Ju-87G Stuka

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by CzechTexan

I'm finishing up a Ju-87G campaign and I was wondering about the lethality of its big guns. I think I remember a while back that there were complaints about the guns not having enough killing power against tanks in our beloved flight sim.

Past arguments on this topic boiled down to complaints by wanna-be Ulrich Rudels that the Ju-87G's cannons aren't 1940s Hellfire missiles vs. sticklers for historical accuracy who actually read the after-action reports on relative effectiveness of airborne cannon and rockets.

The summary of all those reports is that ground attack pilots were seriously overclaiming kills, especially vs. very hard targets like the IS-2 or Panther.

OTOH, they probably weren't overclaiming by that much for kills vs. soft targets.

Currently, I think that cannons are reasonably well balanced. If you use them right they can be lethal, even against the heavy tanks. Really good virtual Stuka pilots can achieve kill percentages which would make Rudel look like a rookie by comparison, but which would also get them killed in real life.

The trick to using the Stuka G, or any other "panzerknacker", effectively, is attack from the rear at a steep angle, and then shoot when you're very close to the target. If you aren't pulling out of your dive at treetop level, you're doing it wrong.