The Science of Flak: How Did German Anti-Aircraft Fire Really Bring Down Allied Planes?
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- Опубліковано 23 вер 2024
- During the Second World War, Allied aircraft conducting bombing missions over occupied Europe faced not-only the threat of enemy fighters but also navigated through skies illuminated by the bursts of Flugabwehrkanone or Flak, the German anti-aircraft defense cannons.
Whether firing from ground-based positions, rooftops or specially constructed Flak towers, the Flak served as the primary line of defense for many German cities during World War II.
In an era before aircraft became too-fast for conventional artillery and necessitated the use of missiles for interception, these cannons played a critical role in a city's aerial defense.
#flak #antiaircraft #ww2aircraft
The 88mm and larger shells relied on fragmentation primarily. At altitude, with thinner air, blast effect is greatly decreased. Another way to look at it is, if the blast is close enough to do damage, you have been shredded by the fragmentation. The black 'smoke' seen is from TNT explosive. It is actually 'fuel rich', and that is unexploded TNT you see. The Germans, like everyone else, moved to amatol which is a mix of TNT and ammonium nitrate. 20 mm HE shells did have a self-destruct fuse, but that was just for ammunition fired over the Fatherland. They relied on a super sensitive fuse so that even the thin skin of the aircraft would detonate them. Having to produce so many FlaK weapons, and ammunition, put a hurt on the Germans as they needed more heavy weapons at the front.
You nailed it. GOLD.
It's the quantity of ammo needed to fight back Allied Aviation that took a toll on Germany's War Industries.
That's really an under estimated contribution of the English and Americans to the Allied Victory. That's a lot of shells spent in the air not over russian divisions.
By the way, 20mm aviation shells got a fuse who was made to travel through the hard metal and detonate only in the fuel tanks when aviation gasoline flooded the inner contact fuse. That was made to challenge the self sealing tanks.
What a mess ! Make those magnifiscent flying machines and then trying to shoot them down with some sort of sling.
What's wrong with humans ?
@@lewcrowley3710 What really hurt, was the production of the battleship Bismark. As if Germany could challenge britains fleet. That steel should have used for tanks.
Can the calibre be further reduced and used against say UAV especially drones as small as birds??
@@yong9613 The issue would be the size of the target. I doubt a prox fuse could detect the small target.
You might need something like a C-RAM. They can take out mortars, so a drone should be an easy target since its slower.
Luftwaffe pilots got a taste of their own Flak during Operation Bodenplatte , which mistook the large formations of fighters heading East to West , as allied planes returning from ops .It is estimated that as a result, one quarter of the German fighter units lost aircraft to their own flak gunners
and?
@@anthonynicholich9654
..and.. shit starts to hit the fan!!
Operation bodenplatte was a failure..
Allied aircraft lost is minimum..they all were up and running in only couple off hours and luftwaffe lost more than 60% off their best and experience pilots needed to defend germany..😅
And not long after that germany surrenders and ww2 ended in europe..but!in the pacific the war is still raging on..😅
@@zadzad4353
Amazing how smart you are hahahaha
Save your story for some kids
@@anthonynicholich9654thats what happen during operation bodenplatte.. im so sorry if i was smart enough to hv interest and to learn and know a thing or two about world history especially about ww1 all the way to Iraq war than your dumbass..lol..
And I knew what type off person you are..
No need to explain..😂🤣
Not so friendly fire...
I'd like to add that the bombers had one commander, who was obviously in one of the planes. In early days, the commander flew inside the first plane. You mentioned, that all lights tracked the first bomber? That was the reason. Kill the commander, and the fleet has to re-group. Then, the radars on the ground (you mentioned) where't radar, those were directional antennas to find out, which plane was transmitting. Because the americans quickly learned, to place the commander somewhere else, but he betrayed his position, as soon as he keyed his transmitter, it shone electromagnetically like a sun in the night. His position was then wired to the next flak battery.
The number of victims you said doesn't seem to reflect the real death-toll. Remember that Avro Lancaster of the Royal Air Force “Just Jane.” It was pretty famous for completing 25 combat missions without being shot down. That was sensational, everybody else had it way harder.
Every single thing you've written here is wrong, what a mess, wow.
