Effectiveness of tactical air power

[SMK-at-work]

I'm not sure it's the done thing to post a link to someone else's forum, but http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ulti ... 011475;p=1 provides an interesting insight into just how effective tactical airpower was at the front line vs armour.....or how effective it wasn't!

[SMK-at-work]

Her's some articles about Airpower in Normandy - mostly poking holes in myths...

http://web.telia.com/~u18313395/normand ... power.html

http://www.aero-web.org/history/wwii/d-day/17.htm (a more optimistic view)

http://info.wlu.ca/~wwwmsds/Vogel.htm - an article from Canadian Military History

http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-WH2-2RAF-c10.html - New Zealand's official history online - no NZ units participated at Normandy but a lot of Kiwis weer serving in the RAF and RN.

Overall the bit I like the most is a quote in hte last article:

Widespread confusion and delay were caused to the enemy attempts at supply and reinforcement from farther afield.

[jon_j_rambo]

Interesting links. Either way, the planes were dropping bombs on something or somebody.

[xtiaan72]

I'm not sure it's the done thing to post a link to someone else's forum, but http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ulti ... 011475;p=1 provides an interesting insight into just how effective tactical airpower was at the front line vs armour.....or how effective it wasn't!

Very interesting threads. So what are you suggesting? How should these facts effect game play? Because if players invest in Air production and tech. And they achieve Air Superiority...They are going to expect and deserve a game play advantage.

[SMK-at-work]

The battlefront games are purely tactical - company-Bn's represented down to squad level. Hence they represent airpower by having a/c apepar over the battlefield firing weapons and dropping bombs - which is spectacularly mor eeffective than it was in "real life".

EAW is going to be at a much higher level and can therefore put airpower in it's appropriate role - behind-the-lines-interdiction mainly. It should decrease supply, make movement more difficult, lower morale a bit, etc., rather than actually kill lots of fighting troops.

Achieving air superiority will (should?) greatly reduce the abvility of the enemy to do this to you, and make it easier and cheaper for your own airforce to do it to them.

I like the approach taken by The Operational Art of War - using a/c in strikes against front line troops in direct support of the battle is very expensive - it quickly tires air units, and results in much higher unservicability rates. Interdiction OTOH does what I mentioned above - it makes movement harder and reduces supply, and the reduced supply has a direct effect on battlefield performance.

Of course in many cases an airfoce cannot effectively interdict because it lacks air superiority - the Red Airforce (VVS) was in this position until 1943 - it was limited to direct battlefield support because it lacked teh wherewithall to ensure air superiority required for successful interdiction - it could protect it's bombers over limited ranges attacking limted targets such as particular front line positions, but it lost an awful lot of a/c doing that.

Conversely the allied airforces over Normandy could range wherever they wanted with no threat of interception - so trucks and trains were their main prey.

[xtiaan72]

I agree with your ideas. I think it would be a sweet way to deal with airpower. And also make the player "Feel" like he is the Supreme Commander in his headquarters. Getting the games interface in synch with the scale is the key to making the player feel like he is "in it".

Nice one

[gaiuslaelius]

I agree with the last two posts. I've read that that air forces in world war two excelled primarily in battlefield interdiction strikes. This is not to say that they did not act effectively in direct support of ground forces. The ability to perform both roles should be available to the player.

[Redpossum]

Not to disagree with anyone here, but I feel moved to add a few rambling thoughts to this discussion.

First the obvious. Aircraft flying close air support missions over the tactical battlefield have two competing requirements -

1) They need to fly slow in order to spot the target and deliver ordnance upon it accurately.

2) They need to fly fast in order to minimise their exposure to anti-aircraft fire.

This basic conflict of needs has not changed in the last 60 years.

Now, early in the war, the Luftwaffe had close air support as its raison d'etre. It was a purely tactical airforce, designed from the ground up to support the Wehrmacht.

It flew planes designed from scratch for close air support, like the Ju-87. And it accomplished its primary mission very well.

(If I seem to be completely ignoring the issue of air superiority, it's because I am. What we're discussing here is the impact on the tactical battlefield, no? Things like the fact that you can't fly close support very well in the face of enemy air superiority I take as given.)

Now, late in the war, the allies flew close support with fighter aircraft, because there was dick-all else left for those fighters to do.

Fighters are not designed for close support. They fly too fast, have too high a stall speed, and just flat don't carry enough ordnance.

This is true of all fighters, and even fighter-bombers (which, like most compromises, don't work very well in the real world) to a greater or lesser degree. Yes, one can point to aircraft like the Mosquito FB-6 or P-38L that actually worked fairly well in the ground support role in comparison to other fighters, but that still doesn't mean they were as effective as an aircraft designed specifically for close support would have been.

Unfortunately, I cannot think of one single aircraft in use by the allies in 1944 that was designed from scratch for close support.

In the end, however, the fact remains that the allies won. And it's hard to argue with success.

My point is simply that the studies linked above largely concern allied efforts in the late war. And as such, they are not an entirely valid comment on the overall effectiveness of tactical air upon the battlefield.

[SMK-at-work]

Presumably you're only thinking of the Anglo-American side of the allies - the Il-2 was still in service on the Russian front in 1944!

Most fighter-bombers could carry more ordonnance in 1944 than dedicated ground support a/c could in 1939, so amount of firepower carried wasn't really a problem.

Also there were more fighter-bombers than there had been dedicated ground support a/c, so although their speed may have been a bit of an irritant, they more than made up for that in sheer numbers.

