Been watching Catch-22 on Hulu, and I’m seeing all kinds of AA fire going off all over the place. I know the show is based on the book and somewhat of a satire, but even in Band of Brothers, the AA seemed to have a somewhat low success rate. I know these are television/movies, but was there any accuracy to the amount of AA fire shown in the films? I’m not sure how exactly how they worked. I guess the true question is, “How did these work? Why didn’t they try to fly above it? Was flying above an option? What kind of success rate did they provide? How have they improved over the years?
In: Engineering
You have some good answers on how they worked in WWII, so I’ll answer you last question, How have they improved over the years?
They used to use timed fuses, so the shell would explode at a certain height, which meant that almost all of them missed. Later in the war, the British and US cooperated to invent a proximity fuse, so the shell wouldn’t explode until it was near an airplane. That’s what AA shells use today.
Most ground-based air defense today, though, uses guided missiles that use either radar or heat sensors to steer the missile toward a specific aircraft. They’re much more expensive than AA shells, but you can use a lot fewer shots to take down attacking aircraft.
That’s a big part of why the US has invested so much in “stealth” aircraft, which are hard to see with either radar or heat sensors. Those can attack the air defenses of an enemy and then the regular planes can come in afterward.
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