How German Anti-Aircraft Artillery Works

Throughout the majority of the Second World War, Allied bombers flew missions over Western Europe. Each time aircrews made this flight, they not only had to compete with enemy fighter aircraft, but also the thousands of anti-aircraft weapons aimed at the skies. These flak batteries threw hundreds of salvos towards Allied aircraft at a time. But how did they work? Today we'll take a look at a 1943 training video, which shows the different types of tactics used by German forces, as well as evasive manoeuvres employed to avoid falling victim to these flak barrages. It was a lot more complicated than you think. If you enjoy this video and want to see more, hit that subscribe button. It's free and really helps the channel reach more history lovers like you. It is tough. Percentage of planes. One is the plane guts and skill of our increasing information from our... They're told, for instance, to begin taking evasive action three minutes off the enemy coast. It will consist of 20 degree changes in course. Made at least every 30 seconds and held for at least 10 seconds. Here, you are to gain a thousand feet in altitude. Arriving at your initial point, make a 90 degree change of course. Lose a thousand feet and continue evasive action until you start your bombing run. Positive statements? The men in this room prefer it that way. They've learned that a bomber formation can't just take flak as it comes. They know that these briefing room statements are based on a scientific study and they understand why evasive action must be flown exactly as planned. So that those of you who do not know can get the same understanding, let's have a good look at this flak business. Enemy anti-aircraft weapons vary from heavy guns like the German 88 millimeter flak, the German 105 millimeter flak, the Japanese 75 millimeter to small caliber automatic weapons like the German 20 millimeter or the Japanese 25 millimeter triple pom-pom. There's a great difference in methods of fire between the heavy gun and the small caliber automatic weapon. The heavy gun destroys aircraft by using a time fused shell to put a large explosive burst in the near vicinity of the target. It must be and is accurate to high altitudes. The automatic weapon depends on a dense concentration of fire, flexibly controlled. Its shells explode when they actually hit the target. In heavy anti-aircraft fire, plotting the necessary accuracy requires painstaking fire control. Let's see why. A heavy gun's shell takes roughly one second to climb 1,000 feet. It would take then about 27 seconds for a shell to reach the 27,000 foot level. This plane represents a bomber formation flying 200 miles per hour. If the gun is aimed directly at the planes at the time the shell is fired, the formation will have moved on almost two miles before the shell reaches their altitude. That's why a gunner always leaves his target like a hunter firing at ducks in flight. The hunter must pledge his lead and aim ahead of the duck if he is to hit it. But because of the great altitude and speed of a bomber, the anti-aircraft gunner cannot rely on dead reckoning. His leading must be a careful mathematical calculation. First, the aircraft is picked up in an optical sight and held on the crosshair. The sight keeps tracking it continuously, obtaining its direction and angular height while a stereoscopic rangefinder determines the altitude. At night or in bad weather, the aircraft may be tracked solely by radar. Whether tracked by optical sight or by radar, the information is fed by electric cable to a director. This mechanical quiz kid digests the data and automatically computes the right lead, setting the guns. So they will fire not at where the target is now, but at where it will be at the end of the shell's time of flight. The director will then go on automatically adjusting and setting the guns as long as the planes remain in range. Of course, guns do not fire singly, but in batteries of four or six. Our symbol now represents the heavier fire of a whole battery making a continuous pattern of bursts along the plane's course. Often several batteries are within range and all fire with a proper lead as produced by their own fire control instruments. Each battery maintains predicted fire until it can no longer reach the attacking planes, but new batteries take up the firing as soon as they come within range. This is called continuously pointed fire. This is what continuously pointed fire looks like. Small groups of one to four bursts move along the course of your plane, keeping pace with you as the fire control instruments supply predicted firing data constantly. This is the most accurate and therefore most dangerous kind of anti-aircraft fire. The next most accurate kind is predicted concentration. For such fire control, a master command post directs the fire of several batteries in the region. Each gun symbol represents an entire battery. The target's sighted, direction, angular height, and altitude readings are taken at several points along its course. Based on these readings, an actual prediction is made as to where the target will be in the sky a certain number of seconds later, and each battery is informed. Each adjusts its gun so the concentrated fire will strike the point of prediction at the given time. While the first salvos are on the way, a new prediction is in the making. The guns are laid on the new point and another concentration set on its way. Bursts occur practically simultaneously. Not as accurate as continuously pointed fire, the predicted concentration has greater volume. From the aircraft, predicted concentrations appear as groups of 10 or more bursts at spaced intervals of approximately 60 seconds. In contrast to continuously pointed fire, there will be flat free spaces between successive concentrations of bursts. In both these kinds of fire, the gunner is up against his greatest weakness, prediction. His firing data can never be more than the assumed future course of the target. In continuously pointed fire, the gunner must get you in his sights and obtain your altitude, at least five seconds consumed here. Then the director must make its calculations and set the guns, roughly another five seconds. Then the shell, climbing at approximately its thousand feet per second, chalks up 25 more. Continuing your present flight path for 35 seconds would place you right at the predicted point. But making a change after 25 seconds leaves the flak bursting on a course you are no longer flying. In addition, the gunner's next prediction must be refigured to fit your new course before he can fire again. In predicted