Original topic’s thread has been largely stolen, with my contribution, so some apologize are needed. However, I’ve read many interesting posts, including those I disagree with, and I must thank everyone for sharing their thoughts, and ask for everyone’s patience, as I’m going for another round.
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Originally Posted by majorfailure
There were quite a lot of soldiers fighting in all WW2. So I would not say it defies the rules of probability. Say among all these million soldiers there were a few thousand as talented as Rudel, that could be right couldn't it?. And then just say that among ten thousand soldiers there was one that was as lucky not getting killed as he was -could be right? -Then just because you have that many soldiers fighting, you will have a reasonable probability to get one to a few Rudel.
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As I understand it, probability doesn’t work this way, but in the opposite direction. There’s not any law requiring Rudel as the final outcome. In other words, it’s not like a National Lottery where, as thin as the winning chances are, a number is ultimately drawn. A war can be – and most probably is – fought without any single soldier reaching such mythical results.
We are talking of people that risked their life with each sortie, and each time faced no small probability of being killed. Regardless of your magic evasive manoeuvres, how many times you can evade anti-aircraft fire and enemy fighters? If your plane is hit, how many times bullets and shells can pierce wings, fuel tanks and fuselage, leaving you alive? If your plane is shot down, how many times can you bail out or land in the field without crashing with fatal result, or without being captured?
2.500 missions and 30 times shot down are the numbers declared by Rudel. To put it simply, I consider them unbelievable, period. Logbooks and documents are falsifiable for propaganda purpose.
Quote:
Originally Posted by majorfailure
And Germany would have lost the war with ten thousand Rudels. Biting off more than you can chew is always a bad idea, and they tried to bite with the mouth still full.
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Here I disagree, and I think numbers disagree also. If we take for good Rudel’s victory tally, just 240 of Rudel-type men would have destroyed 124,560 tanks, more that the total built in Russia during the whole war. Now, let’s divide Rudel’s efficiency by a factor of ten, for a victory tally of 50 destroyed tanks each. Just 2.491 pilots would have been enough to obtain the same result. If we consider that Russian tanks faced also many other dangers, mainly German panzers, jagdpanzers and 88 mm. guns, a much lower kill number was needed to win the war. It’s just a guess, but 25,000 destroyed tanks could have been more than enough to change history. And to obtain that result just 500 pilots, each one with one tenth of Rudel’s victory tally, are needed.
Play a little with different numbers, if you like, but the picture doesn’t change that much and, Rudel apart, says something about anti-tank weapons efficiency.