Impact of Allied fighter-bombers

[Franek Grabowski]

Well, this discussion is slightly turning into what if scheme. Frankly, we cannot make an alternative scheme, we can only make some estimates of effectiveness. This has been already done, and we can see the effects in the development process of post war weapon systems. It is obvious that Flak was extremelly effective, so it remained in use. Fighter bombers also proven their capabilities and they practically killed classic bombers. There were several attempts made to reduce the role of aviation just over the battlefield because of high losses inflicted by defences, the last idea being F-16 CAS I believe, but in the end ground attack aviation always returned in a glory. So, the one must assume Typhoons were both effective and suffered tremendous losses. The latter probably could have been reduced by a more sophisticated design, but there was neither time nor resources available.
Army is another matter, another set of people, another industry and politics. There were several problems with introducing both new designs and tactics with far more people not being able to understand what the modern warfare is.
That said, I would love to read comments of Zetterling on those documents!

[tcolvin]

Originally Posted by Franek Grabowski

Well, this discussion is slightly turning into what if scheme. Frankly, we cannot make an alternative scheme, we can only make some estimates of effectiveness. This has been already done, and we can see the effects in the development process of post war weapon systems. It is obvious that Flak was extremelly effective, so it remained in use. Fighter bombers also proven their capabilities and they practically killed classic bombers. There were several attempts made to reduce the role of aviation just over the battlefield because of high losses inflicted by defences, the last idea being F-16 CAS I believe, but in the end ground attack aviation always returned in a glory. So, the one must assume Typhoons were both effective and suffered tremendous losses. The latter probably could have been reduced by a more sophisticated design, but there was neither time nor resources available.
Army is another matter, another set of people, another industry and politics. There were several problems with introducing both new designs and tactics with far more people not being able to understand what the modern warfare is.
That said, I would love to read comments of Zetterling on those documents!

I don't understand the reference to Zetterling.

But I do understand, and try to avoid, what if schemes.
Let me put my thinking in a series of statements devoid of what ifs.
1. The key to military effectiveness is all-arms. Its exponents succeeded, and those that didn't failed; Monash in WWI, Blitzkrieg in 1939/40, Zhukov in 1944/45 were successful. The allies in WWII were unsuccessful. The performance of British and American armies in WWII suffered because of shortcomings in all-arms. You in Poland, by the way, paid the price of that deficiency in blood from 1944 to 1980.
2. All-arms is the combination of infantry with artillery, armour and air.
3. Monash won by combining excellent Commonwealth infantry, the much improved MkV tank, first-rate artillery, but so-so air support. This was the one shortcoming, but the rest was enough to defeat the German army.
4. The shortcoming in WWI air support is the key to understanding the problems of 2TAF's junky Typhoons.
5. The RFC/RAF's losses of unarmoured Camels and DH5s in CAS (close air support) devastated morale and was never forgotten, especially by the top brass in the RAF in the 190s and 30s who had experienced it.
6. The German Schlachtstaffeln, however, had half-decent CAS aircraft: Halberstadt CLII and CLIV, Hannover CLIII and Junkers J-1, which was an armoured aircraft in the tradition of the HS129, IL-2 and the USAF A10.
7. The German problem in 1918 was their lack of a tank. That was fatal. It was rectified by 1939 and added to the rest of their successful all-arms tactics which they maintained.
8. The British were in the act of rectifying their CAS weakness when the war ended. The armoured Sopwith Salamander was on test and would, I suppose, have matched the J-1 and provided the RAF with some satisfactory experience to temper the unalloyed horror that stuck.
9. The British never officially examined the reasons why they won WWI. Everyone had his own idea. No lessons were learned. All-arms fragmented away, with the RAF and the Tank Corps promoted by arseholes like Liddell-Hart arguing that speed was everything and the army that was used to travelling at 3mph would never 'get it' and would never modernise its thinking which was stuck in the mud of the Somme and Passchendael.
10. The RN got its aviation back in the late 30s. The Army never did.
11. The RAF was not interested in CAS. The Tank Corps was not interested in infantry support. The result was the ineffably bad unarmoured but fast Typhoon and the bad poorly armoured but ast tanks like the Crusader and Sherman.
12. The war in the west was won at great expense of blood and material by the simple combination of the allied infantry and the artillery's FOO (forward observation officer). The guns levelled the German defences which the infantry occupied, again and again. It was slow and costly because there were no tanks (with the exception of very few Churchill VII) and no aircraft that could survive against Rheinmetall-Borsig and Krupp. The tanks were held back ready to 'exploit' the gap which the infantry were supposed to make without benefit of well-armoured tanks and CAS. These were the tactics of the lunatic asylum.
13. Tedder and Coningham waged war on the army. They said the army was 'drugged with air '. They said the army had its own weapons - rifles, artillery and tanks - and should learn to stand on their own feet like men and stop whining for air support. BC had better things to do incinerating German cities. The tanks by the way agreed with the RAF. They had the same vision. Typhoons hopped over the front line and careered about in the rear areas shooting up the German army in exactly the same way the tanks had been taught to think by Liddell Hart of exploiting.
14. I could go on and on and on, but you have enough to understand the hypothesis. The absence of an army air force equipped with armoured dive bombers and CAS - updated Sopwith Salamanders resembling the Hs129 and A10 with the pilot and vitals protected behind rolled or cast armour - and the absence of enough Churchill MkVII infantry tanks to provide the attacking infantry with a large calibre aimed weapon, condemned the allied armed forces to ineffectiveness. Compare and contrast them with the Soviet armed forces. The Soviets studied WWI, and learned and implemented its lessons. They built excellent machine pistols, tanks, artillery, and CAS aircraft. And they copied the all-arms tactics that Monash had invented at Arras on July 4, 1918.

