Was Flak useless or just a bad choose against bombers? The window to shoot them was tiny and the fragmentation radius was too small, it need almost a direct hit with time or proximity fuse.It only make sense when you don't have fuel and aluminium for your interceptor planes.
>>64705283That giganigga twin 12,7 cm FlaK was a good gun (retardedly heavy tho), but suffered from lack of prox fuzed shells, like every non-US/non-UK design.
>>64705283small AA near your troops can ward off enemy aircraft or severely limit their effectiveness due to the need to evade it while bombinglarge, heavy and unwieldy AA with timed fuses is pretty useless except against flocks of bombers, yes
>>64705283It kept making bombers do course adjustments to prevent themselves being zero'd in. This slows down the enemy bombers and gives you time to get interceptors into the air. So no its far from useless.
Bomber crew was one of the worst roles for survivability for the Allies
>>64705287You would needed hundreds of them or at least a few dozens to make bombers bother to evade and miss the target.>>64705289It is so hard to hit a plane even when they diving, how many stuckas or p-47 where shooting down by ground fire? You would need a few AA to scare off those planes.
>>64705305>It is so hard to hit a plane even when they divingit's also hard to hit a target when you're diving in a plane, especially if you're evading aa fire so it cancels outeveryone missed a ton in ww2
If the interception had been done with AA guns, the young soldier who had finally become a fighter pilot would not have been easily killed by the Mustang.
>>64705289>large, heavy and unwieldy AA with timed fuses is pretty useless except against flocks of bombers, yesFun fact: impact fuses were more effective against bombers but everyone used Flak wrong because stupid.
>>64705333>dey niggas waz tarded No, they simply weren't confident that they could accurately land a shell on a moving target from that far away, with the contemporary aiming devices.
Hell, didn't the Western Allies use Automated Radar Assisted AA or some crazy shit like that?
>>64705364Both sides used early computer assisted targeting
>>64705350apparently they should've been because accurately and timely setting the timed fuse to get a hit works even worse
>>64705283>That time when the Germans experimented just using contact fuses and found they got better results outright sniping bombers out of the air, than flakking themThat always cracks me up.
VGH WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN
>>64705443>In the final weeks of the war, the ammunition shortage within the flak arm became acute. The critical situation led the Luftwaffe to test a projectile with a contact and timed fuse (Doppelzünder), the same round that a member of Speer's ministry refused to support in 1944, based on safety considerations involved with the transportation of these munitions. During combat trials in Munich on April 9, heavy flak batteries using these rounds brought down thirteen aircraft at the cost of a mere 370 rounds per shootdown, an extraordinarily favorable ratio compared with the existing average of approximately 4,500 rounds.
>>64705589To think that for about 20+ years every fucking nation was doing flak wrong.
>>64705589>>64705625They probably didn't have the spare r&d capacity to develop a working product before that time anywayTis many a slip betwixt first production and the lab
>>64705283There is no short, simplle answer to this.With ideas and concepts wrtten in the late 20s, and doctrine developed in the mid-30s, heavy AA made a good amount of sense.Of course by the mid 40s there had been a paradigm shift, and germany was physically unabler to react to this.They did develop concepts and prototypes (namely airborne radar, and airborne command and control of interceptors, and jet interceptors), but again all of this just ended up in post-war developments.
>>64705333The German 8.8cm shell initially only came with one fuze, so you had to choose between timed or impact.
>>64705676The vast majority of AA guns (actually as far as I am aware of, all of em in WW2) either had impact of time, not both in the same fuze.
dont forget that deterrence is an important factor and k:d doesnt always paint a complete picture of effectiveness
>Germany had AA rockets while everyone else was playing with props
>>64706048>No functional guidance systemDouble World War losers say what Fritz?
>>64705287Looks really cool.
>>64706068the one i posted used mclos though
>>64705283>useless or bad choice?What an incredibly stupid question. German flak was effective as fuck. It not only blasted literally thousands of planes out of the sky (approx 5,000), it forced British Bomber Command to operate nearly exclusively at night. Which made their accuracy shit.It also hammered American daylight bomber formations so badly they had to alter their tactics. High altitude bombing fucked their accuracy too. If whatever dimwitted bug up your ass compelled you to ask that stupid question is a sign of your general intellect, you should seek help immediately by placing your head in a gas oven.
>>64705283It worked.And also what's your alternative? Planes use a completely different set of resources. If you want more air defense you can use both. Planes are obviously better simply because of range and mobility but it's not like as if flak is taking many resources away from planes.
>>64705305>You would needed hundreds of them or at least a few dozens to make bombers bother to evade and miss the targetYou're underestimating the desire of people to not die. It's like thinking infantry won't duck and cringe to lower their profile by a couple inches if bullets land dozens of meters away. 'But that doesn't actually make a difference' says man not being shot at.And you're overestimating possibly the cost of producing flak guns compared to the alternative of not having any flak.In the interwar peacetime some airforces practiced beautifully precise bombing with incredible mechanical computer sights that could put a bomb up a cow's ass.Then they learned the reality of getting shot at, precision in strategic bombing completely evaporated, and the doctrine became mass high altitude nighttime saturation bombing.>>64705283>It only make sense when you don't have fuel and aluminium for your interceptor planes.Porque no los dos. They're not mutually exclusive if you just accept the small risk of hitting your own interceptors if they're right amidst the bomber formation when it's right over the target. It's like arguing artillery is only for bums who can't just go kill the enemy with direct fire assets.
It was frightingly accurate.I read a memoir about a night fighter pilot, and he went into great detail about German early warning systems, GCI, and flak defense.Flak batteries were guided with a rangefinder and a kommandogerat mechanical fire control system. It was just looking down the sights and shooting willy nilly.
>>64706274*it wasn't just looking down the sights and shooting willy nilly
>>64705301retarded daytime raids exposing the bombers to easy interceptions
>>64705654They researched around 30 ways to make proximity fuze.
>>64705283This >>64706274Bombing missions over Europe weren't a cakewalk,(rip radios) and the flak were just one part of the system, so the kill stats show just one side, not mentioning the bombers that missed their target etcThey also damaged a lot of bombers, and a bomber leaving formation due to damage won't be in for a good timeIf you want to see a clownshow than you have to see what the japanese were doing, LeMay, i think, stated that a training flight over US was more dangerous than a mission over Japan
