Conversations with Colonel Rudel, Antitank warfare seminar. 14 to 15 October, 1976.

Antitank warfare seminar.
14 to 15 October, 1976.
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Archive.org Link, full text:
https://archive.org/details/conversations_20250227
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ABSTRACT
This document is a transcript of a conference held in Washington, D C on 14 to 15 October 1976, with various representatives of the U S Armed Services and Industry and Colonel Hans-Ulrich Rudel. Colonel Rudel was the most highly decorated member of the German Armed Services in World War Two. Colonel Rudel was a J U 87 Stuka Luftwaffe pilot and his most notable achievement was the destruction of 519 Soviet tanks with his J U 87 "G" Stuka which was fitted with two 37 millimeter antitank cannons.
The U S interest in Colonel Rudel was stimulated in the past by the situation confronting NATO today of a massive Warsaw Pact advantage in armored vehicles, especially tanks. The information obtained from Colonel Rudel at this conference and recent studies on air to ground antitank warfare, tend to support the thesis that a tremendous reservoir of information is available from Luftwaffe antitank experience that is directly applicable to the NATO Warsaw Pact situation in Europe today.

Washington, D C.

TAPE One SIDE One.
INTRODUCTION.
CHAIRMAN:

I would like to introduce Captain Lon Ratley who will give a brief rundown of the war on the Eastern Front as fought through the German eyes. Captain Lon Ratley is assigned to AFIT, the Air Force Institute of Technology, but he is going to Postgraduate School in Monterey, California with the Navy. His thesis subject was Close Air Support and he is trying to draw analogies, I think quite successfully, between the war of the forties and the possible war in the near future; or in the next 10 to 15 years. In his research he did go to Germany, he speaks fluent German, and he did examine the Archives and spoke to German Generals. He was fortunate enough to be able to find Colonel Rudel and spend a delightful time interviewing him for his research paper. It was the outgrowth of that effort that has led to where we are today.
What I'd like to do is have Captain Ratley give a brief overview of the war on the Eastern Front, give you background on Colonel Rudel himself, and then we will go into a seminar session. In order to make it reasonable, we will try to restrict the participants to those people that are sitting at the table. Then, we will go into the question and answer period. We will let the topics flow as they may.

Colonel Rudel, I assure you, will be true to his word. He’ll be candid and frank with his answers and when they hurt and are not quite what we want to hear, we'll be fortunate enough to hear them anyway. That is the purpose of this meeting.
Let me, for my own edification and for everybody else here, go around the table and show Colonel Rudel who's here. I am Colonel Bob Dilger. I am the Director of A-10 Armament. To my left is General Brill. He is the System Program Director for the A-10 program. Next to him is Mister Wilson, from the Office of Strategic Research, “C I A”. Close Air Support is one of the prime subjects they are looking at this time. Next to him is Fred Feer who has worked with Peter in some related areas of conventional warfare. Mister Mike Mecca is next. He is a retired Air Force Officer, one-oh-five driver and now very much involved in the A-10 program from a viewpoint of employment, among other things. Next, Mister Fred Frederickson. Mister Frederickson is formerly from Land Warfare of D, D, R and E.
He is now in an analysis program, System Planning Program. Next to him is Mister Sprey. Mister Sprey was formerly in the group that is now called ASDPA and E, and he was very active in the formulation stage of the A-10. He was the man that introduced me to the work of Colonel Rudel back when I was advocating for the A-10 program from the concept formulation viewpoint. Moving to the other side is, Mister Tom Christy.

He is the head of ASD, PA AND E, Tac Air. Next to him is Bernie Bock, Deputy Director of the DDR and E, General Purpose Forces. Then, General Smith, ADCS Air Headquarters Marine Corps. Tom Turner is next, Vice President of Fairchild Industries. He also works for General Brill. General McMullen, who is next, was formerly Director of the A-10 program and is now director of all requirements for TAC. This is a new job for him and we in the A-10 are delighted that he is here. Next to him is Major Tash who will help with the interpretation. He speaks fluent German. I would like to find a seat for Mister Meyers up here at the table. Mister Chuck Meyers is from DDR and E, Air Warfare.
This is an unusual position to have at a meeting like this, but he recently took over responsibility for the A-10.
So, with this, I would like to turn the meeting over to Captain Lon Ratley. He will give us a brief overview of the War on the Eastern Front and a background on Colonel Rudel for those of you that have not read his book.
Then we will go into seminar session.

CAPTAIN LON RATLEY:
Good morning gentlemen. I am Captain Ratley. Colonel Dilger already explained what we are going to go through basically a recap of the campaign on the Eastern Front and a few words about the German anti-tank aircraft.

The code name for the German plan for the campaign against Russia was "BARBAROSSA." Basically, the plan consisted of twelve weeks; three weeks for the capture of Smolensk, three weeks for resupply and rest and then six weeks thereafter would be the capture of Moscow.
There were 3,330 German tanks used in this campaign, opposing approximately 22 to 24 thousand Russian tanks.
About 3.2 million German soldiers and about 4.5 million Russian troops located in Western USSR.

QUESTION:
By General Brill.
Were these all Tigers? Referring to the German tanks.

ANSWER:
No sir, there were no Tigers at that time. They were Panzer three’s and fours. Later in the war the Germans used the Panther, which was in the 40 ton class, and the Tiger, in the 60 ton class.

CAPTAIN LON RATLEY:

The German execution of the campaign went according to plan, until the capture of Smolensk which fell on 16 July, 1941, that is where their difficulty started.
There was some question about the strategic objectives of the campaign. Hitler decided that, in lieu of immediately going for the rail and communication center in Moscow, he would attack instead to the South and capture large numbers of disorganized Soviet troops in the Ukraine.

This was quite a successful operation.
However, when they shifted the weight of the campaign back to the North to Moscow, there was insufficient strength left to permit the Germans to effect the capture Moscow prior to the onset of winter weather.
Through December 41, these figures you see here are rough, but approximately 3 million Russian POW's, 17,500 Russian tanks destroyed, 2,000 Russian aircraft were destroyed the first day. I might add that that figure is somewhat suspect. The Luftwaffe reported 1,800 aircraft were destroyed. Back in headquarters Marshall Goering at the time didn't believe them and he sent his own special people out to the field to investigate. Subsequently he discovered it wasn't 1,800, it was in fact over 2,000.
Basically the winter campaign deteriorated to static warfare. German losses during the winter were primarily due to their unpreparedness for winter, as opposed to any offensive action by the Soviets.
There were excessive command changes on the German side because of the failure to take Moscow Primarily Guderian and Hoth who were the two prime architects of the Blitzkrieg. and armored tactics. All three army group commanders, Von Leeb, Von Bock, and Von Rundstedt, were also relieved.
The summer offensive of 1942 had Two primary objectives, Stalingrad and the oil fields at Baku on the Caspian Sea.

The execution miscarried with the failure to hold Stalingrad.
Ninety percent of the city was captured by the Germans, but ten percent was not. Subsequently, the Russians moved in and were successful in surrounding Stalingrad and capturing the Sixth Army. At the same time, a special Army Group "A", it is difficult to see from this map but Stalingrad is here on the Volga, Army Group "A" penetrated down here by the Caucasus Mountains and advanced patrols-even reached the Caspian Sea. You don't see this much in History books, but they did in fact reach the Caspian Sea. It is down in this area.
As you can see, this extended right wing of the German Army put them in an extremely precarious position because they were not able to hold Stalingrad.
At this point entered Marshall Von Manstein. He was successful in a series of defensive battles on its left wing, and therefore, enabled the Germans to withdraw Army Group "A" back to its jumping off position. In March of 1943 he successfully counterattacked the Russians in Kharkov and they suffered a severe defeat there and the initiative passed back into German hands.
This led to the German Summer offensive in 1943 at the battle of Kursk. This was a Russian salient that protruded into the German lines around the city of Kursk.
It was the Germans plan to pinch off this salient by concentric attacks from the North and the South.

The planning for the campaign was characterized by a lot of deception, delays and differences of opinion. Von Manstein had opted for an immediate attack at Kursk, before the onset of the rainy season, immediately after the battle of Kharkov in March. One thing led to another, and the actual offensive did not start until July 1943.
The allies, as you know, landed in Sicily on the twelfth of July and Hitler called off the offensive at Kursk in order to withdraw the Second SS Panzer Corps into Italy to counter allied landings. It is generally agreed that after the battle of Kursk, any possibilities for a total German victory on the Eastern Front disappeared. That is not to imply that they lost the war there, only that the war could not be totally won.
The final campaigns from 19 43 to 45 basically consisted of a war of attrition with the initiative swinging to the Soviets and a gradual German defeat. There were no spectacular battles after the battle of Kursk.
Field commanders, because of mistrust between major field commanders and OKW Headquarters, were not given enough authority in the field to fully exploit all of the situations that presented themselves. For example, the defensive line, because they taught them "not one step backwards," could not be straightened so as to reduce the number of miles of front that any given division would have to defend.

There was also a marked deterioration in mobile warfare because of worn-out equipment, lack of fuel and logistics support.
A little bit about anti-tank aircraft.
Two were primarily used, the HS 129 and Stuka "G" Model that Colonel Rudel flew. The HS 129 carried a 30 millimeter cannon on a center line mount. The J U 87-G carried two pod mounted 37 millimeter cannons mounted outboard from the main landing gear. This is a shot of the HS-129. Of this particular version here, there were only 6 or 9 built, I'm not sure exactly which. This isn't the 37, this is the 75 millimeter cannon that was used. This particular aircraft was considered ponderous and was only used for individual tanks that had broken through the front and were a threat to the major areas to the rear of the German divisions.
Today we are primarily concerned with the Stuka. You can see a standard “D” Model here without the cannons. It is important to note that the Stuka was considered in 1939 by the Germans to be an aircraft that was not up to modern standards. It was not considered a modern front line aircraft by the Germans in 1939. Yet, it was used up until the very end of the war. This is a picture of the "G" Model Stuka with the individual cannons mounted here, each weighing about 1,000 pounds and each carrying, you can see it here, a magazine of six 37 millimeter shells each. Colonel Rudel flew a large number of sorties.

Twenty-one hundred of which were with the Stuka and 400 of which were in the FW-190.
A little background on Colonel Rudel.
He was born in 1916 in Silesia, his father was an Evangelist Minister. He joined the Luftwaffe in 1936, going into pilot training, subsequently posted to the Stuka squadron and from there he was transferred to a reconnaissance squadron and then back to a Stuka squadron. From there his first actual bomb dropping combat did not start until the Russian campaign of June 1941. Thereafter, he was promoted very rapidly, ending the war as a Gechwader commander which would be roughly equivalent to an augmented AF Wing today. He was primarily responsible for introducing the Stuka with the 37 millimeter cannons, into operational use in Russia. His tally on tanks was 519, that he personally destroyed. The figure is somewhat misleading because the Germans required that the tank burn and also explode before it was considered a kill. So, roughly you can multiply that by a factor of two or three to get a more realistic picture of how many tanks Colonel Rudel personally destroyed.
He was decorated personally by Hitler with the Knights Cross, Golden Oak Leaf, Swords and Diamonds, only one of which was awarded, to Colonel Rudel. He is the highest decorated German soldier in the Second World War.
That concludes my portion.

CHAIRMAN:
Let me just add a few comments to it and then we will go to the seminar. It was the Stuka which was an important part of the Blitzkrieg concept, that was to provide mobile fire power to the rapid advancing forces. Even though the Germans were out numbered, for example, in Russia by a large magnitude, by lightning tactics they were able to get on the edge of Moscow in a matter of 6 weeks or thereabouts. That was a 1,200 mile advance, against overwhelming numerical superiority on the other side. The thing that Lon did not mention was that Colonel Rudel also sunk the largest ship of the war by air.
The battleship Murat. He also sank a cruiser. The 2,500 sorties, as it turns out, in the latter part of the war, when the German Luftwaffe was enormously outnumbered in the air. The Soviets actually had air supremacy for all practical purposes.
The tank kills that he had, again did not occur during the early part of the war at all. His tank kills occurred primarily after the introduction of the gun on the Stuka. And it was over the lively debate that took place within the Luftwaffe forces, as to whether that one could even do this, to Rudel was much impressed with the accuracy of a gun system and did the basic “R and D flying”. He brought it out to operational lines and introduced it through a combination of tactics. He came enormously successful in his venture there.
So most of the kills occurred in the later part of the war, almost all with the gun system.

