Great video Bis, I never would have thought tanks had that good a chance of survival in real life even against modern weapons.

There are plenty of soft targets in an armored division. The enemy can still strafe your trucks and horses. Supplies have to come from somewhere.

Military Aviation History when a video henschel 129?

Yeah, but we still god scared shitless whenever heard planes overhead.

Please let's not discuss politics here, but I have one caveat on your remark about NATO bombings in 1999. in Serbia. Yes, "only" 26 tanks have been destroyed, and only 3 of those were more modern m84s and the rest were venerable T55 tanks that my brigade (211th armored brigade) have already been using as range targets by then and are all melted down by now. Since 2010 t55s are not in use even for training purposes. BUT. We were at the time literally reduced to hiding our hardware in preparation for land invasion. Armored maneuvers were few and far between, and main objective have been preserving our forces for the time. If it was full fledge warfare, losses would most certainly be greater.

To be honest, when I still played War Thunder I flew a lot with the Stuka G-2. I loved flying that plane, but destroying tanks with it was an art of its own. I was insanely happy if during a dive I would hit a tank. Destroying a tank was a massive celebration. Somehow getting back to the airfield to restock without getting shot down? A miracle.

@@Fidokowy Too bad you didnt try the Hs 129 B-3 with the BK75. That thing rains death onto almost any tank, and ive occasionally managed 3 kills in a single sortie in ground RB.

He 112 with cannon I’ve got 4 maybe more kills. It’s amazing low tier

@@builder396 I usually get 4-6 kills when I take it out

I find that the yak 9t and su-6 are some of the best tank killers with guns, now obviously anything with a 1000kg bomb will do the job just fine.

cool, was your Vulcan position on an APC or something like that?

I hunted a lot at a young age, birds hunted during season and you lead on birds, when I got older I could easily lead a running hog or deer. 1/2 hour at the range the first time I could easily pick out the who grew up shooting and those who had not.

Haha vulcan goes BRRRRRRR

@@ronaldreed7698 animals dont shoot back.

​@@stellakintara I don't even get what Ronald Reed is trying to say. 1/2 hour at a shooting range and he could divide people into who has experience shooting and who doesn't? I've never shot a gun in my life but I could guess whos who too.

hahahahahahahahaehgbwrahawhah that was very funny, thank you for that anime cat girl person!!!!!!1!

Exactly, the most damage was done on supporting targets. Especially on trains that transported the tanks to the front.

Very much this. A tank with no spare parts, fuel, lubricants, ammo, coolant etc. is going to become combat ineffective rather quickly.

More specifically the German's got real good at destroying their own tanks when they broke down or ran out of fuel.

Scuttling heavy equipement you had to leave behind was (and still is, I'd imagine) SOP in all armies. Not that troopers under some emotional distress and in a great hurry to be *anywhere else* necessarily remember the standing orders ofc, as for one fairly famous example the bogged-down Tiger IIs the Soviets recovered intact after the Ogledow ambush attest...

That _non sequitur_ is a monument to *your* stupidity. Or inebriation, as the case may be; drink OR post mmmkay?

in that case you messed up the whole German tank division, then the Germans then pour resources on stuff like Me262 or V2 Rocket

Chris LeRoux, a South African serving with 602 Squadron flying Spitfire IXs, appears to be the most likely candidate, although there are other claimants. Ironically enough the incident happened outside a village called Sainte Foy de Montgomerie.

yeah that will do it

Rommel was strafed and, was severely injured. As a result, he could not help/support the bomb coup against Hitler on July 20, 1944.

Which they did, Not Rommel, But the Panzer command based at a Nomandy Château inside a forest, nazi's thought the British found them by radio traffic. It was pummeled. Never gathered Panzer command in a hugamug again. > Upending a Tank wouldn't destroy it, but useless to an army looking over their shoulder !

Look at Falaise. There was two miles of dead horses, burning trucks and smashed wagons.

