German! I had always assumed that they were all Panthers!
There's some great gun camera footage from a following Typhoon showing the lead Typhoon at a high angle putting rocket after rocket right down the center of some railroad tracks.
@@mpetersen6- Yep, thats typical history for competently handled rail systems. Railway can often be built in less space, quicker and faster than highways, mile for mile. Easier and faster to repair too, when you point guns and tell them to hurry.😢
A study by British military historian Stephen L. McFarland has shown that the effectiveness of fighter-bombers against German tanks may have been overestimated. According to this study, Allied fighter-bombers such as the P-47, P-51, and Typhoon directly destroyed about 100-150 tanks in Normandy.
The Allied pilots tended to grossly overclaim armor destruction. The P47s were VERY effective at immobilizing German armor by destroying bridges and by shooting up the supply trucks. Any tank is a gas hog and they need a constant stream of resupply to maintain effectiveness.
According to the Operational Research of RAF tests of firing at a white painted Panther, stationary, in the open, with no threats in good weather, it would take 140 rockets to have a 50% chance of just hitting it, even more to destroy one. In other words, to achieve the 50% figure in 1944 and assuming all 6 fired at one tank, it would take about 24 stories. That's just to get a 50% success rate against one in ideal conditions. You are probably talking double that with battlefield smoke, weather, AAA fire, etc.
Grossly overstating but yes It did happen American Centricy Attackers still did great when using actually practical weapons like 500-2000 Pounders Rockets and MGs are horrible against armor Shocking revelation, I know
Great video on the subject of ground attack. The inclusion of documents and manuals really lends to the details. As to Fritz Bayerlein's comment about Shermans, he is only a person (albeit a commander of the Panzer Lehr) who had his experiences to draw on. I guess he missed the British (Sherman) Fireflies that killed everything up to and including Tigers. Or the battle of Arracourt where short barreled Shermans using good tactics (and serious artillery support) annihilated an entire brigade of Panthers.
I watched a video of a WW2 Thunderbolt pilot who said they aimed at the ground in front or behind the tanks so the rounds would ricochet up into the bottom of the tank.
Ricocheting 50 calibre rounds into an engine, given the grilles, sounds unlikely for anything like a Pz. III onwards. With the various TDs or converted French vehicles you might have a chance. But with s strafing attack on a tank, if you managed to get more than 10 rounds on an engine deck at all, I'd be amazed. Add in angles, chances of ricochets would be better than 0, but not by much. It did cause inexperienced of crews to bail out. From all I've read, bombs were effective, guns and rockets not every effective against tanks, although great against soft ones. A famous test was by the RAF - white painted Panther in the middle of Salisbury Plain, static. Hit rates with cannon were few. With rockets worse. I have the details saved SOMEWHERE.
Half second bursts aren't a lot of rounds, but there's a decent chance of some also knocking out optics and other bits and bobs, if the pilot's a good shot.
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 I don't think you'd be able to deliberately target 8-inch square (at the largest and best angle) vision slits at 200mph from an initial closing range of about 400 yards on s potentially moving target.
@@brucepoole8552 absolute nonsense. At the angles involved, a perfect 50 calibre round would not have been able to penetrate the underbelly (standard armour, not soft). After being deformed by bouncing on a surface, the chance of penetration was even less. So from zero chance to zero chance. And from a dude Angle, wheels and tracks were in the way, so you'd need to attack from ahead or behind, and from ahead the rounds would have zero chance of it penetrating the frontal armour. It's a myth that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
@@wbertie2604 strafing wasn't *very* effective against tanks, but it could and did destroy the radiators/fans, which would disable the tank (although a relatively short and simply repair). Late war some German units began welding raised metal plates over the intake grills to prevent this
Really appreciate your content thank you. Have you looked at the British rocket accuracy testing vs a stationary captured panther? The number of hits was sub 5% in absolutely perfect conditions- was the British 6” vastly less accurate than US 5” or were US perceptions overly optimistic as were early British evaluations?
Pilot perceptions were overly optimisic, from both the US and UK perspectives. Part of the reason the UK conducted such a test was because they were noting a mismatch between the tanks claimed destroyed by the air and the results seen on the ground
So what happened to the spent ordnance shells and the bombers that were blown out of the sky? Did the shell casing and parts of the aircraft fall harmlessly back to Earth or did the debris cause death and destruction to those on the ground?
The Jug was my favorite all-purpose plane of the war. But this doc runs contrary to what I have heard documented of British experiments with Typhoons using rockets. They had terrible results, but I dont think their rockets were the same.
I remember bits and pieces of WWII, the fighter pilots got all the glory for their air kills, but I am thinking these Jugs guys did much more damage than they received credit.
Many disagreements over the effectiveness in the comments. But the fact is that the Germans would not move during the day thus cutting their speed and therefore their range by 40 percent. Fighter bombers denied the enemy use of the battle space 50 percent of the time.
Thanks for this episode as The Thunderbolt one of my favorite Aircraft.. The P -47 also launched of Carriers during the Saipan invasion.. was that the only time ..?
Unless fire and explosions start emanating from a tank, it's not going to be easy to figure out if a tank has been knocked out as an attacking plane has almost immediately flown by. I'm doubtful if you could really tell, given the frames per second of footage, where munitions really hit, as another area of skepticism...
@@mpetrison3799 I see your point but I would think it was like claiming an air to air kill.......it had to be verified by a second pilot. So combine gun camera footage with the eye witness and I would think the numbers would be fairly reliable. By the way.....I wonder if the old WW2 era tanks did the turret toss like the Russian tanks in Ukraine. That would be definitive.
I would think given the state of German logistics by the Battle of the Bulge, the ability to repair damaged vehicles-especially tanks would be minimal at best.
First of all, nobody actually called it Holey Moses. Second, actual armor penetration per OP 1239 with base fuze is 25mm/1 inch with the rocket detonating behind the plate. With nose fuze you get a contact detonation that blows a hole in armor up to 1.5 inches thick, but with minimal (albeit still unhealthy) post-penetrative effects. This assumes you even hit the tank, which statistically you won't.
I feel it's important to note that the chart at 7:45 shows *claimed* kills, not actual recorded kills. BDA and post-war studies revealed that fighters only hit a fraction of their claimed kills, not to say CAS can't be effective because the psychological impact and simple disruption against enemy formations and convoys in the rear was very effective, but WWII CAS was far more show and tell than actually lethal.
Great video as always but very important to question and cross reference the claimed kill rates of fighter pilots, be it air to air or air to ground kills.
WWII after conflict research documented thee failures of allied weapon systems. The Norton bombsight failed in accuracy. Unguided rockets from aircraft were demonstrated to be virtually useless in combat due to being unguided and randomly flying when released. Hits were accidental and a matter of chance.
4:32 Which document indicates AP penetrates 15% more than API? The core, jacket, and base plug are the same. The only difference is the point filler, lead vs IM-11. The API has a higher muzzle velocity. Some army docs show APIT penetrates even more because the burning tracer provides a base bleed effect, which increases the ballistic coefficient, yeilding higher downrange velocities, even though the core is lighter.
All I can add is that AT rounds with no filler (i.e., solid metal shot) out-penetrate analogous ones with explosive filler. Of course, they also do less post-prenetration damage.
Errr, no….. P-51 “tank busters” dropping a still classified mythical smart weapon at low level, shallow angle and high speed in built up urban terrain before the tank can cross the bridge is the most effective anti tank fighter bomber.
@@jonathangriffiths2499He's referring to the final combat scene in the film Saving Private Ryan, where a p51 which wasn't used in this roll drops a remarkably accurate bomb on the frankentiger just as it's about to cross the bridge and secure it for the Nazis! There were Sherman's approaching from the US side but I can't remember if they met the religiously required 5 to 1 ratio to knock out the tiger if it had secured the bridge
I have a documentary about Fighter Pilots during WW2, they interviewed Allies and Axis pilots, there was one P47 Thunderbolt Pilot who dropped a 500lb bomb on a German tank and the hatch was open, confirmed in the video by one of his Wingmen!!! 😳😳😳😳😳😳 The DVD is called Where Eagles Dare!!!
