A couple of BoB questions

Due to my specific area of interest my database only includes axis aircraft that crashed on UK soil so there could be many others that were damaged and didn’t make it back. The numbers were quickly gathered by typing anti-aircraft fire as the cause and the year into the database and noting the number of incidents. I agree it doesn’t look good but perhaps it highlights the difficulties of trying to shoot at something up in the sky at night without the help of radar. 🙂

Slightly approximate but out of a total of 128 German aircraft that actually crashed on UK soil during WW2 where Anti-Aircraft fire played a part in bringing them down.

Hardly a good return on investment if the numbers are correct.
But then again, I suppose something had to be done if for no other reason than to keep the puiblic happy. That mirrors the situation in WWI where the airship and bomber raids probably helped th enemy more by tying up more resources than the bomb damage itself.

And Im sure the allied bomber offensive in WWII did the same in Germany.
I’ve read where enemy fighters brought down far more bombers than AAA.
Anyone have any figures on that?

I’ve heard stories of artillery being dowsed to cool them down (and obviously certain MGs use waters jackets) but I’m not sure of how that’s done. Perhaps one for the folks on ARRSE….

Otherwise your just shooting and hoping that you hit something.

Rapid fire? Wife recalls Paddy pouring buckets of water into the guns to cool them. Is this likely/how??

Only experience of searchlights was with Turbinlites.
Story goes that 1 e/a was disoriented & spun in. About our only success!!

= Tim

The Germans used gun laying radar much earlier than we did. Accurate rangefinding was important and radar gave it easily at night.
We did not have a decent gunnery radar until the American SCR584 was introduced in 1944 just in time to combat the V1 threat. This coupled with the proximity fuse at last gave us capable AA.
I well remember watching a battery of 4 3.7 guns near us using this system. They fired 5 shots each automatically laid by the radar. 3 times out of 4 they hit the target, generally by round 12. We boys used to count the bursts until the satisfying explosion.

Slightly approximate but out of a total of 128 German aircraft that actually crashed on UK soil during WW2 where Anti-Aircraft fire played a part in bringing them down.

47 incidents were during 1940 (15 between 1st October and 31st December)
27 in 1941,
13 in 1942,
19 in 1943,
19 in 1944,
and none in 1945.

as I understand it the Germans changed to night bombing in 40/41 due to losses, now how many were due to AA fire I’ve no idea but when they changed to night bombing there was a lot of guns around London together with search lights but defensive gunnery was in it’s infancy it was all a learning curve,they had nothing to base a plan on and I don’t think until the V1 offensive that we had a AA system that worked,

I do not quite understand. Unless at that time there was a possibility for radar guided surface to air missiles (which there wasn’t) how would one go about shooting down a bomber at night. You would have to visually spot it, hold it in the search lights and then concentrate the AA onto that target. Which from what I have read was pretty effective once they were spotted and held. As I understand it once a bomber was caught and held by a few search lights it was up ____ street without a paddle so to speak and it really did have to take some pretty evasive maneuvers to break out of it. So it all comes down to being able to see in the dark to be able to accurately plant some AA right on the nose of a bomber. Otherwise your just shooting and hoping that you hit something.

But remember that successful AAA defence isn’t necessarily about the number of enemy aircraft shot-down.

During the Battle-of-Britain on ‘the Hardest Day’ the Luftwaffe tried to knock-out RAF Kenley. Most of the damage was done by nine Do17 bombers dropping small bombs from very low level; sixty (?) high level bombers, dropping a greater tonnage of bombs, achieved almost nothing because they missed the airfield targets completely! But the low-level attack suffered far greater percentage losses from ground defences.

Why did the Luftwaffe attack at high-level if it was known that bombing accuracy would be badly affected? This is how the Luftwaffe was trying to win the Battle-of-Britain wasn’t it? The AAA achieved more that day than shooting-down the odd German bomber.

as I understand it the Germans changed to night bombing in 40/41 due to losses, now how many were due to AA fire I’ve no idea but when they changed to night bombing there was a lot of guns around London together with search lights but defensive gunnery was in it’s infancy it was all a learning curve,they had nothing to base a plan on and I don’t think until the V1 offensive that we had a AA system that worked,

I still can’t answer that, Tim, but I think you’ve just reminded a few of us (well, me, anyway) of a truth that ought to be considered a lot more.

To many of us, certainly to me, it’s an interest, it’s something I can afford to be detached about. You were there, you experienced it, you feel it differently.

Last summer I was talking to an old family friend, and she got onto some of the things she could remember. She remembers, as a tiny girl, hiding under the kitchen table as Zeppelins throbbed overhead. To me, that’s fascinating, for I can’t imagine a flying machine the size of a battleship (in fact, I can’t imagine a battleship, because I’ve never seen one), let alone one flying over “my” corner of Essex. To her it was visceral, she could taste the fear again talking about it.

