How did CAS work in the Second World War?

>those were super-effective

And super-inefficient.

Yeah, well over 100% efficiency at times. As in, the reported number of AFV destroyed by them was well above the number of AFV the enemy had available.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Ulrich_Rudel#World_War_II

I think we can draw a distinction between "CAS" in the modern sense where aircraft directly target obstacles in the path of advancing ground forces, and what we might refer to as "interdiction". In WW2, precise fires on enemy ground forces in contact with friendly ground forces were not all that effective. However, sweeps of attack aircraft over the general battle zone and behind the lines attacking targets of opportunity, especially moving vehicles of any kind, were quite effective. We see this a lot in the later war with American and British fighter bomber forces. The Germans really did fear the "jabos" and they effectively prevented German vehicles from moving much during the day. This model seems to have been most effective in the zone behind the frontlines, making reinforcement and movement difficult. See: Falaise pocket, and the Normandy campaign in general.

if armed with bombs you can strike on target, with cannons you can do several strafing runs

And by 1943 those 37mm guns were less then stellar in performance against tanks.

A complete exception.

They had 12 shots max. That's it. You had to be incredibly accurate to make use of it. At the same time you've made a slow, unagile large target even slower.

Attached: P47Europe.gif (320x240, 2.56M)

youtu.be/hfX4SHEpBRk
Generally, if I remember my days as a MS Battle of Europe Combat Flight Sim pilot. You'd come in at 9km set a dive angle to -20 degrees when you're 5km from target and release at 3km.

2worldwar2.com/stuka.htm
>The Stuka had a dedicated autopilot system that automatically brought it to a dive when the pilot extracted the dive brakes, prevented damaging pilot stirring during the dive while not limiting the pilot's ability to aim, and then automatically pulled the aircraft out of the dive and back to level flight when the bomb was dropped.

They made it super easy and in coordination with Luftwaffe fire support ran constant sorties under radio direction like a miniature Vietnam air campaign.

The British used CAS semi-efficiently.

When squadrons operated in an area, an RAF officer, usually a pilot, was thrown into the infantry\armour officer level. Giving them a role in the command unit. And when CAS needed to be called in, they'd tell the RAF officer to do it.

As such, with experience personally, the RAF pilot on the ground conducted and told the pilots in the air what to do, at what angle, with all sorts of different variables

Attached: RAF Typhoon Middle-east.jpg (3898x2594, 811K)

and of course i'm totally off. it's level flight at 3km, target 2km away, dive at -80 degrees and release on 900m altitude. thats for an opposed diving run with a mach 1 top speed around 1.5km altitude. alot of fucking friction on such an old airframe they probably needed to be overhauled monthly during campaigns

>You'd come in at 9km set a dive angle to -20 degrees when you're 5km from target and release at 3km.
This sounds off, i doubt a Stuka would even make it to 9km.
Are you sure you haven't got metric and imperial mixed up?
Also the dive angle is way too shallow, should be more like 60-80 degrees.

Never mind that then.

>P-47 Strafing Tiger Tank.webm

saving private ryan was not a documentary user

The Sturmovik was the ultimate WW2 CAS. The only thing it was missing was a GAU-8.

what if the Airforce liaison on the ground got killed. Could an infantry office pickup the radio and keep the CAS going? or was it "welp that's it boys"

Ranged from "sensical" to "batshit insane"

Attached: Bazooka_Charlie.jpg (418x238, 14K)

post the sturmovik with the Ppsh's

Not a sturmovik, i think it was a Tu-2 or something similar.

Attached: tfw_having_to_reload_drums.jpg (600x797, 50K)

Not envying the poor bastards in maintenance who were responsible to reloading. Not one bit.

I think it was the planes in AO lit everything up that was not defined as friendly. That included allied forces caught up with the enemy that did not have the marker smoke.

But Did It Work?

To what end? What could this possibly achieve that bombs couldn't do better?

Did it spend thousands of rounds in seconds?
Yes.
Did those thousands of rounds do anything useful on the ground that couldn't have been accomplished by normal strafing runs or dropping bomblets?
Not really.
The whole idea was dropped shortly after testing.

Bullets are cheap, but it turns out rifle caliber machinegun bullets are also cheap and a normal strafing run is a lot easier to aim properly, not to mention the much more effective ammunition used.

Not to mentioned the PPShs and ammo for them were better used by the infantry where they were always in short supply already.

Attached: 1512357948407.png (978x1527, 417K)

>had two co pilots drown after forced landing
>made it back from behind enemy lines
>got his leg amputated in February
>returned to flight duty in March
what a badass

>He was shot down or forced to land 30 times due to anti-aircraft artillery, was wounded five times and rescued six stranded aircrew from enemy held territory.[23]

/thread

The il2 could carry 280 shaped charge bombs that could defeat the top armor of heavy tanks.

You think that's bad?

