Unresponsive VVS.

[Juha]

Tony
On Il-2 vs Typhoon. Typhoon was vulnerable to rifle calibre fire but much less vulnerable to Bf 109s and Fw 190s. Both were vulnerable to 20mm AAA.

Il-2 was interesting solution to CAS problem but if you look the Soviet losses in men and material in 44-45 and compared those to losses of Western Allies in ETO in 44-45 you can see that it wasn’t a magic weapon. One could not fight a cheap war against an army like WM.

On Hillman. I cannot follow your logic. If British had known how difficult object it was they could have softened it by heavy naval fire, for ex from HMS Rodney. 1 Suffolks had had easy job to reduce Morris shortly before (white flag went up before 1 Suffolk even had begun their attack on it). and it dawned to them that Hillman would be a totally different game only after their point platoon and parts of the second were inside Hillman. A bit late if one was not totally callous to the life of his own troops to deploy heavy support fire, dive bombers, BB main armament fire etc at that point.

Juha