Why Germany's Deadliest Tank Killer at Kursk Was an Obsolete Dive Bomber

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:01]During the battle of Kursk in July 1943, Germany unleashed some of its most ambitious weapons. The Panther tank, the Ferdinand tank destroyer, and more Tigers than they'd ever concentrated in one place. Hitler was convinced these machines would smash through Soviet armor and deliver a decisive victory in the East.

[00:00:22]But one of the deadliest anti-tank weapons the Germans had at Kursk wasn't a tank at all. It was a slow, low-flying dive bomber with fixed landing gear and a pair of anti-aircraft guns strapped under its wings.

[00:00:34]One pilot in particular rose to fame by perfecting the art of tank hunting in his modified Ju87G Stooker, the Cannon and Fugal.

[00:00:44]He destroyed 12 Soviet tanks on his first day at Kursk. And the way he did it would eventually change how every major air force in the world thought about killing tanks from the air. So today we're going to tell you the full story of the Canonan Fugal Stooker and the pilot who made it work because what it demonstrated about close air support should have revolutionized how Germany fought its war and in a way did revolutionize ground attack just not for the Germans.

[00:01:11]The whole reason this aircraft existed comes down to one number. The Soviet Union was producing T34 tanks at a rate that nobody could keep up with. Between 1942 and 1943 alone, Soviet factories turned out roughly 15,700 T-34s.

[00:01:29]The Germans had no answer for these numbers.

[00:01:33]Their own tank production couldn't come close, and every Panza they lost on the Eastern front was 5 to 10 times harder to replace than a T-34.

[00:01:43]Now, the standard German approach to killing tanks was other tanks, anti-tank guns, and dive bombing.

[00:01:50]The Ju87D Stooker could carry bombs and attempt to hit tanks from above, but the odds of actually landing a bomb directly on a moving armored vehicle were terrible.

[00:02:00]You're dropping a bomb from altitude at a target that's maybe 3 m wide and moving.

[00:02:06]Even experienced pilots missed far more often than they hit.

[00:02:10]The Luftwaffer had tried other solutions. The Henchel HS129 was specifically designed as a ground attack aircraft. It carried a 30 mm cannon and later even a 75 mm gun mounted under the fuselage.

[00:02:25]But the HS129 had problems. Its fuel tanks made it vulnerable. Its engines were unreliable and production numbers never came close to what was needed. The Luftvafer's own assessment was that a replacement for the HS129 had to be found as quickly as possible.

[00:02:43]So here was the core problem. Germany needed a way to kill large numbers of Soviet tanks quickly, cheaply, and with aircraft they already had. And the answer came from a pilot, not an engineer. Hans Olrich Rudol had been flying Stukas since the opening days of Operation Barbarasa in June 1941.

[00:03:03]By early 1943, he'd already completed over a,000 combat missions, which is a number that's almost hard to believe.

[00:03:10]He'd sunk the Soviet battleship Marat at Kronstad with a single,000 kg bomb, diving so steeply that he pulled out just a dozen feet above the water. The explosion cracked the 600 ft warship in half and killed 326 men.

[00:03:26]But Rudell had noticed something while flying ground attack missions against Soviet armor. The standard 20 mm MG151 cannons mounted in the wings of the JU87D could actually damage tanks if you hit them in the right place.

[00:03:41]The T34's frontal armor was 45 mm thick and sloped at 60°, giving it an effective thickness of about 90 mm. From the front, the 20 mm rounds were useless. But the top armor was only 20 mm and the rear where the engine sat was 45 mm but completely vertical with no slope at all. If you came in from behind and above at a shallow angle, you could punch rounds into the engine compartment.

[00:04:11]Rud started experimenting with exactly that approach and he managed to knock out several T-34s with the 20 mm guns.

[00:04:20]But 20 mm was marginal. You needed a lot of hits to reliably kill a tank, and the ammunition ran out fast. What he really needed was something bigger.

[00:04:31]In late 1942, Rudel proposed mounting two 37 mm FLAC 18 anti-aircraft guns under the wings of a Ju87.

[00:04:40]The Flack 18 was a Rhinel design already in widespread service as groundbased anti-aircraft artillery. What made it interesting for the anti-tank role was its muzzle velocity.

