Ju-87G Stuka

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Furio

On the contrary: realism would require less effective weapons. I can’t find better words than those written by Pursuivant.

FWIW, veteran pilots learned that you needed to get really close and low in order to effectively engage ground targets, so it's not unrealistic for very brave/suicidal veteran pilots to pull out of their dives very low, or to conduct strafing runs at treetop height or below.

I don't have any good Soviet or German sources here, but as examples, Francis Gabreski (leading US Ace in the ETO) was captured after he damaged his plane's prop when it hit the edge of a railway embankment while making a strafing run, and that another US pilot making a low strafing run literally cut a German soldier's head off with his airplane's wing!

Of course, that makes it a pain to program the AI, since it means a whole bunch of collision avoidance programming that you can mostly ignore as long as AI aircraft don't fly below a couple hundred meters AGL.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by RPS69

On the other side, Stuka G weapons, were reasonably effective, the main problem with the aircraft itself, was it's low surviving capability once it was attacked by enemy fighters... as long as enemy fighters weren't as useless as the ones on Rudel's accounts.

It's not that Soviet fighters were useless, it's that Rudel was amazingly good. There's one incident where went up against an ace Soviet pilot (probably Lev Shestakov) while flying a Stuka and won.

Originally Posted by RPS69

I use it at 300m, and calculate firing time by dive angle, and height. When I reach near convergence distance, I fire a single shot, and take care to climb again. Is useless to try a second shot, because you will only score near misses on the sides of the tank. Thay are a damn small target.

This is exactly how you do it.

45-60* dive angle aiming at the tank's rear deck, while trying to keep your airspeed down. Time your shot for 300 m or closer, take your shot and then immediately pull out of your dive so that you just miss the ground.

Flaps and dive brakes up, full throttle, and then some sort of evasive action - like a climbing turn - while you extend range and regain altitude.

In the game, you can make repeated attacks. In real life, pilots who survived to become veteran pilots learned that it was "one and done" - unless you were absolutely sure that any flak in the area had been neutralized.

Originally Posted by RPS69

IL2 tanks won't change direction and make your aim somewhat more difficult. Same as ships, they don't engage on evasive maneuvers, so it is actually easier to score a shot, because tanks are trotting ducks on a row.

There's also that stupid, predicable "bump and turn" obstacle avoidance routine that all ground vehicles in IL2 use. If you take out the lead vehicle in a convoy, you know exactly how the rest of the convoy will react and you can use that to your advantage.

At least for convoys of soft vehicles or lightly armored vehicles, you take out the flak guns first. Then you take out the lead vehicle which will bring the rest of the convoy to a stop. For soft vehicles, you can then strafe down the column, working from front to back. For AFVs, pick them off one by one making side or rear attacks, but starting from the front of the convoy.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Furio

I didn’t talk of 90° dive. I talked about the bullet hitting target at 90°, regardless of plane position. At any other hitting angle, penetration is reduced, up to glancing and no penetration at all.

Is this correct? Obviously, it's correct in real life, but does IL2 actually model angle of impact when calculating armor penetration? I'm not sure that it does.

Originally Posted by Furio

A damaged and temporarily disabled tank can be an advantage during a battle, but cannot be considered a kill, if it isn't captured.

You're right, but IL2 doesn't model damaged ground vehicles. A ground vehicle is either dead or in perfect health. Certainly, you don't get credit for damaged vehicles.

In that way, I think that IL2 is unintentionally realistic, in that it sort of models the kill claims made by ground attack pilots. (The unofficial rule being that if you put gunfire into a vehicle it's a kill, even if a few hours at the maintenance unit will set things right.)

Originally Posted by Furio

Otherwise, the same tank could be killed countless times.

This was, and is, is a very common reason for pilots (and tankers) to make exaggerated kill claims.

Unlike in IL2, where the game helpfully shows you (and tells you, if you've got Padlock and HUD messages on) whether you've killed a vehicle or not, in real life it's sometimes quite hard to tell if an AFV is damaged to the point of destruction.

That means that different pilots (and tankers) might shoot up the same "dead" vehicle multiple times thinking that it was still a valid target.

Originally Posted by Furio

A kill means:
A) A completely destroyed tank.
B) A damaged, immobilized and captured tank.

The ordinance units would probably count a "kill" as "damaged beyond effective repair", which can mean all manner of things.

But, setting an AFV on fire is usually a good way to wreck it, since the heat of the fire ruins the armor as well as any internal equipment.

In combat, it's more useful to think of "mobility kills" (vehicle can't move), "gun kills" (weapons systems no longer functional), and "combat effectiveness" kills (crew wounded, killed, or otherwise no longer willing or able to fight, vital equipment destroyed, low on fuel, etc. to the point that the vehicle won't be taking any further part in the action that day.)

If IL2 paid more attention to ground vehicle ops, then it might be useful to model mobility and gun kills. Right now what it does is crudely models combat effectiveness kills.

Originally Posted by Furio

I would not take too seriously Rudel's tales. His victory tally is more than suspicious.

His claims were subject to the usual very strict Luftwaffe kill-claiming procedures - at least for air-to-air kills. Rudel might have been an unrepentant Nazi, and possibly a braggart, but he was undoubtedly one of the finest attack pilots ever.