[Graham Boak]

• Agreed – but totally uncontroversial, I think?
• As above
• Ah, no. I think the blockade and the arrival of the Americans made the German defeat inevitable. See 6. (As an aside, so Monash was the only general, amongst all those on the Western Front, who saw things properly? I think it was more due to the entire staff finally learning the lessons of the preceding years, and being given the tools to put them into practice. And it was the excellent ‘Commonwealth’ infantry….I think your prejudices are showing.)
• Not agreed, but certainly arguable.
• Devastated morale? Arguable again, I think. I haven’t come across it in my readings about RAF thinking postwar, though there may well be some truth in it. How does the concept of this being never forgotten fit with your first sentence in 9? However, the DH 5 was never more than a very minor player, so why mention it?
• Half-decent and few. You appear to have a built-in assumption that the British air support was not effective, which doesn’t seem to be backed by the comments of the time. I don’t know that it has been demonstrated that the German air support, even though it had theoretically more capable aircraft, was actually much more effective.
• see 3 above. The German “all-arms tactics” were not that successful in mid-war. The late German successes were due to changes in their tactics, particularly the Strumtruppen prefiguring the blitzkrieg approach. This inspired the thinking of post-war theorists such as Liddell-Hart: see later.
• The Salamander was not an equivalent to the J-1. It was basically an armoured Snipe. Just as the armoured Typhoon of 1944 was just an armoured version of the 1942 fighter. You seem to have missed this point throughout – the Typhoon was not unarmoured in 2 TAF. However, as demonstrated by the German use (and losses) of armoured Fw.190, the benefit of heavily-armoured aircraft over the battlefield is debatable. The losses due to ground fire are reduced but the resulting aircraft are cumbersome and losses due to enemy fighters go up. Fine if you can rely on total air superiority – as the A-10 can. Without that, you might like to reconsider the value of the Russian armoured CAS aircraft. Over 30000 Il 2s were built, but no more than 5000 were maintained in service throughout the war because of a level of losses that would make Western commanders blanch. Some simple maths suggest that 5000 a/c in front-line service needs a similar number in training and support units, giving an average loss rate of 5000 a/c per year. Half of these will be non-combat, suggesting an AVERAGE combat loss over the whole war (early months of low service numbers and stationary winters included) of over 200 a/c a month. Yes, this does need adjusting to allow for true sortie numbers and utilisation. But so does any simple measure used to denigrate 2 TAF’s Typhoons. Incidentally, this morning I noted a reference to 350 Typhoons lost in the Normandy battles only – not properly statistically referenced, I’m afraid – but see Nick Beale’s comments above.
• Does all the thinking that was carried out after WW1 not count in your book? Just because they came up with different answers to yours does not mean that thinking did not occur. Your derision of Liddell Hart doesn’t seem to be backed by the general adoption of mechanisation, nor by the successes gained using his ideas of indirect approach by generals such as Guderian or Connor. Or, for that matter, Zhukov and Schwartzkopp.
• Much of the disastrous use of the FAA in the early stages of WW2, and its lack of decent types later, was due to the inability of the Admiralty to produce a decent aircraft specification, or use properly the tools it had. Cunningham excepted. As long as the RAF controlled the FAA it was equipped with types that compared well to land-based aircraft – often basically the same types. Look what happened afterwards. Thanks goodness the Army didn’t get control of the RAF – there’d have been less priority given to radar and the design of the defensive networks that saved us in 1940. One very relevant reference may be Futtrell’s The US Force in Korea, where discussion is presented about the US Marine Corps’ very high proportion of CAS, with much lower AVERAGE support provided to equivalent Army units. The USArmy was pressing for dedicated support units: the fallacy of which is well analysed.
• The RAF provided the Army between the wars with the type of support aircraft it was asked for. A lack of joined-up thinking in the British High Command, surely, but a dual failure, not one to be laid at the feet of the RAF alone. The RAF did experiment with dive-bombing in the early 1930s, but came to different conclusions as to its general desirability.
• The Sherman was designed to US requirements, and on its entry to service was an excellent tank, well-balanced in all features. It was retained too long without significant improvements, but I think the US Ordnance Board must carry the responsibility for that, with its own misconceptions. As for the other tanks: I’ve no desire to excessively defend the poor products of the British tank industry, but the main British tank in Normandy was the Cromwell, and this was equivalent to the most common German tank there, the Pz. Mk.IV. Not every German tank was a Tiger, despite impressions given (and clearly received). At the end of the Normandy battles, the US breakthrough on the right, and its sweeping advances across France, could only have been made by fast mechanised divisions and operational practice that Liddell-Hart, Guderian and Rommel would have recognised. It would have been less possible with the slow overweight under-gunned Churchill, no less vulnerable to those deadly German anti-tank guns.
• This really is a series of gross and insulting misrepresentations. It was Coningham and Tedder who worked with the desert Armies to establish all-arms operation, of exactly the kind you glowingly describe, and developed the tactics and co-operation that worked so well then and afterwards. It was Montgomery, with his meat-grinder approach to infantry, who separated the closeness of the staffs for the Normandy operations, leading to some friction during 1944. However, you will find the Army’s own officers criticising the Allied foot-soldier for relying too much on air support before advancing: Tedder was echoing these comments. Neither officer was involved with Bomber Command at all: both were immersed in all-arms co-operation. As for the derisive dismissal of interdiction missions: I refer you back to the references presented in this series of discussions.
• I understand your hypothesis, which at the core has some merit that few would contradict nowadays, but beyond this you are misunderstanding and distorting history to fit prejudices rather than presenting a reasoned case.

