Worst Ground Attack Aircraft Of WW2

A contemporary of the Battle was the Curtiss A-18 Shrike. I think the fuselage looked neat, but the military didn't give in to aesthetic considerations. The wings were too thick, the engines were picked a bit early, and the undercarriage was weak. It lost out to the Douglas DB-7/A-20/Boston/Havoc with later engines, and thinner wings. How would it have done on Belgian bridges?

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Sigh...

The IL-2 had a record of being effective if not perfect.



You keep ignoring the facts. The Battle had no history of being effective.

The RAF realized that Battle was inadequate for it intended role. The pane and the doctrine for the Battle was built were both failures. As I noted, it was slower and worse armed than a Heinkel He-111.

Lots of weapons were conceived to fulfill one role but were able to be adopted to another. The B-52 was conceived as a high altitude penetrator but was able to be adopted as a low level penetrator when high altitude bombing became impossible. The McDonnell Phantom was able to fulfill numerous roles beyond its original role an all-weather fleet defense interceptor. The Chance-Vought Corsair was built as a carrier fighter but achieved success as a ground support aircraft.

The Battle, on the other hand, was unsuitable for its intended role and would have failed in any other combat role.


Actually, combat results showed the Il-2 to be more fearsome than effective, and its armour, while tough, was not invulnerable, sufficient weight of 20mm AA could bring it down, as could a handful of 37mm rounds, and the armour ate into the payload, meaning that it could carry less weight of bombs than the Battle, despite an engine almost 75% more powerful, which combined with its inaccuracy, meant that they only really began effective aircraft once the PTAB came along. Could they have survived the conditions the Battles faced? Possibly. Could they have achieved their aims (destroying the bridges)? Debatable at best. It would also have been worse in any other role, since again, despite having alomst 75% more power, it had the same top speed, about half the range, and a lower service ceiling.

So what was the Battle's intended role? Well as a light bomber, it should have been used at medium altitude against targets with limited defences, not at low altitude against heavily defended targets.
 
Actually, the Curtiss Y1A-18 predates the Battle by about two years , as it was the production version of the Cuertiss XA-14. The designation changed with updated engines. The XA-14 first flew July of 1935 about two years before the Fairey Battle in June 1937. The superb Douglas DB-7 first flew in October of 1938, only 16 months after the Battle flew.

Anyway, the A-18 probably would have done no worse than the Battle, but far worse than the superb Douglas DB-7/A-20 would done.

The more relevant point is that the US had the good sense to procure just 18 Curtiss A-18 Shrikes compared to the RAF buying 2,185 Fairey Battles. The USAAF was able to recognize that the Shrike was not worth building because it was expensive soon to be obsolete. On the other hand, the RAF had the good sense to adopt the DB-7.

A contemporary of the Battle was the Curtiss A-18 Shrike. I think the fuselage looked neat, but the military didn't give in to aesthetic considerations. The wings were too thick, the engines were picked a bit early, and the undercarriage was weak. It lost out to the Douglas DB-7/A-20/Boston/Havoc with later engines, and thinner wings. How would it have done on Belgian bridges?
 
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A contemporary of the Battle was the Curtiss A-18 Shrike. I think the fuselage looked neat, but the military didn't give in to aesthetic considerations. The wings were too thick, the engines were picked a bit early, and the undercarriage was weak. It lost out to the Douglas DB-7/A-20/Boston/Havoc with later engines, and thinner wings. How would it have done on Belgian bridges?

Both the Battle and the Shrike (a several times recycled name for US attack planes) were about the same size and speed. A few Shrikes continued in backwater area service till 1943, so they must have had a little utility.

Another available alternative in French service during 1940 was the Martin 167/Maryland. Bigger, faster, surprisingly manueverable, but more intended as a level bomber & reconnaisance plane. However, the French did also list ground attack as one of the Martin's virtues, and the plane had a better survival record than other French bombers during the campaign. It was a nimble enough performer for Adrian Wharburton to later shoot down five enemy planes too!
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The Breguet 693 proved to be ineffective in the ground attack role, while the Henschel Hs-129B did actually enjoy some, if only some, success at tank shooting. Both shared the same engines. One can wonder if a Breguet built along similar lines, with a quartet of Hispano cannons instead of a belly of bombs, might have enjoyed any success blunting armor spearheads.

