HS-129

"Quite apart from the severe muzzle blast and recoil, the sheer weight of the (Pak40L) made the Hs 129B-3/WA almost unmanageable"

– Paul Eden

"Tod von Oben!"

The Hs 129 was a dedicated ground-attack aircraft ordered for the Luftwaffe that saw service in Africa and the Eastern front. One of the more interesting aspects of the vehicle is that one variant mounted a 75mm AT gun to it, which is as awesomely retarded as it is retardedly awesome. It can be considered the spiritual predecessor to the overall idea of the A-10 Thunderbolt II as a dedicated AT aircraft.

Die Stats

Mid War

The HS-129 is a direct counterpart to its Soviet rival, the Il-2 Sturmovik, it possesses the same Flying Tank special rule that grants it high survivability as an aircraft with 4+ save, and a 2+ aircraft save, in opposition the HS-129 is a pure tank-hunter, possessing 7 AP, though with 5+ firepower needed it'll be hard to force anything greater than a bailout and lacking rockets or bombs limits its infantry hurting potential. Still, not much the Soviets, Americans, or British possess than can survive the top or flank attack of this thing.

IRL

The Hs 129 started its life in the late 30's when the Reichsluftministerium put up a contract for a rather singular aircraft: heavily armored in the front, that could carry at least two 20mm cannons to be dedicated to the anti-tank role and that could not use an engine already in use for other fighter/fighter-bomber series as to not slow down their production. Suffice to say, a mere four developers deigned to answer and only two submitted an actual proposal: Focke-Wulf basically up-armored and up-gunned their Fw-189 'Uhu', and Henschel submitted what would become the Hs 129. While both aircraft performed terribly due to the lack of a decent enough engine to power it, the Henschel prototype was chosen and accepted into service just because it was cheaper.

(Un)luckily for the Hs 129, the fall of France provided a bounty of captured materiel and different possibilities. In 1940, the aircraft was redesigned to accept much more powerful French Gnome-Rhône engines, which turned the Hs 129 from a failure into a workable tank hunter (if slow and lacking autonomy). With the Russians getting rowdy, they were rushed into service on the Eastern front in 1942, and despite their limited numbers and generally poor handling characteristics they performed quite well against Soviet armor. Over the war, the Hs 129 was constantly upgunned to keep being a threat to tanks, going through 20mm guns, 30 mm guns and 37mm guns, but we all know you're waiting for the redpill on the version with the 75mm cannon.

Said 75mm gun. You are free to insert dick jokes here.

In typical German fashion, it was a gloriously terrible idea where the point of stopping to put larger, heavier guns on a given frame was long past, but they kept going anyway... and by some miracle of engineering somehow managed to make it work! The B-3 version of the Hs 129 sported the Bordkanöne 7,5, a one-and-a-half ton weighing monstrosity of a 75mm gun in a special ventral pod, for which they needed to design a revolver-type autoloader that could carry 12 shots (because, no, the pilot couldn't reload the damn thing in flight). Said gun was pretty much impossible to fire consistently, but if/when it managed to hit something said something suffered critical existence failure on the spot whether tank, pillbox or even four-engine bomber. Nothing, save destroyers and even bigger ships or massive concrete fortifications, could withstand a direct hit from a 75mm gun, especially from above. That said, the ungodly monstrosity strained the airframe almost to the breaking point, so badly that the entire gun pod could be ejected if the pilot lost control of the aircraft while firing it.

The Hs 129 never achieved infamy due to the fact that only around 200 were built during the entire war, and the lack of fuel and decent pilots pretty much forced them to stay grounded. It would however have been funny to see what an absolute madman like Hans-Ulrich Rudel could have done with a Hs 129 B-3, especially considering his already impressive track record with mere 37mm guns.