⚜ | The Great Tank Destruction Myth ft. The Chieftain 

Hope you all enjoyed it. I wanted to tackle this 'tank kills myth' for some time. Note that I will most likely make an 'add-on' to this video where I talk about the whole 'soft-targets' matter! *Correction*: At 03:49 the visual says 900m/1000yards when it should say, in parallel to the commentary, 450m/500yards.

I knew it, I didn't suck at War Thunder, I was just being historically accurate!

I can't believe that I sold my tank and bought a fighter-bomber. Bloody typical.......

WTF, war thunder lied to me?

as always, informative, well put together. Thanks for being awesome Bis!

This explains why the A-10 was built around a 30mm auto cannon with depleted Uranium bullets. Add in Maverick missiles and the lethality goes up. Use of the Mavericks infrared camera allowed night vision. Still pilots were told to attack Scud missiles and cannons to preserve allied lives. Tanks were secondary targets.

Planes knocked out more tanks by denying them access to supplies than by direct attacks.

Great video. Over the last few years, my opinion of air attack against tanks (especially during WW2) has drastically changed.

Just for kicks, what % of vehicles on any WWII battlefield were tanks? Wonder what the gents on an Opel Blitz felt when someone spotted an IL2? And as one WWII vet told me, bombs scare you but strafing kills you. Unless well covered indeed think of how many holes in the ground could be delivered by 8 X 50 caliber mgs fired by one fighter. (There are vivid YT videos done during 1945 showing what P47s were doing to the German countryside. Not even horse-drawn carts were safe.) I don't quite understand, however, why the Germans would have felt it necessary to travel at night if aircraft didn't hurt them. Fear, will, training and courage are always in continual tension during battle. But I'm not sure I buy the idea that during WWII the enemy was dying because of a fear of death. And downgrading the impact of a proper artillery barrage has me shaking my head too. You can have low % of hits, but if you're firing literally hundreds of thousands of rounds - or millions - the odds favor the house. I really can't think offhand of any country that believes it has had too much artillery in a major battle. (And as a footnote I'd guess that the Republican Guard wished we'd left our A-10s at home during either war.)

Steel Division does a pretty decent job with airforce as ground kills tend to be pretty uncommon, even for bigger bombers (exceptions include lucky direct hits, soft targets in very exposed positions, low health last-hits. Mostly, aircraft ground attacks are used to suppress units or to just stress them out (reducing accuracy and such).

A similar comparison of these inputs (artillery/air attack) against dug in positions, specifically in the Pacific where initial "softening" is popularly perceived to have been of little benefit.

Psychological warfare has always been a major weapon for Aircraft during warfare. During the Great War, the first war in which aircraft were used in, men would be terrified of the thought of this new contraption that would kill them from above. The Second World War was a high point for these aircraft,with some planes having purpose built features so that they would be feared if they ever were in the airspace. During the Vietnam War, the devastating effect of Napalm on the jungle shrubbery would case some NVA soldiers to run at the sight of U.S aircraft. Even in the Falklands War, one of the reasons why the British achieved Air Superiority is because the Argentine Air Force withdrew most of their air resources back to Argentina due to fear of Vulcan Bomber strikes.

We should use politicians in single white coats to point out the enemy....

Great video. I wonder how effective Hurricanes with 4 x 20mm cannons were against the Africa Corps ?

Dont you think a tanker might be a bit biased? What's the use of a tank with no ammunition or fuel. German general s put their failure in Normandy down to the effective staffing which they claim deprived them of supplies only being able to move at night.

Oh man...600 claimed kills and not even over 30 in reality...while Yugoslavia managed to down a ''stealth'' bomber with almost ww2 radar. GG WP.