PS, the French possessed 64 of the new Douglas DB7 attack aircraft, the ones that superseded the A-18 in American service. I've never heard anything about their role in the losing cause. They were delivered to north Africa, "used" somewhere and returned, to remain in Vichy service. Any record of their use?

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One summary on the DB-7 in French service from here:

Only 64 DB-7s were in service at the time of the German western offensive. They were immediately rushed from North Africa to France and were committed in a piecemeal fashion in a vain attempt to halt the German advance. The first DB-7 sortie against the Germans was on May 31, 1940, when 12 aircraft attacked enemy columns near St. Quentin. Some seventy sorties were flown against troops and panzer concentrations, supply convoys and depots and road bridges. The French DB-7s did a fairly creditable job against the Germans, but at least eight were lost to ground fire and fighter attacks.
So, according to this report they definitely better than the Battle.

PS, the French possessed 64 of the new Douglas DB7 attack aircraft, the ones that superseded the A-18 in American service. I've never heard anything about their role in the losing cause. They were delivered to north Africa, "used" somewhere and returned, to remain in Vichy service. Any record of their use?
 
The IL-2 had a record of being effective if not perfect.



You keep ignoring the facts. The Battle had no history of being effective.
I think the South Africans got some decent results with them, possibly because they weren't sending them on suicide missions

The RAF realized that Battle was inadequate for it intended role. The pane and the doctrine for the Battle was built were both failures. As I noted, it was slower and worse armed than a Heinkel He-111.
The RAF never actually used it in its intended role.

Lots of weapons were conceived to fulfill one role but were able to be adopted to another. The B-52 was conceived as a high altitude penetrator but was able to be adopted as a low level penetrator when high altitude bombing became impossible. The McDonnell Phantom was able to fulfill numerous roles beyond its original role an all-weather fleet defense interceptor. The Chance-Vought Corsair was built as a carrier fighter but achieved success as a ground support aircraft.
Meanwhile the Me-110 was an utter failure in its intended role, but had some utility as a ground attack aircraft and a night-fighter.

The Battle, on the other hand, was unsuitable for its intended role and would have failed in any other combat role.
Since it was never tried in another role, that's hard to tell. Might have served well as a torpedo bomber. Come to think of it, if it had been tried in its intended role it might have done okay too.

Seriously, look at the stats, range 1000 miles, that's twice what most ground-attack aircraft of the time had, armament, 2 mgs, about the same as most light level bombers and torpedo bombers of the era.
 
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Well you've just answered the OPs question, Battles were the worst aircraft used in the ground attack role and shouldn't have been used as such[/no Sarcasm]

Actually he hasn't. If you'd bothered to read the OP properly (rather than just seeing what you want to see) you would know that it only involved aircraft specifcially designed for ground attack. It has been pointed out repeatedly on this thread that the Battle was designed as a strategic bomber.

And do you honestly think the Battle was worse than the Breda 88? Really? Honestly?
 
So disqualified by reason of not being designed for the role? That ought to clear up that issue then.
 
So disqualified by reason of not being designed for the role? That ought to clear up that issue then.

Well, that's one reason. If we ignore the ground rules I set out in the OP we could have included this. The He177 with a 75mm Pak40.

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I still stand by my original assertion. The Breda 88 was far worse than the Battle.

(Whoops! Wrong photo. It should have looked like this.)

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Labelling the Battle a being designed as a pure strategic bomber is incorrect and without a basis in fact.

The battle was in response to a specification was for a "Light day bomber" to replace the Hart/Hind. The Hart and Hind, when used in combat, had been used almost exclusively as tactical bombers.

Was the Battle designed as a ground attack aircraft? Well, based on the specs and development history, attacking military targets such as troop--tactical use--was one of the roles that it was expected to accomplish. (And of course, one it notoriously failed at accomplishing.) It certainly was not developed exclusively as merely a ground support aircraft. But it was certainly not developed to be used only as a strategic bomber, solely to be used to destroy the enemy's economic ability to wage war.

