Opinions please (impact Allied fighter bombers on D-day)

[Tony Williams]

Originally Posted by Juha

I’m not too sure on that the 6” shells usually buried themselves deep before exploding. The main purpose of British naval 6” HE shell was that of shore bombardment, CPBC was the shell normally used in naval engagements. It would surprise me if the RN was incapable to design fuse-shell combination for shore bombardment which allowed the shell burst before it buried itself too deep because all armies I’m aware of succeeded doing that.

You may well be right, Juha, but even with a superquick fuze the much higher terminal velocity of a shell seems likely to ensure that it would be at least partially buried by the time the fragments started to fly.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

[Franek Grabowski]

Originally Posted by Josh Osborne

To say that jabos were ineffective to the overall war effort because they cannot destroy tanks is a ridiculous statement. Was the M-1 rifle a useless weapon because it could not destroy tanks? If you can damage or delay the train that carries the tank, then the tank gets to the battle too late. If there is no gas or ammo for the tank, it is a useless pile of metal.

Discuss with the man.
http://web.telia.com/~u18313395/norm.../airpower.html

[Josh Osborne]

Originally Posted by Franek Grabowski

Discuss with the man.
http://web.telia.com/~u18313395/norm.../airpower.html

Franek, I have seen this little article floating around is message boards. It uses a lot of selective sourcing and questionable logic. It more of a high school level history paper than a serious source, why do you think it is relevant to this discussion? Can you point to a real published work with original research that makes the point that air power in general and jabos in particular were useless in WWII? Give me break.

[Juha]

Hello
Malladyne, have you any firsthand knowledge on explosives? Nearest equivalent to 6” naval shell on which I have experience is SC50, 110lb HE bomb, and nearest equivalent to 60lb rocket warhead is 22lb AT mine, 21lb TNT and 1lb glass fibre casing. The effects of explosion of those to nearby trees were different, believe me.
That rocket firing a/c is more economical, that’s entire true, but I think that Marines, Royal or not, still value high naval gunfire support.

On Wittmann, if IIRC there was only one Firefly which knocked out Wittmann’s and the other 2 Tigers. There were also a couple ordinary Shermans which also fired on those Tigers to distract them. The Firefly was in a position from where it could get flank shots to those Tigers.

Juha

[Tony Williams]

Originally Posted by malladyne

It is fatuous to dismiss the claim that the Typhoon's rockets were significantly less effective than the broadside of a cruiser ( a comparison frequently made ).

In terms of HE delivered, they were quite close. The 60 lb warhead of a 3 inch RP contained 14 lb of HE, which was more-or-less the same as a 6 inch HE shell. So a full load of eight RPs delivered much the same quantity of HE as one broadside from a typical 1930s RN 8-gun cruiser (of course, many RN 6 inch gun cruisers had 12 guns, and USN ones up to 15...).

However, it isn't as simple as that, of course. The much heavier naval shells would have produced a much greater quantity of high-velocity steel fragments when they detonated - but the downside is that they often didn't detonate until they had buried themselves in the ground, as naval shells were generally fuzed to detonate after they had penetrated a ship.

More generally, naval gunfire support is instantly available regardless of day, night or bad weather, and can keep up a relentless pounding - but only within gun range, and they rely on others to spot their targets for them. Each (planes and gunfire) has its place and can deliver effects which the other can't.

...rocket equipped aircraft be it Typhoon or Thunderbolt, Lightning or Mustang could roam at will over a battlefield and it is that very mobility that makes rocket equipped planes the superlative tank killers/pillbox smashers/bridge busters that they were.

RPs weren't superlative tank killers because they were too inaccurate. The average miss distance in 1944 was about 60 yards, with the hit probability of a single RP against a tank being around 5% in ideal training conditions and more like 0.5% (official British estimate) in combat. That meant they had to fire 200 RPs for every tank kill.

Also, somewhere else in this thread a claim is made that the Allied fighters were insufficiently gunned for the Normandy campaign !!!! Is not a snootfull of m.g.'s and cannon in the nose of a lightning not enough guns for you ? let alone the 4 20.MM quick firing cannon of the Tempest and Typhoon and Spitfire variants !!!

They were more than adequate against soft-skinned or lightly-armoured targets, as has been said, but were incapable of damaging tanks, except occasionally by chance. Large-calibre high-velocity cannon were needed for that, and neither the RAF nor the USAAF had planes in Europe equipped with these.

To sum up, the fighter-bombers were very effective in disrupting German operations due their ability to knock out the supply trains (on rail and road) on which the Panzer Divisions depended, and they also scared the daylights out of tank crews (especially inexperienced ones) but they didn't kill many tanks.

Tony Williams: Military gun and ammunition website and discussion forum

[Jukka Juutinen]

Perhaps the best indication of the effectiveness of air power would be the answer to question: what if all aircraft in the world stopped working on June 5, 1944 for the next 12 months? The effect of that would be basically negligible: not a single major battle would have its outcome changed. Just compare what would have happened if all the ships in ther world had ceased working...Perhaps air power fanatics don´t like it, but not a single war in history has been decided by the existence (=resulting in different outcome) of air power in general.

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Jukka Juutinen

Perhaps the best indication of the effectiveness of air power would be the answer to question: what if all aircraft in the world stopped working on June 5, 1944 for the next 12 months?

No aerial reconnaissance (the original reason why air forces were established) … which may have affected the outcome of a few land and naval battles.

No curtailment of German oil production until much later in the war … increasing the mobility of German land forces (and naval units perhaps)?

No wholesale dislocation of Germany's internal transportation system?

Hundreds of thousands of men and thousands of guns not needed in the Flak arm?

[mkenny]

Originally Posted by Nick Beale

Hundreds of thousands of men and thousands of guns not needed in the Flak arm?

And the other side of the coin, the effort put into building the heavies could be diverted to making the Allied Armies/Navies much more powerful.

The loss of the German and Allied air forces would cancel each other out

[Tony Williams]

Originally Posted by mkenny

And the other side of the coin, the effort put into building the heavies could be diverted to making the Allied Armies/Navies much more powerful.

Not if the planes stopped working in June 1944. You can't switch an aircraft plant into making ships; in fact to convert it to anything else, find the machine tools, retrain the workers and get it back into production would probably take a year.

Even switching from making one type of aircraft to another caused considerable delays in production.