It was essentially the A-10 of WWII. If you had air superiority on the western front it was good, and on the eastern front it was unreal. Rudel was an ace in it in air to air combat, and, IIRC, had a higher number of AtoA kills than most if not all western theater pilots in addition to sinking a battle ship, destroying about 570 tanks confirmed on ground and securing the German withdrawal from Romania by telling them his unit would pay a visit if they molested the retreat...
The Hs 129 started picking up some of the ground attack slack late in the war, but Stuka’s were up on the east front until the end.
I did not know of Rudel’s air-to-air kills. Didn’t he fly the version with the two underwing anti-tank 40mm cannons? I guess they could be used on planes. Did any version of the Stuka have a forward firing machine gun for the pilot?
I think the Russian Stormovik was closer to the A-10 in performance.
I remember the first time, Erich Hartmann (352 confirmed kills) tried to shoot down one of them, he was amazed that his bullets just bounced off.
The older pilots told him you had to get close and shoot from underneath them. Otherwise they had so much armor that it was very difficult to shoot one down.