How important were Anti-Air guns in Aerieal Warfare(Esp. WW2)?

[Pisces Axxxxx]

Whenever we hear about defending against Aerial Bombardment and just Military Aircraft in general, we always hear about how the best defensive policy was to counterattack using fighter planes in Modern Warfare esp. WW2. However I notice almost no attention is given to Anti-Air guns at all of their importance.

 

I'm very curious of this. I read the introductary book to the Battle of Dien Bien Phu,Hell In a Very Small Place 2 years ago and one of the most interesting things about this battle was how French Aircraft-especially the Bombers and Supply Planes-were frequently shot down during the battle and the whole flying to the area was so hazardous that VERY FEW in the French Military volunteered to go to the area and a large number of the planes sent to DBP (including Suppliers) were Americans and other foreigners.

 

The pilots who flew to DBP often described that there was so much Anti-Air fire that it was far more than all the Anti-Air firing they witnessed in the German Front in WW2(and a large many of them were Veteran pilots who flew multiple missions over Europe during the war) in that battle.

 

Now this really makes me wonder. Dien Bien Phu was proof of how Anti-Air could neutralize Air Power with Anti-Air guns.

 

 

But I never hear of how important Anti-Air guns was in World WAr 2 and Modern Warfare. The one exception being Pearl Harbor where they often portray Anti-Air Gunners as being the prime defenders of the port.

 

The only thing they ever portray in popular media like Documents on TV and General History books is that to counter Aerial Bombardment you simply send in planes.They portray it to the extent that a base can be successfully defended WITHOUT Anti-Air guns of any sort so long as the planes are up before the base gets bombed.

 

How accurate is this?What were Anti-Air guns real use?Could a base just invest all in fighter planes to defend itself from aerial raids or would they still need Anti-Air guns of some sort?

[caesar novus]

You might like a new military documentary series called History Exposed which brings newly declassified info to old battles. The one on the 1990 gulf war covers how the iraqi aa guns and missles were blinded by targeting their radar guidence. Some cruise missles only carried radar reflectors and others spewed only carbon fibers that would short out power lines to defensive computers. This plan was hard to sell originally, but led to only blind aa firing.

 

A wild weasel pilot who baits aa radar and tries to kill it gave possibly the most clumsy book talk in history about his memoir at http://www.booktv.org/Program/13904/Viper+Pilot+A+Memoir+of+Air+Combat.aspx

 

Aa kills a lot of folks on the ground... big shells that sometimes failed to burst in the air hit schools and vehicles surrounding pearl harbor. Accounts for a lot of damage falsely attributed to stray bombs even today. At pearl the guns only dialed in when waves of friendly planes came back to land and many were hit by jumpy gunners.

 

In ww2 the allied bombing forced germany to starve the russian front of their most effective anti tank artillery 88 gun. Hordes of guns and gunners twiddled their fingers all over germany for what in most places a rare visit. The allies eventually realized the main value of bombers were as live bait, not only tying up guns but attracting fighters to be eliminated by escorts. The invasion via france was hard enough even though german air force had only recently been neutralized.

 

There is the story of the radio proximity fuse which made it easier for us ships to shoot down japanese plane attacks. Or todays phalanx automated machine gun/cannons that target missles or planes that have gotten within a couple seconds away. The balance shifts back and forth for aa gun effectiveness thru time.

[Melvadius]

You have to realise that AA guns were only one element of the defences used during WW2 and the effectiveness of all of them relied on a number of different factors including:

 

How high were the enemy planes?

How fast were they flying?

How many AA guns were available?

What was their effective range?

Were there fighter defensive forces involved

Were there fighter escorts involved?

Were the AA guns under point attack themselves?

Were enemy planes within range of small arms fire?

Were there barrage balloons (or similar) restricting aeriel movement?

Was it day or night time?

What were the weather conditions?

Were defenders solely reliant on visual observation or could they be targeted onto attackers using radar or similar?

 

While some AA guns used proximity fuses requiring either contact with enemy plans or being set to explode at certain heights not all did. The nearer planes were to the ground the more effectively small arms and light AA guns could be targeted onto them. Effectively if you can put up a wall of fire in front of a plane it is liable to run into it and suffer some form of damage even iof you do not use exploding shells.