I really think the truth is somewhere in the middle here. An american rifle company pinned down by a group of tanks calls in for air support, and well say 2/5 tanks were reported as "destroyed" well to a pilot/Infantryman, a tank is knocked out when it stops firing at the enemy. The tank may be perfectly usable or repairable, but its crew isn't. Let's say a P-47 drops a 500 pound bomb within a couple hundred feet of a tank column, the actual explosion itself may not "disable" a tank, however, the air displacement and shock-wave of that explosion turned it's crew into human jello. The tank itself is fine, anything organic inside it is not. Front lines change daily, damaged vehicles are quickly pulled back to be repaired and fitted with a new crew. I mean, even a strafing run from a P-47, that's eight 50 Cals in a line, if your top turret is open and the angle of attack is just right, you could wipe out an entire crew just with ricochets. Also, as far as the value of Ground Attack, the American P-47s literally stopped the German Army in it's tracks, infantry and tanks are useless when they have no food, fuel, horses, or trains to move them. And as we can verify, some of those fighter groups were told to hunt the countryside for convoys and use up all their ammo on any and all targets of opportunity. We also saw what happened when American lost the air superiority during the Bulge, and once the weather cleared. All in all, there's a reason the standard doctrine of land warfare is to establish air superiority first and foremost.

Soviet pilots: "We knocked out thousands of German tanks!" The Germans: "Damn I wish we had that many"

That tanker fella is exactly right, I used to be a Vulcan gunner in the 80's, we were trained to keep our RADAR shut off and use manual mode, aim well ahead of the attacking aircraft on it's bomb run so the burst goes in front of his nose (you're probably not going to hit it anyway), that will hopefully get him to release his weapons early and bug out in the interest of self preservation, as long as you keep him from taking out his target and don't get yourself killed in the process you've accomplished your mission as an air-defender.

The best way to mess up a German tank is to strafe Rommel in his staff car.

The real damage was against supporting infantry and softskin transport. Tanks won't go far when their fuel trucks are all on fire. If you look at photos of the destroyed German convoys racing to Falaise, it's all softskins and horses.

My grandfather flew Hurricanes in the desert in North Africa. He never really talked much about combat, just about his time in theatre and the things they did. However I do remember vividly one day I had a model of a tiger tank and I was showing it to him. He suddenly blurted out “I did not mind shooting at tanks that much, but I hated shooting at trucks because you could see everyone running and falling”

Maybe planes are not that great at killing tanks, but they are good at knocking out supporting infantry and soft skinned vehicles. Strafing a convoy of trucks and halftracks is more likely to yield damage as .50 cals and 20mm cannons can do damage to soft skinned vehicles. And near misses with bombs are much more effective against lightly armored vehicles.

My Dad was in the Irish Guards and always claimed the Typhoon was his saviour in Holland. In later life he became a Germanophile and tried his best to learn the language!

In my opinion, during WW2, the Germans were frightened of Allied air attacks for ONE main reason. Propaganda newsreels. Their OWN propaganda newsreels!!! Nearly all German soldiers would have seen propaganda newreels showing the Luftwaffe in action, particularly reels from the first half of the war, in which the effect of the Luftwaffe's attacks on enemy troops, and the terror engendered in the enemy, was hugely exaggerated by the narrator. So when faced with Allied air attacks later in the war, the first thing the German soldier thought of was what the Luftwaffe had done, or what they had been told the Luftwaffe had done, to the enemy - and because of that, they vastly overestimated the deadliness of air attacks, and were terrified! The Nazis' own propaganda came back and bit them in the ass!!!

Excellent video from the both of you!

Meanwhile taking out an A36 with gunpods is the best anti-tank weapon on 3.0....

About the psychological effect of straffing: if you ever experience an aircraft coming at you (or maybe better for you?) , just in training (doesn't matter if it is a helicopter or a plane) it is easier to understand the effects in real combat. In the trainingcase i had the honour to experience, it was a mixture of surprise and helplessness, because the pilots could have easily done some harm without us having any time to respond effectively. No one had seen them coming. We had just started to set up AAA guns in a new position when 4 Helis came over the treetops pointing at us and leaving again.