I think it was only about 5% or less for the British fighter bombers,so unless the American pilots had amazing skill and exceeded the British pilots in kill numbers
The fact that the HVAR was the USAAF's best AT weapon isnt really disputable i think(even if id be curious about where napalm falls in all of this, at least vs the plethora of german open tops), but I've never seen an actual study of ground results or testing backing that 50-60% accuracy claim. WW2 airpower was generally quite terrible vs armor, and rockets, whether Soviet, British or American were not very precise.(I am not well versed on the limited German efforts with air to ground rockets, but doubt it was much better) Even slow, steady, dedicated platforms like the Ju-87, HS-129 or IL2 armed with cannons didnt produce great results. The only aerial weapon I can think of where the results were better than expected/hoped for were PTAB cluster bomblets, though I can't recall if the results there were particularly impressive either.
The Sherman may have been inferior to German tanks one on one, but that ultimately didn't matter. They were way more Shermans than Panzers. Plus, they were easier to repair and replace.
While not an overall bad summation, some relevant details are missed. The Panther tank is missing, aka Mk V. Arguably the Corsair (late WWII would have 20mm cannon) was equal to the P-47 (which the USAF dumped after WWII and fought in Korea with P-51 of all things). The Navy developed more Corsair versions and its 20mm cannon in Korea would be more effective.
I agree with a number of commenters regarding this article. Post war assessment of the effectiveness of P47 rocket attacks against german tanks was vastly overstated. The figure of. A mere 5% of german tanks were destroyed by the air attacks. Many of the German tanks were abandoned by their crews, had mechanical issues or were out of fuel. If you really look closely you can see how hard its to actually hit a tank with rockets. No disrespect to the brave P47 pilots, but just another false narrative coming out of WW2 propaganda. Just like the strategic bombing campaign by the USAAF. All hokum. 90% of what any narrative coming out of WW2 is false.
@@johnciummo3299 i wouldn't even say this myth was "WW2 propaganda", it springs simply from an honest over assessment of their effect reported by the pilots Imagine you're diving on a tank, you let loose a salvo of rockets, you're confident your aim is good, the tank erupts in a cloud of smoke and explosions as you're pulling up and away, and you see the tank has stopped moving now. That's definitely a kill! Except it's not
It's remarkable how similar the convoy of destroyed tanks looks in WW2 as a result of CAS and modern battlefields with Ukrainian and Russian armour looking the same, but as a result of drones rather than a large fighter aircraft (I suppose it's a similar attack, except now the drone flies the ordinance straight to the target, rather than a P-47 flying to the target and firing its ordinance. They have very similar ordinance and delivery methods but with less risk, cost and with better accuracy)
3:30 That's where the phrase "The whole nine yards" comes from. 9 yards of ammo belts. Returning pilots would tell debriefers that they gave em the whole nine yards of ammo.
I don't have exact sources on me right now but I recall war time estimates of successful air attacks was grossly over estimated. Statistically artillery and ground based AT weapons like AT guns killed the most iirc. But as I said I don't have the source on me so I may be off. WW2 aircraft were effective at interdiction but not in the actual CAS role. They did have a suppressive effect and were enough to deter the Germans from operating in the morning but in terms of actual kills, I think the report is over estimating it by a lot. Also said general doesn't seem to be giving a truthful account. The Sherman was more than a match for the Panzer IV. He led the Panzer Lehr which mainly operated Panzer IV Ausf H and Panther tanks in equal proportions. While the panther tanks as he said was better armed, armored, with greater tactical mobility; it also was unreliable and the long gun and thin side armor made it vulnerable in the French bocage which was where Lehr primarily fought at. At those combat ranges, 76mm Sherman could penetrate the Sherman frontally with decent likelihood. Even Tiger I is vulnerable from the front to the 76mm. Panzer IVs making half of the Panzer Lehr tank force, means that the division was hardly immune. Like actual combat records don't match the claimed testimony. But the document doesn't cite his exact words. Overall, period documents are great so thanks for this. But it is a good example of when we need to also be critical of period documents
Did P-47's or any ground attacking fighters endeavor to use their bombs and rockets first before using their ammo in order to shed weight quickly from their fighter planes? In the event that they would encounter enemy fighters,I would assume they would prefer to be as light on weight as possible.Just a thought.
Disabling a tank, any tank, by damaging the tracks will pretty much take it out of the fight, any aircraft with multiple large cal. machine guns or rockets or bombs could take any tank out of the fight by damaging the tracks or the drive system. So the idea that a tank has to be destroyed to be affective is a misconception. The Russian pilots learn this early, damage the drive system and the German crew would abandon that tank and that was as good as destroying that tank.
Tracks are pretty tough in there own right, optics and pericope glass on the other hand would likely be unusable after being hit. They could also find a lucky gap in the engine louvers and mess up a radiator or fuel/oil line. Other than that it would likely do little than shake up the crew inside.
The 56th FG tried the bazooka tube rockets. They fired 59 of 60 issued and rejected their further use. P-47 pilots tried to get their .50 rounds to ricochet into the tank's belly armor. I do not know how successful this was....
There were claims by the pilots that this was very effective even on tiger tank. I haver been hearing them talk about it all my life, but there is no way that a richochet could penetrate the 1" bottom armor (tanks were armored against mines. If you listen to pilot reports, they destroyed many more tanks than were built in the first place.
One factor would be the road surface. If out in open ground l have a hard time imagining a bullet ricocheting off of dirt Just how committed n were hard surface roads in Western Europe at the time.
@@mpetersen6 Not really. The bottom armor was the same thickness at the top armor and it has already been determined that the .50 API rounds could not penetrate that unless it hit at 90°.
@@mpetersen6I'm guessing only the really main roads might be asphalt, and they'd get torn up pretty quickly by tanks driving on them. Would a bullet even ricochet off asphalt, it's still pretty soft material?
There is a study of recovered destroyed tanks. Both sides. It found a very high percentage of troop launched bazookas and such had the highest kills. It was rare to find rocket damage. Less than 10 percent. Thus pilot exaggerations.
Turns out BDA is hard when you are flying away at 300 mph and thousands of feet in the air. Couple that with nerves, adrenaline and multiple pilots counting the same "hits" and it's no wonder why all sides never accurately reported kills.
Ignition and cooling engine components, and sighting equipment have vulnerability to nearby explosions, besides the crew experience. A near miss from a 500lb bomb is going to stop a tank. Maybe not permanently, but it's gonna be a real pita.
A big risk was inexperienced crews bailing then being killed by the blast from the bombs. Experienced crews tended to stay inside. The tank might still experience a manouvre kill but the crew would tend to survive absent a direct hit. An exception was a Tiger destroyed, with crew, by a B-17 attack which was straddled with bombs and flipped upside down, killing the crew via blunt trauma injuries
@@briancisco1176 it's not clear what destroyed the tank. The film obviously makes it clear the P-51 did, but the P-51s aren't carrying any rockets and you don't see any .50 strafing (not that a .50 could do that damage anyway). It's probably *supposed* to have been a rocket, and they just couldn't get any rocket equipped P-51s to film with (which would make sense, since rockets weren't really their gig).
What about the Army L-4 Cub spotter planes (known as Grasshoppers) who found the tanks for the P-47s and USA artilliary? I know of one famous Cub pilot who even mounted rockets to the wings and destroyed some tanks himself!
@@michaelgill7248 he claims to have destroyed some tanks. It's somewhat questionable if he ever succeeded, especially at destroying "Tigers" as he claims to. No one's found any German report about scout planes rocketing their tanks - which you would think would be an unusual development worth reporting, which German units were generally pretty good at (for example, they immediately reported back about British 40mm Hurricanes when they were first used). Plus the general theme of pilots massively overclaiming tank kills and bazookas generally not being very effective at all when fired at long range or at an angle (as would be the case from a plane), it's unlikely he actually destroyed anything.
I like your channel, but I do not agree to your accessments. Even the Germans having had dedicated antitank airplanes in Russia were disappointed in the results. What was effective was cutting the supply lines such that the tanks had to be abandoned. In one of your videos you claimed that fighter bombers destroyed 750 tanks in the battle of the bulge. This is incorrect and represent the problem of overclaiming. Germay lost in total 520 tanks and aussault guns due to to all causes in this battle, including a huge number of abandoned and self destroyed vehicles due to fuel shortage. BTW, the Brits also came to the conclusion that tank hunting with typhoons, even using rockets, was not successful. You should verify US claims against German damage and loss reports . Overclaiming is a big issue
Kills of anything by fighter bombers were happenstance. In fact I would argue that the tactic of ground strafing would result in high losses for the P47s. The only reason it was allowed to continue was that the USAAF had destroyed the Luftwaffe and tried to keep their pilots busy. The fact it led to the loss of young US airmen for little or no gain is unfortunately covered up or ignored.
If they were knocking out tanks, I'm sure we would see plenty of gun camera film of it. All I saw were soft skin vehicles shot at. Destroy the supply trucks, you stop the tanks.