Sorry if I’m talking philosophical ballcocks, Tim, but you got me thinking (dangerous move, doesn’t happen very often)

Adrian

It just bugs me that London suffered so much without much apparent response.

= Tim

Almost certainly, Tim!

I suspect that there’s an element in there of how visible it was – I surmise that British AA was still learning its trade when the Luftwaffe was at its most visible raiding by daylight, and it must have had some effect on the enemy thought-wise as the later daylight raids tended to be tip-and-run at zero feet, the hardest environment for AA fire to be effective*. By the time the early lessons were learnt, the Luftwaffe was coming in much smaller numbers, so weren’t necessarily there to be shot at.

However that’s pretty much my guess – how you’d prove it either way I haven’t a clue.

Adrian

*of course, you could say the same for radar and fighters.

More to it than meets the eye??

= Tim

As an example, shamelessly cribbed from “The Last Blitz” by Ron Mackay and Simon W Parry, on the 18th-19th of February 1944 German records claim 184 bombers reaching London, while British records suggest around 120 (and 9 lost). The next night 823 RAF aircraft bombed Leipzig, losing 78,the night after that 598 bombers hit Stuttgart for 9 lost, while 80-odd Luftwaffe bombers went the other way, and lost nine of their number.

But how many of these losses were due to AAA?

Despite what Bomber Command maintained throughout the war, most RAF (night) losses were due to fighters. Also the time operating over enemy-held territory is important; for AAA or fighters.

…so Allied AAA tended to remain cruder and a lot less numerous!

I’d disagree that Allied AAA was ‘cruder’ but certainly the opportunity to reap the benefits of the technology were fewer; by the time AAA was really effective there weren’t any German bombers to shoot-down.

By 1944 the Allies had developed proximity-fused ammunition for heavy AAA, something that the Germans never did, and when the V1 flying-bombs appeared over Britain in June 1944 (and the guns were moved to the coast) AAA shot-down more of them than anything else. The first fully-automatic, heavy, anti-aircraft guns with (analogue) computer ‘predictors’ and radar were also in production (by the Allies) when the war ended.

Incidentally the British 3.7” (94mm) anti-aircraft gun was every bit as effective as the German 88mm but, incredibly, the British only ever used them in the anti-aircraft role. Rommel’s tanks would have been stopped dead in their tracks (as the British tanks often were) if somebody had thought to use the British 3.7” guns in the same way as the Germans used the 88mm; still, it was probably against regulations!

As Jayce says, the RAF were applying far more pressure than the Luftwaffe after about 1941/2, with the larger losses you might expect from larger forces involved.

As an example, shamelessly cribbed from “The Last Blitz” by Ron Mackay and Simon W Parry, on the 18th-19th of February 1944 German records claim 184 bombers reaching London, while British records suggest around 120 (and 9 lost). The next night 823 RAF aircraft bombed Leipzig, losing 78,the night after that 598 bombers hit Stuttgart for 9 lost, while 80-odd Luftwaffe bombers went the other way, and lost nine of their number.

Add in to that that the RAF employed the bomber stream as a tactic whereas the Luftwaffe seem to have gone in far more in dribs and drabs, and you have a recipe for greater losses simply in terms of number of aircraft, and the time large numbers of aircraft spent in the target area being shot at.

I’m afraid I haven’t a clue about hot cartridge cases – I suspect that it would depend on how far they fell as to whether they’d cooled off or not.

Adrian

Sad!!

Thanks.

= Tim

Jayce – AckAck. Whereas our losses over Germany seem to have been very considerable, I don’t recall many e/a losses over here?

= Tim

Definitely, Tim. Part of that was a function of the differing strategic positions in the conflict. The Luftwaffe never really brought the level of pressure to bear that the allied air forces did over occupied Europe and Germany, so Allied AAA tended to remain cruder and a lot less numerous!

Its worth comparing German anti-air advances to Allied anti-submarine advances in the Battle of the Atlantic, where the Kriegsmarine crews suffered similar horrendous losses to our bomber crews once the stakes had been made crystal clear. Our shipping was as much our lifeblood as the Rhur was to Germany so a desperate necessity to protect them was very much the mother of invention.

…that’s what interested me and it seems then people were hurt by ammunition falling from the sky not including the shrapnel from AA shells, must have been quite dangerous to be out and about.

I know it’s not real, so will not seem strictly relevant to some, however in various simulations I’ve played over the years, one thing I’ve been acutely aware of was where all the stray ammo went. For instance In a game of Cliffs of Dover last year, I had the unpleasant experience of realizing I’d brassed up Deal almost as thoroughly as I had my target!

I wouldn’t at all be surprised to learn a lot of the German ‘strafing’ incidents in local lore, outside of the deliberate Tip and Runs Tim referenced, were actually just stray rounds from dogfights.

Jayce – AckAck. Whereas our losses over Germany seem to have been very considerable, I don’t recall many e/a losses over here?

= Tim