BREAKING NEWS: armour increases vehicle survivability, more at 10

air attack may not be very effective against tanks, but it absolutely wreaks havoc on infantry - and tanks as i understand it arnt very effective without infantry

Very hard to mount an armored push when your fuel truck looks, like burnt swiss cheese.

Howard Blumenkopf 5 months ago Very hard to mount an armored push when your fuel truck looks, like burnt swiss cheese. And a Tiger in particular has to stay very close that truck.

Not necessarily, it's just that the nature of a video game makes killing tanks very easy.

Ask that Wargaming guy Chieftain about that.

Greg Bailey you should see some of the spitfire pilots in Squadron RB when it reaches that BR, you pretty much have to win that fight.

Also remember that u are most likely using dedicated tank removers like the Il2 and the Duck, not fighter bombers.

Try sim

Air support could strike well behind the lines and well beyond allied help, from friendly tanks or guns. This is why air superiority is so critical.

@@mwnciboo true, I see many people underestimate Air power but the most underrated branch is Navy.

Sounds like the (sometimes deadly)equivalent of a schoolyard slap fight.

From Nicolas Moran’s comments, tankers don’t need to hit attacking aircraft but just throw the pilot’s aim off or cause him to bug out early.

Indeed, engaging the aircraft is intended to distract and disconcert the pilot. If someone is trying to kill me with a four dimensional maths problem (aiming/targeting a weapon in three dimensions plus time, as I’m a moving target) I really want them distracted and disconcerted.

Thanks :)

Except, I think statistics show Artillery was (and is, eastern ukraine) actually by far numerically largest disabler of tanks (=operationally killed)

Try IL-2 with cassette bombs (those tiny little bastards used in hundreds or thousands), or try the Hs-129 with can-opener 75mm gun. You will be able to take out 2 or 3 tanks of whatever type per mission (with limited supplies of ammo of course, otherwise you just kill everything :D )

interesting point

Were the Germans shown propaganda newsreels of Typhoons attacking them? Just kidding. Or do you mean German newsreels showing Stukas etc. attacking their enemies. Could be.

Neil Wilson: The Luftwaffe didn’t have Typhoons. ;) And also, the Luftwaffe generally didn’t bomb or strafe German troops (although they did sometimes, if Goering was in a bad mood. ;) The Italians, however, bombed everyone, when they weren’t flying home after jettisoning their bombs at the first sight of a few fighter planes (or of a flock of birds). ;)

Air attacks were devastating though... they just weren't effective against tanks. Vs infantry and light skinned vehicles they were devastating however. Bombs and rockets don't need to hit directly or very close and lots of heavy machine gun fire and cannons would chew up just about anything (except a tank of course).

George Mihaita: Maybe give some reasoning to your claim rather than just "nope".

I didn't claimed that there were. I was talking in general, only mentioning typhoons and thunderbolts as the most iconic of the "jabos", who's popularity was only reinforced by games like war thunder. But they were first to strafe german columns in ardennes on the very first day of the battle. So?

It would definitely have been hard for the US Air Force to destroy tanks in WW2 since it didn't exist yet.

My favourite bit of air jockey BS came from P47 pilots that claimed they could take out Panzers by richeting their .50 cals off the tarmac into the tank's belly.

"two Jagdtiger commanders failed to attack an American armored column about 1.5 km (1 mile) away in daylight for fear of attracting an air attack, even though the Jagdtigers were well camouflaged Both vehicles broke down while hurriedly withdrawing through fear of an air attack that did not come, and one was then destroyed by the crew." (Otto Carius) If you can make jagdtigers shit their pants, by word of mouth, you're good

the main reason according to my dad in the raf in ww2 was that no evidence was required for a vehicle hit wheras a shot down plane had to be verified or no kill so claims were vastly exaggerated

Smigol Time! I think the bombs are better for reliability those 26mm pen 50 only work on some tanks

Smigol Time! Because at 3.0 most tanks have exceptionally thin side or roof armor, while theres also plenty of soft skin targets, like the Puma or flak 88.

only KV-1 cant get penned... every other tank could be easily taken out by those 10x 50cals