 

Damaged planes tend to fall behind their comrades and any fighter escorts so can be more easily picked off on their return trip by defending fighters even if they do not crash due to the damage they have received. Such planes may have been recorded as fighter destroyed but their original damage was due to AA fire - how could anyone start sorting out which was lost due to what if the probable causes were never originally recorded?

 

Yes there were injuries on the ground due to shells falling back to ground and exploding there but I suspect generally defenders on the ground tended to be more concerned with shrapnel from exploded shells. It was effectively invisible and fell back over quite wide areas causing a higher risk death and serious injuries amongst anyone exposed on the ground.

[caesar novus]

Yes there were injuries on the ground due to shells falling back to ground and exploding there but I suspect generally defenders on the ground tended to be more concerned with shrapnel from exploded shells. It was effectively invisible and fell back over quite wide areas causing a higher risk death and serious injuries amongst anyone exposed on the ground.

Oh, i guess most entire-shell ground impacts came from first-time response to surprise attacks. At pearl they flung many shells up without setting fuses, and similar in more recent beginings of conflict. I only recall one account of someone running thru 88 fallout in a berlin air raid and i think that spent shrapnal was considered more injurous than fatal.

 

I had almost riffed a bit about the most extravagant and maybe wasteful project of ww2... not the bomb, but high flying b29 which actually cost more... to debug the pressure cabin and so on. This must have been partly to fly above aa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.8_cm_Flak_18/36/37/41 gives max heights and effective heights of various aa, but not the japanese ones. Of course high flights over japan proved a failure, and mainly low night runs were done with b29s.

Edited October 30, 2012 by caesar novus

[Melvadius]

I had almost riffed a bit about the most extravagant and maybe wasteful project of ww2... not the bomb, but high flying b29 which actually cost more... to debug the pressure cabin and so on. This must have been partly to fly above aa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8.8_cm_Flak_18/36/37/41 gives max heights and effective heights of various aa, but not the japanese ones. Of course high flights over japan proved a failure, and mainly low night runs were done with b29s.

 

This is back to the issue I touched on earlier that bombing runs could occur at different heights depending on the planes being used, the target and whether missions were carried out during daylight or night time. These issues make any discussion about relative AA weapons effectiveness fairly mote since you cannot discuss like with like.

 

The issue of differences in methodologies is why you have the old RAF joke about US airmen getting increasingly important medals for flying at decreasing heights until they finally get told they will be court martialled as they are not allowed to fly with the British.

[caesar novus]

In ww2 the allied bombing forced germany to starve the russian front of their most effective anti tank artillery 88 gun. Hordes of guns and gunners twiddled their fingers all over germany for what in most places a rare visit. The allies eventually realized the main value of bombers were as live bait,

Speaking of I-told-ya-so, that pretty fascinating wiki article seems to say about a third of military budget was tied up in not terribly effective german homeland aa... for political rather than military priorities. Surprisingly supportive for allied bomber effectiveness (by just being there), and surprisingly detracting for the weak will of a supposed dictatorship.

 

For example, in January 1943

[caldrail]

The biggest issue with AA was targeting. It wasn't easy to get shells at the right point although the Germans became quite skilled at it. However, AA was clearly not bringing down enough allied aeroplanes over Europe and so the Germans began experimenting with ground-to-air missiles. They had a number of projects on the go but the targeting problem remained the same.

[caesar novus]

To see a really dramatic documentary of an inside the cockpit perspective of facing intimidating aa fire, see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40knj0qg_Us&list=FLQgYULq9KCN-zkdBWpRWeRA&index=1&feature=plpp_video

which covers the 1982 bombing run of an obsolete vulcan over the well defended runway in the falklands. The crew hardly expects to survive aa, but soon has more to worry about like overcoming being lost or out of fuel. Their success rested on the efforts of an armada of 13 tankers, the crew of one of them getting more decorations than the bomber crew due to side dramas.

 

The forum where i got this video link included really wild schemes to extend hits on runways on argentina mainland, using a lead vulcan that primarily targeted aa. All using quickly improvised equipment, some from junkyards. But the hit of a single bomb of the first mission sent an adaquate warning message.