And they occurred under a situation that would be difficult to comprehend from a view point of numerical superiority on the opposite side. A tank kill also had to be verified by another person. The tank had to burn, it had to explode and another person had to verify it. Then you had a tank kill, and not before. Two or three to me, is a conservative estimate of what really occurred.
Now, unfortunately, I was outranked. So I cannot be a participant in the seminar. All I can be is the Chairman.
I'd like to throw it open to questions and we will interpret to make sure Colonel Rudel understands the questions as well, and we will interpret back. We will go slowly.
QUESTION:
Bob, I'd like to ask the Colonel this. Colonel, in addition to the tanks that you shot at, did you keep a record of the trucks or artillery pieces or other vehicles accompanying the tanks or did you not even bother to shoot at them?
ANSWER:
Yes, he did both attack and keep some numeration of the things he shot at. Unfortunately these records were stolen from him so they are unavailable to anybody right now. He can't account for all of them, but did, in fact, account for over 300 vehicles and 80 anti-aircraft positions that he had destroyed.
QUESTION:
Almost all the kills I guess were in the Stuka. Now, you said 37 millimeter, 6 rounds per magazine?

ANSWER:
Yes sir.
QUESTION:
So those were really single shot?
ANSWER:
Yes sir. I've already talked with him about this so I can answer your question. Usually what he would do is attack from slant range of about 300 meters.
QUESTION:
Sequential fire?
ANSWER:
No, he'd fire two simultaneously. He would attempt to fire two at the same time; one from each gun.
QUESTION:
Your slant range was 200 meters? Let him answer that.
ANSWER:
The guns were harmonized to shoot at 400 meters but Colonel Rudel found it was difficult for him to be as exact as he wanted to be in order to effect a kill by shooting at those ranges. He would usually go down to 200 sometimes 100 or 150.
He had to be very exact in his deliveries and he had to hit the tank in a vulnerable area where the tungsten-carbide center would penetrate the fuel or ammunition storage area in order to effect a kill. He couldn't do this at further slant range because of the accuracy.
QUESTION:

Now, given you had a very short open fire time what sort of ground air threat was involved? Was there organized arms activity or, because of the dynamics of the situation, was it nonexistent?
ANSWER:
When the Russian tanks would break through the front, as with any attack, their logistics train would become somewhat strained. Flak panzer, the guns that are mounted on a tank chassis would fall behind the tanks. Therefore, the problem would present itself. Tanks that had broken through the front had turned out it was much more difficult of course, and his attacking with his aircraft would be coordinated with other aircraft that would attack the Flak positions on the ground.
Also, he would make multiple passes at the tank.
Generally speaking, there would only be one pass.
QUESTION:
What sort of aircraft provided Flak suppression?
ANSWER:
There were two anti-tank squadrons in his wing. Pardon me, there was only one anti-tank flight of aircraft, it was called aircraft, a very strong squadron of aircraft. What he would do in an attack, there would be other Stuka in his wing that normal Stuka without the cannons on, would bomb, would attack the Flak positions through coordinated effort.
QUESTION:

Were these bombs utilized?
ANSWER:
The Stuka would carry a bomb that could be used against flak and the bombs had a fuse in them that was set at 50 centimeters at that time, which would allow them to explode above the ground. They would carry about a 4 pound bomb inside, similar to our “Rockeye.”
QUESTION:
How long were the fuses?
ANSWER:
About 50 seconds.
QUESTION:
Would you ask him to give us a review of the attack profile, dive angle, air speed, altitude, when he'd generally try to roll in, that type of thing?
ANSWER:
If they had a cloud deck of 200 meters and they had to fly underneath that and then with a very relatively flat attack angle. They didn't take into account the height of the clouds. When they were not paying attention to their cloud decks, then they would normally start between 800 and 1,500 meters. They would circle around until they found the tank itself. The problem was not actually shooting or killing the tank, but it was finding the tank. Being able to visually acquire their target, that is where they spent most of their time. He added too that speed wan poison for finding tanks.

Normally they would fly at 250 kilometers, but when they were at an angle of 20 to 30 degrees, they would dive.
It would be about 320. They had aerodynamic problems with the aircraft. If you got at 320 kilometers, you'd get oscillations.
QUESTION:
This was only the cannon aircraft?
ANSWER:
Yes, this was for the cannon. The cannon would not fire accurately if you went over 350. The regular aircraft would go 450 in a dive.
QUESTION:
Kilometers per hour you’re talking about?
ANSWER:
Everything is in kilometers per hour.
The cannon itself was the controlling factor. It was definitely the aerodynamics of the cannon which limited the airspeed. Normally their landing speed was 180 and their cruising was 250. Because the cannon was the most important thing, they would let the cannon control all of the speed.
That was the thing that actually killed the tank so everything else fell to the side.
QUESTION:
180 kilometers for this landing with the aircraft, with the cannon equipment.
ANSWER:

About 140.
QUESTION:
Pierre mentioned something about speed is poison?
ANSWER:
Yes, there is just a little phrase at the end of what he was saying about that the essence is to find tanks. Once you find them, you can shoot them with a reasonable candor and the phrase he used was that in finding tanks speed is poison.
QUESTION:
Could I quote that?
ANSWER:
Ask him it is not my statement. Let's not take it out of context. He says that really speed is absolutely catastrophic and it is a poison when you are trying to kill a tank because you can get too fast. You will over shoot the tank and then you've wasted your mission.
QUESTION:
Before Tom comes in, let's finish developing our point.
General Smith said don't quote it out of context. We advocate low speeds for discrimination. General Smith, your point is going to be what?
ANSWER:
You've got to take the whole warfare into context. In other words, if you can't survive what surrounds you, you are not going to survive the shoot. Speed is catastrophic when you are trying to find something, and a tank is not too much different from a truck.

If you are in foliage, the slower you can go certainly improves your eyeball action capability and then you've got to keep in sight everything that is going around you too. You know the equation balances out very quickly; what is coming at you determines your speed and if you're going to survive the kill.
QUESTION:
This is the question that I was going to ask. We've mentioned that they did try Flak suppression, but we haven't mentioned what other kinds of air defense flying you were under while you were circling, looking for tanks. While you were flying 250 kilometers at a couple of hundred meters.
What about rifle firing, what about machine gun firing, what about all of the other things that you would encounter. How did you avoid these?
ANSWER:
They had to deal with everything from pistols on up and they had soldiers that had fallen on their backs who would just shoot up into the air and when you had 100 soldiers in front of the tanks or with the tanks and you just had to pass through it and you encountered all sorts of rounds. He says that he often had 30 or 40 hits in the airplane and as long as none of those hits, all calibers, as long as none of those hits were in the radiator, it really wasn't a big problem.