People commonly cite how the Germans always took weather and night in to consideration in Normandy. People use this and say that was because tanks got annihilated by planes but that's not the case. The trucks and half tracks were vulnerable and tanks are useless without the support elements. In addition, tanks can maneuver to defend against planes, but doing so expose themselves to anti-tank guns and infantry. The same people claim tanks are obsolete but fail to look in deeper.

Another great example of the mental effects of air attacks is the fact that in every movie a plane diving/strafing makes the sound of the infamous Ju-87's Jericho sirens.

of course, it certainly doesn't hurt that tanks have almost no luck hitting aircraft back

Well, that explains why in IL2 Sturmovik flight sim, I couldnt hit shit with a FB. Something felt off about the ease with which air claims to kill tanks. Tiny targets and all that jazz, yeah..hitting a tank, never mind a ton of them...

This is something I've always wondered about. In gun camera film from WWII, you can see the rockets fired, then watch how much they drop after the motor burns out. You can often see the rockets hit on either side of the road, rarely see them actually hit a tank or vehicle. Seems like it was extremely difficult to hit anything as small as a tank with these unguided weapons.

Although you talk about the 'control' factor I think you understate the lock-down effect that fighter bombers exerted operationally. Not being able to move except at night. Knowing that if you try to attack or relocate your defence you'll get strafed. All generals complained about how much enemy fighter bombers limited their options. Some were killed by them. Also agree with the commenters who mention the soft skin casualties. Smashed up repair vehicles, fuel and ammo trucks, command and control vehicles, means no useful tanks anyways.

Yes, I'm glad you've finally tackled this topic Bismarck. Very good material, nailing it hard to the point the true effectiveness of the mythologized typhoons or thunderbolts. I remember people obsessively clinging to that myth in one of your videos from a year or two back, where I had to literally pull out sources proving ineffectiveness of the air attacks onto german columns in ardennes (as well that US Air Force was operating as planned and that the famous fog & bad weather is another myth since Peiper's column was strafed resulting in de-tracking one of the king tigers at the very first day). A fun fact about ardenness is that it wasn't air power that stopped german advance. If it was something, the credit goes way more towards the amassed artillery corps that can be easily credited with more tank kills thanks to inconceivable amounts of fire those units were dishing out daily on very narrow stretches of the front (lets not forget that the area wasn't a plain that can be easily navigated). Same with normandy. The jugs didn't slaughtered german panzers, after all by the time of falaise there was a huge lot of them still in operation. But what they did was perfect interdiction in a country littered with dense hedgerows surrounding narrow roads. And since tanks move with support vehicles... Well, if I remember panzer Lehr took a long time to reach normandy thanks to air power. They didn't lost that many tanks, but they lost a crapton of vehicles putting a strain on the morale, supplies and service crews. Leading to abandonment of many due to lack of fuel or spare parts & time to fix them (I'm saying this more in general than about lehr's travel to normandy now). In short air force does not kill tanks. Not outright. But they surely defanged them and let to a quick decline of operational readiness of the units strafed by them for extended periods of time. Anyway, once more a quality upload Bis!

Have you investigated the effectiveness of the modern A-10 Warthog? Just curious since all the aircraft you mentioned were 1940s and 1950s.

What puzzles me is why combat memoirs written by German tankers all seem to claim the allied fighter-bombers in France were their true nemesis. They don't suggest this peril was a myth. In fact they went to great lengths, including hiding during daylight hours instead of rushing to the front, to avert aerial attack. I have read several of these memoirs and all present the fighter-bomber as their gravest threat, at least in the campaign in France. Were they mistaken? Were they dodging apparitions? Perhaps they were just cowardly but I somehow doubt it.

