Anti Aircraft Artillery Ww2 - It soon became clear that small groups of guns working together had only a small chance of hitting a target that had the ability to maneuver in three dimensions. Anti-aircraft guns were later grouped in large formations.
These were usually positioned around military installations, airfields, industrial areas, population centers and on the coast. The main barrage strategy was to place blanket coverage over a particular sector of airspace. Most anti-aircraft commanders believed that shrapnel stood the best chance of bringing down an aircraft.
Anti Aircraft Artillery Ww2
Others preferred high explosive shells or incendiary shells. The ever-increasing German war effort required large numbers of antiaircraft personnel to be transferred to ground combat units. This transfer was made possible without appreciably weakening antiaircraft defenses through the use of railway antiaircraft artillery, which could be transferred rapidly from place to place for the temporary reinforcement of threatened areas, and by the introduction of Heimatflak, or home defense units, involving the replacement
Defense By Rail
of antiaircraft artillery personnel with factory and office workers and 16- and 17-year-old boys. American designers sought to improve upon the 81mm M1 Mortar by reducing the weight and size, which allowed for easier use by infantry and airborne units.
The latter used it to great effect in Normandy as it provided a way for paratroopers to pack some artillery punch. The airborne explosions also produced a characteristic black cloud that hung in the sky, and indicated to pilots that they were in the presence of the flak.
Soon after, the word "flak" soon became a generic term for ground anti-aircraft fire. During the war it was not uncommon to hear, "flak so thick you could get out on a walk on it" when someone described heavy antiaircraft fire.
Impact fuses, sometimes known as crush fuses, go off when they impact something. A split-second later, this sets off the main explosives in the shell and causes it to explode in a cloud of shrapnel. This is great for hitting armored targets where you need the explosion pressed as closely as possible against the hull.
Blind And Confuse
The Germans used a large number of searchlights. Although the searchlights were not particularly successful in illuminating high-flying bombers, they were also used to produce dazzle or glare to blind and confuse hostile aircrews. The main searchlights used were 60cm- and 150cm-diameter parabolic glass reflectors.
Dazzle and glare made locating targets difficult and lessened the accuracy of bombing, and keeping beams direct on an Allied plane helped defending fighters approach the plane unobserved. At the outbreak of the war in August 1914, the French Army possessed just two purpose-built anti-aircraft armored cars and the British had a small number of motorized 3-inch 20 cwt guns.
The rapid growth in the role of aircraft in the war forced all the main countries involved to improve anti-aircraft weapons. At first all types of guns were fitted to upward-firing mountings. Light or medium antiaircraft guns were highly maneuverable and could engage a target almost immediately as it came within view and range.
These guns relied on high rates and volumes of fire. For altitudes below 1,500 feet, they were exceedingly accurate. At very low levels, about 50 feet, accuracy was considerably reduced owing to the limited field of view, the restricted time of engagement, and the high angular velocity of the target in relation to the guns.
An Organized Defense
Fire from light and medium guns was directed and corrected by observation of tracers. Guns were sometimes sited close to a heavy searchlight to obtain approximate target data. The rounds were set to go off approximately 50 feet above the ground.
Shrapnel tore through men and light equipment and took entire armored and infantry units out of play due to the sheer number of wounded and killed service members. This was the most numerous howitzer used by the Germans in World War II.
It was adopted for service in 1935 and used by all divisions and artillery battalions. More than 22,000 were produced, and it was the standard divisional field howitzer. It wasn't suited to anti-tank combat, but was used to good effect in that role in North Africa and even on the Eastern Front.
Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer who has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers and websites. He regularly writes about military small arms, and is the author of several books on military headgear including A Gallery of Military Headdress, which is available on Amazon.com.
Would Allyn Bath
In fact, for the first while after the rounds were deployed, gains were only made at sea because the technology was deemed too sensitive to employ on land where duds could be captured and then reverse-engineered.
Developed as a light anti-aircraft gun that was used on all fronts by the Germans during World War II, the 2cm FlaK 38 was deployed in both single mounting and quad mounting configurations. It was also deployed as an anti-tank and even anti-personnel role.
In the film Saving Private Ryan a 2cm FlaK 38 gun was seen in the final battle at Ramelle. The cannons were also unique in that they were designed with a high rate of fire, and the FLAK 18 automatically ejected spent shells.
The guns were tested in the Spanish Civil War, which led the Germans to refine the design as the FLAK 36, which featured the use of a two-piece barrel for easier replacement of worn liners. The trailer design was also improved, which streamlined the set up and transport of the fixed guns.
Barrage Balloons
The 88 was considered among the best anti-tank weapons but its size was an issue. The 7.5cm Pak 40 was also designed from the ground up as an anti-tank weapon and was capable of piercing 120mm armor at a distance of a kilometer!
It offered a high rate of fire—fourteen shells per minute, making it an effective weapon to stop enemy tanks. Allied strategic bombing forced Germany to organize an extensive air defense system of both air and ground elements.
The defense system included concrete towers over 100 feet high that allowed heavy antiaircraft guns to be sited above the surrounding buildings, the creation of camouflaged streets, and even false towns. A network of air warning, coordination, and direction centers detected Allied bombers and alerted thousands of antiaircraft gunners, searchlight units, and civilian defense authorities to the approaching waves of bombers.
On nights with considerable ground fog or industrial haze, searchlight beams were unable to penetrate the haze, and searchlights went into action at a low angle of elevation to diffuse a pool of light to make target location or landmark identification extremely difficult for Allied bombing crews.