Tape one, side two.

ANSWER CONINUED:
Until such time as he has through his experience and seat of the pants feeling and he could see the slant range to the tank, he would roll out just for a second, stabilize I- his platform and fire and then immediately start Jinking again.
That's a very important point, let me emphasize that. I went over that with Colonel Rudel. He says that his line up time from wings level until firing with the cannon was between 1 and 1 and a half seconds, and I believe that's accurate because he quotes for bombing 3 to 4 seconds line up time for experienced pilots. He said, however, there was no way you could get a pilot out of ordinary training to be able to hit a tank with only one second line up time. On the other hand, he said it was absolutely essential for survival to hold it down to that.
And, of course, in an airplane, that would be less limited by its cannons, you know, that one second for cannons versus three or four seconds for bombing, in and of itself, would be a tremendous survival advantage. Younger pilots, to continue augmenting what Mister Sprey said, had a lot of difficulty because they couldn't, quite frankly, they couldn't "see" the same slant ranges that Colonel Rudel could. They simply didn't have the experience and hadn't had enough practice to be able to roll out just momentarily and let two rounds go and start jinking again. The majority of the losses that they had with the antitank aircraft were in a phase where the pilot would roll out, track the target and then fire. I might add that just based on a conversations with colonel Rudel yesterday, that you had to be very canny in working with the Russians.

He said often he would come into the area, a wooded area, and finally after making several orbits, he would spot a tank and then, he said, something would just not look right to him, it would look fishy, and so he would maybe wait ten more minutes and then he might spot a Flak battery or they would finally just get disgusted with waiting and they would open up on him. They would expend all of their munitions that they had at the time and then, he could go in and attack the tank, after the enemy had expended all of their Flak at him. It is very individual the way that a pilot is going to attack tanks. He rates that as a very important factor in survival in addition to the tactics that he is talking about. That sense for a tactical situation for telling when there was a Flak trap set up and when there wasn't.
He refers to it as just intuition and also constant exposure to get that sixth sense it is absolutely essential to be flying every single day. A few weeks away from the front you lose contact with the situation, you lose contact with the latest tactics of the enemy. He says it is very dangerous when you come back after you've been out of contact for a few weeks.
QUESTION:
He said he typically operated from 1500 meters from the front?
ANSWER:
No, 1500 meters in cruise altitude.

QUESTION:
Okay then, how typically.
ANSWER:
Your question as to how far depended on the particular time of the war and where the airfield happened to be. It could be anywhere from 17 to 100 kilometers. It is impossible to say. But he definitely stresses experience. It was a very important thing. That is why it was impossible for young people to survive the way he did because they did not have the experience.
QUESTION:
One other question along that same line, when he arrived in target area, I assume that he had no problem finding a target area was there any control at all over the Air Force like today with airborne air controllers and so forth, or did he have to be brought in by external means?
ANSWER:
He stresses particularly experience. With the young pilot the aircraft flys the pilot. With the very experienced pilot, it is the pilot that is flying the machine. He says that he practically slept in his machine. He'd be going from 3 in the morning until eight or nine in the evening. He was constantly with the machine itself and it was the fact that he had total control over his aircraft that made the big difference.
CHAIRMAN:
Excuse me for just a minute. We've been going for one hour now.

Suppose we take a 15 minute break. We've only scratched the surface of Mister Christie's question. I don't know the size of the flights, I don't know the tactics involved. I don't know the coordination of the captain. We will open up session with those kind of questions. Did he rendezvous, how was it controlled, how did they get there, how did they get back?
INTERMISSION.
CHAIRMAN:
I appreciate the patience of everybody at this time.
We have made a few changes. One is that I've asked here, because he speaks fluent German, Mister Sprey to sit up here so that we get the full impact of what is being translated.
It is easy to lose some of what is being translated. Secondly, there was a suggestion made and I concur that what we ought to do is set up a random shotgun blasting rather than questions that bounce all around, to all kinds of issues, that we take phases of the problem and we restrict questions to you know like command and control or whatever one at a time and stay with it until we have exhausted it to our satisfaction, then press on to the next topic area.
There was one other thing, they have to have the tape recorder down here to get a better pick up and they have asked me to ask everybody to speak up when they ask the questions so that it is picked up and if not for me to repeat the questions to make sure that it is picked up on the recorder.

QUESTION:
What are you going to do with the tape?
QUESTION:
Who's doing the taping? Bill McLaurin
ANSWER:
Yes, if I may. Bill McLaurin is a professional journalist. We thought it might be very good if he wrote a piece on how he sees the discussion then pass it around to the people who were here to make sure it was a truthful reflection of Colonel Rudel's comments. That was the idea, to get a professional journalist, so to speak, to give an interpretation.
CHAIRMAN:
Let me make an observation, it is a viewpoint of mine, and don't know if it is held by anybody else, but Colonel Rudel has had enormous experience, but in a different era under different conditions and different times and I think it is incumbent upon us who have some influence on this era on this time that we listen to the history as it were and we are each responsible for how well that translates into today's world. It may not translate at all or it might be almost 100 percent translatable with each of us. We are not here to quarrel with what happened 30 years ago, we are here to find out what happened 30 years ago.
With that, I'd like to pick up with where Mister Christie's question dropped off.

That is, we are trying to build the scenario that took place more or less typically and I guess when you really get down to it, there is no such thing as a typical mission. Questions like how many people flew in the flight? Was it a flight of one, a flight of two or was it squadron size. Did he meet up with cover, was that standard?
How did he support his organization? Was it controlled by ground controllers? Those kind of questions. Neil can you go ahead and start that off there and that will open it up.
ANSWER:
He would usually go out alone. He would start early.
He'd be the first one out to reconnoiter the area. When the report was that there would only be ten tanks, that they were looking for ten to 15, then he would be followed up with a very small flight of usually about 12, sometimes only six or seven of those aircraft. He added that he would fly with a squadron size of seven, a normal squadron was 12 to 16 aircraft, but because of the maintenance difficulties and so forth, they could only put six or seven up in the air.
If there was a stronger enemy formation of artillery and tanks and so forth, instead of flying a squadron level, they would fly at a group level. Theoretically 27 aircraft, in reality, 15 aircraft. Again they would fly in a group.
QUESTION:
What sort of Liaison did they have with the top cover?
The fighter aircraft, were there prior rendezvous arrangements or was the cover against the Soviet opposition?