@@kenneth9874 Go to " WWII 5.0 inch HVAR air-to-ground rocket, attacking with the broadside firepower of a Light Cruiser " to see footage of rockets in action.
Did "Bazooka Charlie" actually destroyed Germany tanks, or only disabled them? The guy in a L-4 Grasshopper armed with 6 Bazooka rocket launcher on the wing struts.
It's unlikely he destroyed anything. Bazookas really weren't effective at the range and angles an aircraft would be attacking from, and there's no known reports from the Germans regarding this new type of attack. Which is notable because the Germans were normally pretty hot on reporting things like that.
This is certainly interesting but incredibly flawed, as other have stated and pointed out. If we were to believe 'claimed' kills by pilots, tank and anti-tank gunners, something like 3x the number of tanks needed to have been produced.... The two relevant studies are ORO-T-117 Survey of Tank Casualties in NW Europe, June 1944 to 1945, and The Work of No.2 Operational Research Section, NW Europe 1944 to 1945. The former states by study of casualties investigated on the ground, first hand, that only 7.5 % of German tank losses could be attributed to aircraft, both strategic and tactical. The opinion of the 'German tank General' is also flawed on the same line: The Sherman is inferior in those manners compared to what?? There was no tank of 35 tons or less with as much equivalent frontal armour as the Sherman, and no tank that had as great operational range. To claim that fighter-bombers and/or rockets were the *only* or *most* effective anti-tank weapon for the US or the Allies is incredibly disingenuous and not based on reality. The proof of study and fact outweighs opinions on both matters. Certainly though it can be said that the effect of both strategic and tactical air power on German supply dumps, columns and organisation in general, played a huge part in success in NW Europe, and the relative superiority in ground forces, including armour, too. To claim that fighter-bombers and/or rockets were the *only* or *most* effective anti-tank weapon for the US or the Allies is incredibly disingenuous and not based on reality.To claim that fighter-bombers and/or rockets were the *only* or *most* effective anti-tank weapon for the US or the Allies is incredibly disingenuous and not based on reality.
I saw a P47 pilot being interviewed once and here is his favorite way to disable/destroy a German tank - especially the Tiger. They were such fuel hogs that they would often pull a fuel trailer behind them while in transit. If you could catch one on a downhill stretch then the move was to light up the fuel trailer with a burst and then the burning fuel would engulf the tank, causing the crew to jump and run. Now the tank is a sitting duck and he would bounce rounds underneath the tank. I would have been skeptical of his claims but he had gun camera footage that confirmed his story. Whatever works, I guess.
No dedicated ground attack 47 was developed. Such would have included turbocharger not useful at low levels removed to save weight, cost, etc. Cockpit and perhaps engine cowling and spinner armored. At least some 50 cals replaced with cannon. 47N style inner wings to increase fuel capacity and loiter time. Similar modifications would have made for a very effective GA P-38. Such fighterbombers would have been most useful in Korea.
@kirotheavenger60 It's well known the Nazis encouraged their pilots to excess. But even if you are correct, can you name another pilot who could come close?
He asserts that the P-47 is a top US tank destroying weapon. He does not mention the other nations weapons, though we can infer that rockets were the most effective.
I would argue the P47 was superior for attack, even though it was fortuitous that it was good for ground attack because it wasn't designed for that role. The il-2 was shot down and droves and the p-47 had excellent survival statistics. The p-47 is much faster and can defend itself well in a dog fighting sense, certainly compared to the Il-2. The p47 head excellent range was durable, had a much less vulnerable engine even though the engine on the aisle 2 was armoured. Perhaps airport engines are less vulnerable to freezing and cold temperatures as well
Yes, guys, we get it. We saw it and we accept that it is the focus of the video. However, we are all aware that the USAAF did not operate in a vacuum. They were not alone. Comparisons are inevitable. Particularly considering the narrators assertion in the last moments of the video.
...And on a more serious note - they likely wanted to keep the time down by simplifing the example set. The discussion could easily grow to 30 to 45 minutes; ESPECIALLY with PzV as it was a relatively hurried tank that suffered from numerous design compromises. Like 45 tons heavy when mediums were 30 ton range- affecting mobility, speed, fuel consumtion, transportability. Nearly impregnable frontal armor (at the time) but weak from the sides and rear- makeing it one of the last heavy tanks to be endangered by anti-tank rifles. Design optimised for the eastern front, the T34 & KV1 killer- but soviets were the primary users of anti-rifles! Build issues of design, materiels & machine tool availability, slave labor assembly with sabotage occuring (saw video examples recently, restorations of engines & gearboxes, that would pass testing but fail early). Which leads to the M2/3 .50cal machinegun: cartrige design being based on a WW1 german anti-tank rifle, so from the begining a dual purpose anti-armor/aircraft capable weapon, a role it performs to this day - just renamed as "anti-materiel gun systems". Check out the M2 wiki article, its much better than it was a few years ago... see, a long ramble showing how 10min could turn into an hour video!
As I’ve stated in the previous video, USAAF ground kill claims, particularly against German armor, were grossly over estimated. Post war research actually examining destroyed enemy AFV by aircraft demonstrated that such kills fell far below pilot claims. For example: in the German armor counter attack at Mortain, USAAF & RAF claimed 252 armored vehicles destroyed (122 USAAF & 140 2nd-TAF). However, large scale, highly detailed ground investigations after the conflict carried out by the British No.2 Operational Research Section in the claimed regions found that only 49 armored vehicle could possibly be attributed to aerial kills by USAAF & 2-TAF. Even out of that number, only 21 could be positively determined to have been knocked out by air-strikes - 6 Panthers, 3 Panzer-IV, 11 APC (Sdkfz-250 & 251), & 1 Armored Car (It should be noted that 15 of these were destroyed by rocket attacks, two by bombs and four [all APCs] by 50-cal & 20mm ). This comes to a kill claim inflation rate of about 450% if we include all possible claims --- with confirmed kills an inflation rate of about 1000%.
Surprisingly, attacks against “soft” vehicular targets in the area examined didn’t fair any better. Of a 168 destroyed or possibly destroyed soft transportation vehicles claims by pilots, only 43 could possibly be attributed to aerial kills and of this a bare 12 could positively be identified as aerial kills, although there’s a much higher likelihood that abandoned, self-destroyed, or other soft vehicle losses were due to air-attacks compared to AFV with similar fates.
The No.2 Operational Research Section’s study on the subject: “No.2 Operation Research Section with the 21st Army Group June 1944 to July 1945” also covers other aerial kill claims such as “The German Retreat from Normandy to Seine,” and “Air Attack on Enemy Armour in the Ardennes Salient.” Similar results are also found in these highly detailed reports. For example, the USAAF claimed 90 Tanks & other AFV destroyed over the examined Ardennes region, after an extensive ground examination only 19 were possibly destroyed by aircraft, and a mere 7 confirmed destroyed by USAAF (4 tanks, 2 SPG & 1 light armor).
It should be noted, although the overall effectiveness of aerial strikes against ground vehicles were exaggerated, air-to-ground rockets WERE by far the most effective means of destroying enemy AFV & Transport.
Details of the Study "Report No.4 “Air Attacks on Enemy Tanks & Motor Transport in the Mortain Area, August 1944”
Allied Fighter Bomber Kill Claims: (pp.174 [Table I]):
2-TAF: Enemy Armored Vehicle Losses: 84 destroyed/ 35 possibly destroyed/ 21 damaged = 140 total
IX-USAAF: Enemy Armored Vehicle Losses: 69 destroyed/ 8 possibly destroyed/ 35 damaged = 112 total [Overall total Armored Vehicles 2-TAF + IX-USAAF = 252]
2-TAF: Motor Transport: 54 destroyed/ 19 possibly destroyed/ 39 damaged = 112 total
IX-USAAF: Enemy Armored Vehicle Losses: 94 destroyed/ 1 possibly destroyed/ 21 damaged = 116 total [Overall total Motor Transport 2-TAF + IX-USAAF =228]
Results of Ground Investigation (pp.175 [Table II])
Total Armored Vehicles Destroyed or Abandoned: 78
Number destroyed by US Army (ie. ground units): 29, Destroyed by Crew (self-destruction): 4, Abandoned Intact: 9, Unknown Cause: 15. Number known destroyed directly by 2-TAF & IX-USAAF: 21 (6 Panthers, 3 Panzer-IV, 11 APC, 1 Armored Car).
