Subject: P-47/51 deflection shots into the belly of the German tanks,
reality or fiction?
From: Ed Rasimus
Date: 8/5/03 8:33 AM Pacific Daylight Time
Message-id:

What's really at play here is the fact that even today, tanks and
armored vehicles are hard on the sides and soft on the top/bottom.
Their most likely threat is from other armor or anti-armor ground
forces. When a compromise needs to be made for overall gross weight
reduction it takes place on the top and underside. For this reason,
strafing armor at high angles (dive angles, not lead angles) the
aircraft can be effective against tanks even though the armor of a
tank is usually characterized as being capable of resisting that
caliber of weapon.



Since I never attacked a tank in a fighter I am giving you hearsay from
fighter pilots who did. They described the attack this way. They would
appproach the tank and their first aim point is behind the tank. They then
walk their fire to the main body of the tank. The assumption is that the fire
that they lay in behind the tank will ricochet up into the soft underbelly
where armor is very thin. It worked better if the tank was on a hard surface
rather than earth At least that is the way the story was told back then. But as
I say, I have never attacked a tank in a fighter. I am just giving what pilots
who did had to say at the time.

Arthur Kramer
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer