Kongo class AA shell?

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: el cid again

When I get home I will look in a list of all artillery pieces in my files taken from a British publisher. It might also be in Campbell - if these were used for CD they should be. To confirm the data is not a misprint - or is.

My artillery file set - sent by a British author - seems to be missing the page listing data for German Heavy Flak. But the German "Light Anti-tank" (if this stuff is light, wow) page does show German FLAK guns had high velocities: PAK 40 comes in at 3250 fps (980 m/s); PAK 36 comes in at the same value; PAK 41 comes in at 3690 fps (1125 m/s) - and is above the range I described as "normal" above. This was with a 4.53 kg shell (10.01 pounds) - a peculiar hollow charge shell - for a 7.5 cm gun. The German "Medium FLAK" page shows FLAK 58 at 3445 fps (1040 m/s) and FLAK 41 (the 8.8 cm one, not the 5 cm one) at 3280 fps (1000 m/s). Clearly velocities over 3000 fps were routine for wartime German high performance rifles. Wierd "taper bore" guns reached as high as 4593 fps (1402 m/s).

Aha - I found it - on the wrong page - with AT guns "15cm FLAK": 3600 fps (1100 m/s). That is actually higher by 150 than the web site listed above shows. This is small enough it may be a matter of the specific round or charge used - but it is certainly in the same range.

All those numbers seem high, Cid. Are you sure you aren't quoting MV's for the sub-calibre tungsten- cored AP rounds?

It would seem unlikely. Why would someone building an ordnance table use a non-standard round for the basic data on the gun? I do not even know if there IS a 15 cm Tungsten round suitable for the Flak 39? Since all the rage in that era was high altitude precision bombing (American rage anyway) - it was not yet known that winds would prevent it from ever working as intended - they seem to have sought very high altitude performance - which is the point of very heavy AA to begin with. The mv seems appropriate for that mission to me. AA is a better buy than it may seem like - because it does not require aviation spirit and undamaged airfields and pilots with good morale to achieve attrition on enemy air attacks. Also because good air defense requires layers of defense - and what works against one layer often does not against another. I STILL advocate guns for AAA, and am upset that the current major USN gun - derived from an AA gun - is SP only.

[Dili]

FLAK 36 the comon 88mm had 820 m/s,  FLAK 41 a later and heavier 88mm reached 1000m/s.   8km Vs 10km "effective" ceiling. 10km Vs 14,7km max ceiling. I have no data on FLAK 39 with 150mm it is probably a typo.


http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=1271

2.0 cm Flak 28 and 29 (Designed by Oerlikon and purchased prior to the outbreak of war, many others adquired from Czechoslovaquia, France, but without Fremdegerät number asignation)

2.0 cm Flak 30 (Adopted in 1935 as main light Flak gun, and remained in service throghout the war)

2.0 cm Flak 38 (Developed by Mauser as a replacement for the Flak 30. In service from 1940. Nearly 18.000 made)

2.0 cm Gebirgsflak 38 (The same weapon as above, with a lightweight carriage for mountain use)

2.0 cm Flakvierling 38 (Four Flak 38 barrels together in a special carriage (Sonderanhänger 52). The most effective light AA gun)

3.0 cm Flak 103/38 (A makeshift weapon. Marriage between the Aircraft Mk 103 Kanone and the Flak 38 Mount)

3.0 cm Flakvierling 103/38 (Four Flak 103/38 barrels in the Flakvierling 38 carriage)

3.7 cm Flak 18 (Developed by Rheinmetall, little more than a enlarged version of the Flak 30. Production stopped 1936)

3.7 cm Flak 36 (Redesigned Flak 18 with a new lightweight 2 wheel carriage)

3.7 cm Flak 37 (Same gun as above, but with the Flakvisier 37)

3.7 cm Flak 42 (Originally designed for naval use, but many used as coastal gun)

3.7 cm Flak 43 (Designed with a new gas-operated breech)

3.7 cm Flakzwilling 43 (Twin barrelled version of the Flak 43)

3.7 cm Gerät 339 (Krupp project for the Flak 43 programm, not accepted)

5.0 cm Flak 41 (Designed by Rheinmetall. Nearly 200 made in 1940, but shortly after take out of service)

5.0 cm Flak 214 (Former Mk 214 A aircraft cannon mounted in Gerät 58 carriages)

5.0 cm Gerät 56 V1a, Gerät 56 G, Gerät 56 K and Gerät 56 M (Prototypes only.)