Total Motor Transport Vehicles Destroyed or Abandoned: 50
Number destroyed by US Army (ie. ground units): 7, Destroyed by Crew (self-destruction): 1, Abandoned Intact: 4, Unknown Cause: 26. Number known destroyed directly by 2-TAF & IX-USAAF: 12 (4 cars, 6 Trucks, 2 Ambulances, 1 Motorcycle).
Thanks for Posting.
All claims are exaggerated to some extent, it's one of the classic problems analysts and historians have to grapple with, but focusing too much on destruction ignores the reality of suppression. While there is very little chance of actually destroying a tank by strafing it with a machine gun, it does force the tank crew to react to the attack in ways that make them less effective. For example, forcing the tank commander to button up reduces his situational awareness. Convincing the crew to "go to ground" takes away their initiative, Even if the effect is purely psychological (even the Germans thought fighter bombers far more effective then they actually were) the real measure of effectiveness isn't the number of enemy tanks destroyed, it's the number of enemy actions interrupted or prevented. It's true that the tank crews were far safer than everyone assumed, but being safe and feeling safe are two very different things. Most people would tell you roller coasters are scary even though they're actually in far more danger driving to an amusement park. As for the low numbers of soft skin vehicles destroyed, the Germans didn't have that many soft skinned vehicles in the first place and in the real world strafed vehicles rarely explode and will keep running if nothing vital is hit. I can envision 5 or 10 pilots all strafing the same truck and claiming it as destroyed. And depending upon where it was hit I can also envision the driver climbing back out of the ditch where he took cover and driving it away, full of superficial holes but still in running condition.
@@danielstickney2400 I've commented elsewhere in this video that the greatest effect the Allied fighter-bombers had against the Germans was physiological and logistical.
As seen in this report, these aircraft weren't particularly effective at destroying German AFV (or to some extent, soft vehicles either), but it did degrade the German's morale dramatically. Additionally these aerial attacks seriously disrupted German logistics, which greatly hindered the potential effectiveness of their motorized & mechanized units, and daytime movement, which lowered their ability to counter Allied attacks into German territory.
So the USAAF & RAF were very effective fighting forces against German ground units, just not in the manner in which this video portrays it.
Could you provide a link to the original report? Detailed reports such as this are not easy to locate without the correct search terms.
Edit: I've discovered Terry Copp and the Laurier Centre, but unable to locate "Report No. 4" relating to actions in Mortain.
@@jefferyroy2566 Sorry, I should have made my sources more clear. You can actually find it online as a free PDF book called:
"Montgomery's Scientists: Operational Research in Northwest Europe - The Work of No.2 Operational Research Section with the 21st Army Group June 1944 to July 1945, by Terry Copp (editor)."
It's simply a modern reprint of the complete original study. It actually covers a large number of broad topics about the effectiveness of allied weapons including Air Support, Artillery, Tanks, Infantry, ATGs & other miscellaneous topics .
Report No.4 is under Part-I Air Support: Chapter 3 "Fighter & Fighter Bomber Attacks on Tanks and MT" pages 173 to 180. Appendix B (pp-176): describes in detail claimed air attacks in the area vs the actual ground kills found (or not found).
Man your videos about planes are one of the best on RUclips . I absolutely adore this content
Totally agree.
That 50-60% accuracy rate is just based on what the air crews said. If you compare it to actual German losses, you´ll find that rate to be about 10 times smaller.
My father served in ground crew support for P-47s and had a friend in my home town who worked at the air force base with my dad. He was a P47 pilot from his group; when I was growing ups who was quite the story teller. He claimed to have flown over 100 missions and that he would fly so low to the ground the German AA guns couldn't get him. He said he was a terrible shot with rockets aiming at tanks, as were most of the pilots but a. few were very good, and they did most of the rocket fire and other pilots flew cover or straffed.
I suggest you to look at 4% training hit rate, so rather 1% in combat.
@@ondrejdobrota7344 According to German WWII tank veterans the rockets were pretty inaccurate, the .50 cals did little or nothing to harm a tank, 20mm shells could cause more damage but that was mostly limited to mobility kills. According to one of these guys a tank was one of the safest places to be during a fighter bomber attack. What they had the hardest time with was convincing the greenhorns of this because they would often panic and abandon the tank which is where the .50 cal DID actually do some serious damage by mowing the fleeing greenhorns down. A Bundeswehr tanker I talked to who claimed he had been in a tank that was being machine gunned told me that it was scary as hell even if you knew for an absolute fact that a 7.62 mmm round does not stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting through the armour of a Leopard tank so the psychological effect of being in a tank being strafed is still pretty great.
Compare that to the german "aces" 1% lol.
@@brentonherbert7775 Are you talking about German air to air aces or air to gound aces?
I highly highly doubt the account of 50 to 60% accuracy of HVAR rockets fired at tanks
I highly doubt you’re qualified to highly doubt this claim
@@guaporeturns9472
I doubt
Therefore I might be.
I’m sure I ought to doubt.
@@xx1352 But you might not be , or would that be might be not..?
hmm 🤔
@@guaporeturns9472 claims in NW Europe were assessed in 1944 or 45. From memory, against tanks, based on claims versus actually destroyed tanks, accuracy was probably closer to 5%.
Joint Report No3 - Rocket Firing Typhoons in Close Support of Military Operations, and this can be found on p.176 of the link. It can be seen at Table II that the report assessed that 140 rocket projectiles (RP) would need to be fired at a Panther to achieve a 50% chance of a hit. This was the stationary one, painted white, in the open, no AAA fire.
In combat conditions, and assuming all rockets fired, you are probably talking a 1-2% success rate per attack, not 50% from a P-47. And this is success measured as HITTING it, not destroying it.
I saw that. But are we talking about the same rockets here? Perhaps the US rockets had a flatter trajectory? Better range? etc...
@@billd2635 the US rockets were slightly different, but not enough to make them twenty times as accurate.
@billd2635 the difference is one is an actual study under somewhat combat conditions, and the other is based on pilot testimonies.
No hate to pilots, it's basically impossible to see preciselg was your results were from a plane mid attack, and it's natural to kinda assume the best.
@@kirotheavenger60 and the RAF test was in pretty ideal conditions too. They tested with cannon too, IIRC, and hit percentages were also pretty low. It was a tough task for pilots to achieve. I can see why they might want to be optimistic about their hit chances to make the risks they were taking seem worth it. It would be a natural human reaction.
Yep, the Germans also gave up on equiping FW 190 with the powerful MK 103 30 mm cannons for tank hunting, due to poor results. The MK 103 is not be confused with MK108. Both fire a 30 mm shell, but the MK103 has a much higher mussle velocity and thus recoil.
Excellent episode about one of the overlooked aspects of the ETO.
My dad was in the 99th Infantry Division during WWII. The division had landed at Le Harve, France in October of 1944 and moved into “the quiet sector” of the northern Ardennes forest.
The 99th, along with other adjacent US forces, endured the longest artillery barrage on the Western front at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge. The 99th pulled back west to consolidate their front during the initial days of the German attack. They ended up on the Elsenborn Ridge where US artillery helped stop the German advance.
In the early days of 1945, the 99th began attacking east from the Elsenborn Ridge, attempting to recapture ground lost to the Germans.
As the weather improved, US fighter-bombers began attacking exposed German units. In the snow, the German vehicles stood out in sharp contrast.
While dad told me there were several different aircraft involved in the ground attacks, the P-47s stood out.
One thing that the US and British fighter groups began using were forward observers. Usually pilots, assigned to different infantry units, they had radios that allowed them to directly communicate with pilots of attacking aircraft. The results were devastating to the German vehicles.
Dad told me, that he was glad the P-47s were on our side!
Close air support is still a vital element of US military doctrine.
I appreciate the arguments, but over 50% would be a great kill ratio with modern antitank missiles.
USAAF estimates on tank destruction exceeded German production, so I’d take these contemporaneous reports with a considerable amount of salt.
Excellent.
I was surprised how accurate rockets were. As you said, by the second half of the war, starting with the British - I believe, rocket-firing fighter-bombers had largely replaced dive bombers - both in tactical support and anti-shipping/ anti-submarine roles.
My father lived near RAF Acklington in NE England during WWII; and a vivid and exciting childhood memory was watching the Typhoons in 1943 on exercises, trying out their new experimental rocket armaments in exercises against tank decoys. Dawning of a new era...
Yes, rocket equipped RAF aircraft were very successful against coastal shipping.
It's noteworthy though that fighter-bombers attacking tanks had a reputation far outweighing their actual effectiveness.