I bet more aircraft destroyed tanks, than tanks destroyed aircraft... Joke aside, tanks are only one component of a mobile division, surely it is the steel fist, but without its support elements, mobile infantry, mobile artillery, mobile supply train, it is a clutched fist, without an arm... This is were ground attack aircraft were brutal. This was much more a problem for the Wermacht, with limited mobile resources, especially by the time of Normandy... Rommel understood this with his limited supply resources in Africa, that were decimated by allied air attacks... It was hard enough to get his supplies into Africa and then to have so much of it destroyed by allied air power...

@Military Aviation History, i have great and BIG book in pdf about hs-129, Do you want it?

They majority of vehicles in a armoured division are soft skinned, which can be destroyed by machine guns. Without them, armour is ineffective.

Even as ineffective as it was, ground attack operations probe their worth, but with the onset of intensely powerful ground attack platforms like the Thunderbolt 2 and Soviet Frogfoot, just how much do those kill factors change?

come on. the pilots strafe rail road rolling stock, but cant hit a tank? typhoons can salvo rockets on train tracks and hit with perfection, but no way can hit a tank? planes can dive bomb a bridge and hit it, but not a tank? look at a Tiger's rear deck. 8 50 cals cant get a half dozen rounds bouncing about in the engine compartment? or light up fuel cans,lubricants, rations, tents or pierce any thin tank roofs? or a hatch that was not closed down? anyone set up some track and work it over with a m2 50 cal? the air to ground kills may be less than claimed, but not this bad. look at the german organization for tank repair and recovery. all open top and soft skinned vehicles.

Small brain: planes knocked out whole columns of enemy armour Medium brain: planes didn't knock out much enemy armour but did kill lots of trucks and trains. Large brain: planes destroyed some tanks and lots of vehicles including those used for the supply of tanks meaning that many tanks had to be abandoned due to lack of supplies and fuel. Enlightened brain: planes knocked out whole columns worth of enemy armour.

I am so grateful that you tackled this one, because its one of the most persistent myths I've encountered and it never seems to die. It can be kind of infuriating.

On the last bit, about the spits and the white man. can you elaborate please?

This video misses the entire point of tactica close air support sustained over a period of time. The purpose of airpower is to make the concentration and movement of armored or mechanized columns impossible or extremely difficult during daylight hours. General Eisenhower had his transportation plan to interrupt the French railway system and road networks in the months before the Normandy invasion. Medium bombers delivered accurate bombing of bridges, railway roundhouses marshelling yards and supply centers. Heavy bombers hit these same transportation targets concentrating on French railway roundhouses and rail repair facilities too. The bombing was relentless because the Germans were smart at quickly repairing railways thought bombed out during the Salerno operation. The Germans were still able to concentrate and launch a counterattack at Salerno, Italy. The whole concept of General Eisenhower's Transportation plan was to destroy the logistical ability of the German Wehrmacht to move Panzer divisions from Calais into Normandy via railway or roadway. The Normandy invasion after June 6, 1944 saw incessant RAF and American fighter bomber attacks on German operated railways, trains, armored columns on roads, bridges, road networks and railway supply centers. The Allied fighter bombers destroyed any German Wehrmacht supply column or motorized infantry column or armored division that dared move in daylight. Allied medium bombers hit railway centers, bridges, supply depots, roadway transport centers. The fighter bombers concentrated on trains and motorized supply columns. American pilots usually tried to destroy the fuel trailers pulled by German tanks. The life for a German truck driver or horse team driver become almost impossible in Normandy. The interdiction of supplies convoys for German Wehrmacht infantry divisions and armored divisions made the concentration for armored maneuver warfare almost impossible. The bridges destroyed took all night to repair causing motorized traffic to bunch up or have to rerouted at night. Any Germany convoy bunched up behind a bombed out bridge was promptly destroyed by Allied fighter bombers and medium bombers. We should also recall General Montgomery's Operation Goodwood with saturation bombing from heavy RAF and American 8th Air Force bombers around Caen. This saturation bombing was extremely heavy severely damaging and wearing down German Wehrmacht armored units. It wasn't just the number of tanks destroyed but also the casualties of logistical, transport and mechanical support units that were virtually annihilated in this bombing. German tanks without repairs, fuel, ammunition and technical support become nothing but useless scrap metal. The American General Omar Bradley used saturation bombing during Operation Cobra around St Lo. Both of these saturation bombings wore down the German Wehrmacht destroying their ability to conduct maneuver warfare or mount counterattacks. The bottom line here is any armored force needs air superiority in order to conduct maneuver warfare. Otherwise, defeat is the only possible outcome. So all countries with tanks and armored forces including mechanized infantry forces need strong air forces to support them. These lessons are as applicable today as in Normany in 1944. You are dead on the ground as a tanker or mechanized infantry soldier without a strong air force supporting you keeping the enemy air forces off of your supply lines.