5.5 cm Gerät 58 (Rheinmetall design for a weapon systemwith radar and firecontrol equipment, not completed before war ends)

5.5 cm Gerät 58 K (Krupp design for the same specification of above)

7.5 cm Flak L/59 (Designed by Rheinmetall but not accepted for service)

7.5 cm Flak L/60 (Designed by Krupp not adopted by Germany but exported, many guns taken after the outbreak of war)

8.8 cm Flak 18 (First of a serie that become the most known antiaircraft and antitank gun of the war)

8.8 cm Flak 36 (Redesign of the Flak 18 with minor ghanges in carriage and barrel made in three sections instead of one)

8.8 cm Flak 37 (Improvements in the data transmision system and a new barrel in two sections)

8.8 cm Flak 37/41 (Flak 41 barrel on the Flak 37 carriage)

8.8 cm Flak 36/43 (Flak 41 barrel on the Flak 36 carriage)

8.8 cm Flak 39/41 (Flak 41 barrel on the 10.5 cm Flak 39 carriage)

8.8 cm Flak 41 (New design by Rheinmetall, the gun was mounted in a turntable, with great improvements in ballistics, a powered loading mechanism and a three sections barrel in the first guns produced and a two sections in the latest)

8.8 cm Gerät 42 (Krupp design for the same specification of the Flak 41, not accepted for service)

10.5 cm Flak 38 (Designed by Rheinmetall as a full power operation gun, with a high rate of fire)

10.5 cm Flak 39 (Redesign of the Flak 38, changing the electric power supply from direct to alternate, new barrel in five sections instead of one of the Flak 38, and a new data transmision system)

10.5 cm Flak 39/40 (A Flak 39 gun in the platform of the 12.8 cm Flak 40, never reached production)

12.8 cm Flak 40 (The most powerfull antiaircraft gun produced, originally as a mobile gun but the majority used in static emplacements)

12.8 cm Flakzwilling 40 (Two 12.8 cm Flak 40 putted together to arm the Flaktowers erected in many German cities in place of the proposed 15 cm antiaircraft guns designed for them. About 34 produced)

12.8 cm Flak 45 (Redesign of the Flak 40, with larger chamber and a longer barrel and a muzzle brake.Only one prototype produced before the war end)

15.0 cm Gerät 50 (Flak Projected by Krupp to a 1936 requirement of the OKL. Dropped in 1940.)

15.0 cm Gerät 55 (Flak Projected by Rheinmetall to a 1936 requirement of the OKL. Dropped in 1940)

15.0 cm Gerät 60 and 60F (Flak Design made by Krupp, after discarding the Gerät 50. (F means fest, static))

15.0 cm Gerät 65 and 65F (Flak Design made by Rheinmetall, after discarding the Gerät 55. (F means fest, static))

24.0 cm Gerät 80 (Krupp project combining a Luftwaffe gun with a Navy carriage, cancelled in 1943)

24.0 cm Gerät 85 (Rheinmetall project combining a Luftwaffe gun with a Navy carriage, cancelled in 1943)

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Dili

FLAK 36 the comon 88mm had 820 m/s,  FLAK 41 a later and heavier 88mm reached 1000m/s.   8km Vs 10km "effective" ceiling. 10km Vs 14,7km max ceiling. I have no data on FLAK 39 with 150mm it is probably a typo.

It is probably not a typo because we have two different sources giving two slightly different (but very similar) values.
A typo would be the same in both sources. The existence of two wholly different sources describing a weapon of the same name with similar but not quite identical data of all sorts implies strongly this is real data - and it is certain no single typo by any writer or typesetter can account for the reported m/v being so high.