British testing showed that even under ideal combat conditions, rocket accuracy was in the 5% range, and battle damage assessment of German tanks showed that the great majority were destroyed by ground based gunfire, not air attack.
Aircraft, of all nations, overclaimed tank kills by about 10-1 compared to how much they actually destroyed.
It is notable though that the vulnerability of German engine radiator grills to strafing and airburst artillery was mentioned in multiple places. It's easy to believe many German tanks founs themselves immobilised following a strafing attack, but a replacement radiator would not take them out of the combat for long.
However few tanks work after their fuel browser and ammunition truck have been shot up by airpower.
This.
This is exactly what came to mind as soon as I saw the thumbnail, irrespective of the quality of content.
I agree with what you have said here. My thoughts were that rockets were terribly inaccurate and that Fighter Bombers were relatively ineffective against ground targets, but the evidence presented in this vid is compelling, and they may have been more effective than I thought. It is so difficult to know conclusively the truth.
Have you heard the story of how one radiator in a Tiger I being punctured led to the loss of the whole Tiger platoon? Short version is that trying to tow the Tiger I back to the repair shop overloaded the drivetrains of the other three, resulting in the Germans having to blow up all four themselves when forced to retreat. So no, losing a radiator might not be a small thing after all.
The effectiveness should be gauged by how the combat readiness was affected, if they never arrive or arrive late then the fighter bombers were very effective....
These are theost tecnical vids about any subject. To he fair there very dry so i have to be in the right mood so i save them up.
Thanks doing exceptionally good work
Thank you. My father flew the P-38, 47 and 51 as a gunnery instructor in Texas. His favorite was the P-38. This is very interesting!
Very interested in how ground troops needing air support would set that up. The logistics, communication, how resources were allocated, etc.
CabRank system, based on FOAs and radios. The impression that there was no CAS for Market Garden is a common misconception. There were some hiatuses during airdrops but the big issues were undertrained FOAs with the troops and failures in radio equipment (not of the type shown in A Bridge Too Far, which is nonsense in this regard). Due to failed long distance radios, sometimes commands had to ve relayed through three or four networks, before they got to USAAF or RAF to then call in aircraft. There were 11 squadrons of just Typhoons assigned
@@wbertie2604 interesting. It would make a good video for this channel
@@Roddy556 as i understand it, the cab rank system was shared in the chain somehow in a way I don't fully understand. So you might use your forward air observer to call in a mission and get a P-47 or a Typhoon depending on what was available.
Market Garden flew (for some reason I remember the number) 238 sorties on the first day, but I'm not sure how many resulted in contact as they couldn't stooge around the battlefield all day.
Targets were marked with smoke and friendly fire could and did occur if units used the wrong smoke colour for concealment. Yellow might be all they had for concealment, but if a fire mission was called for two miles away and yellow was the target indicator colour of the day then in the days before GPS, Allied troops could and were attached.
There was also a free fighter element in designated areas and a D-Day reconnaissance unit drawn from the legal profession was wiped out as it advanced to well and far and into such an area.
More consideration might be given to the question. How much more effective would the P-47 have been, if the USAAF had used Napalm as extensively in the European theatre, as much as in the Pacific theatre.
@downunderrob, I think napalm would have made fighter bombers more effective,p. I read thanapalm was the most effective weapon by planes against tanks in Korea.
@@stevehofer3482By the postwar ORD study, napalm was the top killer of T-34/85 tanks.
my understanding is that by the time napalm became a usable weapon,
the war against the big h was in the endgame phase.
at that point most of the combat was taking place in cities and towns,
and setting those on fire would have been verging on counterproductive.
most of*(edit) the napalm in the Pacific was used on IJA fortifications on islands.
Oh yeah for sure. Why not find even more horrible ways to carry out the war...
@davidkavanagh189 Fire has been a legitimate part of organised Warfare since Ancient Greece.
Another Master Class; well done, sir!
Even if the .50 cal weren't penetrating, the sound from inside the tank of them striking the outer plate had to be terrifying.
Yes, the P-47 with 8x .50 guns fireing at an average rate of 800rpm (13.3rps) per gun! delivers 107rps (rounds per second) on the convergence point. Likely quite noisey for the 1 or 2 seconds its on target. so- more than twice 50hz electrical line frequency.
It's for exactly this reason that I sometimes strafe enemy tanks with a machine gun in Battlefield 1. Although the bullets don't penetrate, the sound of them hitting the tank walls is annoying/distracting/deafening, depending on the level of volume used by the tank driver. In a fast-paced game where you're already nervous, the constant clatter of bullets hitting your tank is far from helpful. And the weapons and magazines available to Supply players in BF1 allow you to fire for much longer than 1-2 seconds. Tank drivers who are already being attacked by other players will sometimes freak out and literally drive right into danger.
@@KevinSmith-ys3mh Assuming of course you get any real hits, or that you're actually blowing that much ammo on a target you can't actually damage.
My Dad flew F4U Corsairs in WWII, Pacific Theater and used the rockets on occasion. He found their accuracy to be very good.
If shooting at say a pillbox seeing the rocket hit next to the pillbox does not necessarily mean said pillbox is destroyed. This does not mean the people inside the pillbox are having a great time. Each rocket was the equivalent to a 5 or 6 inch inch artillery shell. The most effective use of rockets in WWll was likely in pre landing bombardment during amphibious assaults. One LSM(R) could lay down hundreds of rockets in one salvo. Later LSM(R) ships had 40mm Bofors mounts converted to fire spin stabilized rockets. The converted 40mm mounts were tied into the vessel's fire control system. Some of these vessels were still in-service in the 1960s. First with 10 mounts firing 2 rockets per mount. Later ships had 20 mounts. Each mount capable of firing around 20 or more rockets per minute iirc.
I've read that USAAF pilots claimed they could destroy a Panzer by shooting .50 calibre machine gun bullets onto the ground underneath a Panzer, so they would ricochet upwards "and go through the unarmoured floor"!
I can only suggest that those who believe this myth study the spec. of German tanks; ALL of them had at least 25mm / 1 inch thick *armour plate* forming the floor of the tank - in order to give the crew a chance to survive if the tank ran over a land mine. If anyone sets up a demo to prove that a copper-jacketed lead bullet can ricochet off the ground, and hit 25mm armour plate at a very shallow angle, and *penetrate it* I will happily and publicly eat crow!
Of COURSE Browning 50 cal bullets wouldn't penetrate a bloody tank; FFS, they probably wouldn't even work against a FIRST World War tank, let alone a Panzer.
Even 20mm cannon shells wouldn't work, which was why the RAF converted some Hurricanes (the Mk.IID) to carry a pair of semi-auto 40mm cannons in wing pods; these worked well enough against the Panzers of the Africa Korps, but despite having extra armour, the pilots suffered heavy losses from light anti-aircraft fire from ground forces.
I agree but 50cal can definitely kill WW1 tanks. They had much thinner armor, and besides that the front has about as much armor as the roof of WW2 tanks. This makes a shallow angle easier to penetrate. And most WW1 tanks used inferior steel than those seen on WW2. Also IIRC, the M2 browning was designed with WW1 tanks in mind. Granted it was considered anti-armor in a ground based role but is still worth considering.
There were often a number of hatches on the underside of WW2 tanks that were supposed to be secured in theory; but were often left unsecured in actual practice.
I’ve often laughed at that horseshit claim, too.
Excellent video as always, man!
It's funny... I was shocked when I found out that 'Panzer' did not mean 'Panther' in German!
I had always assumed that they were all Panthers!
There's some great gun camera footage from a following Typhoon showing the lead Typhoon at a high angle putting rocket after rocket right down the center of some railroad tracks.
One thing the Germans got very good at was putting train tracks and marshalling yards back into service.
@@mpetersen6- Yep, thats typical history for competently handled rail systems. Railway can often be built in less space, quicker and faster than highways, mile for mile. Easier and faster to repair too, when you point guns and tell them to hurry.😢
A study by British military historian Stephen L. McFarland has shown that the effectiveness of fighter-bombers against German tanks may have been overestimated. According to this study, Allied fighter-bombers such as the P-47, P-51, and Typhoon directly destroyed about 100-150 tanks in Normandy.
Very mild, grossly over estimated unless the German target was already damaged.
You have a great channel
The Allied pilots tended to grossly overclaim armor destruction. The P47s were VERY effective at immobilizing German armor by destroying bridges and by shooting up the supply trucks. Any tank is a gas hog and they need a constant stream of resupply to maintain effectiveness.