Before going overboard on Western Allies BAD Russians GOOD (purely in military terms, of course), it might be worth adding that wherever a post-war Western-trained Army has met a Russian-trained Army on a conventional battlefield, it is the Russian-trained Army that has lost. But then perhaps the post-war Russian equipment and doctrines were not the equal of their wartime counterparts?

[tcolvin]

Originally Posted by Graham Boak

• The Salamander was not an equivalent to the J-1. It was basically an armoured Snipe. Just as the armoured Typhoon of 1944 was just an armoured version of the 1942 fighter. You seem to have missed this point throughout – the Typhoon was not unarmoured in 2 TAF.

I haven't had time to absorb the rest of your interesting reply.
But one thing stands out. You're right. In my mind the Typhoon was completely unarmoured apart from the usual fighter's armour of a rear seat back, perhaps an armoured seat and a bullet-proof windscreen.
So please define the armour you say was fitted to the CAS Typhoon, and please explain how, if his plane was armoured, the following could happen to Sqn Ldr. Eric Roberts, CO of 609 Squadron on March 9, 1945; (extract from Frank Ziegler's book on 609 Squadron; my additions are in the brackets); "Because of the lowered cloud base I checked with Baldy (Gp Capt. Johnny Baldwin) as to whether to attack, and received the expected OK owing to the scarcity of Flak (big NB). Turning west, I spotted the barges and led the boys down. At the bottom of the dive I saw a machine-gun on the barge I was aiming at open up and almost immediately felt the engine hit. This is it! Panic! Or not so much panic as a feeling of futility at getting hacked down on such a stopgap show. The motor stopped when I had climbed to 1,500 ft, and I jettisoned the hood ......"
One 10cent 7.92mm bullet downed Robert's Typhoon, and sent him to the Stalag. And you say his Typhoon was armoured?
You must know Schwabedissen's book; 'The Russian Air Force in the eyes of German Commanders'. "General der Flakartillerie a.D Wolfgang Pickert adds that the IL-2 was impervious to light 20-mm armour-piercing or 37-mm shells. The same views are expressd by General der Infanterie von der Groben, who emphasisies the nose armour and remarks that direct hits with 20-mm shells frequently had no effect on the plane".
The IL-2 is what I call armoured.
Over.

