Ju-87G Stuka

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by Furio

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.

Never said "require", just said allows. And how ever improbable it may be, not impossible.

Originally Posted by Furio

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.

In a state so focused to document everything correctly, even their own war crimes? And at least for missions flown, there would have been witnesses to every take-off and every landing. Not impossible to do, but I'd bet some witness would have come forward after the war and tried to debunk the myth then. The shotdowns should even today be verifyable by comparing documents.

Originally Posted by Furio

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.

You know i was deliberately overexaggerating, do you?

But let's just extend this a little further. It is just too much fun.
Ten thousand Rudels would not have been able to kill as many tanks each as Rudel did, even given no shortage on planes and fuel and so on.
Rudel was operating in a target rich environment - he usually should have found more targets than he was able to shoot at. But if there were more Rudels around it gets increasingly difficult to find targets to the point where more than one Rudel is hunting the last available enemy vehicle - and they need to find it first.
So 10000 Rudels may be able to largely kill any AFVs the Red Army could throw at the Germans - still the Wehrmacht needs to occupy Russia with lots of ground to cover and infantry, artillery, airforce still defending. Already overextended supply lines getting even more extended, making any partisan warfare more effective - impossible to occupy all of Russia in time. And after total occupation the war is not won, there are still enemies, one you just gave a big breathing space(Britain), and one who is still powering up, and by that time - maybe unknowingly - has degraded your ally Japan from a vital to a medium threat (Midway).
So i do think even with the help of ten thousand Rudels the Germans would not have been able to conquer Russia, Great Britain and North Africa in time to make it impossible for the US to get seriously involved in the ETO, which in the end should highly likely lead to defeat - even if it may prolong the war for a few years - in the end your leadership errors kill you -and attacking any and all powers around you except a few allies at the same time is even beyond dumb.

Originally Posted by Furio

30 times shot down. I know that Rudel was severely wounded and lost a leg, but just think a little at this number. Try to hit an airplane for 30 times with bullets and shells, always leaving the pilot alive. Pilots apart, for 30 times the plane receive fatal damage: one time the engine is stopped, another the fuel tank sets on fire or explode, control linkages are severed, wings or tail are shot away, and each time the pilot bail out or crashland successfully, and always comes out alive and is never captured.
There’s no need for statistical analysis here.

As I said he must have been one of the luckiest pilots in that war.