concentrations, the gunner has an even longer time left to contend with. For plotting the target's course, 25 seconds. For making a prediction, five seconds. For the telephoning and actual setting of the guns of the various batteries, 10 more. Adding 25 seconds for approximate time of flight gives us a total of 65 seconds. However, by flying planned evasive action, that is a point you'll never reach. You can see from this that if you knew when to make changes and what changes to make, you could continuously defeat the predictions. Well, that's what flak intelligence has figured out. As a rule of the thumb on when to make changes, you're given this. Never fly one flight path for a greater number of seconds than you are up thousands of feet. In other words, flying at 30,000 feet, make a change at least every 30 seconds. In planning what kind of changes to make, we must avoid ineffective evasion. Do not fly a sinuous course illustrated here. Because such small regular variations can be averaged out. The same is true for small regular changes in altitude. Even a constantly curving course must not be maintained for too many seconds at your altitude because the newer directors can predict on such a curve. They can also predict on constant changes of altitude. When you consider the overall pattern of an evasive course in the sky, you can see that nervous minor changes are worthless. Instead, compromising between what confuses gunners the most and upsets your formation the least, we plan this sort of evasive action. Changes in course of a minimum of 20 degrees. Changes in altitude of greater than 500 feet. The two changes made simultaneously whenever your formation permits and never held longer than the number of seconds which corresponds to your altitude in thousands of feet. You will be told to start this planned evasive action three minutes before reaching a defended enemy area. That's because you have no way of knowing when the gunner gets you in his sights. To ensure against flying straight and level long enough for the gunner to get off even one accurate prediction, evasive action is started before you're in range. If for any reason accurately predicted fire is impossible, the enemy can still resort to a third type of fire called barrage. Here the flak is fired into a certain volume of sky. Very roughly predicted, the individual bursts are inaccurate. But with all guns trained on this zone, a dense pattern is formed. To force the aircraft to fly through flak-filled space, the barrage is usually laid in front of the estimated bomb release line. The chances of being hit in a barrage are not as great as in the other two types of since accurate prediction has been sacrificed for volume of fire. Evasive action will not carry the plane out of the barrage or affect its chances of being hit. The sooner the aircraft flies through, the better. Remember the barrage hangs in one region of sky and is not predicted for any particular aircraft's course. However, evasive action during the approach to the target can upset the enemy's effort to effectively locate his barrage. If the defense knew your bomb run long in advance, the barrage could more effectively be placed in your path. Evasive action will add to his difficulties. Sure, we know it's easy to advise. And we know that with a sky full of bursts, barrage fire looks like the worst of them all. But remember first, that bursts you see already hanging in the sky are no longer dangerous. And second, that barrage fire is actually the least accurate of the three controlled methods. By turning away to find another approach, keep yourself in the target area for a longer time, thereby exposing yourself to additional fire. Further, you break the planned formation and in one against the other, it's safer to fly on through a barrage. Absolutely necessary. The evasive tactics we've seen so far were designed for heavy flak at high altitudes. Bombing missions are planned for high altitudes whenever possible because above 15,000 feet, anti-air effectiveness decreases. Flak is quite accurate at 15,000 feet, but it becomes less accurate with altitude. So that at 20,000 feet, it is only one half as accurate as it was at 15,000 feet. At 25,000 feet, its accuracy is again reduced by one half. At 30,000 feet, accuracy again is cut in half. In general, flak accuracy is reduced by one half for every 5,000 feet increase in altitude. A common belief is that a magic medium altitude exists where heavy flak has not yet become effective and light flak cannot reach. How wrong this legend is can be learned in a brief examination of the enemy's major guns. All light flak is effective up to 4,000 feet and some special types are effective up to 10,000. Heavy flak becomes effective at about 3,000 feet, lowest level for which its time fuses can be set, then goes on to reach as high as 37,000 feet. This means that a medium altitude mission, say just about 10,000 feet, offers protection only against light flak. When we know that both light and heavy can be expected, the safest altitude is either as high as possible or as low as possible, right down on the deck. Flying on the deck renders heavy guns impotent and at the same time gives the light automatic weapons their toughest possible traversing job because of your high angular velocity defenses by making use of defilade caused by trees, houses, and low hills affords a chance to come in on enemy positions with forward guns blazing. Evasive tactics at this low level however, the enemy's automatic weapons do not rely on direct decrease in the range with which they deal, the leading problem becomes almost as rapid as the duck hunter and with the time of flight so short, gentle 20 degree changes will turn ducks or bombers into clay pigeons. So against light flak, your protection lies in maximum speed combined with all the sudden alterations in the direction of flight that are possible within the limits of your formation. Skid turns, porpoising, corkscrews, side slipping, anything which will keep those gunners guessing. Yes, keep those gunners guessing, but guesswork on your part won't do it. Evasive action, routes to and from the target, the initial point, and the bomb run, all must be planned to take advantage of the latest available flak intelligence, and even more important, all must then be flown exactly as planned. What were your thoughts on this training film? Did you learn something new? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section down below. As always guys, thanks for watching, be sure to hit that subscribe button if you want to expand your knowledge and join the growing Premier History community.