[Graham Boak]

I refer you to Francis Mason's book on the Typhoon/Tempest, where at least one photograph is printed showing the armour fitted to late production Typhoons around the cockpit (not just pilot back armour) and, IIRC, the engine. Liquid cooled engines are vulnerable to "the golden BB" as our US friends put it, but the Sabre installation was less vulnerable than most because the close mounting of the radiator to the engine resulted in shorter piping.

The vulnerability to small arms is of course one reason for the use of the rocket, permitting operation at greater stand-off distances. You may like to study the recently published history of 351 (Yugoslav) Squadron, with its interesting comments on the much higher loss rates of its Spitfires than its sister squadron with rocket-firing Hurricanes.

The Il 2 was indeed in a different category of armour, but given the number of Il 2s shot down by Bf 109s and Fw 190s, it clearly was rather less invulnerable to 20mm cannon than General Pickert believed. Perhaps his flak was also less accurate? The similar IL.10 proved vulnerable to the 0.5in machine gun fire of US fighters in the Korean War, and was driven from the skies by mainly a mix of P-51s and F-82s. Not a great advertisement for the concept, and closer to the loss rates of the Battle in 1940.

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by tcolvin

[/list]One 10cent 7.92mm bullet downed Robert's Typhoon, and sent him to the Stalag. And you say his Typhoon was armoured?
... direct hits with 20-mm shells frequently had no effect on the plane".
The IL-2 is what I call armoured.

A bullet in the radiator or a coolant line can stop a liquid-cooled engine. You cannot fully armour a radiator because it must have a free flow of air over it to function and if it doesn't, you engine seizes anyway. This is as true of an Il-2 as it is of a Typhoon.

I wonder how Luftwaffe fighters, primarily armed with 2 cm cannon, managed to shoot so many Il-2s down?

In your retrospective advocacy of armoured (and thus relatively slow and non-agile) aircraft, I think you'd do well to apply an "all-resources" analyis: to factor in the cost of producing and crewing the escorts necessary to keep the skies clear enough for your armoured machines to reach their targets and operate at acceptable cost, either as close escort or sweeping ahead.

[Kutscha]

Originally Posted by tcolvin

You must know Schwabedissen's book; 'The Russian Air Force in the eyes of German Commanders'. "General der Flakartillerie a.D Wolfgang Pickert adds that the IL-2 was impervious to light 20-mm armour-piercing or 37-mm shells. The same views are expressd by General der Infanterie von der Groben, who emphasisies the nose armour and remarks that direct hits with 20-mm shells frequently had no effect on the plane".
The IL-2 is what I call armoured.
Over.

posted 11th March 2006 here by Dénes Bernád

statistics of Il-2 losses, according to Hans Seidl:

Year - Total Losses - To Enemy Action - % of Strength at Hand
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
1941* - 1100 - 600 - 73.3%
1942 - 2600 - 1800 - 34.2%
1943 - 7200 - 3900 - 45.0%
1944 - 8900 - 4100 - 46.6%
1945** - 3800 - 2000 - 27.3%
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total: 23600 12400 70.3%
* presumably from June 22 [D.B.]
** until May 10

Therefore, over 50% of losses [not counting the 'worn out' category] was due to enemy.

So what was the calibre of the weapons that shot down these Il-2s?