Flak Tactics
On clear nights, when in belts to aid fighter interception, the usual tactic was to illuminate the target by directing beams vertically too produce a wall of light against which enemy bombers would be visible to fighters attacking from the rear, or to compel the bombers,
as they ran the gauntlet of lights, to fly so close that they became visible from the ground, thus enabling other lights to engage them. A searchlight battalion included three or four heavy searchlight batteries. The batteries contained up to a dozen 150cm searchlights and a number of sound locators.
Except for mass employment, initial directional data for heavy searchlights were usually obtained through the use of sound locators, while light searchlights relied on picking up targets by means of search patterns. Searchlights would be laid out in belts or in concentrations along likely lines of approach to important targets.
A belt usually consisted of between 10 and 30 searchlights placed 1,000 to 2,000 yards apart. In Britain an Anti-Aircraft Brigade was formed by the Royal Marine Artillery. The equipment chosen for this unit was a Vickers Naval gun mounted on a Pierce-Arrow 5-ton armored lorry chassis.
Aircraft-Warning Service
The Anti-Aircraft Brigade had four batteries. Each battery was equipped with four Vickers Naval guns and Pierce-Arrow armored cars. Three of these were positioned to provide protection of government buildings in Whitehall. After the start of the war, the Luftwaffe quickly realized the need for protecting Germany and occupied territories from the growing strength of Allied bombers.
The result was an enormous expansion of the antiaircraft artillery organization. Total antiaircraft artillery personnel strength, including staff and administration, grew to over one million, with hardware that included 9,000 heavy guns, 30,000 light guns, and 15,000 heavy searchlights.
Jet engines, air-to-air rockets, drones. World War II was filled with flashy technological breakthroughs that would change warfare, both during that conflict and in wars to follow. But it was one humble piece of equipment that got an early upgrade that may have actually tipped the war in America's favor: the fuse.
During the Second World War, it wasn't just the aircraft that delivered devastating blows to the enemy. As the Allies sought to liberate Western Europe from Nazi Germany both sides engaged in artillery exchanges that proved as devastating and as destructive as the bombs dropped from above.
Deploying The Guns
That may not sound like a great rate, but it was actually a bit of a miracle. Air defenders had to fire thousands of rounds on average to bring down any of the fast, single-engine bombers that were becoming more and more popular — and deadly.
In well-defended areas, heavy guns were deployed on the outskirts with special attention to expected lines of approach. Light guns were concentrated at vulnerable points, such as factories and docks. They were occasionally emplaced on lines of approach, such as canals, rivers, or arterial roads.
In an effort to counter strafing operations, light guns were used to ambush fighter-bombers. March 10th, 1915: We established an advanced Headquarters at Hazebrouck. This was the first time during the war that aircraft co-operated with artillery in battle.
Some of the pilots were up nearly all day sending wireless messages. The rounds were finally authorized for ground warfare in 1944, and their greatest moment came during the Battle of the Bulge when Gen. George S. Patton ordered them used against a concentration of tank crews and infantry.
An Investment Without Returns
The gunners do not seem to have realized that the aircraft might not be German. Such a mistake points to a want of familiarity with airplane tactics on the part of personnel of the anti-aircraft batteries and observer companies.
Allied bombers had to penetrate belts of heavy antiaircraft guns spread across the Reich's frontier and along routes of approach to target areas. A target might be defended by anti-aircraft guns with barrage balloons overhead, an array of searchlights, and even smoke pots to obscure the area during daylight.
Low-level raids had to run gauntlets of rapid-firing 20mm and 37mm guns. The gun was also fitted with a semi-automatic vertical breech mechanism to reduce recoil, while it was also redesigned to be fired electrically while on its wheels.
It had a flat trajectory out to 914 meters, which made it easier for the gunner to hit targets at longer ranges. One of the challenges in using the 88 as an anti-tank weapon was in its transport.
An Army Of Air Defense
The Krupp Factory, which built the weapon, received requests from the German military to produce the anti-aircraft gun but in an anti-tank role. The result was the Pak 43, which included a shield and two steel wheels.
The sector controls were the operational headquarters for fire control and also acted as communication centers. Close liaison was maintained between the flak organizations and the warning service, and between flak and fighter-interceptor units. Operational units included battalions and regiments.
Organization of the individual units was not uniform? the exact composition of the unit depended upon the role it was expected to play in the defense scheme. Regiments might consist entirely of searchlight units, gun units, or mixed gun and searchlight battalions.
During the Allied air campaign against the Third Reich in World War II, well over a million tons of bombs were dropped on German territory, killing nearly 300,000 civilians and wounding another 780,000. While much of the focus remains on the air battles above Germany—the Anglo-American bombing offensive and the defeat of the Luftwaffe—the role of German flak units has generally been ignored, despite the employment of more than one million men and women who helped
brought down more than half of all Allied aircraft. The fuses' combat debut came at Guadalcanal where the USS Helena, one of the first three ships to receive it, fired on a dive bomber heading for its task force.
The Helena fired two rounds and the fuses' first victim burst into flame before plunging to a watery grave. Searchlight tactics varied depending on cloud conditions. On cloudy nights, if a hostile aircraft broke through low-hanging clouds, a limited number of searchlights, in belt or other configuration, went into action.
They attempted to follow the course of the aircraft along the base of the clouds in order to indicate its course to night fighters or to produce an illuminated cloud effect against which the aircraft might be silhouetted for the benefit of fighters or antiaircraft artillery.
It even potentially saved the life of one of its creators, Dr. Van Allen. During the Battle of the Philippine Sea, where U.S. planes and gunners brought down over 500 Japanese planes, Dr. Van Allen was exposed on the USS Washington when it came under kamikaze attack.
He later described what happened next:
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