ANSWER:
I'll answer his question, but just to clear up any confusion, I'll run through the.
QUESTION:
I want to know why you laughed.
ANSWER:
Because he said that their communications, normally were telephonic landlines that functioned part of the time and functioned part of the time not. So, that was one of their problems. The levels at which they would work, would be staffeln squadrons, smaller than our squadrons, maybe 12 to 36 aircraft. From there, you would go to a Gruppe which was three squadrons plus a staff flight. From there you would go to a Geschwader which was three Grupen. From there, you would go to a Luft division or a Luft Korps, which would be an air division or Air Corps. From there, to a Luft flotte which would be an air fleet, it would be just the level of command.
In Colonel Rudel's case, his wing would be subordinated to an Air Corps, through land lines would coordinate with close air support units like Colonel Rudel's and with fighter units. They would set a rendezvous point and they would supposedly meet their air cover prior to going into attacking their targets.
In practice, Colonel Rudel's support aircraft would arrive only about one-half of the time. There would be different excuses, they would say they were attacked in route, they were engaged elsewhere, the weather was too bad And so forth.

In Russia the airfields were so muddy sometimes, that they couldn't take off.
QUESTION:
With regard to the General's question. What sort of large mass armored forces were engaged? Some said when he got into a situation when there was a mixed battle between the Soviets and the Germans it was difficult to discern.
ANSWER:
Normally, between 15 and 20 was what they were facing Tanks. But in a very large conflict when they were concentrated, there would be between three and four hundred tanks.
QUESTION:
Which would be equal to, he's speaking now of what you would actually see or encounter on a sortie? I'm talking about what was inside his area of responsibility.
ANSWER:
What he'd have to do, would be to fly very close to the ground to the figure of two meters, in order to distinguish who was a German and who was a Russian. Often they could be engaged as close as 50 meters from one another and he would fly under to see the form of the German helmet, so that he could distinguish between the ground units. It was extremely difficult the way they would mix themselves on the front lines intermingled. They would really intermix. The Germans would be at one place, the Russians may be back behind the German line at one point, and the Germans into the Russians line at another point.

It was an extremely difficult problem for him to discern which were friendly and which were enemy, and, of course, that was the big thing that occupied his time. It was very difficult, especially when they were receiving Flak, because the positions on the ground were so close and the tendency would be to, if they're flying around up there and they start getting shot at they'd say, "Well, we're getting shot at so obviously those are not Germans.
In reality, it wasn't the case because the troops were so intermixed, so interwoven with one another on the ground. He said that he had to sometimes make as many as five or six passes for identification alone.
QUESTION:
Were there cases of complaints of inexperienced Stuka pilots shooting up friendly, as happened to us, was that a constant problem or?
ANSWER:
This, of course, occurred, but one did not see it very often. It happened to Colonel Rudel on one occasion. It was the regulation in his wing that none of the pilots in his wing could drop ordinance any closer than he, himself, personally did. He also said that he controlled when they bombed at all, so the last decision before bombing was hit.
QUESTION:
I was thinking in particular, if the case of using the Stuka "G" with the 37 millimeter, whether there were cases where inexperienced pilots actually shot up individual German armed fighting units?

Germans because of misidentification, stress, whatever.
ANSWER:
It happened to Colonel Rudel personally. Fortunately the bomb missed, and the guy jumped out of the tank and waved at him. It was a Tiger tank and the guy, very shocked and frightened, popped open the hatch and waved at him.
QUESTION:
Let's pursue that a little further then, did they ever have any ground control-or ground assistance in target identification, and what marking devices would be used?
ANSWER:
He said that in the Panzer divisions, which you have to remember were elite divisions, they had Luftwaffe officers who were on the ground, in tanks, with radios. They were in very close communication. There is probably a better way to introduce this subject. The fourteenth Panzer Division had one Panzer left at the time of this incident and the commanding general of the unit told Colonel Rudel that he was going to use that tank as a radio tank. Put in his Luftwaffe Liaison officer. He took the cannons out in order to get the radios in.
He said that the conversation, the exchange, was far more important to him than whether that one Panzer could shoot or not.

The Stuka gave him the possibility of attacking targets that he needed attacked and obviously with vastly greater fire power than that one tank could give him. That introduces the importance of this liaison.
But the fact that there were Luftwaffe Liaison officers mounted in special tanks, had radios that were on the air to ground frequency of the J U-87 and they were in constant, very close, contact. They announced what they needed done, what targets they needed, if they could pinpoint them, they would pinpoint them, if they only knew they were taking fire from a certain area, they would ask them to search for them. So they were in very close tactical contact. Colonel Rudel says that if they had not had that kind of arrangement, the war would have been over in 1943.
That's how critical it was to the overall success of this close support effort.
QUESTION:
Down to what level were these patrol units, did he tell you? How many?
ANSWER:
There was one per division, so that would be division level liaison.
QUESTION:
Liaison Movement aroused the battle field is terribly confusing and diverse, it seems to me that they obviously couldn't be everywhere at once.

ANSWER:
You've got to remember that, these were small divisions. They were more like our brigades. Somewhere between our brigade level and division level.
This was, of course, up to the division commander, where to put the Luftwaffe Liaison Officer, but he was normally to be found all the way up front with the spearhead of the armored division and that was just the assistance they gave the division commanders.
NEW VOICE:
You know, though, Pete, Tom, it seems to me, that when you have friendly versus enemy, you get into a large mass of tank battles, the thing that occurs is going to be very murky. People is the wrong word.
It is going to be difficult, in fact, if there was some kind of marking capability to keep track of what's out there.
That's why it is so important to train the force before the battle starts.
So what?
So important to train the force before you get in that situation.
Yeah.

ANSWER:
In addition to the Panzer divisions, there were liaison officers with 20 other elite groups. The liaison officers were not organic to the division because there were not enough of them to go around. In fact, they were only assigned to divisions that were right in the thick of it. Any division that was off the line or just holding or something, they pulled the Luftwaffe Liaison Officer and assigned him to the replacement division.
QUESTION:
What was the line of authority? Did these liaison officers have the authority to direct aircraft? What was their authority?
ANSWER:
Now just one minute, first answer the previous question.
Yes, we have a previous question that has not been translated.
And the question was about whether or not you used pilots as these forward controllers or liaison officers.
ANSWER:
No, there were no pilots that were used. They were Luftwaffe officers who had special training, one year schooling for this particular chore that they were doing.
They were mostly used just as liaison officers. They did not have any command authority or anything. They would inform the air units how the division’s units were deployed on the battlefield, where they were, where the friendly troops were, and where they suspected the enemies were.