[00:04:52]Firing armor-piercing composite rigid ammunition with a tungsten carbide core.

[00:04:56]The gun could push a round out at over 850 m/s. And remember, each gun weighed about 270 kg, including the pod. So, you were bolting over 500 kg of additional weight under the wings of an aircraft that was already slow.

[00:05:13]The first prototype was fitted to a Ju87D1.

[00:05:16]Works number 2552 nicknamed Gustaf the tank killer.

[00:05:22]The maiden flight happened on January 31st 1943 flown by Hman Hans Carl step and the results were mixed. The test pilot noted that the drag from the gunpods reduced the aircraft's speed to about 259 kmh.

[00:05:38]The plane was also noticeably less agile than standard D variants. You couldn't dive bomb with it anymore because the dive brakes had been removed. You couldn't carry bombs. All you had were those two cannons and 12 rounds of tungsten carbide ammunition. Six rounds per gun fed from box magazines. 12 rounds to kill tanks. That's what Rud had to work with.

[00:06:01]But here's what made the concept work despite these limitations. The 37 mm tungsten carbide round could penetrate the T34's rear and top armor reliably at combat ranges.

[00:06:12]One round through the engine deck and the tank was done. The engine would seize, the fuel would ignite, or the crew would bail. You didn't need to land a bomb on a 3 m target. You just needed to put one round through the roof.

[00:06:26]The first production JU87G1s were delivered to frontline units in April 1943, just in time for what was about to happen at Kusk.

[00:06:36]Before Kusk, Rudolph took the new Canon and Fugal to the Crimea to counter a Soviet amphibious landing on the Kuban Peninsula. And despite getting shot down by anti-aircraft fire on his very first combat test flight with the cannon armed stucas, what followed proved the concept beyond any doubt.

[00:06:53]The cannon birds turned out to be devastating against Soviet landing craft, bringing troops and supplies ashore. Rud alone claimed 70 landing craft destroyed during the Kuban fighting. Landing craft were easier targets than tanks. They were slower, less armored, and couldn't shoot back as effectively, but the experience taught Rudell and his pilots the attack techniques they'd need for armored targets. How to approach from behind, how to judge the shallow dive angle, how to fire short bursts and conserve ammunition when you only had 12 rounds.

[00:07:24]The success at Kuban earned Rudel the Oak Leaves to his Knights Cross, and more importantly, it got the Luftwaffer's attention. He was posted back to Schnutz Kamfkashvvada 2, the Immelman wing in charge of its new JU87G anti-tank squadron and he arrived just in time for the largest tank battle in history.

[00:07:45]So here's what was happening on the ground when Rud's squadron arrived at the front. By the summer of 1943, a massive bulge had formed in the eastern front around the Soviet city of Kusk.

[00:07:58]The salient stretched roughly 190 km across and 120 km deep into the German lines.

[00:08:06]Germany planned to pinch it off from both sides in a double envelopment they called Operation Citadel.

[00:08:12]The numbers on both sides were staggering. Germany assembled around 780,000 troops, roughly 2,700 tanks, and about 2,000 aircraft.

[00:08:23]The Soviets knew the attack was coming, partly through their own intelligence and partly through the British breaking German codes, and they prepared accordingly. They dug in with roughly 1.9 million soldiers, over 5,000 tanks, 3,000 aircraft, and defensive positions so dense that some sectors had 1500 anti-tank mines per square kilometer.

[00:08:47]When the offensive launched on July 5th, 1943, both sides threw everything they had into the fight. And this is where Rud squadron entered the picture. Rud's cannon birds were assigned to support the second SS Panza core, attacking on the southern axis of Operation Citadel.

[00:09:04]Their job was to range ahead of the advancing panzas and intercept Soviet reserve tank columns moving toward the front.

[00:09:11]On his first attack run at Kusk, Rud came in behind a column of T34s, flying low enough that debris from his kills scored marks on his aircraft, and heat from the burning tanks scorched the fuselage.

[00:09:24]He destroyed four tanks in that single pass.

[00:09:28]By the end of the day, his personal count stood at 12.

[00:09:32]Now, we should be honest about something here. Aerial tank kill claims during the Second World War were notoriously inflated across all air forces.