BTW, as early as January of 1939 AOC-in-C of Bomber Combat indicated that the Battle should not be used in hostile airspace because the already obsolete Battle was too vulnerable.

Anyway, there were very few aircraft that were designed primarily exclusively for ground support and fewer that made it into production. Most planes used for close support were developed to perform a number of duties (e.g., the Douglas A-20) or adopted to perform the role (the Lockheed P-38). Even dive bomber advocates saw dive bombers as being used for strategic bombing and various tactical missions that were not truly ground support. (Indeed, none of the carrier dive bombers were designed as ground attack aircraft if you want really to consider what the original post actually asks. Their primary missions were killing ships not directly supporting ground troops.)

Really, only the aircraft that that were designed to be primarily ground attack aircraft (attacking enemy troops, armor, ground weapons, etc.) that saw action in any numbers in WW II that I can think of were the IL-2 and He-129. (Arguably, you might count the He-123 and possibly the Ju-87, also. However, both were designed to also be used as tactical bombers, for precision attacks on such things as factories, supply dumps, etc.)


Actually he hasn't. If you'd bothered to read the OP properly (rather than just seeing what you want to see) you would know that it only involved aircraft specifcially designed for ground attack. It has been pointed out repeatedly on this thread that the Battle was designed as a strategic bomber.

And do you honestly think the Battle was worse than the Breda 88? Really? Honestly?
 
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Still can't claim the title mind you, I mean they might not have performed well against heavy ground fire and enemy fighters (which I maintain should not be an indictment on the aircraft, but on the men who ordered them into those situations), but unlike the Breda it did at least get as far as seeing combat. Also, as has been pointed out, they did actually perform fairly reasonably in situations that weren't suicidal, such as against the barges being gathered in preparation for Operation Sealion, and in Italian East Africa.
 
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...but unlike the Breda it did at least get as far as seeing combat.

The Bredas did in fact see combat, although not very effectively. They made at least two raids on the French airfields on Corsica shortly after the Italian declaration of war.
 
Something that's easy to forget when we attack some of the choices made, at times.

I was reading a book about the 51st Highlanders recently (they were sent into France as the core of the 'new BEF' after Dunkirk, with plans to other infantry divisions and 1st Armoured to follow them) and as a soldier of the late 20th/early 21st Centuries you just can't imagine being in a situation like that where the enemy has overwhelming air superiority, where the allies on your flank are falling back without even telling you they're going, where you can send someone back to HQ to find out where your ammo resup is and (if they manage to avoid death or capture and make it back to you) all they can tell you is that there's a Panzergrenadier battalion sitting where your Bde HQ should be and where the only chance you have to make it home is to desperately try and make it to the coast and hope you'll find a boat when you get there.

Then to round it all off the politicians at home were denying them permission to withdraw because it would give the French something to whinge about and forced them to avoid ports where they could be evacuated from in good order because it would make the French think they were being abandoned and they'd surrender.

I really can't grasp just how desperate the French and British commanders must have been when they realised just how quickly the Germans were slicing through their positions and just how useless their years of planning had become, virtually over night. They really were just throwing anything into the mix in a desperate attempt to find something, anything, that worked long before the majority ever got close to Dunkirk.

(Was that Gen. Julian Thompsons Dunkirk Retreat to Victory? That was an eye opening read)

As Gen Ironsides Said "A Corpse Cannot be made to Feel"

Yes Churchill had a thing for throwing away good units for lost causes - the Rifle Brigade at Calais (should have been given permission to evecuate - the loss of this Brigade severly impacted the development of Tank Infantry co-ordination in the British Army), 51st Div in the 2nd BEF (good job Alanbrook was on the ground and managed to convince Winston to evac the rest of it) again should have been withdrawn ASAP - Sending troops to Greece (60K Soldiers and 120 Tanks vs 1.2 Million Axis Soldiers and 1200 Tanks) then the Hong Kong Garrison - How long did he expect 15 thousand men to stand against the entire might of the Japanese Empire! Even if they had somehow fought off the 50 thousand strong Japanese Army tasked with its capture - there was no way they could have been reinforced or relieved.
 
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