TLDR War Thunder's CAS mechanics (especially in air battles) are quite meh. (Though I do quite enjoy the A36. I take it out sometimes for low tier F84 memes, sprinting across the map at the beginning and dragging half the enemy team into diving to low alt. Gives my team time to climb... and there's not much in tier range that will catch it after she's built up some steam. Sometimes get that 2-3 people who insist on chasing me, so I lead them on a merry jaunt around the map while my team gets a free opportunity to outnumber the enemy)

I have read that Napalm was very effective against North Korean T-34/85 tanks

Not to mention that FB strafes against soft skinned targets *were* effective, and what carries the supplies required to keep a Panther in the field? Problem is hitting the logistics train is not what people want to hear about when they read about a war, its not interesting, tank busting is.... Despite the fact that the real killer is the effect of disrupting or even removing entirely the logistics support for the teeth arms. A tank without fuel is at best nothing more than a steel bunker position, at worse, it is a liability.

This video is talking about the interaction with tanks and aircraft. Not with support vehicles, light skinned or unarmored vehicles. How about staying on topic? Its obvious, that unarmored/light skinned vehicles such as trucks are going to get completely fucked, as they can be shot by .50cals, or hell, even 7.62's.

Maybe they took more notice of their NCO's claims of shoot hundred of diving allied planes, so didn't want to be near the fiery crash site : -D

No offense, but "not as effective as most people are thinking" tells us basically nothing. I'm not expecting footnotes on YT - but a brief description of what you're citing would help. The reason I'm very skeptical of the "airpower revisionism" is that it flies in the face of German and Soviet behavior. (And, US experience too if you examine the few campaigns - like PI 1941-42 - where the enemy had air superiority.) Check the "German War Files" - the great series profiling German weaponry based on the zillion miles of film taken by Goebbels' cameramen during the war. Weapons based in the West are covered with extra camo coming from leaves, branches etc etc. What were they worried about? You might check out the photo evidence of damage done by allied air power to German units fleeing the Falaise pocket. Examine why Rommel was so certain that German efforts in France must be directed toward an immediate defeat of the landings instead of an extended battle inland. (Just a clue - he argued Rundstedt could not imagine the crippling impact allied air power would have on German troop movements - he'd seen it in the desert. Hitler got the idea - that's why he scheduled the Ardennes attacks for days that would have cloudy weather.) Or you might enjoy checking out the mountain of allied gun camera film illustrating the devastation of German ground targets of every type. Indeed, by February 1945, the Reich had so few targets left that the USAAF was considering things like "Operation JEB Stuart" which would have directed US aircraft to attack every public building in Germany - including vital places like small town libraries. Fortunately JEB Stuart was rejected because the losses incurred by airmen would have been greatly in excess of damage inflicted. Oh. you might also try to explain why the USSR built more IL-2s than any single type of warplane in history (I think the BF109 was close) and keyed their entire air effort toward ground attack. Maybe just dumb rooskies. Or maybe they were making life hell for the Wehrmacht. Read Wehrmact memoirs - they argue the later.

In addition much of the German support columns were horse drawn. Horses do not respond well to 20mm canon fire.

The name is 'hs-129 Panzerjager by Martin Pegg '

I would be very much interested! Do you have Discord or Steam?

it is swirekster on steam

I want it too...

just ask me on steam

@GhostRider659 He must have been frightened out of his wits - as most people would be. Glad he made it through.

So am I, obviously^^ the pressure was really on them the time that happened, I believe he was 17 when he was drafted along with his classmates, they didn't even get to finish secondary school before being sent to war.

Lazarett is the german word for field hospital, if that's what you're looking for. The whole Bismarck thing is sort of a culmination of naval developments from several preceding decades, a new battleship sinking an old one and then being doomed by the next big thing. It's always interesting to see how those numbers and statistics break down to actual people and their stories, it's probably why history is studied as intensively as it is.