[00:09:42]British operational research in Normandy found that pilot claims against armor were typically 5 to 10 times higher than actual verified kills.

[00:09:51]There's no independent Soviet verification of Rud's specific numbers, and there never will be because the ground he fought over was immediately overrun by the Red Army. So nobody ever went back and counted Rex.

[00:10:05]What we do know is that Rud flew an extraordinary number of sorties, operated in an environment absolutely saturated with Soviet armor, and that the 37 mm tungsten carbide round was genuinely capable of killing a T34 from the rear.

[00:10:21]Whether his final claimed total of 519 tanks represents exact kills, a combination of kills and disabling hits, or significant overcounting, nobody knows for certain.

[00:10:32]What's not disputed is that the concept worked. Air delivered cannon fire could destroy tanks efficiently if you had the right weapon, the right angle of attack, and a pilot willing to fly low enough to make it count. The actual technique Rudol developed was simple in theory and suicidal in practice. You approached the tank column from behind, which meant you were flying toward your own lines. This was deliberate. If your aircraft was hit, you were heading toward friendly territory rather than deeper into enemy held ground. You came in at low altitude, somewhere between 10 and 50 m off the ground. At that height, Soviet anti-aircraft gunners had almost no time to track you, but it also meant that if anything went wrong, you had zero margin for error. Rud figured out that the ideal attack formation was small, five to six aircraft maximum. any more than that and pilots started attacking the same tanks and getting in each other's way.

[00:11:29]Each pilot would pick a target, fire a short burst of one or two rounds, and pull up. 12 rounds meant you could engage 6 to 12 targets per sorty if you were disciplined with your ammunition.

[00:11:40]The key vulnerability they exploited was the T-34's engine deck. The rear-mounted diesel engine and its cooling system didn't allow for heavy armor plating on top.

[00:11:50]20 mm of roof armor was all that separated the tungsten carbide round from the engine. And once you punched through, the engine seized, the diesel fuel ignited, and the tank became a burning wreck in seconds.

[00:12:03]Soviet tanks also commonly carried external fuel barrels mounted on the rear deck, which were essentially thin metal containers full of diesel. Even a near miss could puncture those and start a fire.

[00:12:15]After Kursk, the Luftvafer created dedicated anti-tankooker squadrons built around the Ju87G and Rudel's unit became what ordinary German soldiers called the front fire brigade. They were called in wherever the latest Soviet breakthrough threatened to overwhelm German positions. By November 1943, Rudel had flown over 1500 missions and claimed more than 100 tanks. His rear gunner, Sergeant Irwin Henchel, became the most experienced gunner in the Luftwaffer with over,200 missions. When Rudel was summoned to receive the swords to his Knights Cross, he brought Henchel along and personally arranged for the gunner to receive his own Knight's Cross directly.

[00:12:58]At the Battle of Kirarad in November 1943, Rudel and his pilots blunted a Soviet attack involving hundreds of T34s.

[00:13:06]Time after time, his stookers were thrown into crisis points on the Eastern Front as Soviet offensives grew larger and more frequent.

[00:13:15]General Ferdinand Sherner is quoted as saying that Rud alone was worth an entire division. And that quote, whether or not it's precisely accurate, gets at the core argument of this entire story.

[00:13:26]If one pilot in an obsolete dive bomber with 12 rounds of ammunition could have the tactical impact of a division, what did that say about the potential of dedicated closeair support? And what did it mean that Germany never scaled the concept?

[00:13:40]This is where the story gets interesting from a strategic perspective. Rudell had essentially proved that a purpose-built anti-tank aircraft operating at low altitude with cannon arament could destroy Soviet armor more efficiently than German tanks could on the ground.

[00:13:56]A JU87G cost a fraction of what a Tiger or Panther costs to produce. It could be turned around for multiple sorties per day. One aircraft could potentially destroy more tanks in a week than a Panza crew might engage in a month.

[00:14:11]But Germany never built a proper successor to the cannon and fugal.

[00:14:15]While other Stooker units eventually transitioned to Faulerwolf FW190 ground attack variants or continued struggling with the problematic HS129, Rudel stayed with his Ju87G because nothing better was available.

[00:14:30]The Luftwaffer kept flying an airframe designed in the mid 1930s into 1945 because they never developed a dedicated replacement.