To this, add what I said above: a significant fraction of German AA and AT weapons have similar m/v - and even higher m/v; such an m/v cannot be said to be technically unfeasible never mind impossible; and the values are reasonable given the ranges/ceilings in the same tables - there is no escape from the conclusion these values are probably correct. If we had to argue it in court, we would win to the standard of preponderence of the evidence. The other side is only "it seems high." I agree - it does. But we cannot make up data and be honest - and this is the data we have. When you have multiple sources for data that are not carbon copies of each other - investigators say the data is "confirmed" - no matter how much we might like better data (or even the ability to field test actual original guns). We should always seek more data; we should never disregard the data we have, particularly not when confirmed.

[Dili]

My advice is that should ask in knowledgeable forums like AxisForum and other places. Lonesentry if that was one of your sources is from war period and obviously far from reliable. I have made no comments on muzzle speed other than giving the data i have.

When i said typo it was concerning 105mm Vs 150mm. As you can see in above list Flak 39 is a 105mm AA Gun.

[mikemike]

ORIGINAL: el cid again


It would seem unlikely. Why would someone building an ordnance table use a non-standard round for the basic data on the gun? I do not even know if there IS a 15 cm Tungsten round suitable for the Flak 39?

Germany had no subcaliber (sabot) rounds in WWII except for large-caliber weapons, where they were intended for use against hard targets - the so-called Röchling shells whose use had to be expressly approved by Hitler himself in every single case. Oh, and fin-stabilized subcaliber "dart" shells for the 310mm smoothbore version of the K5 railway gun (AKA "Anzio Annie") that is said to have had a maximum range of about 120 km or 75 miles.
Every other shell, all the anti-tank rounds, for standard-barrel guns, were full-bore. AFAIK, tungsten ammo was used only for the conical barrel weapons that had an impressive penetration performance, but tungsten was in short supply and reserved for machine tools, so the conical barrels had a rather abbreviated service life.
So, those 1000 m/s ( ~3300 fps) of muzzle velocity quoted for the 88 mm Flak 41 are for the full-bore HE shell; not extravagant considering that the gun had a barrel 71 calibres long and that the round was specified as 88/855 mm and looked rather like a supersized rifle cartridge. A similar weapon was used as the Pak 43 and the KwK43 (on Jagdpanther and Königstiger).

150 mm AA guns were just prototypes, their cost/performance ratio was probably too unfavorable for series production. Krupp and Skoda had, however, projects for 240 mm DP guns intended mainly for coastal defence installations. I've fond numbers like 1030 m/s (3390 fps) muzzle velocity, 120,000 ft max altitude and 48 km (52500 yds) of range. There are also stories that the 12in coastal guns on Helgoland were used against aircraft at long ranges; said to have achieved four kills on January 4th, 1944. Such large-caliber guns would probably have been used mainly against groups of aircraft, like bomber "boxes", with shells having a lethal radius of several hundred feet.

BTW, the V2 was designed for use from mobile launchers (part of the original spec) and its guidance unit was a self-contained gyro/accelerometer platform; it contained no radio-command component. That story probably derives from the fact that one of the V2 test shots the Allieds got their hands on (either the one that landed in Sweden or the one that was airlifted from a Polish firing range) had been used to test the guidance unit for the "Wasserfall" SAM. IIRC a number of ground-based jammers were deployed in Britain in the expectation that it would be possible to confuse the V2s away from their targets, which was of course completely futile as the V2s were strictly ballistic.