US bombers flew in groups called boxes, each 16 bomber box had a lead bombardier that was in the lead bomber, he was the only one who used a bomb sight, all other bombers in the box dropped on his cue, there was a backup bomber in each box in the event something happened to the lead bomber that would move into the lead position and take over, it didn't require anyone on a radio to tell them to do it either, it's how they were trained.
What you think was some kind of radio monitoring antenna was indeed radar just as the narrator of this video says, it was what's called gun laying radar and it was used to range the bombers so the gun crews would know what setting to put on the shell's fuses so they'd burst at the right altitude, US bombers didn't need to talk to each other during the bomb run, they knew exactly what to do, wherever it is you got the idea that they were gabbing away with each other over the radio is just absolutely laughable, once again each 16 bomber box had a lead bombardier, the other bombers in the box toggled off their bombs upon seeing him drop his, the arrangement of the bombers in the box is what gave them bomb dispersal, ie a pattern on the ground.
The thought that if the Germans took out the commander then no one in the other bombers would know what to do is comical, they knew what to do in the first place and didn't rely on radio communications during the bomb run, it's called training.
You really need to do your research in life before making ridiculous claims like you have here, start with this video because it's right when it comes to how the radar augmented German AA gun's worked, then go to the channel US WW II Bombers, he has several videos that go into even more detail than this one about German AA gun's and their use of radar.
here i am.. after a drunk wild night..with a poutine at 2am..watching some flakgun documentary. its pretty interesting ngl
Name a better way to end a night on high!
With a what?
@@CometdownCat google poutine for picture...but it's pretty much fries, cheese and gravy. perfect for any drunk night.
I was telling my father how sick I was as I practiced my spins for my licence, he asked me what I was in, I said a Sessna 152, he replied you should try it with 4 engines. He explained he was pilot of a Halifax in 158 Sqd.at 16,000ft bombing at night. The cockpit was lit up, he knew he had been coned by 3 search lights and now the guns could trig him, height, direction and speed, and would be hit with AA fire soon. He released all his bombs, shut down the 4 engines pulled it up and went into a spin. Ignoring the risk of hitting other aircraft the lights could not follow him, he recovered and flew back to base to fly another day...or, I would not be here as well!
Hard to believe unless you had this conversation about 40 yeads ago. Then still hard to believe.
Cap
Yea that didnt happen lol, you cant recover a spinning ww2 bomber lol
@@Sahlokniirno, it was known as corkscrewing and was a tactic used by aircraft coned by searchlights.
... so they must moved on to a different plane in the formation?
My father 1926 born was yet inhis last 2 years on gymnasium as pupil in the "Flieger-Hj" in the nights in Saarbrücken engaged at 1 8,8cm antiaircraft Batterie in Saarbrücken neat the footballstadium "Kieselhumes". For targetting they had a kind of radar, called "Funkmessgerät". With the so delivered datas they had to "program" the timer of the detonator of the 8,8cm grenades and then to try to load the canon at to shoot at the exact right time, surely more inexact then a proximity fuse, unknown in Germany. I do only exist, because my father was absent from his artillery Batterie in the night, when thus battery was hit by a bomb killing everybidy there. Greetings Martin Schneider
I'd like to hear that kind of story.I'd get tired of hearing allied grandpa kinds of story.Thanks you.
Ive wanted this video for 30yrs
Excellent Interesting Video Thank You
Glad you enjoyed it
My great grand uncle Gerd was a flak gunner at the Zoo tower in Berlin
His unit abandoned the tower roughly a day before Hitler suicide
and fought across a couple of bridges to surrender to British forces
My mother kept his flak badge , iron cross second class and silver wound badge in a old jewelry box
8:52 The Germans did NOT use a 125 mm gun. Their big flak gun was 128 mm. Close, but not the same.
You are correct sir!
Fleigerabwehrkanone, the Germans have such awesome words for things!
due to the German language being a Romantic Language,
where you string together what the object does,,,,
like the term TV...which would be the box that shows moving pictures and sound....
@@ypaulbrown It's funny you say that, I had a very educated friend back in high school who had told me the romantic languages were ones like Italian, French and Spanish where the ugly languages were German and the Slavic languages
@@ypaulbrownHi Paul. German is frequently agglutinative in its noun formation, as you describe. Romantic - better, Romance - is the term used to describe languages derived from Latin, and German isn't one of those. It's a term that applies to Italian, Spanish, Romanian and Portuguese, among others.
