Please post some of these quotes you've supposedly read. Martin Pegg's book has a lot of quotes from the HS129 pilots and they liked the effectiveness of the MK101/MK103 very much.
Funny how you take something and try to twist it... Oh, wait.. not funny. Standard for you. Include my words immediately AFTER that comment. I said AT FIRST they were skeptical. Then they were won over and the 30mms became the primary method of busting tanks. This quite factual comment is one you agree with yourself, and yet you attack me over it.
You go well out of your way to selectively edit your quote of me just to try and create an argument. You almost always do this wmaker. You have a personal vendetta against me and it's quite clear. Your comment doesn't deserve a response, but I will stoop to give you and your cronies your answer: Squadron In Action, page 32, discussing the Hs129 in its early service before the 30mm Mk101 was even available.
Imagine that! A dedicated close-support aircraft mostly being shot down by ground fire. Who would have thunk it?!
At least 9 on the Krusty scale.
Don't be a dull troll. The discussion was talking about the durability of the plane. Comparisons were flying around to almost make it sound like it was invulnerable to ground fire. There were also direct comparisons to our IL-2, which IMO is not a good comparison. I was simply adding some statistics to show that it was quite vulnerable, and that it didn't fly as lightly as our IL-2. There was nothing spectacular about its armor defenses. If it got hit, it would still go down. Probably more so, since it could barely fly on 1 engine. If 1 were damaged or knocked out, you couldn't fly home the same as you could in a bf110 or Ju88. Even in 1942, before the super heavy armament options were around, an engine loss often meant a fatal crash. The Kaegero book "Hs 129 in Combat" lists time and time again when a Hs 129 took damage to an engine, it either went down, the pilot had to bail, or the pilot had to force-land (i.e. crash) immediately. The plane needed a long runway takeoff to get airborne, and when at full loading was slowed to 325km/h. What that armor did was keep the pilot alive. It didn't stop the plane from going down, pilot and all. End result: It wasn't invulnerable, and it was weofully underpowered and hard to fly.
Yes,
They also liked the B-3
3ft hole
The few B-3s actually made were extensively tested for quite a while on all manner of captured Soviet tanks. Including the IS2 and the biggest baddest tanks available. They were excessively tested. Actual combat records (not tests against captured tanks) are rare. Actual production versions of the B-3 had the Revi gunsight replaced with a telescoping sight. How many photos have you seen with this telescope gunsight? Almost all the 75mm equipped planes in photos have the standard Revi. Most likely all those photos you see of Hs129s are of the initial prototype, the plane that flew with the wooden mockup, or the Hs129C prototype (which was mocked up with 75mm but never produced). The ZFR 3B doesn't look like the other revi gunsights. You'd notice it when you saw it.
On the production breakdown it lists 23 B-3s made. Those ranged from wrk no 162033-162055. These were made between July 1944 and September 1944 (considering produciton was very slow, this is understandable). "Equipped to" lists DT+GB to 'GD, others N/A. The note next to this says:
"162052 captured by the Soviets in 1945. DT+GB test flown at E-Stelle Tarnewitz on 11 August 1944 by Oblt. Gatzemeier. DT+GD ferry flight from Breslau to Udetfeld on 27 September 1944. Last 20 units (4 B-2s & 16 B-3s) manufactured September of 1944. Production halted, all extant airframes scrapped."
Production for all Hs129s was stopped in Sept 1944. That means of the 23 B-3s produced, 16 were scrapped in the factory? At least 3 were dedicated to the erprobungskomando group for testing. J.R. Smith's Profile Publications book says both 10/SG9 and 14/SG9 received them (Kaegero says 10 and 12 gruppe), so it can't have been many per gruppe. On Jan 22, 1945 3 of those SG9 B-3s were reported to have been destroyed on the ground by IL2s, thus reducing the count even further. Your quoted comment is repeated in different words in Kaegero's book, and it is the only actual reference I've seen to B-3s seeing real combat.
You have to admit it: B-3s with 75mm weren't the norm and weren't used much at all. They probably didn't even fill a single gruppe at a time. That's something that the Ta152 can at least boast, but the 75mm Hs129 cannot.