Attached: nambu.jpg (500x498, 39K)

My grandfather did this as a P-47 pilot during the battle of the bulge, 1944. He radioed in attack runs on German armor when the weather was clear enough for sorties.

>nambu
What did he mean by this?

those are c96s, not "nambu"s

>And by 1943 those 37mm guns were less then stellar in performance against tanks.
>74 mm pen at 30 degrees at 500m
>vs the 45 mm side armor of a T-34, which is angled in favor of a plane diving on it
The guns had great performance, but the airframe was old and the ammunition capacity was sharefyl.

Sub caliber tungsten core ammunition was just about unobtanium on the front line though

>A complete exception.
maybe, but what an exception.

Wew lad.

>with a mach 1 top speed around 1.5km altitude
Fuck it just keeps getting better.
Stuka's airframe could not survive 1 mach for even fraction of a second. Accelerating beyond 700 km/h during a dive usually torn off their wings almost instantly. That's what the fucking air brakes are for.

It's a Pe-2.

Rudel's not an exception - he's an example. His memoirs are top-tier autofellatio in a written form.

>you can pen the armor of a T-34
>side armor though
>if you have tungsten ammo
>on a good strafe
>on a good day
>not hitting anything vital though due to angle of attack, just immobilizing the cheapest to make and repair tank in the universe for awhile
>not even scratching anything tougher like KVs or IS
Gun ground attackers were quite shit for tank-hunting, Ju-87G and Il-2 both. That's not what they were meant for tough. They were god-tier at hunting and destroying trucks and weak-armored vehicles - sonderkraftfahrzeugs, stugs, Sov and US open-topped tank-hunters, of which there were thousands more than the tanks in question.

I don't think you know what exception or autofellatio mean.

Attached: Combat_Wings_concept_04.jpg (1200x680, 280K)

> both wings shot off
alright, tovariscthc, we've got just 5.23 seconds of lift remaining

>side armor though
Bruh you're in a plane. Just fly so you can see the side. Or don't, the front is the same thickness.\
>the cheapest to make and repair tank in the universe
You heckin' what, bud? Christie is a bitch and a half to repair.

Very carefully

>Bruh you're in a plane. Just fly so you can see the side
Yeah. Those vehicles just stand there stationary while we're doing our aerobatics and going out for another strafe, instead of breaking order, hiding their sides and driving for the trees. Never mind a good battalion's worth of machine gun or even proper AA cannons gunning for you, or even enemy fighters possibly on approach right now - nah, that's all bullshit pal, you're in a PLANE!
>Or don't, the front is the same thickness.\
Actually no.
> Christie is a bitch and a half to repair.
Are you actually retarded or something?

RAF concluded at the end of the war that only 3% of RAF Pilot claimed kills from aerial strikes in fighter bombers were legit.

yea its also complete horseshit
he claimed he killed like 6 Tigers in his piper

Kek

There's CAS, battlefield interdiction and interdiction. CAS is ground controlled or otherwise in cooperation with ground forces, hence the 'close', battlefield interdiction is combat support without ground control and interdiction is shooting up ground targets outside combat. I am unaware of how each nation performed battlefield air control but IIRC battlefield interdiction stopped being a thing after WWII because it's so goddamn dangerous to friendly forces.

no way

Yes T-34 was huge shit to repair after driving to a mine. Panzer III and IV suspensions were way faster to repair and Sherman's even faster.
But why would you shoot at tracks when you can shoot the very thin top armor?
Too bad that they didn't bother to make anything with that 7.5cm and decent engines.

Attached: Hs_129B-3.jpg (413x241, 19K)

>IIRC battlefield interdiction stopped being a thing after WWII because it's so goddamn dangerous to friendly forces.

I see you're using the USAF doctrine.

What the USAF calls "battlefield interdiction" is what US army doctrine calls CCA, close combat attack.

It's highly preferred over USAF style CAS, which isn't actually support - it's slower, more bureaucratic, less available artillery. You could say CCA is good CAS, USAF CAS is bad CAS.

Source? Sounds like a good read

It's true that CAS is a reactive measure like artillery but positive blue force identification was a major issue until GPS instruments and such, US army only operates rotaries as far as I know so I assume the risk of blue on blue is reduced

Y'all want to know about stukas, this is it.
Interesting read, a bit dry in some places, but excellent book.
Was a kreigsmarine pilot flying float planes, gets moved to the stuka unit that was supposed to be on the german carrier, Graf Zeppelin.

Attached: 20180503_061232.jpg (4032x2268, 1.83M)

>CAS in WW2 was so inaccurate and weak that it worked more as a weapon against enemy morale, than something that had material benefits
CAS in WW2 was devastating and decided battles. It was effective against soft targets and hard targets alike. Some internet contrarians have sprung up stating otherwise, basing their arguments mostly on some randomass blogger and youtube videos, but that basically boils down to the argument that CAS overclaimed their kills therefore it was ineffective which is, yes, as retarded of an argument as it sounds.