Best regards
@@John14-6...There is no other language with more words than german. Its because of the their ability to combine many words. "Fliegerabwehrkanone" is a combination of three words , "Aircraft/Plane (Flieger) defense (Abwehr) cannon (Kanone)".
Its no big deal for an Italian to learn Spanish, Portuguese or French, but its a nightmare for them to learn german. I immigrated to germany when i was 3 years old, otherwise it would be a torture to learn german as an adult. 😅
@@alcapone9550 I know right! When I was in highschool decades ago we had to take a foreign language and I chose German. That lasted one day when I saw how complicated the language was. So I took Italian instead
I think you meant 128mm gun, not 125mm.
Glad I'm not the only one. You beat me to it.
It's some AI seemingly
Thank you for your great video that answers my questions
The lack of any effort aimed towards anything like correct pronunciation of German words disappoints.
I'm disappointed that the Germans were responsible for 100 million deaths and the destruction of Europe and, except for a handful of executed top Nazi officers, EVERYBODY got to go home plus having their country rebuilt free of charge.
AI will do that.
Millions killed/slaughtered/murdered and you're concerned about phonetics???
Dang we are still having to ration concern I see....
That's because this entire account is low-effort AI content
This is truly a great video on the Real Impact of the Flak 88 on the Airborne War! Thank you very much.
Thanks for the visit
I can’t imagine what those crew members felt like flying through that 0:30 0:30 😊
I wonder how much damage was caused on the ground by all the falling shrapnel & shells that flew everywhere…🤷🏽♂️
That's something that l have wondered for long time, after all, what goes up must come down, so what did it hit on the ground? Did the gunners care where it landed, or was that just considered and acceptable cost of war?
@@oldtrkdrvr yeah, did it hit civilian houses, & farms? I’m sure it did. It could’ve fell like rain in the heavily-defended areas!
I think the AA batteries were positioned in areas approaching potential targets. Targets were going to get bombed, so AA is positioned in a target. Unless it is on a FLAK tower.
Pretty significantly if the battle of LA is considered and how much was shot just for that amount of time.
The Flak fired shells designed to pierce wood and fabric planes, like a grenade. It was modernized to modern shells for metal only in 1944, too late.
When the sky is more metal shards than air, it must have been really hard to miss all of that when flying through.
I thought you were gonna tell us what happened to the flak that fell back to land.
Same here. Thanks for saving me the time. I often wondered the same - and all of the projectiles from machine guns, cannons and the brass. (not all was caught)
I was a little boy then. We always had alarm and people were ordered to go into shelter and nobody was on the street. Afterwards we could find splinters of flak grenades and there was the rumor that you will get a helmet when you had collected 5 kilos of splinters. I never could witness like I never heard that anybody was hit by splinters.
My mom - ageing 19 in 1945 - told me they called it flak-rain, when the little shrapnels rained down to soil, street and house. Powerless, of course, the was no charge propelling them anymore and no explosives, to drive these shrapnells through the fuselage. They were just propelled by gravity alone and being light-weight. There was a metallic sound when thy hit roofs or whatever. It sounded just like rain, so much shrapnel came down.
A statistic that could never be known, but I was super curious about, how many people were killed or wounded from falling AA/AAA fire. Now, the high explosive shells, 20mm, 37mm, and obviously 88mm, would self-detonate at certain altitude, for that very reason. But in aircrafts, not every round was HE, plus all the shrapnel from flak; there had to be lots of incidents. Especially in urban areas, plus a certain percentage of shells were defective; thus, the self-detonating rounds would fail.
@@TV_Schleuderprogramm Wow! I suppose that was routine back in the day, but that blows my mind. Did she live in a larger city?
Had germans had proximity fuze allied bombing missions would have been futile
They did before anyone else. not sure what you're talking about
@@anthonynicholich9654 my ancestors did NOT develop proximity fuzes during ww II.
@@anthonynicholich9654 Having them and having the means to have them are two different things. As was not unusual with German engineering during this period
And we just let all the Germans go home after the war with a stern warning not to do this again.
I wonder if there were any flak ace gunners?
You should check the dutch radar system
They were still using Flaks during the Vietnam war and even in the Gulf War
a little like a reverse depth charge
'How flak works?' Not a question, so mustn't have a question mark. Why does everybody do this online?
