In WW2, were there any instances of a plane strafing a tank and actually seriously damaging or destroying it?

Question

You sometimes see old WW2 movies and newsreels of planes strafing ground targets and I've often wondered if strafing really had any chance of destroying a tank (not counting the open topped vehicles) and not counting the 37 mm carried by Stukas and 40 mm guns carried by Hawker Hurricanes.

Answer 1

yes they did. American planes often had AP rounds and phosphorus rounds together; which made for a lethal and explosive combination. P-51's did make a mild name for themselves as tank busters.
But, the British can take the crown as having the best tank busters in the air beteen the US and Britain. The Typhoon was a great attack plane.

Answer 2

There are stories of planes, at least in the case of the P-47, taking out tanks with machine gun fire. As QanA notes, it usually involved bullets ricocheting off a hard surface, like a road, into the belly of a tank, where the armor was much weaker. Once inside the tank, the round could ricochet around, destroying equipment and, presumably, people. At one point during the war, Maj. Gen. Lawton Collins, VII Corps commander, remarked to Maj. Gen. Pete Quesada, of the Army Air Corps, that tanks had indeed been taken out in this manner.

This probably would not have been possible with a tank as heavily armored as a Tiger, or even a Panther, but there were several lighter tanks in the German arsenal that might have been succeptible to such an attack. For instance, the Pz. III and Pz. IV, both main battle tanks, had only about five to ten millimeters of armor, respectively, on their underbellies. That's only about a quarter to a half an inch. The P-47 carried eight 50-caliber machine guns, and if you've ever seen a 50-cal. shell, you can fairly easily imagine it piercing a relatively thin sheet of steel.

Still, it would require just the right ground conditions, and some pretty good shooting, to pull off. There would be little chance of piercing a tank in an attack from above, except for possibly some of the thin-skinned Japanese and Italian tanks, or the really light German Pz. I and Pz. II, which only had, respectively, about 15 mm and 30 mm of armor maximum, and that would have been on the front (30 mm is a little more than an inch).

Answer 3

I heard a P:47 pilot say once that they would stop tanks by trying to shoot with their .50's on the ground underneath the tank. This would let the bullets ricochet up under the softer belly of the tank and so penetrate the interior. I would assume this would only work on a hard surface though. Since many planes were using armor piercing ammunition for air to air combat I would say that hitting a soft spot in this manner or even a lucky shot on the top of the tank, could happen.

Also later in the war many planes carried rockets just for this purpose but I don't think you are meaning that.

Answer 4

Yes plenty. The Typhoon and Tempest were ground attack planes and fitted with tank busting rockets.