[Redpossum]

Presumably you're only thinking of the Anglo-American side of the allies - the Il-2 was still in service on the Russian front in 1944!

Yes, I ignore the russians completely. Their aircraft were of poor quality, they lacked radios, they lacked any sort of coherent air support doctrine, and thus they were not effective.

As a painful example, when we sent the russians the P-39 Airacobra, which was a dismal failure in US service, the russian pilots actually liked it for its stout construction, self-sealing gas tanks, and reflector sights. Of those three features, the last two were not found at all in contemporary russian aircraft.

Not for one instant would I question the courage, tenacity or patriotism of russian pilots. They had just as much balls as the pilots of any nation. But their equipment was of questionable quality, and the pilots themselves just were not well-trained, and therefore did not equal the skill levels of even the USAAC, let alone the RAF.

What basis do I have for saying this? The opinions of Luftwaffe pilots who flew on all fronts. Such pilots almost always rated the RAF best, the USAAC second (how far second depended on the individual Luftwaffe pilot's opinion), and the russians a distant third.

Most fighter-bombers could carry more ordonnance in 1944 than dedicated ground support a/c could in 1939, so amount of firepower carried wasn't really a problem.

Also there were more fighter-bombers than there had been dedicated ground support a/c, so although their speed may have been a bit of an irritant, they more than made up for that in sheer numbers.

Ordnance carried doesn't mean anything if you can't deliver it accurately upon the target.

And no, they clearly did not make up the difference with numbers, if you look at the articles linked above. What they all appear to be saying is that allied air support in the Normandy invasion and its immediate aftermath was, in the words of Will Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing".

[SMK-at-work]

Certainly Russian pilots tended to have much less trainingthan their western counterparts, but to say they had no radios, no doctine, etc is to repeat a myth.

there's a lot of information comming out about the VVS since 1990 that was simply not available a while ago, and it is clear that the soviets had many problems (production quality among them), but they were not idiots any more than westerners were. Russian tactics and doctrines were pre-war until about mid-1942 - ie about a eyar after the start of the war. Afterthat they reorganised into their "Air Army" structure and began to apply the harsh lessons of the first yeatr of the war - oddly enough a year is about as long as it took the RAF to adopt German tactical methods too (such as the "rotte" & "schwarm").

By 1943 every Soviet aircraft came from teh factory with a radio, and they had reflector sights from teh start of the war - but the Anglo/Allied ones were better.

The P-39 was effective in Soviet hands because they fought at an altitude where it was not disadvantaged - the Anglo-allies had tried to use it like a Spitfire - intercepting Germans up to 25,000 feet, where it was a piece of junk jsut like every other allied fighter using the Allison engine, including early Mustangs and P-40's. However when kept to low altitude it was a good machine - again just like those other American fighters.

The Soviet/German air war was fought almost exclusively below 15000 feet because it was almost entirely tactical.

Germans certainly did think they were effective - but effectiveness is not solely about killing tanks in the front lines.

Anglo-allied air support over Normandy was "much ado about nothing" because there was nothing to strike!! However when the Germans tried to move en-masse the effects could be devastating - such as at Falaise.

Certainly the average results for each sortie were pathetic, but that's no different from anywhere else in WW2 and indeed for most weapon systems of the era - most Sturmoviks failed to kill a single German tank, most U-boats sank few ships, most Tiger tanks didn't kill more than a handful of Shermans or T34's, etc.

Even Stuka's in 1939-40 usually didn't hit anything!

You should go re-read the articles I posted - they make points about how air support IS effective - and it is brutally effective agaisnt "soft" targets away from teh front lines - even if the aircraft are "only" russian!

[Redpossum]

But what I was discussing was close support, which is pretty much defined as what happens on the battlefield.

[SMK-at-work]

See my point earlier - close support was mostly inefficient in that it cost a lot of dead a/c, tired out aircrew quickly, and took a lot of ammunition to get kills.

It is a bad way to use WW2 era a/c. However in many cases it was the only way available - interdiction is hte best method since you attack "softer" rear area targets.

For good interdiction you need to have lots of aircraft stooging around looking for targets of opportunity. And to do this you need to have effective air superiority - otherwise enemy fighters have a "target rich environment" - even fighter bombers are vulnerable when carrying bombs or rockets.

In the case of the VVS they were able to escort strikes on known enemy targets, but couldn't guarantee air superiority over wide areas until 1943 - hence before then they are limited to close support.

IMO the anglo-americans did NOT practice close support in Normandy. They had air superiority and went for interdiction - trucks and trains were their targets, and they destroyed thousands of them, as against only a few handfuls of tanks.

[honvedseg]

The Allies didn't need to do a lot of close air support on D-Day, the Navy provided more than ample firepower on call. Allied aircraft had two main responsibilities at the time: preventing Axis aircraft from interfering with the landings, and preventing the movement of Axis manpower and equipment to the beachhead area. Since the first task was pretty much a given at that stage of the war, they were able to concentrate a lot of aircraft on the second part, targeting railways and road junctions in particular. German units were virtually immobilized during daylight hours by the threat of air attack; all movement either needed to be carried out after dark or in small groups that wouldn't draw attention from the air.

[SMK-at-work]

honvedseg - that's the whole point of my argument

However even so the popular image of Germans being unable to move by daylight is massively over-exagerated - they were able to do so with minimal losses most of the time, but they did have SOME losses, and occasionally they had a bit of a disaster.