The most well-known research about this is the data presented by an Allied research group studying German tank wrecks all over Normandy and the Bulge to a smaller degreee. While doing his run he was likely under fire from AA it's easy to see how the high number of kill claims developed. Add on this that regardless of the status of tank the area around the tank was smoking/burning due to the impact of the bombs. Imagine a pilot strafing a German tank and shooting his rockets which all land next to or even on the tank, he will obviously assume the tank is destroyed but in all likelihood, his best chance on a kill would be the German crew bailing out due to fear. The pilots while being in a very high-pressure situation had only a very short amount of time to evaluate the possible damage. This resulted in massive kill claims of Allied pilots which then resulted in a warped perception of the effectiveness of aircrafts acting in anti tank duty. As a pilot it was extremely difficult to assess the damage their weapons did to the vehicle they targeted, even bombs landing close to a tank maybe didn't even damage the tank significantly. This was mostly due to heavy over claiming of the pilots. The effects of the anti-tank capabilities of fighter-bombers were overstated shortly after the war. I assume you are mostly talking about Allied fighter-bombers attacking German vehicles on the west front so I will focus my answer on that. Gooderson thus concludes that close air support might not always have been successful in destroying targets, but was highly effective at neutralising them. They had great difficulty in preventing the inexperienced men from baling out when our aircraft attacked." "The experienced crews stated that when attacked from the air they remained in their tanks which had no more than superficial damage (cannon strikes or near misses from bombs). The psychological effect upon crew could also be considerable, especially inexperienced soldiers from questioning prisoners of war: By destroying supply vehicles tanks were starved of fuel and ammunition, in mixed columns roads were blocked, contributory factors in the tanks being abandoned. To soft-skin motor transport, though, they were far more dangerous several hundred lorries, cars and motorcycles in the Falaise Pocket were destroyed by rockets, bombs and aircraft cannon and machine guns. In terms of direct effectiveness against tanks, then, fighter-bombers had a rather poor record the rockets were inaccurate and required a direct hit to be effective. At the Falaise Pocket in August 1944, for example, the 2nd Tactical Air Force and 9th Air Force claimed over 400 armoured targets destroyed the ORS examined three areas and classified 35 tanks and SP guns as aircraft kills, 16 as ground kills and 304 abandoned or destroyed by their crew. In all cases armoured vehicle losses positively identified as being caused by air attack were lower than those that were abandoned or destroyed by their own crews. Gooderson then examines several examples from the Normandy campaign in which RAF Typhoons and USAAF Thunderbolts were credited with large numbers of German tank kills, referring to reports by British Army Operational Research Sections (ORS) that investigated battlefields and attempted to classify actual losses and causes. With no return fire, against a clearly identified and stationary target only three of the 64 rockets hit the target. They were not very accuracte, though Ian Gooderson's thesis Allied Close Air Support 1943-1945 includes a section "Allied Fighter-Bombers Versus German Armoured Forces: Myths and Realities" that outlines a test carried out by eight Typhoons with eight rockets each against a captured Panther tank. The RAF turned instead to 60lb RP-3 rocket projectiles, primarily carried by Typhoons, as a more versatile weapon, packing a greater punch against the increasing armour of German tanks and not encumbering aircraft once fired. The RAF employed the Hurricane Mk IID and IV with 40mm Vickers 'S' guns in the desert in 1942, and these were accurate and effective, but the Hurricanes were highly vulnerable to ground fire and were withdrawn from European service prior to D-Day.
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