Ironically the Army have in place a command and control system for fast response to the call - for the artillery.
No-one has thought to use a modified version for air support, and the exercises didn't show up the need as everything was pre-planned. It's not going to be until actual combat the lack is shown up glaringly.
Which is pretty much why an IL 2 type is useless for the British, and a dive bomber sub optimal ( it exists because of the weakness of the Soviet artillery arm and the areas involved. Its also not very effective. )
If the British can locate something ( see it, flash/sound range it, look at a map and identify where it is) they can engage it with artillery within 3-4 minutes. A Close Air Support aircraft has to better that to be worth the effort - better that includes the fact that a low level aircraft will be in the same airspace as artillery rounds and one or other has to go.
If you have a cab rank of aircraft standing off burning fuel waiting to be intercepted you can contact which can engage faster than organic weapons great . But that means using VHF radios in ways you don't know they can be used yet. Also helps if they have a useful weapons load.
And before someone says Luftwaffe what they were doing was being told the direction of the attack is from A-B on front X-Y bomb everything else and using the german phone network to speak between Luftflotte and Army HQ with the occasional light aircraft landing next to a command vehicle. As soon as they move out of friendly ground comms - Russia this fall apart what they are not doing is directing a Stuka to bomb a tank on the fly.
As soon as you start talking about army cooperation you are talking about really 5 missions.
Air Superiority - without which your bombers will get intercepted and the slow now pathetically slow and vulnerable Battles slaughtered whenever they run into German Fighters - as the AdA aircraft were in 1940 ( and Luftwaffe for that matter)
Air denial - without which Luftwaffe bombers and recon aircraft have free reign and bomb your armoured spearheads with impunity - as the British did, well everywhere.
In its pomp in 1944/5 2 TAF and the 9th were flying 80% of their missions as counterair.
CAS - where you have deal with the fact that a squadron of light bombers with a few small bombs in the afternoon is less effective than a regiment off 25lb in 4 minutes. Now rocket firing or napalm dropping would be something else but these are much more powerful weapons.
Interdiction - which is further back. At this point hmm. Depends on the flak defences. The reason for dive bombing to ensure accuracy in the face of medium flak. A level bomber is just as accurate as a dive bomber provided it can identify the target and fly straight and level and constant speed for about 4-5 minutes. Unfortunately it takes 2-3 minutes for medium flak to get a solution on the attacker and at least scare the crew into dodging or releasing early - this is the German lesson from Spain. And of each attacker has to do its own bomb sight solution or you dropping on the lead bombardier so by definition not accurate. A dive bomber is changing the height solution too fast for medium AA to track and is aiming the plane and releasing at low level. Its problem is that light flak can hit it at least at the bottom of the dive - and sometimes MG fire. For that target this may not matter but over time the damage to dive bombers mean the squadrons rapidly become ineffective - which is why they get sent to places where there is No Flak at all or used by navies where the target is important.
A low level light bomber has the worst of all. Its always vulnerable to light AA if it exists, and is basically inaccurate its slow, not agile and toast if it runs into fighters as the AdA and the Red Air Force would demonstrate time and again.
If the target is defended by medium Flak the dive bomber is a good idea but that's strategic bridges, factories, towns, transport routes etc. If its defended by light flak the level bomber is as accurate as you need and invulnerable. If its maneuvering troops without Flak set up low level bombers fine, also ievel bombers and dive bombers the issue then is the bomb load - which is more for the level bomber usually.
If the enemy actually has fighters i.e. they know where to put them almost as if they are flying standing patrols over their armoured spearhead you need escorts for everything or you get shot down.
And recon which is fine if there are no fighters and part of recon is the debrief after any other mission. So to find the armoured spearhead the recon aircraft has to survive the defending fighters.
The RAF - who have more experience of this than anyone else BTW knows this and has tried it with the armoured ground attacker, and rejected the notion. Their view was level bomber fine, handy and there is not that much medium Flak to go around otherwise the best option is the fighter bomber, Which is why BTW the DAF and Co operation command in NI came up with basically the same solution on basically the same timetable independent of each other, implementation being dependent on available aircraft.
a) you need fighters to do everything else so as many as possible and there are vast economies of scale in big production runs
b) the sort of payload a Battle will deliver is about the same as fighter bomber will deliver but the fighter is moving 50% faster and is more agile so its in the engagement envelope for a lot less time and less likely to get hit at all. But probably wont do much damage.
c) a recon AOP aircraft which was the Lysander but thats really more than you need.
Also need to remember that the pre war the scenario is the war starts with massed attack on civilian targets with chemical weapons. Which is potentially decisive. There is no point in being able to dive bomb panzers if the Heinkels are bombing London with mustard gas.