[el cid again]

Nope. That story derives from decades of forinsic examination of the launching facilities - and also from archival materials - mostly British - done by a British engineer and author (Philip Henshall). Some supplimentary information was obtained by US archival materials - and some of them were supplied bo Henshall by US researchers. To this I can add that the radar installed is very well understood and documented before Henshall wrote about it extensively (although originally the information was classified). His conclusions are persuasive. There is a great deal of information about the various weapons in the German language - although I regret to say there is a great deal of misinformation to sort through. The misinformation has two different species of origin:

a) A desire to sanitize the Axis weapons programs for personal and political reasons [Individuals wanted to be seen as technically useful to us without being too associated with nasty weapons and nasty manufacturing facilities, so they just left out lots of things; officially we had - and apparently still have - some concerns about certain technologies as such - in particular radiological warhead technologies]

b) A desire to "sell newspapers" (or more often today magazines, books and strange booklets) - to which end the more sensational the claim the better you can find a market among "true believers" willing to accept any and every claim.

The problem of the limitations of the guidance systems then available was well understood. And worse, the problem was greatly exaserbated by the desire to hit a much more distant target: New York City. The primary launch facilities were set up with both London and New York in the permissable launch/tracking window for (in the first instance) V-2 and later generation weapons which had a V-2 as an upper stage. [Just what to call the later weapon is a matter of great controversy and uncertainty? Henshall prefers V-4 - and I am convinced that must not be correct. For one thing, there was an actual V-4 weapon project - and it is not a rocket. For another, there is a statement by Adolf Hitler himself implying later, higher numbers were all bogus. And for another, there are still other programs various authors associate with that designation.] But the chances of hitting were vastly improved by tracking and correcting during the critical powered phase of flight.

The charge there was no radio control mechanism is false on its face: see the information on the testing program. I do believe the part that the weapon was made to be capable of mobile launch - otherwise there would have been no development of the vehicles (there are several, including a mobile launch center) to do it. But these must by necessity be less accurate than if the fixed sites were used.

Turns out - the launch facilities for various missiles (V-2 is just one of them, V-1 was another, and there were yet others) were the MOST EXPENSIVE construction program - indeed the most expensive program of any sort undertaken by wartime Germany. This was defeated when Allied intelligence came to understand they were associated with rockets (from photo intelligence - HUMINT reports before that were not believed) - and a massive bombing campaign that succeeded in their destruction before completion could be achieved at any of them. There is no way that that massively expensive program - whose partial fruits are still present - and almost impossible to afford to remove so big are they - in France - had no purpose at all. Clearly these weapons were to be used from fixed sites. You need to ask why spend all that labor, concrete, and then add the most expensive radar in the world (at the larger sites)? The answer is the hope to achieve greater effect with more accurate bombardment.

[mikemike]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Nope. That story derives from decades of forinsic examination of the launching facilities - and also from archival materials - mostly British - done by a British engineer and author (Philip Henshall). Some supplimentary information was obtained by US archival materials - and some of them were supplied bo Henshall by US researchers. To this I can add that the radar installed is very well understood and documented before Henshall wrote about it extensively (although originally the information was classified). His conclusions are persuasive.

You are correct. I should have read the wikipedia article first. The guidance system for the V-2 whose description I remembered was used for early production examples while a small proportion of the late production models used a radar beam-riding guidance system for the boost phase.
However, I disagree with you about the need for fixed installations for maximized accuracy. This was more a matter for the V-1 which used a magnetic compass for azimuth guidance in a steel airframe and needed exceedingly careful handling before launch: they needed to be stored for a while in the intended flight direction to align the magnetization of the airframe, a process that was later accelerated by hitting the thing with hammers which shook up the elementary magnetic regions in the steel sheet and allowed them to realign themselves with the earth magnetic field. That was the main reason for the large size of the ski-jump launch sites. (When using the later transportable launch rails, apparently this procedure was abbreviated, since the things were obviously fairly inaccurate anyway).
However, for the V-2, maximum accuracy depended on 1) accurate knowledge of the launcher's position (which was attainable by conventional surveying techniques almost anywhere in Western Europe) and 2) precise trajectory control in the boost phase; as this was after launch, a fixed installation wouldn't have helped there. It is true that precise trajectory control by a self-contained onboard platform was technologically at least a decade in the future, so the best bet would have been to remote-control the missile on to a precalculated trajectory; that was obviously tried. If this had been precise enough for transatlantic ranges, even assuming that the Peenemünde boys had been able to develop a missile with that range, I doubt very much. The system was, however, completely viable for a SAM system like the "Wasserfall" that could have become operational if it hadn't been put on the back burner by the priority of the V-2 program.

