Post by whitehorse on Dec 8, 2019 18:50:53 GMT
copy the Flak 88 a devastating gun
(1) Copying a weapon is not nearly as simple as you might suppose. The easiest way is to use the original builder’s specifications which indicates not only the measurements but the tolerances as well. Copying an artillery gun using a captured example is extraordinarily difficult because you cannot know the tolerances. For example, an engineer is hired to disassemble and document every component of a captured Fliegerabwehrkanone 18. He removes a pin from the trunnion and measures it with his calipers. It’s 17.562 cm long and 3.455 cm in diameter. Is 17.562 cm toward the outside of the tolerance range for that component? Toward the inside? Or right in the middle? There’s no way to resolve that question by looking at one example or even a dozen. You’d need hundreds of intact, undamaged Flak 18s to get a decent statistical sample to deduce the tolerance ranges.
(2) It’s A Long, Hard Road. In WWII it was typical for a new weapon system to consume two years of development and testing before the first battle-worthy examples could be manufactured and delivered to the front line troops. It was December 1941 before the US entered the war and 11 months later before US troops entered ground combat against Germany and Italy. If the US started a project to copy the Flak 18 on the day after Pearl Harbor, assuming they had good engineering documents to work from, it would have been late 1943 before the guns would be ready to mass-produce.
(3) We’ve Got Our Own, Who Needs Yours? The US and the British had AA guns of their own which may have been marginally less devastating than the German 88 — something I seriously doubt — which were already in production or soon would be. Weapons such as the 120mm Gun M1:
(2) It’s A Long, Hard Road. In WWII it was typical for a new weapon system to consume two years of development and testing before the first battle-worthy examples could be manufactured and delivered to the front line troops. It was December 1941 before the US entered the war and 11 months later before US troops entered ground combat against Germany and Italy. If the US started a project to copy the Flak 18 on the day after Pearl Harbor, assuming they had good engineering documents to work from, it would have been late 1943 before the guns would be ready to mass-produce.
(3) We’ve Got Our Own, Who Needs Yours? The US and the British had AA guns of their own which may have been marginally less devastating than the German 88 — something I seriously doubt — which were already in production or soon would be. Weapons such as the 120mm Gun M1:
And the 90mm Gun M2:
As it turned out many of these guns were moved to rear echelon depots because they were seldom needed on the front, especially after D-Day. Thanks to long-range fighters like the P-38, P-47, and the P-51 the Allies captured air superiority over western France and Belgium in the spring of 1944. After the Normandy campaign was completed forward air bases in France allowed British fighters like the Supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker Tempest to help the Allies extended their air superiority all the way from the Atlantic coast to the Rhine and beyond. The Luftwaffe was simply not an appreciable threat, therefore the 90mm and 120mm triple-A units were mostly superfluous. Some were assigned to protect big rear-area supply depots and major headquarters like SHAEF, but for the most part, they were mothballed and their crews reassigned to other duties. Both the 120mm gun and its little brother could be used as field artillery or anti-tank guns, just like the German 88, but such weapons are best suited to defensive fighting. The Allies were on the offense. What they needed was self-propelled anti-tank guns — not towed pieces like the Flak 88, which could take thirty minutes or more to be put into action from a transport configuration. And that's what they had:
(4) Meh. As field artillery, the Flak 88 was inferior to the standard artillery used by the British and especially the Americans. The US Army may have had a less than ideal tank in the Sherman M4 (This is the commonly held notion, but as a practical matter, the Sherman was well-suited to the fighting it was called on to do.) however, United States artillery was the best in WWII. No joke. Using a corps of highly trained forward observers, time-on-target fire coordination, and devastating ordnance like the VT shell, the American gunners could rain absolute hell on any target within range. Most German soldiers killed in the ETO by Americans were blown to pieces by corps and division-level artillery and not by small arms fire or tanks.
Why do I say the Flak 88 (there were four different models, btw) was inferior as field artillery? Two reasons:
Small bursting charge compared to Allied field artillery. As an AA gun, the Flak 88 needed high velocity to counter bombers flying at 20,000 feet or more. To achieve that high velocity the projectile itself was quite small compared to the shell fired by the 105mm M2A1 Light Field Howitzer. The high velocity made the Flak 88 a formidable anti-tank weapon, but it did little for its effectiveness as field artillery.
Mobility. The Flak 88 was designed for high angle elevation (from -3 to +85 degrees) and a 360-degree traverse, which are priority characteristics for an AA gun. However, achieving those characteristics required a special mount that was quite different from the typical split trail carriage used for field guns even today. Split trail carriages have the advantage of stabilizing the gun from being displaced by recoil while being lightweight and quickly deployed. The typical AA mount used with the Flak 88 was both heavy and relatively slow to deploy. (The M2A1 weighted about 5000 lbs, the Flak 88 was more than three times that mass.) The mass and the relatively immobile mount of the 88 made it more vulnerable to counterbattery fire than purpose-designed field guns of considerably greater destructive power. Shoot and scoot is the unofficial motto of the field artillery. The American 105 howitzer did that quite well. The Flak 88, not so much.
