RE: Normandy 44 interdiction
My recollection of Beevor's book on Normandy was that the Allies did a battlefield study of the effectiveness of air attacks and generally found that it was wildly overestimated. Soft skinned vehicles sure, but not so effective versus tanks.
I also wonder how many soldier kills an interdiction attack might cause? Let's say a column of men, on foot or in trucks is attacked from the air, wouldn't they all scatter in every direction? There would be losses certainly, but 150 men running in every direction makes for a difficult target. Their vehicles (if they have them) would no doubt be shot up, but actual casualties might be low. What got me thinking about this was that a recent air interdiction attack in my (still ongoing) PBEM of Normandy 44 saw a German company of men (around 110) lose something like over 30 men. So over a quarter of the entire unit was wiped out by one air attack. Granted their movement should be hampered, but the KIA seems a little extreme.
|