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
AA in ww2 was not an exact science. The gunners would calculate the altitude and speed of the aircraft and fire ahead of the planes with a timed fuze. If they got it right the shell would explode in the proximity of the aircraft and hopefully the flak would damage the aircraft. It took a lot of shells to down an american B17. The death rate was high but planes often came back with huge chunks missing. Due to winds or the aircraft moving in zig zags (a common tactic) the accuracy often went way down. A small change in aim on the ground could mean a huge change when fired in the air at 25,000 feet.
Flying above the AA was not a real option. If the guns were too far away then yes they could fly over the arch of the projectile. The cannons were designed so this couldn’t happen often. Another option was to fly low so that the gunners had much less time to track the planes and fire at them. This made the planes more susceptible to ground fire and enemy aircraft though.
AA started to get really good towards the end of the war. The US developed radar fuses for AA guns. The bullet had a radar on the tip of the round and would detonate itself when it detected something near it (at first an enemy plane but they were also used on enemy bunkers). These radar fuses are what helped the US pacific fleet to protect itself much much better against Japanese torpedo bombers and kamikaze. The success rate went way up but they weren’t used everywhere at first, the US made it a priority to keep such a good technology a secret.
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