I think it is basically an American thing, that everyone else has copied.
if they have proximity fuses that will change the odds
one will not be making a lot of course changes with a fully loaded bomber, in formation, flying on the edge of the performance envelope.
Correct, FLAK forced the bombers higher
War is the industry of death.
What is 'fluga bear ganoney' ? 😳
FLAK = FLiegerAbwehrKanone = PlaneDefenseCannon 🤗
Any statistics on how many aircraft were shot down by flak ？ i used to wonder how the hell they hit a plane that high with a big bullet 😅🙄😏
Imagine if the Germans had proximity fuse.
You gotta have some pity for the Japanese pilots. The Germans had the best flak on the Axis side, which exacted a terrible toll on armored, well built US aircraft. But the US Navy had the best flak of the war, with proximity radio fuses and radar guided fire control. Not to mention the almost delirious saturation of AA batteries on the ships which were themselves in massive task forces of ships.
Id rather face German flak in a plane that stands a chance rather than US flak in a unarmored Japanese plane that doesnt.
Yeah, I feel sorry for the Jap pilots (and army in general) who killed and tortured how many 10's of 1000's of young American men?
88's could shoot 25rpm???
128 mm ! There was NO 125mm Gun !
Yeah there was but it's an anti tank gun. It's Russian.
Terrifying
O Brasil comprou da Alemanha e recebeu em 1937 baterias de Krupp 88 para DCA, portanto não é artilharia desconhecida pelo Exército do Brasil.
aun las tienen?en algun museo o base militar?
A DCA da Ilha de Fernando de Noronha na WWIi era por Krupp 88 e metralhadoras Breda italianas. Deve existir algumas peças em museus militares. A aviação militar usava o JU-52 alemães em 1940, a Marinha de Guerra navegava submarino italiano.
I've read that the three most defended cities in WW2 were, London, Berlin and Moscow. I've read German accounts, (Granted Moscow was barely bombed during the war, in comparison), that say Moscow was the deadliest city to bomb due to their air defenses.
Taking nothing away from London, nor Nerlin. The German 88mm was said to be the most definitive weapon of WW2. The German 105 mm flak guns were better in air defense than the 88. The 88 was tremendous, only they lost accuracy over about 20,000 ft.
That's why Allied bombers came in at higher altitudes when they learned that. But the German 105mm worked just fine.
aka "Deadly Fireworks"
And during a bombing run, the bombers had to fly straight and level, for a couple of minutes...becoming an easier target.
I am wondering if a cannon ball acted in a similar way: breaking apart upon impact, sending fragments in all directions
a cannon ball? no. But there was grapeshot
It would be obvious for you to be highly stressed if you knew you were flying into enemy territory for what it could be you last time. I can see loosing sleep over that.
With the odds given, it was a suicide mission.
Reee
Toward the end of the war Dresden had not been bombed. So the army "borrowed" the 88 mm guns to kill Russian tanks. Then the bombers visited Dresden. Oops.
Cessna
AI generated?
I wonder where & from WHOM the allies had first gotten proximity fuse tech?
Also I.R compression fusing for implosion VS. rifle fired atomic bombs....Oh!...And the Uranium contained IN the bombs the U.S used on Japan? No doubt properly scrubbed of any 'Spandau Arsenal' engraving(s). As U.S stocks of enriched uranium were enough for test bombs, but not enough for test bombs & operational munitions (Of particular note being: A late-wartime night-mission, surface running German U-Boote was given >>British Allied Air Escort> where >> it wasall going right?.....The U.S "Trading With The Enemy Act" WHA-?!....;
Really kindve depressing...
and what are you going to do about it? So many smart people who seem to know what's going on but nobody with any ideas or plans of action.
There were GM and Ford factories in Germany, before the war started and they made usefull things, like trucks.
Skies illuminated by what now? 😂😂😂
Radar.
@@oml81mm Radar? How did you get thatmfeom flugewehrkanoone?
@Mrtweet81 Flugabwehrkanone is the word that you are looking for, I think. Nowadays such guns are guided by radar. One of the first radar guided guns was the American 'skysweeper'.
@@oml81mm No its not, if he had said flugabwherkanone, my joke, that went straight over your head, wouldn’t work. He was probably looking for that word though