Thank you. I'm told German's not too bad, but I despair when I encounter children under 10 whose German is far better! Later, the POW and Repulse were sunk by pure air attack after the Bismarck, and the apogee was reached by kamikaze operations - essentially slow missiles. The film "Sink the Bismarck" overdid it on the Fuehrerbefehl aspect and probably distorted the situation. I mean, you're an Admiral on your flagship and you see another battleship that wants to sink you - what are you supposed to do - invite them for tea?

It isn't unheard of that people are blown out of their tanks and survive relatively unharmed if there's an explosion within. My guess from what you've told me would be that his tank was hit by artillery, which peppered his neck and shoulders with shrapnel and set something off within that blew him into the pig-pen. Did he ever learn what happened to his crew? Iirc, airburst shells were only used in an AA role by the Germans, but if that was the thing then his crew would likely have been unharmed, while an artillery hit would have left them in a bad way.

In the gulf war the A-10s were taking so much damage from low level attacks they were ordered to med to high altitude. Modern AAA can wreck the frogfoot and the A10, not to mention SAMs. Now many of those A10s managed to get home but the plane was more or less put out of operation.

Kirk: When you say A-10s hit by "low level" attack, sounds like your saying they were hit by planes. Do you mean ground fire? Just curious about the effectiveness of both A-10 and ground fire. Thanks

You should check out DCS. Flight sim, with a free low detail frogfoot, and a $40 super realistic A10

Air-headed Aviator In the first Gulf War A-10s accounted for 900 tanks, 2000 apcs/trucks, 1200 artillery pieces and 2 rotary winged aircraft. They traded that for 4 A10s shot down. The game changer was the AGM-65 and the CBU-87, as well as the GAU 8. The AGM-65 and the GAU 8 give the A10 the accuracy needed to target indivdual precision targets such as snipers, let alone AFVs and CBU-units allow a single aircraft to engage and to destroy platoon sized elements.

Kirk Gibbs Bullshit. The A10s flew nearly 9000 sorties during the 1st Gulf War losing 4 shot down and 2 damaged. The actions of the Iraqi military had no effect on the planning nor the execution of the mission.

Not very low, it was a dive bomber, not a fighter-bomber

Those tail drager's frighted everyone, they must have stamped the guarantee on the nose cone. "Catch me if you can"

Which have generally been kinda shit at their jobs. Most of the air-to-ground vehicle kills in in the middle eastern conflicts were made by F-16s. A-10s did very little damage to enemy armor and were mostly just used to strafe infantry positions. The fart gun sounds very impressive but the reality is that it's not going to do a great deal of damage to modern tanks and the missiles they carry can also be carried by other, faster, higher altitude planes which are more capable of avoiding AA. The Su-25 has a slightly better service record but I suspect that's just because it's used more by more people.

Was something that happened in April 1945. Allied soldiers spotted a few German panzers in a position and had no easy way of taking them out (hence the air strike). They called it in, but since they had nothing to indicate the German position (like smoke rounds etc.), they set up someone in a white shirt 200 paces from the Germans (obviously so that he isn't spotted by the Panzer crews). The aftermath I do not know but the attack seems to have been conducted.

point of this is that pilots in planes cant locate them? am i right?

Well you see my friend, Europe is a magical place where those of a lighter complexion seem to dominate in cultures, and well...

Wtf?

MavisLenya just a bit of humur sparked from saying “Spit fires and the white man”.

:)

In The Flesh? Does Bismarck like Pink FLoyd?

me: looks at claimed kills vs actual kills @ 1:44 min "Hans, we need to talk ..."

Hans : iam not giving back my knights cross with golden oak leaves,swords and diamonds anyway

So you believe in Rudel myth?

The tanks are only vulnerable if they are out in the open, parked and immobile and the enemy don't do anything to hide or defend it. It does not matter if the attacker is an A-10 or F-35.

@@linusa2996 Oh? What is your source of information?

