In the example of the Normandy campaign it was found that the aggregate kill reports of all arms would place more tank losses in Normandy than German records have in Normandy, and the airforce alone claimed to have killed 3x the German armour present. Now you could attribute this to Air power, but that would fly wildly in the face of ground attack effectiveness surveys of the USA army (based on their own plane sorties conducted after the war, also sorry no link) in which they determined the Air force was woefully inadequate at engaging and destroying ground targets. Often cases, these units were the aforestated KV or T-34 battalions. This inconsistent reaction, coupled with the vast majority of Red Army forces being either on par with the German forces or vastly inferior in most metrics allowed the Germans to overrun and encircle any military unit they could not defeat in a direct engagement. In the case of Barbarossa the Red Army was reeling from the Surprise attack and the various Corps and Division commanders reacted with a huge variety of actions, some going straight into a counter offensive, some withdrawing, others staying put and fighting. Yes, both of those are important but they are never required, in game or IRL. You are really overrating air power, and the ability to frontally penetrate the enemy armour is also heavily overrated.

Hearts of iron 4 super heavy tank