According to the Operational Research of RAF tests of firing at a white painted Panther, stationary, in the open, with no threats in good weather, it would take 140 rockets to have a 50% chance of just hitting it, even more to destroy one.
In other words, to achieve the 50% figure in 1944 and assuming all 6 fired at one tank, it would take about 24 stories. That's just to get a 50% success rate against one in ideal conditions. You are probably talking double that with battlefield smoke, weather, AAA fire, etc.
Allied fighter bombers also had a huge morale effect. Just the sight of them was enough to disrupt enemy ground movements & organisation.
Grossly overstating but yes
It did happen
American Centricy Attackers still did great when using actually practical weapons like 500-2000 Pounders
Rockets and MGs are horrible against armor
Shocking revelation, I know
I only believe the claims of German pilots. These have all been fact checked by Goebbels himself!
@@ComfortsSpecter rockets were found to be more effective than bombs, simply because were so much more accurate.
But bombs were more dual purpose
Great video on the subject of ground attack. The inclusion of documents and manuals really lends to the details. As to Fritz Bayerlein's comment about Shermans, he is only a person (albeit a commander of the Panzer Lehr) who had his experiences to draw on. I guess he missed the British (Sherman) Fireflies that killed everything up to and including Tigers. Or the battle of Arracourt where short barreled Shermans using good tactics (and serious artillery support) annihilated an entire brigade of Panthers.
regardless if the 50s can penetrate or not, I can't imagine that crew being effective while all those 50s are hitting your tank.
I watched a video of a WW2 Thunderbolt pilot who said they aimed at the ground in front or behind the tanks so the rounds would ricochet up into the bottom of the tank.
Ricocheting 50 calibre rounds into an engine, given the grilles, sounds unlikely for anything like a Pz. III onwards. With the various TDs or converted French vehicles you might have a chance. But with s strafing attack on a tank, if you managed to get more than 10 rounds on an engine deck at all, I'd be amazed. Add in angles, chances of ricochets would be better than 0, but not by much. It did cause inexperienced of crews to bail out. From all I've read, bombs were effective, guns and rockets not every effective against tanks, although great against soft ones.
A famous test was by the RAF - white painted Panther in the middle of Salisbury Plain, static. Hit rates with cannon were few. With rockets worse. I have the details saved SOMEWHERE.
The trick was to hit under the tank, the 50cal rounds would ricochet into the soft underbelly
Half second bursts aren't a lot of rounds, but there's a decent chance of some also knocking out optics and other bits and bobs, if the pilot's a good shot.
@@grizwoldphantasia5005 I don't think you'd be able to deliberately target 8-inch square (at the largest and best angle) vision slits at 200mph from an initial closing range of about 400 yards on s potentially moving target.
@@brucepoole8552 absolute nonsense. At the angles involved, a perfect 50 calibre round would not have been able to penetrate the underbelly (standard armour, not soft). After being deformed by bouncing on a surface, the chance of penetration was even less. So from zero chance to zero chance. And from a dude Angle, wheels and tracks were in the way, so you'd need to attack from ahead or behind, and from ahead the rounds would have zero chance of it penetrating the frontal armour. It's a myth that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
@@wbertie2604 strafing wasn't *very* effective against tanks, but it could and did destroy the radiators/fans, which would disable the tank (although a relatively short and simply repair).
Late war some German units began welding raised metal plates over the intake grills to prevent this
Really appreciate your content thank you. Have you looked at the British rocket accuracy testing vs a stationary captured panther? The number of hits was sub 5% in absolutely perfect conditions- was the British 6” vastly less accurate than US 5” or were US perceptions overly optimistic as were early British evaluations?
Pilot perceptions were overly optimisic, from both the US and UK perspectives.
Part of the reason the UK conducted such a test was because they were noting a mismatch between the tanks claimed destroyed by the air and the results seen on the ground
I was going to comment on over-claiming and air attack having more of a morale effect, but I'll just leave it at "The Chieftan, has entered chat..."
Great video as always. Would it be possible to link your sources? I'd be particularly interested in the 1946 Defeat document.
Later production tigers had their roof armour increased to 45mm calculated to stop most 75mm and 105 mm artillery shells
Very informative vid sir. Have you ever wondered making a video about the tiny tim rockets? They are so massive
So what happened to the spent ordnance shells and the bombers that were blown out of the sky? Did the shell casing and parts of the aircraft fall harmlessly back to Earth or did the debris cause death and destruction to those on the ground?
Great channel
Great video...👍
Can you cover the employment of B-25s using gliding and non-gliding torpedoes. Tactics s as well. It's such an odd but not surprising thing!
The Jug was my favorite all-purpose plane of the war. But this doc runs contrary to what I have heard documented of British experiments with Typhoons
using rockets. They had terrible results, but I dont think their rockets were the same.
I remember bits and pieces of WWII, the fighter pilots got all the glory for their air kills, but I am thinking these Jugs guys did much more damage than they received credit.
Many disagreements over the effectiveness in the comments. But the fact is that the Germans would not move during the day thus cutting their speed and therefore their range by 40 percent.
Fighter bombers denied the enemy use of the battle space 50 percent of the time.
Tell me about the fuel load and consumption.
Thank you! I always wondered about the ricochet theory after reading about it many years ago.
Thanks for this episode as The Thunderbolt one of my favorite Aircraft.. The P -47 also launched of Carriers during the Saipan invasion.. was that the only time ..?
Launched after airfields were secured.
I see a LOT of comments claiming gross exaggeration by the pilots.........what about gun camera footage?????
Unless fire and explosions start emanating from a tank, it's not going to be easy to figure out if a tank has been knocked out as an attacking plane has almost immediately flown by.
I'm doubtful if you could really tell, given the frames per second of footage, where munitions really hit, as another area of skepticism...
@@mpetrison3799 I see your point but I would think it was like claiming an air to air kill.......it had to be verified by a second pilot. So combine gun camera footage with the eye witness and I would think the numbers would be fairly reliable.
By the way.....I wonder if the old WW2 era tanks did the turret toss like the Russian tanks in Ukraine. That would be definitive.
GEEEZ ! They had to get danger close for those attacks.
I would think given the state of German logistics by the Battle of the Bulge, the ability to repair damaged vehicles-especially tanks would be minimal at best.
First of all, nobody actually called it Holey Moses.
Second, actual armor penetration per OP 1239 with base fuze is 25mm/1 inch with the rocket detonating behind the plate. With nose fuze you get a contact detonation that blows a hole in armor up to 1.5 inches thick, but with minimal (albeit still unhealthy) post-penetrative effects.
This assumes you even hit the tank, which statistically you won't.
I feel it's important to note that the chart at 7:45 shows *claimed* kills, not actual recorded kills. BDA and post-war studies revealed that fighters only hit a fraction of their claimed kills, not to say CAS can't be effective because the psychological impact and simple disruption against enemy formations and convoys in the rear was very effective, but WWII CAS was far more show and tell than actually lethal.
Many thanks!
Great video as always but very important to question and cross reference the claimed kill rates of fighter pilots, be it air to air or air to ground kills.
WWII after conflict research documented thee failures of allied weapon systems. The Norton bombsight failed in accuracy. Unguided rockets from aircraft were demonstrated to be virtually useless in combat due to being unguided and randomly flying when released. Hits were accidental and a matter of chance.
4:32 Which document indicates AP penetrates 15% more than API?
The core, jacket, and base plug are the same. The only difference is the point filler, lead vs IM-11. The API has a higher muzzle velocity. Some army docs show APIT penetrates even more because the burning tracer provides a base bleed effect, which increases the ballistic coefficient, yeilding higher downrange velocities, even though the core is lighter.
All I can add is that AT rounds with no filler (i.e., solid metal shot) out-penetrate analogous ones with explosive filler. Of course, they also do less post-prenetration damage.
More P-47 videos are appreciated.... My father flew a P-47.
Errr, no….. P-51 “tank busters” dropping a still classified mythical smart weapon at low level, shallow angle and high speed in built up urban terrain before the tank can cross the bridge is the most effective anti tank fighter bomber.
Can anybody help here , what is this “ mythological weapon “ ?
@@jonathangriffiths2499He's referring to the final combat scene in the film Saving Private Ryan, where a p51 which wasn't used in this roll drops a remarkably accurate bomb on the frankentiger just as it's about to cross the bridge and secure it for the Nazis!