Modern aircraft find it much easier to wreck armour. The trick is finding them, as ever.

well, by default, they would use missiles and bombs, after all, even if they can do damage, the 30mm cannon isn't that much effective against tanks, even parts of the T-62 are "imune" to the GAU-8

Marrvyns Willames a lot of vehicles below the level of main battle ranks are not armoured against much beyond large machine gun rounds, fewer still have that sort of protection on their upper surfaces. When the sheer volume and penetrative power of the GAU-8 firing its signature depleted uranium rounds is considered alongside the unique angle from which it can make its attacks it doesn’t surprise me that according to the USAF a 1 second burst would knock out a tank. That being said, that’s 1 second of on target fire, which is no mean feat. They would indeed almost certainly use missiles and other weaponry where possible and save the cannon for softer targets - but the capacity is there to do serious, perhaps fatal damage even to MBTs. As for the aforementioned missiles - the methods of detection and guidance mean that tanks find it much harder to evade aircraft these days. Ever more sophisticated thermal and radar imaging mean that previously safe positions now don’t conceal a vehicle - and infantry or vehicle based laser designation, communication of positions and increasingly data links mean that an aircraft has ways of spotting and killing things the boys in WW2 would have boggled at.

if war break out. I let you use tank. I will fly A-10. In WW 2 was Typhoon and P47. Your Stat was a joke. Who or what did kill the Nazi Greman Tank?

Ouch, i know what you're referring to, and its painful

Neither were any Abrams. And the Bradley killed more AFVs in the Gulf War than the Abrams and the Challenger. What point are you trying to make?

That is not true. There was 18 Abrams lost in the gulf war and 9 of them was permanent. 7 permanent was from friendly fire and 2 purposely destroyed to prevent capture after being damaged. There was no direct loss from enemy tank fire, but it is still a combat loss if your own side destroy it. If a tank is damage and cant continue to fight is is a loss even if it might be reparerad and return to combat later.

That's not how statistics work. If that were the case, every instance of a training accident where a plane crashed would be fair game for another nation to rack up to their "kill count." If a job is done by someone else the claim doesn't belong to others that did not accomplish the deed.

How so? Do you have an analytic study that proves the Bradley is a piece of junk? Or are you just taking pot-shots?

That's because SPR is a Hollywood movie. The Mustangs (P-51Ds) could mount rockets and bombs, but rarely did so in WW2. It was one of the things they did in Korea however.

Military Aviation History Thanks man, its always really really bothered me how it just instantly blows up a tank like it had a 75mm gun strapped to it!

In fairness, the P-51 airframe first entered service with the US Army Air Forces as a dive bomber, the A-36 Apache.

Allison powered P-51C were the base of the A-36. This did make it a dedicated dive bomber that could hold its own in air to air combat; a very rare bird.

P51 mustangs were told that any remaining ammunition on ground targets but a .50 cal will not do much to a tiger

xXE4GLEyEXx technically not your fault ;)

Mostly: A) You can't really confirm whatever it's done for. Plane might've immobilized it and appear dead, but in tanker's book it's only "damaged". Also even a direct hit from a rocket might not destroy everything, but stun the crew to make it look like dead tank. But mostly I think it's B) Situational awareness. You might mistake the tank AT on the ground knocked out for your target or you simply don't bother confirming it. Don't remember any Air Force instructing planes to specifically circle around confirming kills, so that adds quite a bit to the mix. Combat is hell and keeping reliable kill count isn't your first priority. Military History Visualized has a podcast on his For Adults channel (hehe), "Kill Claims vs Losses with Tank Archives". Researched info on the subject there.

A guess; As you swoop in with your aircraft and light up the enemy your ordinance explodes around the tanks, and tracers flies everywhere. You are positive that nothing can survive such a barrage (after all, this data wasn't available at the time + confirmation bias). You claim about as many kills as you targeted (say 3). 3 minutes later your wingman strafe the exact same 3 targets as he didn't notice that they were indeed your targets from before, again he delivers such a punishing that he is utterly certain that nothing could survive what he throwed at them, he also claims 3 kills. The next day a second squadron shows up and strafe the same targets in a different position producing similar results to the first day, claiming 5 kills across 4 pilots. A total of 11 kills have been claimed, but in reality the enemy only suffered minor damage to the targets and while all three targets got disrupted in their operations, none was knocked out.