[00:14:39]The reasons were familiar. Germany's war economy was being pulled in too many directions.

[00:14:45]Fighter production took priority as Allied bombing intensified. Fuel shortages limited flight operations and the institutional culture of the Luftvafa prioritized air superiority fighters over ground attack aircraft.

[00:14:59]The one thing the Eastern Front had proven beyond all doubt that close air support with the right weapons could be decisive against armored formations was the one lesson Germany failed to industrialize.

[00:15:11]Compare this to what happened 30 years later when the United States Air Force began designing the A-10 Thunderbolt in the early 1970s. The design team lead Pierre Spray required every member of his team to read Rudell's memoir, Stooka Pilot.

[00:15:26]The combat specifics, the tactics, the cannon effectiveness, the importance of operating from austere forward air strips, all of it fed directly into the A10's development. The A10's 30mm GA AU8 Avenger rotary cannon is essentially the same concept as the canonfugal's BK 3.7 scaled up with modern engineering. A cannon built around an airplane designed to kill tanks from the air. Rud proved the concept at Kursk. America built the airplane three decades later. Germany, which needed it most, never did.

[00:16:01]What makes Rud's combat record even harder to process is what he survived to compile it. He was shot down or forced to land 30 times. Every single time by anti-aircraft fire, never by another pilot. He was wounded five times. He rescued six downed crew members from behind enemy lines. Once swimming 600 m through the freezing Denipa River to reach friendly forces.

[00:16:26]Of the four pilots who went down with him in that incident, he was the only one who made it back alive. The Soviets placed a bounty of a 100,000 rubles on his head, dead or alive. They chased him with dogs and on horseback after one crash landing behind their lines.

[00:16:43]By 1944, Rudol had flown over 2,000 missions and claimed more than 300 tanks.

[00:16:50]He was promoted to left tenant colonel and given command of the entire Schlactkashada, too. He was shot down again over Latvia, crash landing with his gunner, Anst Gardaman. Both were wounded. Both went right back into the air.

[00:17:06]On February 9th, 1945, Rud was attacking a column of 13 T34s and IS-2s near Frankfurt and Oda. He destroyed 12 of them, but on his final pass, a Soviet anti-aircraft round struck his stooker and destroyed his right foot. He managed to land the aircraft, but his leg had to be amputated below the knee. He escaped from the hospital, got his rudder pedal modified for a prosthetic leg, and was flying combat missions again by March 25th, 6 weeks after losing his leg.

[00:17:40]He claimed another 26 tanks before the war ended. On the last day of the war, Rudel led the three remaining Ju87s and four FW190s of his unit on a final attack run against Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia.

[00:17:56]Then he flew west, landed at a US-held airfield, and ordered his pilots to lock their brakes and collapse their landing gear to destroy their aircraft on the runway.

[00:18:07]Over the course of the war, Rud flew 25,530 combat missions. His claimed record includes 519 tanks, one battleship, one cruiser, one destroyer, 70 landing craft, over 800 vehicles, 150 artillery positions, four armored trains, and nine aircraft shot down.

[00:18:30]He was the only recipient of the Knights Cross with golden oak leaves, swords, and diamonds, a decoration created specifically for him because they had run out of higher rewards to give. Even if you cut his tank claims by half or more to account for the overounting that affected every air force in the war, the numbers are still extraordinary by any standard. And yet, the most important thing about Rudell's combat career isn't the individual statistics.

[00:18:56]It's what they proved about close air support as a doctrine. A single pilot in an obsolete airframe with 12 rounds of ammunition repeatedly demonstrated that purpose-built anti-tank aircraft could be more cost-effective at destroying enemy armor than the tanks Germany was spending its shrinking industrial capacity to build. Tigers, Panthers, King Tigers, all of them devoured resources that might have produced hundreds of dedicated ground attack aircraft instead. Germany proved the concept and ignored the lesson.

[00:19:27]The United States Air Force learned it 30 years later and built the A10 around it. And the A-10's 30 mm cannon, its titanium armor bathtub, its ability to operate from damaged air strips, all of it traces a direct line back to a dive bomber with two anti-aircraft guns bolted under its wings at the Battle of Kursk in July 1943.