The answer should be, go around it, soon it will break down and they won't have the parts to fix it or they will have to abandon it because it ran out of gas.

A Typhoon or Thunderbolt

JABQ04 said:

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A Typhoon or Thunderbolt

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I recently read an article that gave statistics that ground attack aircraft had very little impact on actual tanks with a very small percentage of the total kills. However, they devastated soft skin vehicles which in turn reduced the logistic support for the tanks; basically starving them of fuel, ammo and repair.

I will try to find it in my magazine stack.

Myth of the Tankbuster

The eight .50 caliber machine guns on a Thunderbolt might scuff the paint job on a Tiger, but that's about it. I don't know if many P-47 pilots could drop bombs accurately on a target the size of a tank ...

BTW, I'm annoyed by the P-51s being referred to as "tankbusters" at the end of Saving Private Ryan. The ones shown in the movie don't even have bomb racks, so I don't know how they stopped the tank that was about to run over Capt. Miller. And even if one had dropped a bomb on the tank, it likely would have taken out Capt. Miller, too.

Irks me every time

There weren't very many Tigers on the western front in the first place. On June 6th the Panzer Lehr division had 6 total and after less than a week of fighting that was down to 2 operational tanks.

That very well may be true, I'll dig into it as well, however the Germans were absolutely terrified of "Jabos" as the advanced to confront that allies at Normandy. Most of their travel was done at night. I swore it was the Das Reich division, but maybe not but one unit took upwards of 2 weeks to marshall and move into combat

If you watch German footage of vehicles moving toward the end of the war they always have one passenger devoted to scanning the skies.

Yep. Their numbers seem to be inflated. Way more of a psychological effect on armor vs actual impact. However like you and other said devastating to soft skinned vehicles..

Aviation History March 2019. Cover story, Myth of the Tankbuster. Talks about the Hurricanes in North Africa, Typhoons and Jugs in Normandy and the Il-2 and JU-87 and HS-129Bs on the Eastern Front.

You are right that the constant harassment from the air slowed everything. Remember tanks don't move alone, they need huge fuel, ammo, and maintenance convoys to support them. A company of tanks would have at least as many vehicles there in support as it did tanks, if not more.
Which goes back to my original comment about avoid them eventually they will be abandoned and useless.

There was a platoon of panther tanks, 4 I believe, that stopped an entire British division near Cean. They held a high position, were dug in and out ranged everything the Brits had at that point. Those 4 tanks held off the division for an entire day. The crews abandoned those Panthers over night and walked away because they didn't have the fuel left to drive them out or fight them the next day.

CT'97 said:

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You are right that the constant harassment from the air slowed everything. Remember tanks don't move alone, they need huge fuel, ammo, and maintenance convoys to support them. A company of tanks would have at least as many vehicles there in support as it did tanks, if not more.
Which goes back to my original comment about avoid them eventually they will be abandoned and useless.

There was a platoon of panther tanks, 4 I believe, that stopped an entire British division near Cean. They held a high position, were dug in and out ranged everything the Brits had at that point. Those 4 tanks held off the division for an entire day. The crews abandoned those Panthers over night and walked away because they didn't have the fuel left to drive them out or fight them the next day.

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I saw an example of this the other day. I was on my way out to Midland Saturday and passed a train loaded with army equipment coming from the west. Probably 10 to 20 (?) cars of M1s and the rest were HEMTT (wreckers, tankers and pallet haulers) M88's (the ones based on the M1 chassis), LMTVs, Humvees and LOTS of other soft skin stuff on a 50-75 plus car train. Obviously coming from NTC.