He didn’t have any command authority. The organization chart would have the Flieger Air Division or Air Corps as Colonel Rudel's commander, and he was theoretically responsible to him.
However, because of his experience, innovation and previous employment, he in effect had a free hand with operations, that was given to other experienced leaders also, but only very experienced ones.
They would be sent from one area to another as the need arose and that would come from higher authority. But as far as employment within his area, the authority to release his bombs, was left to him because of his experience and his prior success. He knew more than his commanders knew and they recognized it and said in effect, you fact a free hand in what you are doing.
Start out with the question. What was the question?
The question was, did other commanders, were they held responsible to the higher echelon of the command, the Air Divisions and Air Corps?
ANSWER:
Colonel Rudel said that there were a few of course, if the commander of the individual wing or group was a new commander, then the control that the Air Division commander would exercise would, of course, be much more stringent than he would with someone like Colonel Rudel.

However, because of the core of experienced people that they had available for commanders, by the end of the war there were very, very few wing commanders that had to be subordinated to the Air Corps commander, in that manner.
For the inexperienced squadron leaders Geschwader, the Flieger Corps level, the Air Corps level told them exactly where to bomb or gave them exact coordinates and they had to bomb there. They had no freedom of action, for the inexperienced people, and they bombed there even if there were friendly troops right at those coordinates.
Colonel Rudel came back from a mission and he said that they had not destroyed all of the Russian tanks or troops in a particular area and he wanted to return to that particular target to finish up, if there was a conflict between what he thought and what the Air Corps commander thought that the Air Corps commander had a more important target, the, of course, Colonel Rudel was ordered to the more important target.
QUESTION:
I'd like to ask him a two part question. Could he give us a brief description of how he reacted to an air request, where did it come from and how did it actually get to him. In reading his book, I see that some of his missions were almost on his own initiative. He went out sort of hunting as against reacting to a request as we would to our own tactical air control section and along in home areas that were within the range of friendly units, did he ever have coordination with the artillery that helped him soften up the area, so to speak, in suppression?

Did he ever use the artillery?
ANSWER:
It would be the front division commanders that would place their requests and many times the army requests would be 20 to 30 at a time. Of course, this would far exceed the assets that they had.

Tape two, side one.

The final decision on who would receive the help was made by the Air Corps. It apparently was neither a joint conference of division commanders nor higher than Air Corps. The last decision, after receiving the requests and the reasons from the division commanders, was made at the Air Corps level on who would actually receive the help.
QUESTION:
Yes, you said something interesting conversation. You said that even though there were intelligence of those who were issuing the orders and executing that mission for the tactical battle, wouldn't there be some process of updating mission parameters.
ANSWER:
It was clear that a German pilot, group commander, squadron commander, whatever, wouldn't knowingly attack German troops. I think what he meant before was that if there was some friendlies you couldn't see on the ground, they were ordered to attack there and naturally they would.
There was, theoretically, a system of update, but it was so complicated and fluid there, that it seldom functioned. It was dependent upon how far away they were from the controls, how far away they were from their own bases, from the Corps.

If they were 300 kilometers from the Air Corps, their radios could not function at that distance, so it had to be strictly at the knowledge oi the flight commander as to whether or not they would attack. He said that the German soldiers on the ground, it was seldom that they would have trouble discerning which were their own soldiers, in that situation, because of the Flak, other than, as we said before, when they were mixing in one with another.
But, normally the Flak was so intense that they, an inexperienced man would say that that is the place that normally they attacked that there was not a great difficulty telling which were the friendlies and not.
The German friendly soldiers would have a flare signal they would use, so that they could identify themselves.
If the Stuka were to fly over and there was no signal, they would circle again. Knowing the circle, their own troops would use the flare signal to say "we're German, and don't bomb us."
QUESTION:
I'd like to go back to his flight control. He indicated that the first shot out of the barrel in the daytime was his. Look at the situation and then quite often it wound up with additional airplanes in the flights.
Could you get the command and control that he exercised over his supporting air that was directly in support of him on a mission?

ANSWER:
Yes sir, Could I just hold on it one second to answer the previous question, the artillery, about, well that also, I meant about the identification of the ground troops. They would fly down, of course, and make these I D passes and then when the troops on the ground realized that they were trying to clarify the situation they would use flares, flare pistols to clarify their position. Then, from above, Colonel Rudel could look down and he could see all the lights and maybe he could make out exactly where the front was.
They would use different colors for different purposes and he would know exactly along what line the friendlies and the enemies.
And even apparently inexperienced commanders would normally be warned off if they were about to bomb on some coordinates that were four hours old and the friendly troops had advanced too, meanwhile. Even an inexperienced commander normally, if they were shooting off Very pistols, would see that he wasn't supposed to bomb there. If he wasn't too rigid, then apparently they would let him move his coordinates forward, bomb forward.
Apparently, that was an informal arrangement, strictly, speaking he was supposed to bomb the coordinates.

But, apparently the system was flexible enough to allow him to shift his coordinates forward.
The remark that you made about giving away positions, sir, by the lighting and by flares. He, colonel Rudel, said that the Germans were concerned about having friendly bombs dropped on them and they would constantly light their own positions to avoid this situation. There was no such thing as a secret as to where they were.
The Germans always knew where the Russian soldiers were and the Russians always knew where the German soldiers were.
So, it was not a problem of giving away their positions, it was already known. It was more important to them and to their own safety that they identify themselves, which they would do constantly, with the Stukas so that they would not get their own bombs.
To answer your question about the artillery. The artillery was used only for spotting. They'd drop a shell. They wouldn't be used to soften up an area or to try to destroy some of the Russian units, suppression?
The artillery didn't have enough munitions to waste them that way. Not that they'd be wasted, but there were other targets of higher priority that they.
You see, they were operating on a completely different tonnage scale than the U S divisions. A U S division got such higher artillery tonnages that they could afford to do that type of thing.