There were Sherman's approaching from the US side but I can't remember if they met the religiously required 5 to 1 ratio to knock out the tiger if it had secured the bridge
@@jonathangriffiths2499 Only one piece of footage of this amazing technique survives!
ruclips.net/video/hOydrC8rsoE/видео.html
I have a documentary about Fighter Pilots during WW2, they interviewed Allies and Axis pilots, there was one
P47 Thunderbolt Pilot who
dropped a 500lb bomb
on a German tank and the
hatch was open, confirmed in
the video by one of his Wingmen!!! 😳😳😳😳😳😳
The DVD is called Where Eagles Dare!!!
I think it was only about 5% or less for the British fighter bombers,so unless the American pilots had amazing skill and exceeded the British pilots in kill numbers
Thanks
The fact that the HVAR was the USAAF's best AT weapon isnt really disputable i think(even if id be curious about where napalm falls in all of this, at least vs the plethora of german open tops), but I've never seen an actual study of ground results or testing backing that 50-60% accuracy claim. WW2 airpower was generally quite terrible vs armor, and rockets, whether Soviet, British or American were not very precise.(I am not well versed on the limited German efforts with air to ground rockets, but doubt it was much better)
Even slow, steady, dedicated platforms like the Ju-87, HS-129 or IL2 armed with cannons didnt produce great results. The only aerial weapon I can think of where the results were better than expected/hoped for were PTAB cluster bomblets, though I can't recall if the results there were particularly impressive either.
The Sherman may have been inferior to German tanks one on one, but that ultimately didn't matter. They were way more Shermans than Panzers. Plus, they were easier to repair and replace.
While not an overall bad summation, some relevant details are missed. The Panther tank is missing, aka Mk V. Arguably the Corsair (late WWII would have 20mm cannon) was equal to the P-47 (which the USAF dumped after WWII and fought in Korea with P-51 of all things). The Navy developed more Corsair versions and its 20mm cannon in Korea would be more effective.
I agree with a number of commenters regarding this article. Post war assessment of the effectiveness of P47 rocket attacks against german tanks was vastly overstated. The figure of. A mere 5% of german tanks were destroyed by the air attacks.
Many of the German tanks were abandoned by their crews, had mechanical issues or were out of fuel. If you really look closely you can see how hard its to actually hit a tank with rockets. No disrespect to the brave P47 pilots, but just another false narrative coming out of WW2 propaganda. Just like the strategic bombing campaign by the USAAF. All hokum. 90% of what any narrative coming out of WW2 is false.
@@johnciummo3299 i wouldn't even say this myth was "WW2 propaganda", it springs simply from an honest over assessment of their effect reported by the pilots
Imagine you're diving on a tank, you let loose a salvo of rockets, you're confident your aim is good, the tank erupts in a cloud of smoke and explosions as you're pulling up and away, and you see the tank has stopped moving now. That's definitely a kill!
Except it's not
You destroy the support vehicles and tanks become armored bunkers due to maintenance and resupply issues.
It's remarkable how similar the convoy of destroyed tanks looks in WW2 as a result of CAS and modern battlefields with Ukrainian and Russian armour looking the same, but as a result of drones rather than a large fighter aircraft (I suppose it's a similar attack, except now the drone flies the ordinance straight to the target, rather than a P-47 flying to the target and firing its ordinance. They have very similar ordinance and delivery methods but with less risk, cost and with better accuracy)
3:30 That's where the phrase "The whole nine yards" comes from. 9 yards of ammo belts. Returning pilots would tell debriefers that they gave em the whole nine yards of ammo.
I don't have exact sources on me right now but I recall war time estimates of successful air attacks was grossly over estimated. Statistically artillery and ground based AT weapons like AT guns killed the most iirc. But as I said I don't have the source on me so I may be off. WW2 aircraft were effective at interdiction but not in the actual CAS role. They did have a suppressive effect and were enough to deter the Germans from operating in the morning but in terms of actual kills, I think the report is over estimating it by a lot.
Also said general doesn't seem to be giving a truthful account. The Sherman was more than a match for the Panzer IV. He led the Panzer Lehr which mainly operated Panzer IV Ausf H and Panther tanks in equal proportions. While the panther tanks as he said was better armed, armored, with greater tactical mobility; it also was unreliable and the long gun and thin side armor made it vulnerable in the French bocage which was where Lehr primarily fought at. At those combat ranges, 76mm Sherman could penetrate the Sherman frontally with decent likelihood. Even Tiger I is vulnerable from the front to the 76mm. Panzer IVs making half of the Panzer Lehr tank force, means that the division was hardly immune. Like actual combat records don't match the claimed testimony. But the document doesn't cite his exact words.
Overall, period documents are great so thanks for this. But it is a good example of when we need to also be critical of period documents
Did P-47's or any ground attacking fighters endeavor to use their bombs and rockets first before using their ammo in order to shed weight quickly from their fighter planes? In the event that they would encounter enemy fighters,I would assume they would prefer to be as light on weight as possible.Just a thought.
@@rayl.clemonsjr.4210 yes, when ordnance was carried it would generally be used first
@@kirotheavenger60 Thanks!
Disabling a tank, any tank, by damaging the tracks will pretty much take it out of the fight, any aircraft with multiple large cal. machine guns or rockets or bombs could take any tank out of the fight by damaging the tracks or the drive system. So the idea that a tank has to be destroyed to be affective is a misconception. The Russian pilots learn this early, damage the drive system and the German crew would abandon that tank and that was as good as destroying that tank.
Tracks are pretty tough in there own right, optics and pericope glass on the other hand would likely be unusable after being hit. They could also find a lucky gap in the engine louvers and mess up a radiator or fuel/oil line. Other than that it would likely do little than shake up the crew inside.
The 56th FG tried the bazooka tube rockets. They fired 59 of 60 issued and rejected their further use.
P-47 pilots tried to get their .50 rounds to ricochet into the tank's belly armor. I do not know how successful this was....
There were claims by the pilots that this was very effective even on tiger tank. I haver been hearing them talk about it all my life, but there is no way that a richochet could penetrate the 1" bottom armor (tanks were armored against mines. If you listen to pilot reports, they destroyed many more tanks than were built in the first place.
One factor would be the road surface. If out in open ground l have a hard time imagining a bullet ricocheting off of dirt Just how committed n were hard surface roads in Western Europe at the time.
@@mpetersen6 Not really. The bottom armor was the same thickness at the top armor and it has already been determined that the .50 API rounds could not penetrate that unless it hit at 90°.
@@jfess1911 It would have 0% chance of penetration
@@mpetersen6I'm guessing only the really main roads might be asphalt, and they'd get torn up pretty quickly by tanks driving on them.
Would a bullet even ricochet off asphalt, it's still pretty soft material?
There is a study of recovered destroyed tanks. Both sides. It found a very high percentage of troop launched bazookas and such had the highest kills. It was rare to find rocket damage. Less than 10 percent. Thus pilot exaggerations.
Turns out BDA is hard when you are flying away at 300 mph and thousands of feet in the air. Couple that with nerves, adrenaline and multiple pilots counting the same "hits" and it's no wonder why all sides never accurately reported kills.
Ignition and cooling engine components, and sighting equipment have vulnerability to nearby explosions, besides the crew experience.
A near miss from a 500lb bomb is going to stop a tank.
Maybe not permanently, but it's gonna be a real pita.
A big risk was inexperienced crews bailing then being killed by the blast from the bombs. Experienced crews tended to stay inside. The tank might still experience a manouvre kill but the crew would tend to survive absent a direct hit. An exception was a Tiger destroyed, with crew, by a B-17 attack which was straddled with bombs and flipped upside down, killing the crew via blunt trauma injuries
One has to wonder how German tanks were destroyed prior to the P-47/HVAR.
Was it a rocket that killed that German tank at the conclusion of "Saving Private Ryan"?
Bomb
No, it was Capt Millers 1911. If the tank was close enough that Miller is shooting a .45 at it. Any hit with a bomb would likely kill Miller outright.
@@briancisco1176 it's not clear what destroyed the tank. The film obviously makes it clear the P-51 did, but the P-51s aren't carrying any rockets and you don't see any .50 strafing (not that a .50 could do that damage anyway).
It's probably *supposed* to have been a rocket, and they just couldn't get any rocket equipped P-51s to film with (which would make sense, since rockets weren't really their gig).
Napalm is also effective but it was not used a lot, if at all, in Europe.
What about the Army L-4 Cub spotter planes (known as Grasshoppers) who found the tanks for the P-47s and USA artilliary? I know of one famous Cub pilot who even mounted rockets to the wings and destroyed some tanks himself!
@@michaelgill7248 he claims to have destroyed some tanks.