I think that there's a lot of truth to his stories. Certainly, his story about sinking the Marat is valid, as is his sortie record (over 2,500 combat missions!). How many ground vehicles he actually destroyed is questionable, but it's probably a considerable number.

[KG26_Alpha]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1X21-pUQsw

[Furio]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

It's not that Soviet fighters were useless, it's that Rudel was amazingly good. There's one incident where went up against an ace Soviet pilot (probably Lev Shestakov) while flying a Stuka and won.

Amazing is not enough, “incredible” is more fitting word. Any Russian fighter had an enormous speed and manoeuvrability advantage over a Stuka, so big that no pilot’s ability on earth could balance it, if not by pure chance. If ever happened, this incident demonstrates just luck.

[Furio]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

His claims were subject to the usual very strict Luftwaffe kill-claiming procedures - at least for air-to-air kills. Rudel might have been an unrepentant Nazi, and possibly a braggart, but he was undoubtedly one of the finest attack pilots ever.

I think that there's a lot of truth to his stories. Certainly, his story about sinking the Marat is valid, as is his sortie record (over 2,500 combat missions!). How many ground vehicles he actually destroyed is questionable, but it's probably a considerable number.

The problem is not that Rudel was an unrepentant Nazi, but that his feats were surely amplified by Nazi propaganda, and we don’t know how much. In the process, his ego was inflated to the point that, very humanly, he probably ended up believing his own tales. But why today should we take his words for granted? He surely was a fine pilot, but how he really compares to his comrades? Anyone knows – this is a serious question, not a rhetorical one – how many Luftwaffe pilots flew the same plane types as Rudel, mainly the Stuka?

[_1SMV_Gitano]

Originally Posted by Furio

[...]Anyone knows – this is a serious question, not a rhetorical one – how many Luftwaffe pilots flew the same plane types as Rudel, mainly the Stuka?

You can have and idea from www.ww2.dk website, Air Units --> Ground-attack units section, and checking what units had operational Ju-87D/G on strength. An example is 10. (Pz.)/SG77: http://www.ww2.dk/oob/bestand/schlacht/b10sg77.html

[RPS69]

Originally Posted by Furio

I didn’t talk of 90° dive. I talked about the bullet hitting target at 90°, regardless of plane position. At any other hitting angle, penetration is reduced, up to glancing and no penetration at all.

Sorry, I understood that you were implying a 90° dive. It wasn't clear.
Anyway 30mm are easily penned by 37mm BK, on any angle in between 45° and 90° at around 300m

A damaged and temporarily disabled tank can be an advantage during a battle, but cannot be considered a kill, if it isn't captured. Otherwise, the same tank could be killed countless times. A kill means:
A) A completely destroyed tank.
B) A damaged, immobilized and captured tank.

I must disagree. The pilot job is done, it can't depend on the ground troops performance to be asigned as a kill.
Tank is abandoned, crew is badly injured, or temporarily out of comission, the attack is a kill.

Many kills were scored by pilots that never realized that they were that successful. Not all kills are spectacular.

The lack of sinc made bursts impossible, but how many bursts can you fire with the 12 rounds per gun of a Ju87G?

None, that weapon doesn't fire any bursts at all. It must always be a precision shot.

I agree with you. Ju87G was very slow and vulnerable, but at least it has a gunner. The Hs129 was even slower, had no rear defence and had a built-in enemy in the form of unreliable engines.

I don't know the Gnome to be unreliable, it makes it underpowered, but they weren't unreliable.

I would not take too seriously Rudel's tales. His victory tally is more than suspicious.

Propaganda inflated most probably, as some other british bomber pilots.
Anyway, my comment was supposed to be an irony.

[RPS69]

Originally Posted by Furio

Amazing is not enough, “incredible” is more fitting word. Any Russian fighter had an enormous speed and manoeuvrability advantage over a Stuka, so big that no pilot’s ability on earth could balance it, if not by pure chance. If ever happened, this incident demonstrates just luck.

I don't share this. Low level flyers, with good maneuver capacity, were tough targets. Fast fighters, trained to hit and run, see those targets as a good opportunity to start a nice and long chat with the worms.

Many of this planes at slow speeds, got better maneuver capacity than the fighters themselves, and they were also better at low level handling.

A fighter pilot trained to dive and shoot as near as possible, will see a low level flying aircraft as a "not on the manual" procedure.
If they overshoot, they were most likely to end six feet under, without the need for a grave digger.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by RPS69

I don't share this. Low level flyers, with good maneuver capacity, were tough targets. Fast fighters, trained to hit and run, see those targets as a good opportunity to start a nice and long chat with the worms.

That's exactly what happened. Rudel was a master of his aircraft and was able to make sharp evasive maneuvers at close to ground level. His opponent either took a lucky shot from Rudel's rear gunner and/or stalled out with too little altitude to recover.

Rudel only knew that he'd won the fight when his rear gunner told him the Soviet plane had crashed, which tells you that he was utterly focused on defense.

By rights, Rudel should have been dead, but his opponent got greedy for the kill, got sucked into a low speed maneuver fight, and then screwed up (or got unlucky) doing it.

Smart tactics for the Soviet pilot would have been to get a few of his buddies together and do "Thatch weave" beam attacks by sections. Twisty, windy, slow speed evasive tricks only work well against one opponent. They don't work so well if you're bracketed by 2 or 4 fighters.