[Franek Grabowski]

Tony
I am not sure what do you mean by Polish blood resources. Could you clarify?
Concerning Russian/Soviet experiences, they were actually born in Poland in 1920 when dare attacks of Polish Brisfits decimated and panicked Budenny's cavalry. Proper conclusion of this highly manouverable war were drawn and ground attack aircraft secured their place in Soviet aviation. The question is if the way chosen was always perfect, but that is another matter.
Here is the point of widespread Il-2 myth. An armoured capsule was created and fitted with the most powerful engine available to get airborne. The problem was that in field conditions Il-2 could take some 500-600 kgs of bombs. Not very impressive. Due to weight and engine performance, mission profile was always quite low and the aircraft was exposed for a prolonged time to enemy groundfire. That said it is interesting note, those comments of that German guy. According to Soviet data some 4,500 aircraft were lost to Flak, 2,500 to fighters and 3,500 missing to unknown reasons. In 1944 alone those numbers were respectively 900, 1,900 and 600. Tremendous numbers considering rather limited presence of Luftwaffe and their allies. It is also a fact, Soviets returned to the concept of fighter-bomber, increasing their numbers, but the problem was in insufficient range of their designs.
That said, the concept of an armoured aircraft must be considered a wrong way, and it is confirmed by the concept of following ground attack aircraft, slightly armoured in weak points but with a strong structure, able to withstand a punch of enemy fire. Such aircraft is lighter and thus has better performances, the penalty being a higher damage rate. This is not that problem, however, as long as the pilot survives.

[Juha]

Tony
a) British even had a separate category for the slow and heavily armoured tank, Infantry tank. Have you never heard on Infantry Tank Mk II Matilda? First use in combat in May 40. Max armour thickness was 78mm when the German tanks at that time had max armour thickness of 30mm. Now Cruisers main problem was poor reliability and a gun which had optimized for anti-armour work but Cruisers armour protection was usually in same order than the German tanks they met, that means before Tiger and Panther and Panther's side armour was weak. But those late German tanks were much heavier and much more complicated than British and so needed much more materials and working hours to produce. It's true that between 1940 and late 44, so between A13 and Comet British Cruiser thanks were not as good as the best German tanks but majority of German tanks were not Tigers and Panthers during that time and with Tigers and Panthers one could not have made the dash through France and Belgium in August and Sept. 44, they were too unreliable for that.

b) there was not a big difference between number of claims made by Finnish 20mm and 40mm AAA troops on Il-2s in the summer 44. Finnish experience was that 20mm AAA fire when gun used both HE and AP rounds was effective against Il-2s. Il-2 was a hard nut but not invulnerable. Each troop also had a twin 7,62mm AA-mg and they even figured out a useful use for that against Il-2s.

Juha

[tcolvin]

Originally Posted by Juha

Tony
a) British even had a separate category for the slow and heavily armoured tank, Infantry tank. Have you never heard on Infantry Tank Mk II Matilda? First use in combat in May 40. Max armour thickness was 78mm when the German tanks at that time had max armour thickness of 30mm. Now Cruisers main problem was poor reliability and a gun which had optimized for anti-armour work but Cruisers armour protection was usually in same order than the German tanks they met, that means before Tiger and Panther and Panther's side armour was weak. But those late German tanks were much heavier and much more complicated than British and so needed much more materials and working hours to produce. It's true that between 1940 and late 44, so between A13 and Comet British Cruiser thanks were not as good as the best German tanks but majority of German tanks were not Tigers and Panthers during that time and with Tigers and Panthers one could not have made the dash through France and Belgium in August and Sept. 44, they were too unreliable for that.
Juha

Spot on. The Matilda must be high up in any analysis of what saved the BEF. The 37-mm Pak's shells bouncing off its 4-inch glacis panicked the Germans in the Arras counterattack and led to the halting of the Panzer divisions. It was also the key to destroying the Italian army in North Africa.

The problem was this. From D-Day onwards the Allies were attacking German defences equipped with the Dual Purpose 88-mm, as well as the 50-mm Pak. For the 50-mm Pak the army needed a tank with about 7-inches of frontal armour. The Churchill VII provided this, but almost all of them were removed from the Tank Brigades for turning into flamethrowing tanks, leaving them with Churchill IV with only six inches. For the 88-mm a tank was needed with 12-inches of vertical armour or less if sloped. This was never produced for two reasons. The armoured divisions were fixated on speed over armour (exactly the same discussion as the Typhoon versus the IL-2) and persuaded Montgomery to scrap the Churchill (which WSC refused to allow); and because the RAF took roughly half of all the resources in their abortive campaign to bomb German civilians to force Hitler to surrender there were never the resources to develop a decent infantry tank. Forget the armoured divisions - they were only interested in exploiting the mythical hole in the line to be punched by the infantry with their infantry tanks. (All numbers are from memory. Only the realationships are vouched for).