5:40 Pink Floyd Is that you?

I've come back to this again a couple years later and something new occurs to me: Another factor affecting modern perceptions is likely that we have a higher level of expectation of training and doctrine employment. The media impact is obvious in exaggerating our perceptions by this point, but perhaps what is less obvious is that these days we except *excellence* from those using military hardware, as in getting the most performance possible from it, and this was both much more difficult and much less the case back then. For example, I am able to reliably score multiple direct hits per run with rockets or bombs against tanks shooting back at me, without taking hits most of the time while flying a P-47D in DCS: World. *However* I have only been able to do this after doing literally hundreds of sorties to practice my technique and to review how to improve with all the angles and footage available in 3rd person, and this is simply something that was not available or possible during the time. Now, true, I am not subject to the same control forces or stress of actual combat and that makes it much easier, but the physical ability of the aircraft to be flown in a way that scores reliable hits, even with realistic rocket or bomb dispersion, is there, but this level of practice and mastery would be unobtainable to real pilots in their situation

During the Blitzkrieg era. I wonder what the Stuka kill rate was.

The wreckage seen at La Baleine is a perfect example of the direct and indirect effect of TAC. A bridge was destroyed (by 500 lb bombs from Thunderbolts) and this meant 4 Panthers were abandoned by the crews when they could not cross the river. 2 in the middle of the road and near bomb craters which suggest the crews fled because of the attack. Over the bridge were the 2 RP destroyed tanks and a further 2 intact tanks abandoned by the crew.

The thing I find most interesting, and perhaps disturbing, is the way that in the past few years people who were not involved in the real life events of WWII have stepped up to rewrite the reasons/causes/individual action results from the conflict. Of course one can say that modern technology and research allows historic evidence to be reviewed with high tech forensic equipment and that "advances in science" enable "myths" to be debunked. Basically, since those who actually did the fighting, flew the planes, operated the tanks etc. are no longer alive to report first hand what actually happened we have these so called new experts telling us that what the people who were actually there said isn't a true reflection on what happened. Rather like armchair generals being smarter than the ones that fought the battles. Being fortunate enough to have known those in the greatest generation first hand perhaps gives me a certain level of skepticism when it comes to modern self appointed historians who promote alternative facts to those that history has already recorded first hand.

The more I watch RU-vid videos about tanks and aircraft in World War 2, the more I'm convinced that nobody actually died. I've learned that German tanks weren't actually any better than American ones, that Americans almost never faced Tigers, that U-boats had a negligible effect on the American and British war efforts in Europe, and that the Zero didn't actually outclass the Wildcat. Now I'm learning that close air support on both sides sucked too. I'm starting to understand why so many people are becoming Holocaust deniers.

Stukas could hit within 50 feet of a tank in 1940.

My grandfather was drafted during the closing years of the war, he was sent to fight the Western Allies after some time spent on the flak. He never talked much about it, but my grandmother told me that once, he was forced to hide in a chicken coop from fighter bombers.

