Response to Glider and Juha.

[Six Nifty .50s]

Originally Posted by tcolvin

Rudel in his Ju-87G2 aimed his twin 37-mm guns at the engine covers when destroying 519 tanks and 150 StuGsBTW, you know Rudel's withering opinion of RPs as "Quatsch". He told some Typhoon aces of 2TAF that he had tested RPs and rejected them as too inaccurate compared with guns. He did his homework while 2TAF did not.

Other Luftwaffe flyers testified that Hans-Ulrich Rudel filed bogus claims for tanks destroyed when other Stuka pilots flew over the same battlefield and reported no vehicles were burning. I don't take stock in what Rudel imagined about himself or the world around him. His Nazi handlers were not keen on applying science to investigate, substantiate, or question the claims of national heroes.

Originally Posted by tcolvin

Airborne PAKs could easily penetrate the StuG III's 12-mm top plate and the 10-mm top plate of the Jagdpanzer IV. Rudel in his Ju-87G2 aimed his twin 37-mm guns at the engine covers when destroying 519 tanks and 150 StuGs.

You did not consider the physics of this problem very carefully.

The Stuka pilots usually made heavy cannon attacks in a shallow dive, so a 37mm round could bounce off horizontal armor plate that was 10-15mm thick. The pilots could try a much steeper dive angle, but a heavy and poorly maneuvering machine like the Ju-87G would need a lot more room to pull out at the bottom -- which means that the pilot must open fire from a much greater height and distance -- throwing off his aim and lessening the chance of getting good strikes on the target.

Geometry is another reason why we can find endless accounts of tank-fired 75mm and 76mm shots that failed to penetrate the thinner side armor of Panther and Tiger tanks. It doesn't matter how big your gun is, you need a good angle of attack when shooting at a hard surface. I don't know why some of you think that a 37mm peashooter will do better.

Originally Posted by tcolvin

Of course aircraft vulnerable to FLAK were used in the FLAK suppression role. How else could FLAK be suppressed in WWII, or in Vietnam come to that?

Advancing the timeline to Vietnam will not help your case. No other air war provided us with more verification that sending aircraft straight into the teeth of flak was hideously expensive. No air force could afford to suppress so many flak guns, so the Americans reduced their ambitions to pinpointing radar sites that controlled some of the guns, missiles, and interceptors.

Better and less expensive solutions were studied and tested like the all-weather F-111 and its terrain-following radar. With or without smart bombs, it was the most cost-effective bomber in Southeast Asia. Despite the dangers of flying at supersonic speeds just 200 feet off the ground, F-111 airstrikes suffered few losses and did not require the support of escort fighters, AWACS, ECM aircraft, air-refueling tankers, or Wild Weasels. During its 1972 deployment, the 474th Tactical Fighter Wing flew over 4,000 combat sorties and lost six airplanes, for a loss rate of 0.15%, which is better than some outfits achieved in peacetime.

Originally Posted by tcolvin

The RAF did order a "large and expensive fleet (300 aircraft) of Vengeance bombers in 1940". The British taxpayer paid for them and took delivery in 1942/43. They would therefore have been available, manned by trained crews, bombed and fuelled up, and ready to blitz Hillman on D-Day

No taxpayer that I've ever met wants to spend money on obsolete weapons that can be deployed only on the speculation that battle conditions might become safer in the future.

British and American operational research teams studied, compared, and mapped the effectiveness of ALL air weapons kept in stock, not just rockets. If you showed us the results of real performance trials which tested these relevant airplanes, and which scored the mathematical difference in probability of hitting various targets with free-falling bombs, it would make this thread more interesting.

We both know that you do not have that kind of information, but you tried to form a hypothesis without it. I cannot think of a more blatant advertisement that you are not objective. Until you provide scientific proof that a lamentably outdated airplane could do the job better, you are spin-doctoring.