Dean Robb
Posts: 204
Joined: 5/25/2000 From: Va Beach, VA USA Status: offline
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quote:
My feeling about AA fire is that aircraft should be hard to hit, but should suffer suppression if taken under fire by AAA. They should suffer much more suppression if fired at by dedicated AAA. By that I mean "flak" units as opposed to an mg34 on a halftrack. On the other hand, 88's shouldn't be very effective against low level aircraft, since they don't have the rate of fire necessary to hit a target like that.
Disagree here. First off, you gotta believe that the enemy ISN'T going to get you if you're a fighter pilot. If you suppressed easily, you'd be flying Gooney Birds pretty quick.
Second, it wasn't until late in the war (and for the Navy) that radar-directed AA guns were developed. Land units were firing with a fixed sight and had to guesstimate proper lead - much harder to do against low-level aircraft due to the angles and smaller amount of time in the target window. The damage to the aircraft came mainly from the sheer volume of fire rather than any major accuracy - when everyone with a gun is shooting it at you, sooner or later someone is bound to get lucky.
As for the 88: I believe it was effective because of the burst. With a big ol' exploding round putting lots of fragments into the air, you don't need great accuracy. Needless to say, the bigger the shell the better the chance to damage the plane.
quote:
I also think AAA should be MUCH more effective than they are now against infantry. Historically, AAA has been extremely effective in that role.
Concur here, assuming we're talking about the dual/quad MGs and the cannon. When you've got twice/four times the number of bullets coming in in one burst as a regular MG, the odds of hitting someone have GOT to increase significantly. And the cannon are basically small air-burst artillery shells, sending fragments through the troops.
A pertinent side note here: The US Army is developing a new generation of standard infantry weapon. One of it's features is an integral 20mm grenade launcher with VT fuze for use specifically as an airburst weapon against dug-in troops, massed troops and for clearing rooms.
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