[烛光生存狂]-苏联IL-2的反坦克攻击

Since this article was originally available on battlefield.ru only in Russian I have translated it for those who will be interesting to know more about the experience of the Russian IL-2 against German panzers.

IL-2 against Panzers

Despite some success in gun armament the main combat weapon against German panzers starting from 1943 became anti-tank cumulative air bomb. New air bomb was designed in ZKB-22 under management of I.A. Larionov Effect of a new bomb was as follows: while hitting the tank armor detonator worked out, which through detonating charge resulted in charge explosion. When charge detonation, owning to so called hollow cone, cumulative spurt was created, which resulted in piercing the armor of up to 60mm under angle of 30’ with subsequent destruction effect like annihilation of tank crew, detonation of tank ammunition, inflaming of fuel or its vapor. This was confirmed by polygon testing. The minimum altitude, accounting for bomb alignment to a tank armor surface was 70 meters.

IL-2 could carry up to 192 air bombs (PTAB-2, 5-1,5) in four cassettes (48 units per cassette) or up to 220 units when rationally placed in four bomb compartments.

When dropping PTAB bomb from the altitude of 200 meters under horizontal flying with the speed of 340-360 km/h, a bomb was hitting an area of 15 square meters in average. Depending on bomb load the total destruction area of PTAB bomb was 15x 190-210 square meters that ensured almost guaranteed destruction of any German panzer located in that area. In fact, the area occupied by one tank was approx. 20-22 square meters and even one bomb hit was well enough to put a panzer out of operation, in most cases for good.

Thus, PTAB bomb was a rather formidable weapon for that time. By the way, the Chief Designer of ZKB-22, I.A. Larionov was awarded by the Lenin Order for creation of PTAB-2, 5-1,5 AND AD-A detonator and later in 1946 was awarded USSR State Premium.

In the very first day of the Kursk Battle, on July 5th, 1943, the Red Army Air Force applied new anti-tank cumulative bombs PTAB-2, 5-1,5 for the first time. The flyers of the 2nd Guards and 299th Air Divisions of 16th Air Army acting against German panzers in the area of Maloarchangelsk, Yasnaya Polyana tested the new air bomb first. There enemy’s panzers and grenadiers conducted up to ten attacks during the day. Mass application of PTAB anti-tank cumulative air bombs had a devastating effect of tactical surprise and strong morale impact on enemy. German panzer crew, as well as their Russian opponents, by the third war year gets used to relatively low efficiency of the air strikes. Therefore in the beginning of the Kursk Battle Germans didn’t use scattered marching and pre-combat orders for tanks movement or in other words in the routes of tank motion in columns in the assembly areas and were severely punished for that. Fragmentation area of PTAB bomb covered 2-3 tanks situated in the distance of 60-75 meters from each other and because of that Germans suffered significant casualties even under conditions of lack of massed application of IL-2.

So, flyers of just one 291st Air Division of Colonel A.N. Vitruk while applying PTAB bombs destroyed and disabled up to 30 German panzers only on July 5th 1943.

Sturmovik-flyers of 3rd and 9th Air Corps of 17th Air Army by the end of July 6th 1943 reported of destruction or damaging by PTAB bombs up to 90 units of German armored vehicles on the battlefield and in the area of North Donetz river crossings. In the Oboyan direction on July 7th 1943, IL-2 of the 1st Air Corps of the 2nd Air Army while supporting the 3rd Mechanized Corps of the 1st Tank Army in the period from 4.40 a.m. to 6.40 a.m. in two groups of forty six and thirty three aircrafts covered by sixty six fighters inflicted targeted strikes at the assembly areas of German panzers in the areas of Syrzevo-Yakovlevo concentrated for an assault in the direction to Krasnaya Dubrava (300-350 panzers) and Bolshie Mayachki (about 100 panzers).

Air strikes of the 1st Air Corps and active actions of the 3rd Mechanized Corps were successful: Germans failed to breakthrough the second line of defense of the 1st Tank Army. Decipherment of the battlefield photographs at 13.15 o’clock showed over two hundred (200) knocked out German panzers and SP guns.

According to the German sources, 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf which underwent several massed air strikes by the IL-2 of the 2nd Air Army in the area of the Bolshiye Mayachki lost in total two hundred and seventy (270) panzers, SP guns and armored vehicles. Density of air bombs coverage was so great that it was fixed over 2000 direct hits of PTAB-2,5-1,5.

Having recovered from first shock, German panzer crews in a few days after the beginning of the battle shifted exclusively to scattered marching and pre-combat orders. Naturally it strongly hampered management of tank formations & units, increased their deployment & relocation time and made interaction between units more difficult. The efficiency of the IL-2 air strikes using PTAB decreased approx. in 4-4.5 times. However it was on average in 2-3 times higher then when using explosive and explosive-fragmentation air bombs.

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