Absurd or simply wrong kill claims are a thing that happened with everyone. Even in naval warfare there are incorrect kill claims. You have cases by captains of varying nations claiming, "Our torpedoes sank a Battleship" when it was really a Cruiser. You even had airstrikes slamming a Carrier for great damage, fires billowing and everything, the aircrews claim killing a Carrier... Yet that Carrier survived to fight later on, which was what happened to Yorktown prior to Midway and Enterprise was thought destroyed a few times.

theordinarytime: I think you've hit the biggest nail in the answer, the other being that you may rarely get your assumptions validated or not validated. Even if there are a handful of dead tanks left for your sides ground troops to look over, it's unlikely that you can identify that your specific plane killed that specific tank, etc..... In tiny engagements - much better possibility of getting reliable feedback.

See a lot of good reasons here and thought i´d put my own in that might explain the exagerations of the Soviet airforce. In Soviet Russia, are you going to tell your CO and the Commisar that you just wasted fuel, 10 rockets, 6 bombs and a lot of cannon shells without scoring a single kill?

Well, yeah. They were also dive bombers (the whole point of which was accuracy) and dedicated ground support platforms rather than fighters drafted into ground-attack duty. Apples and oranges.

well, he credited even more during the war. It was after the war when the number was set to cca 500 (even then, its still possible that some of them were destroyed by his mates in stukas who followed him)

Agraviadore: Well, don’t forget that the RAF, USAAF and Soviet Air Force didn’t use dive bombers like the Ju 87. Dive bombers were far more accurate than level bombers or fighter bombers. Also, 37mm tank buster cannons with armour piercing shells are far better able to penetrate a tank’s rear or top armour than regular 20mm cannons with high explosive shells, or 0.50 inch machine guns designed for shooting at thin-skinned aluminium aircraft. Also, a lot of Rudel’s tank kills were gained in 1941-42, against light tanks with thin armour, e.g. T-26’s and BT-7’s. Light tanks with only 10-15 mm of side and rear armour were far more likely to be penetrated by bomb splinters from a very near miss than a T-34 or Sherman would be.

Tim Smith im still sceptical. 500 is an outrageous number for even a group of stukas and those 37mm guns did not carry much ammunition. They were also gun pods and unlikely to have anywhere close to the accuracy of proper fixed guns. If you believe the stories, he once flew a mission with his leg in a cast and in that single flight he destroyed 13 tanks, in 1945. Sounds far fetched in the extreme.

Agraviadore: Not when you consider Rudel flew 2,530 ground attack sorties. Although 13 tank kills in one sortie is extremely improbable, 13 in one day (during 6 or 7 sorties, flying from an advanced landing ground near the front line to reduce flying time per sortie) is conceivably possible. Flying with a leg in a cast was possible. The British fighter pilot Douglas Bader flew with two prosthetic legs and gained 22 confirmed kills doing so.

I'd be interested in knowing if there was any follow-up after the war to see if his numbers were legitimate. I've read his book "Stuka Pilot" and more than anything else I think he was really lucky. And focused and disciplined. He was shot down so often and still managed to survive the war. I suspect it will always be a mystery, but for my money he is still the greatest combat pilot of all time.

They looked like moving bushes and remember that Rommel was badly injured by a jabo.

These are period numbers contrasting with the perception of what happened then. The viewpoint of what happened then in public perception is created more by cinema than the reality experienced on the ground. Even then the experience of those there is not infallible.

Yeah, but they got magnets in their heads

Four of them were sunk by USN aircraft.

@@rimshot2270 he's talking about the attacks BEFORE that one

@@jean-bastienjoly5962 I know. I was referring to Midway. Every Japanese carrier that directly took part in the Pearl Harbor attack was sunk by V-J Day. Revenge!

Rubbish. That gun is dead weight. Nowadays, rockets are extremely accurate, much more so than abck then.