[Mike Scholl]

Given that a V-2 launched from Holland had a pretty good chance of hitting the "Greater London Area" (several hundred square miles), I would hazard a guess that an "Amerika Rocket" would have a pretty good chance of hitting....., North America.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: mikemike

ORIGINAL: el cid again

Nope. That story derives from decades of forinsic examination of the launching facilities - and also from archival materials - mostly British - done by a British engineer and author (Philip Henshall). Some supplimentary information was obtained by US archival materials - and some of them were supplied bo Henshall by US researchers. To this I can add that the radar installed is very well understood and documented before Henshall wrote about it extensively (although originally the information was classified). His conclusions are persuasive.

You are correct. I should have read the wikipedia article first. The guidance system for the V-2 whose description I remembered was used for early production examples while a small proportion of the late production models used a radar beam-riding guidance system for the boost phase.
However, I disagree with you about the need for fixed installations for maximized accuracy. This was more a matter for the V-1 which used a magnetic compass for azimuth guidance in a steel airframe and needed exceedingly careful handling before launch: they needed to be stored for a while in the intended flight direction to align the magnetization of the airframe, a process that was later accelerated by hitting the thing with hammers which shook up the elementary magnetic regions in the steel sheet and allowed them to realign themselves with the earth magnetic field. That was the main reason for the large size of the ski-jump launch sites. (When using the later transportable launch rails, apparently this procedure was abbreviated, since the things were obviously fairly inaccurate anyway).
However, for the V-2, maximum accuracy depended on 1) accurate knowledge of the launcher's position (which was attainable by conventional surveying techniques almost anywhere in Western Europe) and 2) precise trajectory control in the boost phase; as this was after launch, a fixed installation wouldn't have helped there. It is true that precise trajectory control by a self-contained onboard platform was technologically at least a decade in the future, so the best bet would have been to remote-control the missile on to a precalculated trajectory; that was obviously tried. If this had been precise enough for transatlantic ranges, even assuming that the Peenemünde boys had been able to develop a missile with that range, I doubt very much. The system was, however, completely viable for a SAM system like the "Wasserfall" that could have become operational if it hadn't been put on the back burner by the priority of the V-2 program.

We don't think (and wartime British intel did not think) the ski jumps were associated with the V-2 - but rather the V-1.

A big problem with all forms of bombardment is knowing where you are relative to where you want to hit. A properly surveyed site ALWAYS helps you be more accurate. PRC uses (or at least used to use - there is some controversy on the matter's current status) a system where ICBMs could be fired by mobile launchers that hide under mountains. Mostly they use "exit tunnels" - some of them not cut all the way through - from interior launchers. But there is - or was - a mobile launcher alternative system: in order to work over great ranges, they had to build launch pads - properly sited and surveyed in - and then special clamps to insure the launcher was in the exactly correct position. [It is these pads that are the source of controversy: they don't seem to be building them any more - which I interpret to mean "we have enough" but which others think means "they don't use em any more."] In our country, we had a lot of problems with Polaris and later SLBMs because we never knew exactly where the submarine was - SINS (Ships Inertial Navigation System) only partly addressed that - and left us with an inaccurate system until we put stellar navigation on a later generation of missile [after which the missile could correct itself with reference to star locations].

