Why the USAAF gave up on the A-36 in favour of the P-47.

[Juha]

On Pe-2
All I can say that the Finnish liaison officer ar the HQ of Luftflotte 1 reported that Germans had warned that some special Pe-2 units were very good bridge busters, they attacked out of sun during a big raids and Germans concluded that the big raid was in fact a decoy with allowed the specialist Pe-2 unit to approach unnoticed and began its dives unhindered by AA.

On the other hand when the German AA-ship Niobe, ex-Dutch armoured deck cruiser Gelderland (commissioned 1900) was sunk by VVS KBF on 16 July 44 in Kotka harbour, Pe-2s were used more like a decoys, the real killers were 4 skip-bombing A-20G Havocks/Bostons. According to Soviets the 22 Pe-2s (á 2x250kg + 2x100kg) got 2 hits on Niobe, but as I wrote Niobe was sunk by A-20Gs which got two 1000kg hits.

Pure Pe-2 attack on 12 Jul 44 on Niobe by 30Pe-2s of 12th Guards BAP KBF didn’t achieve any hits.

On Ju-88
all I can say now that it has automatic dive-bombing sight and was fairly accurate, but I recall only some Finnish claims and I have not time to validate them. IIRC LW Ju 88s sunk at least some ships from Arctic convoys, some convoys suffered rather heavy losses to LW, especially PQ-18 which lost ten merchant ships to LW attacks, but I cannot recall how many were sunk by torpedo bombers and how many by Ju 88s.

On A-36
what I read yesterday, in all books and articles there was comment that A-36 was fairly vulnerable to German AA, but the loss rate was clearly sustainable. Also according to USAAF final evaluation even with dive-brakes deployed it accelerate too fast for a proper dive-bomber but its dive properties were very good for a fighter. At least some pilots seemed to have liked it and thought that they got good results in their dive bombing attacks but at least their claims against German evacuation shipping in the Strait of Messina seemed to have been optimistic when I compared them to German info. Also A-36 seemed to have suffered higher fatality rate per flying hour than any other a/c during training in Continental USA during early part of its career.

Juha

Addition: IIRC a big RN light cruiser Trinidad, which had earlier torpedoed herself (extreme cold had put one of its torpedos run a circle and hit her instead of a German DD) and hastily patched at Murmansk, was hit on home run by a 250/500kg bomb dropped by a Ju 88 and the fire the bomb had started got out of hand and the cruiser had to be scuttled.