Destroyed tanks counted as "air victories" in April, 1945 by German fighters in east

[Ruy Horta]

In Robert Kershaw's excellent War Without Garlands - Operation Barbarossa 1941/42 I've read an account of 20mm Flak knocking out several T-34s in a desperate defensive battle.

Not actually destroying the tanks but supposedly by completely demoralizing the tank crews because of the terrifying and unendurable sound inside the tanks.

Of course damaging tracks should be reasonable with 20mm AP ammunition.

[Boomerang]

It does seem quite reasonable that 20 mm fire could disable, as opposed to knock out a tank via a fortuitous hit to, for example, a track link.

IMHO another possibility to consider in this discussion is that a fighter could strafe and destroy a half-track, or similar weakly armoured tracked AFV, but claim a tank destroyed. Unfortunately this is moving towards speculation that cannot be tested with hard information, so it can't really go much further.

Regards

Boomerang

[marsyao]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

IMHO another possibility to consider in this discussion is that a fighter could strafe and destroy a half-track, or similar weakly armoured tracked AFV, but claim a tank destroyed. Unfortunately this is moving towards speculation that cannot be tested with hard information, so it can't really go much further.

Regards

Boomerang

That sure happened, and every "smoking" tank was a "knock-out" tank, and every "knock-out" tank is a "destroyed" tank, and one tank attacked by several aircrafts, could be "destroyed' several times, this kind of things occured to every airforce in the war time.

[Csaba B. Stenge]

Calling an AFV as 'totally destroyed' is a complex question, not just the aviators overclaimed in this way (the Soviet Il-2 units heavily overclaimed many times as well), but the ground troops too (many AFV remained repairable, even after a medium or heavy AT weapon hit) An AFV was really destroyed generally, if it is really burnt out (from the write off engine till the internal ammo explosion).

BTW the Soviet and German armoured troops suffered many times much more higher losses during retreats by mechanic failures (abandoned/destroyed AFV's by own troops) than by the enemy.