[Kurfürst]

Originally Posted by glider1

I happen to think that any airforce would have difficulty knocking down the Wesel bridges for the reasons stated earlier mainly their construction.

And why is that? The problem with the 2nd TAF's fighter bombers were three-fold:

1, Complete lack of armor protection making their operations highly risky
2, Lack of accurate delivery of ordonance to target
3, Lack of the ability to carry suitable ordonance

None of these above problems exists in the case of dive bombing, armored Stukas dropping 1800 kg bombs, for example. FBs could fire up trucks and other soft targets on the roads, but there was a clear gap in ability in the West between shooting up things that couldn't shoot back, and and smashing big targets like marshalling yards and railroad junctions.

It was a very unlucky Typhoon pilot who was lost to an LMG, he was a difficult target and well proctected, the Vengence was vulnerable, big, low and slow.

The Typhoon, Spitfire, or for that matter the P-51, P-47, P-38, Bf 109, Fw 190A (note that the ground attack 190F series were properly armored) can be considered completely unprotected for even small calibre ground fire, let it be infantry SMGs, rifles or MGs.

All the protection afforded was limited to a relatively thin plate behind the pilot's back and head, and an armored glass in front of cocpit. The engine, fuel tank, radiators, the pilot - in short, all vital components - were completely vulnerable to ground fire of any caliber, as there was no armor protection from hits from below, or the sides, and in most of these components, behind. The British had a practice of fitting rather thin plates in front of cannon ammo bays,, but only from the front, and these were hardly good for anything else but fragments and non-AP rounds; their protective cover was also extremely limited.

I did not find a complete armor diagram for the Typhoon, but from British tactical trials of the Tempest, but it is said to be the same as the Tempest - which was again marginally armored, typical for a WW2 fighter:

http://www.hawkertempest.se/TacticalTrials.htm


Armour

Of a similar design and installation as on the Typhoon aircraft, with the exception that the head-piece is a trifle larger in size.
Thickness of headpiece - 9 mm.
Thickness of back pieces 6 mm.
All fuel tanks are self-sealing. Bullit-proof windscreen is of "Dry-cell" type. Front side of outer gun ammunition tanks have a piece of 1/8" armour plate.

The problem for both the Ju87 and the Vengeance is that slow speed makes you a very easy target.

If you mean from interception, it's true - but it's also true for bomb-laden Typhons or any other fighter bombers, they are easy targets for opposing fighters, being both slow and unmanouverable and if they drop their bombs to engage, its a mission kill.

Secondly, there's a reason why ground attack aircraft are slow. Effective, accurate shooting is helped if the weapons platform is stable, and well controllable during the firing pass. Low attacking speed is also a requirement as otherwise the pilot simply does not have sufficient time for aiming and also, to observe his enviroment. This means that it has to have great slow speed control characteristics and stability - which for example both the Stuka and the Stumovik had - and this generally requires generous wing area, which in turn will invariably reduce speed. This is the exactly at opposite requirement as with fighters - the Typhoon was meant to be an interceptor after all - which require high speed above all else. As a consequence, their low speed handling will suffer.

We have discussed in some detail the difference between the well armoured but easier to hit IL 2 and the less well armoured but harder to hit Typhoon and as you know my opinion is that they would balance out.

But, appearantly every air force in the world in convinced that speed does not make up for the lack of armor - a few hits will be always scored. The Soviets had their Sturmoviks, the Germans choose to up armor their Stukas, Hs 129s and Fw 190s for ground attack task, and the trend is still present today - see the massively armored A-10 and Su 25, not to mention armored attack helos.

The simple reason that using unarmored aircraft for lowly tasks like air support against ground units, is that there will be far too many enemy weapons capable of bringing them down. And as aircraft are expensive, both in material and training effort, whereas ground targets are generally cheap, the cost-benefit analysis will soon reveal that attacks against such targets is prohibitively expensive.