There was very little mass artillery anywhere on the Russian front, because they were so tight on artillery. Our idea of artillery preparation, by the Germans was relatively rare.
CHAIRMAN:
I think we can take a break now. I propose, it's quarter to twelve right now, that we take a fifteen minute break, return at twelve, go for another hour and then at one o’clock we'll adjourn for lunch.
This paper, that's hopefully going around; if you would, I would really like you all to sign up with your address and when we have something that resembles minutes out of this, we'll send them to you for your information.
It's started out, it hasn't gone too far. So, if each of you would please sign we'll try to take care of that administrative detail.
AFTER BREAK.
MISTER TURNER:
Can I make a point? The comment that I made about the journalist. He is a journalist by background but this report is strictly for internal use and not for the press, for anybody who may be misled by that comment.
QUESTION:
Internal to what? Explain internal!
ANSWER:
To this group.

QUESTION:
He's making this tape so that this group can hear it?
ANSWER:
No, so that we can put one report together, that's not biased.
QUESTION:
That's an internal tape?
ANSWER:
Yes.
QUESTION:
Controlled by you?
ANSWER:
Correct.
QUESTION:
That's going to be used to cross check the minutes.
ANSWER:
That's correct.
CHAIRMAN:
Specifically, we want to avoid any kind of an implication that sounds like, and that was the ground rules that Tom and I had talked about. We're going to live by those and we'd like you all to do the same.
Now, we're having lunch at one o'clock and we have reserved spaces for twenty people, it's flexible. For those who wish to sit in at lunch, it will be informal.

We'll have .an hour and a half, of course not all that period will be lunch. We'll re adjourn here at two-thirty.
May I have the hands of those people who would like to have lunch upstairs. Someone count, I'm too dumb.
If someone wishes to join that did not put their hand up, I'm sure there is expansion capability. We specifically went at one so that we wouldn't be going during the noon lunch hour rush.
Luncheon intermission.
CHAIRMAN:
O K, with that we closed with the question of signaling and controls that were used at the front by the pilots. Shall we continue in the command and control sense for a period. Raise your hands, and we'll start the' questions still in the command and control area.
QUESTION:
Why don't we pursue the one that we had just before lunch. As we were closing Colonel Rudel made a few comments that I think were very interesting and that underlines probably the most fundamental points concerning the men at controls. He said that the pilots involved in close support, they must think of themselves as soldiers, if they don't think of themselves as soldiers, then none of the other arrangements can work. The whole thing evolves around that.
He said that if they think of themselves as purely pilots or as fighter pilots, it is not possible to do this mission.

To do close support, the pilots have to be, in his term, infantry of the air.
QUESTION:
How did Colonel Rudel manage the air that was supporting him? He indicated that quite often the first flight of the day was the personal reconnaissance of the area and then subsequently air power was applied. Did he hold them from the fields? Did he marshal them so far from where he was? How did he call it in? Is he a one man army?
ANSWER:
The first part of that question was that he would go out first, then return to the base, because the other pilots would sleep longer than he would. This was a before dawn flight. It was a reconnaissance flight before dawn. He would return and the other pilots would then be ready, having gotten up later than he did, and they would take off, usually in group strength, which was, as we have said before, about 14 or 15 airplanes. Then he would take them back to the area that he had selected and presumably brief the Air Corps level what was to attack.
That would start off the fighting day. With his normal aircraft strength being 36, he would only be able to put 14 to 15 aircraft in the air and ready for flight.

QUESTION:
Was the reason for this battle damage, or was this one of their maintenance problems?
ANSWER:
The main reason for that was mechanical. Their problems were because an aircraft is a very technical machine and in order to maintain that aircraft properly, they could only get about one third of them in the air. It was less the problem that they had been shot at.
Half of the aircraft were severely battle damaged.
He has located them. In theory he had 36 airplanes available, 27 on strength and 9 reserve. The reserves were always intended to be in maintenance. In fact, he was able to only put up 14 or 15, normally. Of course, there were days when he'd go alone; there was only one airplane available.
He says it was not so much a problem of resupply, because they got pretty good resupply by air with the J U 52 tri-motor, up to and including engines. But, he said that the battle damage system was a serious problem.
QUESTION:
That's the point I want to clarify. Was it the battle damage that war keeping the readiness strength suppressed?
ANSWER:

He says about half and half. About half would be in battle damage status and about half would be in mechanical difficulty.
QUESTION:
Can we press just a little bit further on this control of his flight. I recognize that there are as many different targets as there are ways to run an air show. But, in general, did he make the first pass and mark it? Did he exercise command of the individual planes in their strikes? How tightly did he hold them or was it a general application and then to go home, reload and come back?
ANSWER:
It depended greatly on whether or not there were other aircraft, whether there were enemy aircraft in the air coming against them. If, in fact,-they had to counter enemy aircraft, then the formation would be very tight and they would go one after another, following Colonel Rudel. He would always be the first one in and everyone else would follow him through, in trail, with about 10 feet of separation between them, the aircraft behind him.
The reason for that was that the typical enemy fighter tactics that they were facing were to try to get in the midst of the group, to catch a straggler or something.

If they tightened up, they found it was very discouraging to the Russian pilots because the J U 87 had pretty good air-to-air firepower. Normally, if they could hold tight formation, the fighters would never try to break up their formation.
Now within that tight grouping they still had individually briefed targets where they rolled in. Every single pilot had a prescribed target that was given to him by the flight commander. Those could be different, Of course to keep a tight formation, they had to be pretty close, but they would be briefed to remain in formation.
Without a falter threat it was a much less controlled flight that would go in and, as was already said, they each had a target that was re-briefed. That could be within a two or three kilometer distance that they would be attacking. He would let his pilots have their individual target and then after about 10 minutes time he would call for reassembly, they would gather together and then either return or.
QUESTION:
One final question or command control. Once they got airborne how much of the time did they get diverted to a higher priority target and what was the mechanism for doing this?

ANSWER:
That happened very seldom. They got it over radio, but it was only possible to recall them if they were within 30 or 40 kilometers of the transmitter. This was a very seldom occurrence. one of the reasons they were much less diverse is they were flying so many sorties all day long and they weren't particularly long, they were about an hour a sortie. With flights taking off all day long there was less reason to divert. They pulled up to two-hour normal combat missions and the average was about one hour.
First, to answer the first question, the thing with the sortie was the fact of how far away the target was. That was the only criteria. We keep coming back to the resource problem. They didn't go around throwing bombs all over the countryside. They had to have targets that warranted sending the aircraft, the few resources that they had and using the bombs and cannon to attack specific targets, on an average day, however, he would fly five to six sorties, but if it was that necessary for them to fly in order to save ammunition and gas they would just stay on the strip.
That was five or six sorties per ready aircraft.
That means if there were 14 or 15 that were normally ready, each of those would fly 5 to 6 sorties per day.

