LowCommand
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Naval Anti-Aircraft Guns & Gunnery Norman Friedman
This is, as always for Friedman, excellent. For this group it has a number of very interesting and useful bits of information. Like which AA systems worked best and how well, including hit and kill percentages, totals, by weapon, country and time, ranges, tactics, etc. It includes the expected, how the various systems started, how they worked, the development, and final forms. It includes discussions about the various trade-offs, weight, manning, vulnerability, ease of manufacture, effectiveness of training, etc. Of special interest for the ‘What If’ types, he goes into the failed systems, the systems that just couldn’t be produced in time or because of budget shortfalls, etc. There are also interesting theoretical discussions, like the number of hits and kills expected per sq/ft at what range by the different systems. And how the changed over time. He also discuses the errors in the tests. As many of you know, at the start of the war 20mm did most of the kills. Then it shifted to 40mm and 5” or the equivalent. He goes into the why and how. He also mentions things like tests showing that 20mm was still effective, but got replaced anyway. Also tucked away, is info like Brit air attacks on convoys. Much of it was masthead altitude attacks. The attrition rate was horrible.
Unusually for him, it has a few notable problems. Somehow a few sentences were left unreadable. This is a rather overstated in one Amazon review. There are a surprising number of sentences with problems, but most of them aren’t too horrible. Another problem is trying to understand how AA directors worked from written descriptions. If you read, re-read and think hard you can mostly figure this out. But this is one of those things that Really needs diagrams. (Video is even better, but…) For the what-if folks, he also doesn’t mention one solution to the hideous Brit decision to go with Totally Hand Operated open mount medium AA for most ships – especially the lack of power ramming. (The US also did this, but for fewer and better mounts in less critical positions.) The Brit Army developed a spring recoil cocked rammer for some of their AA guns that worked ok. This decision had big repercussions.
Other things of annoyance. He starts each section with the Brit systems, then American, then everybody else. The everybody else parts are rather thin. He actually complains, in places, about how little information was gathered after the war. In Germany, it was because the investigators were all drooling over the good stuff, missiles, homing torpedoes, jets, rockets etc. Not enough work was done on rather conventional stuff like fire control systems and such. In Japan, it was, in part, because all the papers got burned. The Japanese engaged in systematic, wide spread efforts to destroy all documentation and most everything else. Still, it is more than a bit worrisome about how little information on other countries is in the book. Given his deservedly good reputation, it would appear that there really isn’t much available.
Again, for this group, there is lots of really good info, especially the hit and kill info. If you want to understand a Big part of WWII in the Pacific better – this is one book that will help a Lot. It will also help the what-if and improve the game efforts.
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Suggested Book Naval AA - Norman Friedman - 
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