How come the vastly exagerated kill claims?This is especialy glaring for the soviet air force's claims at Kursk, as those 3147 claimed kills would be almost all the 3253 tanks the germans aparently had in total (though I guess those numbers may vary a bit depending on your source). Possible explanations that come to my mind: - simple bragging- exagerating your successes out of fear or due to competition for supplys between squadrons (especialy in the soviet military)- self-deception: you see a dark cloud over a tank you fired on, you truly believe you see it burning, even if it's just dirt kicked up by your misses (seeing what you want to see)- true errors: smoke rising form a tank may simply be dry grass that caught fire, a vehicle you actualy hit may have sufferd only minor damage but did indeed emmit smoke for a while, mock-ups mistaken for real targets, destroyed lighter vehicles mistaken for tank kills, ect. edit: why does YT fuck up my simple formating?

Hmm, so it's never going to be quite the same replacing 1000 rockets fired by 100 planes where only one rocket hits... with a single stealth jet that fires one silent bomb that hits. The 999 rockets that missed and the 99 planes that didn't hit anything weren't "a waste" they terrified and suppressed the enemy, driving them to ultimately surrender. Would the Germans have been so inclined to surrender in WW2 if those "wasteful" fighter bombers were replaced by far more efficient high altitude jets dropping guided ordnance from an undetectable altitude? What would the troops ever be intimidated by? Because everywhere that a rocket if fired is going to lead to a negative reaction from the enemy as they try to avoid the fire. The Cold War seems to have bred a total focus on only killing the enemy, not how threats of lethal force can manipulate the enemy into doing what you want them to do.

*Hans-Ulrich Rudel Laughs in the Distance*

I would think that all this information probably formed the basis for the development of the A-10, which has a pretty good track record of knocking out Iraqi tanks in Operation Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. Times change

hmm so i wont feel bad anymore in IL2 for taking out mere 2-3 tanks (on good days) in an attack :P

True story. During WWII, post-war studies stated that only about 1 to 5% of total tank losses were due to air support. Most of tank losses were caused by AT guns. But it's also a fact, as you point out, that air superiority worked as a strong deterrent for German armored division on the western front, forcing them to move at night only and/or with bad weather. Nice video.

This makes me feel way better about my hit rates in DCS world

The psychological effect of rockets is depicted fictionally in one episode of the TV version of Sharpe where a rocket unit basically frightens a Naopleoinc column into retreat.

Just as a note to this, many years ago in my job I got to talk to a guy who was in the radio tank of his unit while pushing out from the D Day beaches. He explained how each unit had one Sherman Firefly to take out any Panthers. Unfortunately progress was slowing due to the undergrowth and hedges and they were getting pinned down by German units too. In his words "we would call up the RAF with the co ordinates of the enemy and then wait. For the first week the planes would appear in the distance and do one orbit to get their bearings and then dive to attack. He described them as Typhoons with rockets. He added by the second week that now on the initial circuit the German hatches would open and the crews scarper as they knew what was coming. In his words he said they never missed and was greatly thankful for his accurate the attacks were."

M.A.H. and Chieftain, combined arms at it's best.

Unfortunately this is EXACTLY why we can never have a completely accurate WWII simulator without literally altering the minds of the players into THINKING that they are ACTUALLY in WWII.

The relative inaccuracy of using modified fighters to take on tanks was why we got the A-10 _Thunderbolt_ and Su-25 dedicated ground attack planes by the 1980's.

In curious to see this same analysis applied to Hans-Ulrich Rudel who was credited with a supposed 519 tank kills, which sounds ridiculous and i suspect it was.

Nice vid as always. Great to debunk those kind of things.

Quick question; Did the P51 Mustang posess any anti-tank armaments? I watched the end of Saving Private Ryan and the P51 (at least I thought it was) instantly blew the Tiger up with what must have been some sort of strafe, clearly no bomb or rocket hit the tank cause the explosion wasn't large enough and there was no prior sound of a bomb or missile being dropped/ launched

What we need now is an analysis of the two Gulf Wars, investigating whether the Americans had a higher hit/kill probability when attacking allied tanks or iraqi ones.

