Quote:
Originally Posted by Juha
Hello tcolvin
"the Polish army in 1939 which lacked Flak" is not entirely correct, Polish army had a decent number of 40mm Bofors AA guns and some heavy AA guns.
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This is new. Can you tell me how this Polish Flak performed during the heavy LW attacks on September 16, 1939 against the Bzura counteroffensive?
Is it not true that the LW considered the Polish army had no Flak?
It is my understanding that the LW responded to the Wehrmacht's clamour for help against the Polish counterattacks that began on the Bzura on Sptember 9, by sending everything available to destroy the Polish army.
On September 16, 820 German aircraft dropped 328,000 kg of bombs on the hapless Poles. Sending everything to destroy Poles included fitting bomb racks to air superiority fighter aircraft for the first time ever, because a bomb was seen to be more destructive than bullets against troops that could not fire back and had no fighter defense. The German fighters had nothing to do so why not use them as make-shift bombers?
The fighter-bomber was thus born over the Bzura.
Later, during the Battle of Britain, Galland was told to fit a bomb rack to his Bf109 when bomber losses became unacceptable. Galland went apeshit. The British saw a bomb rack on a downed Bf109 and promptly followed this LW innovation that was controversial even on the German side. The British had never thought of a fighter-bomber before, but seized on it as a way of using up failed air superiority fighters like the Typhoon and at the same time heading off army demands for an army-air corps because the army had been abandoned by the RAF at Dunkirk.
The Russians started from a different and base which was the development at the end of WWI by Britain and Germany of armoured tactical ground-attack aircraft, which like the IL-2 were bombers which could survive over the battlefield and not fighter-bombers which could not survive - except against troops like the Poles who lacked Flak.