Why do I say the Flak 88 (there were four different models, btw) was inferior as field artillery? Two reasons:
Small bursting charge compared to Allied field artillery. As an AA gun, the Flak 88 needed high velocity to counter bombers flying at 20,000 feet or more. To achieve that high velocity the projectile itself was quite small compared to the shell fired by the 105mm M2A1 Light Field Howitzer. The high velocity made the Flak 88 a formidable anti-tank weapon, but it did little for its effectiveness as field artillery.
Mobility. The Flak 88 was designed for high angle elevation (from -3 to +85 degrees) and a 360-degree traverse, which are priority characteristics for an AA gun. However, achieving those characteristics required a special mount that was quite different from the typical split trail carriage used for field guns even today. Split trail carriages have the advantage of stabilizing the gun from being displaced by recoil while being lightweight and quickly deployed. The typical AA mount used with the Flak 88 was both heavy and relatively slow to deploy. (The M2A1 weighted about 5000 lbs, the Flak 88 was more than three times that mass.) The mass and the relatively immobile mount of the 88 made it more vulnerable to counterbattery fire than purpose-designed field guns of considerably greater destructive power. Shoot and scoot is the unofficial motto of the field artillery. The American 105 howitzer did that quite well. The Flak 88, not so much.
Conclusion. The Flak 88 gained its reputation in the Western Desert where Rommel used feints and ambush tactics to lure British armor into killing zones dominated by pre-positioned AA guns, often set up in pits to reduce the silhouette.
In the early phases of combat in the North African theatre of operations, the British had few replies to well-sited Flak 88 batteries except to withdraw their tanks and attack the German guns with counterbattery fire from their own artillery or with fighter-bombers of the Desert Air Force. Later the British were re-equipped with American M3 Grant tanks which had the firepower needed to destroy German gun positions at long range.
The British learned their lesson and consequently gained the upper hand against Rommel’s 88s. Lloyd Fredendall’s American II Corps had to learn the same lesson at the Kasserine Pass.
The Flak 88’s reputation was reinvigorated in the Italian campaign. Field Marshall Albert Kesselring was given a comparatively small force to hold Italy against the British Eighth Army and the US Fifth Army with few tanks but a with a generous allotment of AA guns. Kesselring used them in a series of defensives lines sited on high ground which dominated the roads and defiles the Allies would have to control to conquer the peninsula.
The Flak 88’s reputation was reinvigorated in the Italian campaign. Field Marshall Albert Kesselring was given a comparatively small force to hold Italy against the British Eighth Army and the US Fifth Army with few tanks but a with a generous allotment of AA guns. Kesselring used them in a series of defensives lines sited on high ground which dominated the roads and defiles the Allies would have to control to conquer the peninsula.
Kesselring’s tactics included creating as many gun positions as possible, in some cases dozens of protected gun pits for every Flak 88 in service. When not occupied by an actual gun, the pits were often host to a decoy, what the Confederates called a Quaker gun in the American Civil War.
Ideally, the German guns would be sited on high ground with a commanding view of several kilometers of open ground in front of them with hidden forward observation posts linked by telephone to a battalion HQ and defended by MG positions backed up by mortars.
Kesselring’s first two lines, code-named Volturno and Barbara, were hastily fortified positions meant to delay the Allies while a much more formidable string of defenses, the Gustav Line, was being prepared by the engineers of Organization Todt. Where the Volturno Line had sandbags and timber, the Gustav Line had reinforced concrete and armor steel.
By exploiting the defensive advantages offered by the Italian landscape enhanced with concrete, barbed wire, and intestinal fortitude, Albert Kesselring’s undermanned Army Group C largely negated the Allies’ material superiority and threatened to transform the Italian Campaign into a bloody stalemate, not unlike the trench warfare of Flanders in 1917. The Germans used the Flak 88 because that’s what they had. Its wide arc of elevation and high muzzle velocity made it a good defensive artillery piece, but it was Kesselring's tactics that made the Flak 88’s reputation in Italy, not the gun itself. Army Group C would have done just as well with American 90mm M2 guns or Russian 85mm M1939 (52-K) guns. So let us dispose of adjectives like devastating and deadly, and bromides like the best gun of WWII. They were all deadly. While this gun or that gun may have enjoyed a marginal advantage in range or firepower over its rivals, it was tactics — particularly fire control — and defensive measures against counterbattery fire or air interdiction that made the difference.
By exploiting the defensive advantages offered by the Italian landscape enhanced with concrete, barbed wire, and intestinal fortitude, Albert Kesselring’s undermanned Army Group C largely negated the Allies’ material superiority and threatened to transform the Italian Campaign into a bloody stalemate, not unlike the trench warfare of Flanders in 1917. The Germans used the Flak 88 because that’s what they had. Its wide arc of elevation and high muzzle velocity made it a good defensive artillery piece, but it was Kesselring's tactics that made the Flak 88’s reputation in Italy, not the gun itself. Army Group C would have done just as well with American 90mm M2 guns or Russian 85mm M1939 (52-K) guns. So let us dispose of adjectives like devastating and deadly, and bromides like the best gun of WWII. They were all deadly. While this gun or that gun may have enjoyed a marginal advantage in range or firepower over its rivals, it was tactics — particularly fire control — and defensive measures against counterbattery fire or air interdiction that made the difference.