Now, if we could just get Gaijin to watch and understand...

they don't say that about the A-10 :P

Don't forget Bazooka Charlie! The absolute mad-lad.

Loli and Coffee would disagree with the 5% bomb hit ratio... =)

If all the aircraft attack does is point out the exact positions of the enemy forces, then they have done their jobs. Everything else is a bonus.

Thank you for the lecture. However I think the summing up really should centre around stressing just the following 2 points: 1. Very few actual tanks were directly destroyed by aircraft attacks. BUT 2. All other non-tank vehicles, particularly tank support vehicles carrying men including mechanics, ammo and fuel etc, and supporting troops and horses close to the tanks could certainly suffer catastrophic losses by enduring such air attacks, or suffer pyschological effects rendering them unfit or degraded for any further attack.

In one of the greatest book about the Typhoon (Firebirds: Flying the Typhoon in Action by Charles Demoulin) this subject is very well explained. He say, lot of tanks (or other vehicles) hit by air attacks was recover by German units for cannibalism or repair. Hence the absence of exhibits for statistics. Another thing, the review of abandoned tanks often reveals rocket impacts along with damage from artillery shells or tank. A tank imobilized by an air attack are often "ended" by tanks or artillery ... Completely destroyed tank makes it almost impossible to accurately identify the nature of the explosion. And in this case, lot of destroyed tank was awarded for the ground forces. And the last argument : Some targets were attacked by several pilots, which could skew the balance sheet without fraudulent intent ... Another good information : In Invasion 44, General Speidel (an officer of Rommel staff) give a lot of informations about Normandy loss. He say about Falaise pocket ... 84 tank destroyed by Typhoon's, 35 was seriously hit, and 21 hit with minor damages.

You didn't mention the ferocious antitank war record of the L4 Grasshopper with bazookas tied to the wing struts.

what if the rockets had napalm? that would be diff. napalm on the engine grills is...

@Military Aviation History could you talk about the strategies and techniques used by fighter-bomber pilots to destroy ground assets?

I really wish “simulator” games like War Thunder understood this concept. And the players understood teamwork.

The Germans in Normandy couldn't move during the day and had heavy foliage camo. One German officer said the Allies having total air superiority was like playing chess were you had one move and your opponent had two.

Hi Military Aviation History - I fully agree with you, and as a pilot's perspective - ground support is probably the most dangerous mission. Firing "dumb rockets" or dropping "dumb bombs" against reinforced or moving hard targets is very difficult and dangerous and this is with computer-assisted aiming gun/bomb sight. You make a low-level pass and everybody is shooting at you with everything they got. Great video, air-ground support without smart weapons against protected or hard targets is difficult and very dangerous. Ciao, Veteran pilot.

What about big bombs with a near miss, such that the shockwave actually tipped over the tank? Is this even possible with a 250 kg bomb? Was this strategy ever intentionally employed, and if so, was it successful compared to the numbers for rockets, guns, etc.?

Thank you for posting this education and informative video!! I was guided to your channel by the channel "Military History Visualized." Considering the many aspects of the ground air war of World War II I learned from the above video; do I understand you correctly, in April 1945 a man, wearing a white shirt/vest was posted close to German lines to direction air attacks??

yup, Aircraft knocked out just ~2% of tanks. the highest cause of tank knock out was enemy AT gun fire (most consealed towed AT guns but tanks and tank destoyers aswell) at ~40-50% followed by mines at 20%. Infact the Planes that killed the most tanks weren't even things like the B-25, P-47, Typhoon or anything like that but the Il-2, which mainly used it's 37mm guns to kill tanks.

Are you ill? your voice seems a bit off :( , if you are get well soon

Bis - very good work and I was wondering when you were going to put some of this information in a video. In my previous job I had the pleasure of studying American, British and Canadian Operational Research reports about the effectiveness of Air-to-Ground weapons from WW 1 to the present. You "hit" all the major points and accurately! :)

So....you deliberatly ignored the Falaise gap battle?....i mean...500 tanks is a lot to lose....plus several thousand other veichals...the example where you show a test in a feild, of a Panther being fired on from the side, wasn't the technique used, the Germans were clogged bumper to bumper so the Typhoon's only had to strafe along the line of the road...the same happened in the Gulf war..."the highway of death" was heard in both battles .