It's somewhat questionable if he ever succeeded, especially at destroying "Tigers" as he claims to.
No one's found any German report about scout planes rocketing their tanks - which you would think would be an unusual development worth reporting, which German units were generally pretty good at (for example, they immediately reported back about British 40mm Hurricanes when they were first used).
Plus the general theme of pilots massively overclaiming tank kills and bazookas generally not being very effective at all when fired at long range or at an angle (as would be the case from a plane), it's unlikely he actually destroyed anything.
Those 50 cal machine guns not wrecking havoc with German armour. Canon much more effective and largely unavailable in US fighters.
Next do the Stuka w/twin 37mm in Rudel's hands.
I like your channel, but I do not agree to your accessments. Even the Germans having had dedicated antitank airplanes in Russia were disappointed in the results.
What was effective was cutting the supply lines such that the tanks had to be abandoned.
In one of your videos you claimed that fighter bombers destroyed 750 tanks in the battle of the bulge. This is incorrect and represent the problem of overclaiming.
Germay lost in total 520 tanks and aussault guns due to to all causes in this battle, including a huge number of abandoned and self destroyed vehicles due to fuel shortage.
BTW, the Brits also came to the conclusion that tank hunting with typhoons, even using rockets, was not successful.
You should verify US claims against German damage and loss reports . Overclaiming is a big issue
@chrhie Please share the URL of your WW2 aircraft RUclips channel.
Kills of anything by fighter bombers were happenstance. In fact I would argue that the tactic of ground strafing would result in high losses for the P47s. The only reason it was allowed to continue was that the USAAF had destroyed the Luftwaffe and tried to keep their pilots busy. The fact it led to the loss of young US airmen for little or no gain is unfortunately covered up or ignored.
I want to see videos of the rockets actually hitting a tank before I will believe it.
If they were knocking out tanks, I'm sure we would see plenty of gun camera film of it. All I saw were soft skin vehicles shot at. Destroy the supply trucks, you stop the tanks.
Rockets and bombs didn't have cameras.....
@@kenneth9874 The P-47 does.
@@walterschumann2476 gun cameras....
@@walterschumann2476 gun cameras....
@@kenneth9874 Go to " WWII 5.0 inch HVAR air-to-ground rocket, attacking with the broadside firepower of a Light Cruiser " to see footage of rockets in action.
Did "Bazooka Charlie" actually destroyed Germany tanks, or only disabled them? The guy in a L-4 Grasshopper armed with 6 Bazooka rocket launcher on the wing struts.
It's unlikely he destroyed anything. Bazookas really weren't effective at the range and angles an aircraft would be attacking from, and there's no known reports from the Germans regarding this new type of attack. Which is notable because the Germans were normally pretty hot on reporting things like that.
Rockets were not accurate enough to achieve a direct hit on the tanks and with no direct hit the tanks will not be destroyed.
This is certainly interesting but incredibly flawed, as other have stated and pointed out. If we were to believe 'claimed' kills by pilots, tank and anti-tank gunners, something like 3x the number of tanks needed to have been produced....
The two relevant studies are ORO-T-117 Survey of Tank Casualties in NW Europe, June 1944 to 1945, and The Work of No.2 Operational Research Section, NW Europe 1944 to 1945. The former states by study of casualties investigated on the ground, first hand, that only 7.5 % of German tank losses could be attributed to aircraft, both strategic and tactical.
The opinion of the 'German tank General' is also flawed on the same line: The Sherman is inferior in those manners compared to what?? There was no tank of 35 tons or less with as much equivalent frontal armour as the Sherman, and no tank that had as great operational range.
To claim that fighter-bombers and/or rockets were the *only* or *most* effective anti-tank weapon for the US or the Allies is incredibly disingenuous and not based on reality.
The proof of study and fact outweighs opinions on both matters.
Certainly though it can be said that the effect of both strategic and tactical air power on German supply dumps, columns and organisation in general, played a huge part in success in NW Europe, and the relative superiority in ground forces, including armour, too.
To claim that fighter-bombers and/or rockets were the *only* or *most* effective anti-tank weapon for the US or the Allies is incredibly disingenuous and not based on reality.To claim that fighter-bombers and/or rockets were the *only* or *most* effective anti-tank weapon for the US or the Allies is incredibly disingenuous and not based on reality.
I saw a P47 pilot being interviewed once and here is his favorite way to disable/destroy a German tank - especially the Tiger. They were such fuel hogs that they would often pull a fuel trailer behind them while in transit. If you could catch one on a downhill stretch then the move was to light up the fuel trailer with a burst and then the burning fuel would engulf the tank, causing the crew to jump and run. Now the tank is a sitting duck and he would bounce rounds underneath the tank. I would have been skeptical of his claims but he had gun camera footage that confirmed his story. Whatever works, I guess.
Dont expect tbis realistic data to apply to war thunder mobile with cheating game bots
They had cluster bombs but weren’t clued in on using them against tanks.
No dedicated ground attack 47 was developed. Such would have included turbocharger not useful at low levels removed to save weight, cost, etc. Cockpit and perhaps engine cowling and spinner armored. At least some 50 cals replaced with cannon. 47N style inner wings to increase fuel capacity and loiter time. Similar modifications would have made for a very effective GA P-38. Such fighterbombers would have been most useful in Korea.
Oh, and now we'll hear from Oberst Hans Ulrich Rudel. He has some things to say as well.
Aces are largely propaganda tools. Rudel especially so.
@@downunderrob Rudel is the very definition of reputation exceeding his exploits. He destroyed but a fraction of what he claims
@kirotheavenger60 It's well known the Nazis encouraged their pilots to excess. But even if you are correct, can you name another pilot who could come close?
Yeah the Commonwealth Typhoon and Tempest pilots, plus the Il-2/10 guys from Frontal Aviation, would like to challenge this assertion.
Even if they were more effective, they aren’t USAF aircraft and thus aren’t being compared here
Did you even watch the video, multiple times he mentions specifically that he is considering US weapons systems
He asserts that the P-47 is a top US tank destroying weapon. He does not mention the other nations weapons, though we can infer that rockets were the most effective.
I would argue the P47 was superior for attack, even though it was fortuitous that it was good for ground attack because it wasn't designed for that role.
The il-2 was shot down and droves and the p-47 had excellent survival statistics. The p-47 is much faster and can defend itself well in a dog fighting sense, certainly compared to the Il-2. The p47 head excellent range was durable, had a much less vulnerable engine even though the engine on the aisle 2 was armoured. Perhaps airport engines are less vulnerable to freezing and cold temperatures as well
Yes, guys, we get it. We saw it and we accept that it is the focus of the video.
However, we are all aware that the USAAF did not operate in a vacuum. They were not alone.
Comparisons are inevitable. Particularly considering the narrators assertion in the last moments of the video.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️🇺🇸
Err anti tank guns?????
8:45
@@randomnickify There is nothing at the mentioned timestamp regarding anti-tank guns
It explains Germans we're afraid to even move their asses because they could be straffed at any point. Anti tank guns did not have that effect :)
FIRSTIES ?
;-p
Ciao !
2:08 they didn't have data on the pz V panther? It's strange that it's not included.
They were all in the repair shop.
...And on a more serious note - they likely wanted to keep the time down by simplifing the example set. The discussion could easily grow to 30 to 45 minutes; ESPECIALLY with PzV as it was a relatively hurried tank that suffered from numerous design compromises. Like 45 tons heavy when mediums were 30 ton range- affecting mobility, speed, fuel consumtion, transportability. Nearly impregnable frontal armor (at the time) but weak from the sides and rear- makeing it one of the last heavy tanks to be endangered by anti-tank rifles. Design optimised for the eastern front, the T34 & KV1 killer- but soviets were the primary users of anti-rifles! Build issues of design, materiels & machine tool availability, slave labor assembly with sabotage occuring (saw video examples recently, restorations of engines & gearboxes, that would pass testing but fail early).
Which leads to the M2/3 .50cal machinegun: cartrige design being based on a WW1 german anti-tank rifle, so from the begining a dual purpose anti-armor/aircraft capable weapon, a role it performs to this day - just renamed as "anti-materiel gun systems". Check out the M2 wiki article, its much better than it was a few years ago... see, a long ramble showing how 10min could turn into an hour video!
No. P-47 vs ARMOUR.
holy moses rockets. where did that nickname come from?
05:47 surefire huh? I see what you did there…or rather, “they” did there…
Very interesting I had no idea. I would have thought the bombs would do more damage
accuracy is more effective than power , even with a pistol