Do you really believe all that Nazi propaganda about Rudel, Hartmann, Rall etc?

H

You serious? The Luftwaffe maintained extensive records concerning confirmed kills and those stats have been validated by both US and UK military historians. Maybe you should read up on the subject before spewing your ignorance?

Issue here is the kills are confirmed by the Germans. its going to end up higher most likely than reality. And 2... I am guessing he was using one of those crazy cannon pods? I think in the vid he was talking more about US and Uk tactical air more than purpose built tank busters like you saw on the eastern front. Also the Russian step is much more open and way less cover than France.

If hits are made to a tank and it shows in the camera footage it may in fact look bad but everyone buttoned up might well be still breathing.


And i missed this years tank fest. Went to last years. Forgot about this years. ... =(

Yes. Rudel flew the JU-87G with the underwing 37mm pods.

Interesting video. Also learned about Jack Churchill, who is a certified British badass:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill

Whoa there tiger. Having a bad day?

To be entirely fair, if we go by the statistics of the USAAF and the RAF that have been subjected to scrutiny post war and compare the number of "confirmed" armour kills to kills actually proved in a statistically sound manner by unbiased parties, I'd not be surprised if Rudel didn't kill more than 10 or so medium tanks.

I'm not disputing that he was a great pilot, but that goes for hundreds of British and American pilots who between them had more "confirmed" tank kills than Germany could ever field on both fronts combined as well.

From late '44, the Luftwaffe confirmation system had broken down.

So from 519 to 10. You think the discrepancy is that huge?

Someone forgot to carry a 1 somewhere or something...

Kind of irrelevant and OT anyway. It was a good vid.

Germans are supposed to be good at math though.

I have also read/heard it was policy for the German propaganda machine to exaggerate kills for tank crews fighter pilots and Ground attack pilots in the later years of the Russian offensive.
As information about just how bad things were going started
To circulate amongst the German public.

Definitely. The norm was that when both USAAF and RAF CAS flights got hundreds of confirmed killed tanks, unbiased observers who actually examined the wrecks after the battle would only attribute less than 10 or so for every 100 "confirmed" at best. And that was despite going by the extremely generous guidelines of not only counting the ones they could prove were killed by planes, but also adding every single wreck that they couldn't attribute to anything else to the planes.

Add to this the fact that the Germans very rarely were able to examine the wrecks claimed by the Luftwaffe due to being claimed far behind enemy lines, or in territory that since had been overrun.

Ok, I've seen through the whole thing and he doesn't say that Air power was useless. At all.
He never even throw about number of Eastern front- he is really just focusing on the aftermath of Normandy landings and he confirms what I've read too- that planes not made specifically for the role of CAS weren't that good.

Yeah, Typhoons and Thunderbolts were not great AT KILLING TANKS- while they performed admirably against all the rest.

On the other hand he admits that the Il2 and the Hs 129 were fantastic at plinking tanks exactly because that was their only scope.

Go and look at the last ten minutes of that video. It's pretty clear, really.

The debate was really pointless... But were's the news? It's an internet forum.

If it quacks like a duck...

Apparently the Soviets did, as Hartmann was confronted by them while in captivity with having downed 352 Soviet planes.

The German aerial victory accounting system was very fastidious until almost the very end of the war, by which time it did not make much difference as the Germans were not scoring much by then.