I don't know if you guys remember the 1st Gulf War. Baghdad had the heaviest concentration of AAA that had ever been placed in a city. They didn't hit anything.
That being said, it seems that flak was pretty ineffective till after '42, when both sided started tying them to radar. The Brits were suffering 1 in 10 losses to their nightbombers, but that also includes the nightfighters taking a bite out of them. American bomber pilots said that German flak was almost a carpet that they could get out and walk on.
From Wikipedia on Anti-aircraft -"Post-war analysis demonstrated that even with newest anti-aircraft systems employed by both sides, the vast majority of bombers reached their targets successfully, on the order of 90%."
From Wikipedia on 88mm Flak Gun-"Owing to the increase in U.S. and British bombing raids during 1943 and 1944, the majority of these guns were used in their original anti-aircraft role, now complemented by the formidable 12.8 cm FlaK 40 and 10.5 cm FlaK 39. There were complaints that, due to the apparent ineffectiveness of anti-aircraft defenses as a whole, the guns should be transferred from air defense units to anti-tank duties, but this politically unpopular move was never made."
Keep in mind that only 18,295 of the 88mm Flak gun were made. Consider that some were used as anti-tank guns and the rest were used to defend the entire Reich, from Norway to Africa, From France to Russia. Granted that the 88 was not the only flak gun. Still, as the most "famous", the numbers are much less than I expected.
Anyhow, I am not sure how this translates into a computer simulation, but it would seem that high-altitude flak is pretty innaccurate, and until you get to low-medium levels, where numerous smaller caliber guns were able to get in on the action, kills were few and far between.
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06-29-2011, 12:44 PM
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