They would surge and fly more sorties when there was an enemy breakthrough.
The question was asked, what kind of resource allocation would they make to these particular missions.
The Germans built about 116,000 planes during the war time period, of which 4,888 were Sutkas. A small percentage of those Stukas, I don't know the exact amount, was the G-model with the gun. In addition to those close air supports there were just a few hundreds of the Henschel 129. So, in essence, the Luftwaffe was not making allocations of resources, it was not truly a close air support air force. They were primarily the air superiority type fighters that they were building or the interdiction kind of aircraft. The two main birds were the F W 190 and the M E 109 and they built over 60,000 of those two birds.
QUESTION:
I hear the British felt that the gun was not satisfactory because of the lack of a good gun sight and the low rate of fire and perhaps the low range, although the outer penetrating quality was there. I believe the Royal Air force abandoned the gun for the rocket. Was the gun with favor in the Luftwaffe or was the gun ever abandoned, or was the gun carried to the end or did the rocket come in?

ANSWER:
Their experience was exactly the opposite. He would take any problem that he had with his aircraft just to have the weapon system that he had on it, to have the cannon that he had on it, because the accuracy and the distance to which he could shoot, was much better and further than was their experience with the rocket.
With the rocket, they had a problem with the trajectory at the end, which would bend down and come in at the tank. The aerodynamic control of the rocket was so poor that the stability of the rocket was such that they could not count on the accuracy that he would have in cannon. He said that with his cannon position of the 3.7 he could count on about 1,100 meters muzzle velocity whereas with the rocket it was only 700. They did experiments with the F W 190 and they worked quite hard on the rockets. They brought the muzzle velocity up from 115 meters per second to 400 meters per second, but it was still hopeless at 400 meters per second.
The trajectory for it was just too great to do any good. Even the warhead was quite good, he said, if you could hit you usually got a kill with these bigger rockets but it was just hopeless to hit.
Also, he reports something that I don't think is widely known about his gun. The aircraft canon is different, apparently, than the ground 3.7 from which it was derived and according to him, 1,100 meters per second muzzle velocity, whereas, the ground 3.7 had 700.

I've always believed this gun had that too, but he says that 1,100 meters per second was the velocity. Actually, that makes it a little faster, I think, than the A-10 gun.
QUESTION:
We've been hearing comments here regarding the fact that he was willing to take certain measures on the Stuka there relative to modifying weapons to get the kind of weapon that he wanted. The question that I am interested in turning the problem around the other way is. In view of the fact that all of this modification was going on with the Stuka in order to have the so-called regimented weapon, were there any other plans to come out with a new airplane with those kind of weapons so they could get a better marriage. If so, what kind of airplane were they thinking about?
ANSWER:
Originally he did not like the Stuka because it was not a close air support aircraft, but as they went on he found things that he liked about it. There were no plans that he knew of to create a better aircraft that would be a close air support type aircraft.
QUESTION:
Let me pursue that then while we are on it.

Were there any recommendations either by himself or other pilots in the Luftwaffe to do such a thing?

End side one tape two.
Tape two side one.

QUESTION:
Was there any kind of recovery system if they lost a pilot? Could he describe that?
ANSWER:
They always waited until they had information as to the status of the pilot whether he was dead, whether he was breathing, or whether he had been taken prisoner.
If it was within 5 to 600 meters in the Russian front, they would land another Stuka and pick him up.
QUESTION:
The other question was, when pilots were hit on this type of mission and they sustained damage, was it typical for them to explode in space, or to be able to milk the plane, or to fly long enough to get back into friendly territory normally, or did they normally go down behind Russian lines behind the FEBA, Forward Edge of the Battle Area, on the Russian side?
ANSWER:
They would land in friendly territory. It would have to be in a prepared field, and then a couple of days later the pilots would show up back in the squadron.

QUESTION:
Would you explain that answer one more time?
ANSWER:
The pilot would attempt to get the aircraft back over to, friendly territory. He would select a landing area so that he could make it back to the field, so that lie could land the aircraft and a couple of days later, he said that they would show up back at the squadron unit.
He says that about 50 percent of the pilots hit were able to make it back to friendly territory and the other 50 percent were either killed in the air or had to land on the Russian side which was pretty much the same thing, he never saw them again.
QUESTION:
Why don't we talk about the Pilots for a little while. Apparently they had a big turnover since they had a high casualty rate. He must have some sort of an idea of what it took to make a pilot. What kind of a-guy was a pilot? how long did the guys usually last? What sort of people were around making up the force that was important to him?
ANSWER:
They began flying either the trainers door to door, then they would graduate to the Henschel 123. The normal flying course lasted a year and half.

And after that there would be another 6 months of specific Stuka training where they would learn bombing and how to shoot the weapons that were attached to the aircraft itself.
They would practice flying at 5 to 7 meters formation.
During the height of the war, the initial training was shortened by half a year, but it was immediately apparent that the pilots were not as well trained and they were not as capable as the other pilots.
QUESTION:
About how many flying hours?
ANSWER:
This would only be an estimate, but he says about 80 hours, that's total. That includes both at the Stuka school and other training.
QUESTION:
That really is a very low flying rate for the period of time.
ANSWER:
The rest of the time, basic training was devoted to such things as infantry training so they had all of the training that a basic soldier would have had, specific training hours in infantry warfare. He doesn't want to be quoted as to saying that precisely.
QUESTION:
It sounds that fairly early on they were selected to go to Stuka pilots.

ANSWER:
The decision was made after your year to year and a-half time in your training. Colonel Rudel wanted in all instances to be a fighter pilot, but his whole class, his whole year group, was sent to bomber school. He was very distraught about that actually, and on one occasion Marshall Goering came for a visit and he explained that they were just starting out a Stuka unit, a dive bomber unit, and asked for volunteers and Colonel Rudel volunteered. That's how he became associated with the Stuka.
He explains this rather emphatically in his first book, The Stuka Pilot. The possibilities for becoming a fighter pilot were so scant for his class, there were rumors going around that they were all going to be bomber pilots and that's the way it was going to be and only the very top of the class, the very top percent would be taken in