Allied aircraft, particularly rocket-firing Hawker Typhoons, were viewed as being highly effective against tanks during the Normandy campaign of 1944. The German counterattack at Mortain is a prime example; from 7th to 10th August Allied fighter-bombers claimed over 150 tanks destroyed, plus others damaged, and additional motor transport units. Volume III of the RAF's official history describes the action, starting on August 7th:

"Between 1230 hours and dusk the Typhoons flew 294 sorties. Their first target was a concentration of 200 vehicles and 60 tanks, a little north of Mortain. [...] Investigations after the action showed that for the loss of only three of their number the aircraft probably destroyed at least fifty per cent of the 78 armoured fighting vehicles, 4 self-propelled guns and 50 unarmoured vehicles left behind by the enemy. [...] The intervention of the Tactical Air Forces, especially the rocket-firing Typhoons, was decisive. 'Suddenly the Allied fighter-bombers swooped out of the sky', said General von Lüttwitz, commanding the Second Panzer Division which made greater progress than any other. 'They came down in hundreds, firing their rockets at the concentrated tanks and vehicles. We could do nothing against them and we could make no further progress. The next day they came down again. We were forced to give up the ground we had gained, and by 9th August the division was back where it started . . . having lost thirty tanks and 800 men'. Five years later General Speidel, who was Chief of Staff to von Kluge, stated that the 'armoured operation was completely wrecked exclusively by the Allied Air Forces supported by a highly trained ground wireless organization'."

Note that the total number of destroyed vehicles is considerably lower than the claims; all air claims were hard to verify and overstated, and small targets on the ground were particularly difficult to positively identify and judge the results of attacks against. Closer analysis by Ian Gooderson in his PhD thesis Allied Close Air Support 1943-1945 shows that, specifically against tanks, the results are even worse; he fully breaks down the statistics gathered by the Operational Research Sections and they show that of the AFVs mentioned in the above paragraph only 43 were tanks (33 Panthers, 10 Mk IVs), and of those only 9 were definitely destroyed be aerial attack (7 by rockets, 2 by bombs). The other AFVs were armoured troop carriers or armoured cars (31 listed), of which 12 had been destroyed by aircraft. More tanks were destroyed by US ground forces (19), another 11 were either abandoned or destroyed by their own crew, the cause of destruction of 4 could not be determined. Gooderson considers other cases, including the Falaise pocket and the Ardennes offensive, and finds similar results of claims by air forces not being supported by analysis of results with relatively few tanks actually destroyed by air attack.

Accuracy was likely more the issue than the lethality of the 3" Rocket Projectiles (RPs) used by Typhoons. Trials determined that RPs could penetrate all but the thickest frontal armour of a Panther, but in a test against a stationery tank in which eight aircraft fired eight rockets each only three of the 64 RPs hit; with an accuracy less than 5% in ideal circumstances, identifying and engaging targets in battlefield conditions under small arms and anti-aircraft fire was highly challenging.

The direct effectiveness of fighter-bombers against tanks, then, was rather less than their reputation (Niklas Zetterling's Normandy 1944 gives other examples of German accounts crediting air power being responsible for considerable losses, though notes that this may have been, whether consciously or not, a way of diverting the responsibility of defeat from the army to the German Air Force for their inability to contest the air), but they also had an impact in destroying transport and supply vehicles, isolating ground units, and air attacks could have a considerable psychological effects, contributing towards abandoned vehicles; from questioning prisoners of war:

"The experienced crews stated that when attacked from the air they remained in their tanks which had no more than superficial damage (cannon strikes or near misses from bombs). They had great difficulty in preventing the inexperienced men from baling out when our aircraft attacked."

Gooderson thus concludes that close air support might not always have been successful in destroying targets, but was effective at neutralising them.