My own artillery training in the Soviet Army was focused on dealing with disposing of infantry support, disrupting armour formations and leaving armour exposed to close infantry weapons. Reports we read in Afghanistan talked of insurgents using almost defunct and antiquated tanks to draw out helicopters that they could down with American supplied missiles. Many pilots would pause to aim properly making themselves more vulnerable. The motivation for the attacks was fear of helicopter attacks. The opinion of some of my seniors was that fear of helicopters forced the insurgent command to stage real attacks instead of the hit and run.

Ugh... Tactical bombers were basically used against enemy supply lines. (Roads bridge rail lines etc etc). Most German tanks were taken out not by weapons but because of shortages of ammo spare parts and most importantly fuel. In essence the tactical arm of air power was used to starve the front line of supplies. Though concentrated air tactical attacks were useful in OFFENSIVE operations this same tactic was wasteful when used for the sole reason of attrition.

How does one quantify the effectiveness on morale on both sides in regard to combat value more precisely than simply 'good/strong' or 'bad/weak'?

Like at Midway. The Japanese carriers weren't hit but kept in defensive circles where they couldn't launch or retrieve plans. They were kept out of the fight. Brilliant video.

OK; fair enough. But the devastating moral hit that air attacks inflict has great value.

My late father in law flew Hawker Typhoons with 2 ATAF over France, Belgium, and Holland. His log book didn't explicitly state any tank kills

Kinda surprised the modern example isn't the '91 dustup in Iraq, A-10s popped quite a few T-72s, and did destroy entire columns of vehicles (of course, the vast majority of Iraqi tanks were killed by Nicholas and his ilk -- Abrams tanks -- and the majority of American armour kills were oopsies by American tanks.)

Great video as usual. I would just have to correct numbers for the VJ in 1999. It's entire inventory of tanks was about 1000, and counting units deployed in Kosovo region, it's probably about 250-300 tanks tanks which were under operational air strikes, plus about similar number of IFVs and other armored vehicles. So maybe 600 assorted armored units, not just tanks. Actual number of VJ armor casualties in a war is somewhat debated, but your numbers of about 26 is probably right, again for armored units, not tanks alone, and a number of them were disabled and abandoned by AT mines KLA deployed and in ground combat. So this puts number of actual air strike casualties even lower, probably at around 15 for intensive air campaign lasting almost three months. This gives even worse effectiveness ratio then planes had in WWII despite all the new technology employed.

This video is excellent and gives the perfect background as to why the A-10 Warthog's gun and plane are EFFECTIVE tank killers. Thousands of depleted uranium rounds per minute? Be afraid for a REASON!

Test in the US-desert show little effect on main battle tanks with A-10’s bursting with 30 mm GAU-8, only light armoured logistic trucks are vulnerable for this gun. Using Hellfire, AGM’s and such, however is another story….

@ Military Aviation History Being ex RAF I will forgive you for forgetting the day that the RAF sent in their Typhoons plus a whole load of B25 Mitchells and nearly wiped out the entire 'Panzergruppe West'! What? No you can't be serious, I am but tongue in cheek it is their HQ. On the 9th June Rommel had visited their site. On the 9/10th June, after Bletchley Park had intercepted Panzergruppe West Radio Traffic found their location and decided to send in their tank busting aircraft the Hawker Typhoons with fighter cover being provided by Spits. 42 Typhoons from the 2nd Tactical Air Force set off hugging low over the French countryside and 18 German officers of Panzergruppe Westen HQ were killed in their Chateau in La Caine that surprisingly had little AA protection. The HQ was out of action for 18 days and had to relocate to Paris.