I agree that an ICBM during the war was not feasible. But

1) Germany didn't know how long the war would last (some programs contemplated use as late as 1948-50)
2) Individuals and institutions wanted to justify doing things other than being soldiers on the Eastern Front by any means they could
3) Germany (and Axis powers in general) tended to develop too many things to the point resources could not allow most of them to have any chance of completion


Wasserfall was actually a smaller scale V-2 - and it was entirely feasible in the sense it might have worked. Only one system really is modeled on it - the very first Soviet SAM system defending Moscow was set up to use the barrier defense concept. But it was in many ways the inspiration for most early postwar SAMs. A focus on it might have been wiser than the V-2 - but that is hard to measure. The V weapons were POLITICAL weapons - not intended for military effects - but to build morale. "We are hurting them in retaliation for their bombing" sort of thing. Just what that was worth to the regime is hard to say. [V stands for a German word meaning "revenge"]

[MineSweeper]

Here is a battle scene from the movie IJN Yamato.....it shows the 18" guns firing at A/C....
Pretty cool [:)]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUl1mAjTTb0

[spence]

According to Yamato's TROM at Combined Fleet she may have damaged up to 4 Zekes the first time she ever used her special AA shells (at the beginning of the Battle of the Philippine Sea).

[el cid again]

If so - that pretty well settles that the AA shells could damage aircraft.

[spence]

I certainly never doubted an 18.1" shotgun shell couldn't damage aircraft. Fire control seems much more likely to have been the "fatal" flaw in the system. The Japanese a/c damaged in the previously mentioned action were not manuevering for or expecting an attack but rather just flying by (pretty much fat dumb and happy) when Yamato and the most of the other ships in the TF opened fire on them. Musashi apparently correctly ID'd the planes as friendly and did not open fire.

The fire control for these guns was their "fatal" flaw. Against anything other than high level level bombing I'll wager the director(s) simply couldn't keep up to say nothing of the umpteen zillion ton turrets.

[el cid again]

Assuming competent fire control, that isn't going to be the problem. [You can always screw up and not even identify the target - or get it wrong - as here].

The main problem is going to be training rate. The ONLY time these weapons will matter is when the target is on a predictable course for long enough for the guns to bear. The reason that is likely to happen is that a naval unit under air attack is often - usually - presented with targets that are ideal from a fire control point of view - expressed as

"constant bearing, decreasing range"

If indeed the bearing is constant, the big problem with training is solved - you have time to get to the bearing - and you then simply set the fuses for the range - elevate to get the elevation - and shoot.

Some kinds of attacks permit 'jinking' - (moving) - but torpedo attacks and glide bombing/skip bombing attacks do not.

Another problem is that these big guns do not fire very often. So even if you hit the first target, you won't be able to reengage very fast - and this means it isn't hard to "saturate" the target with more than it can stop. The low ROC means that these won't be the main AAA defenses - even in conditions where the targets are predictable enough to engage with effect. [Big guns often can only load at certain angles - so they must take the time to move to that angle - then reload - then go back to the firing angle. Add to that a Yamato could only shoot about 1/3 as often as a US or British battleship could, per tube - maximum ROC on the order of 1 in 90 seconds vice 1 in 30 seconds. A ROF of less than 1 round per minute is never effective for AAA. ]

[m10bob]

I don't think anybody would argue that the smaller the gun, the more rounds it would fire, (unless inherently designed as a DP gun.)[:)]

[Mike Scholl]

ORIGINAL: el cid again

If so - that pretty well settles that the AA shells could damage aircraft.

Are you sure? You can damage a Zero with a well-thrown rock..., durability isn't it's strong suit. If in couldn't knock at least one of the four out of the sky I'd hardly call the shell an effective weapon. It certainly didn't prove to be of any use when fired "in anger".

[el cid again]

While it is true that a Zero can be dented by a well thrown rock - so can any aluminum airplane. Or perhaps that was hyperbole??? If you hit it with a projectile, it depends on what happens next: what is on the other side of the aluminum?
Again, just like any other airplane. Unless you hit armor, a projectile is going to penetrate - and much - even most - of the time - it machts nichts. [I remember a Harrier returning from a strike on Goose Green - with a neat hole in her tail. It was certainly "damaged" - but also airworthy. It also shows the AAA was as close as can be to on target. And I would say it shows the AAA was dangerous: if you can hit the plane at all, it is a matter of luck wether or not it is serious.]

It seems pretty obvious to me that if an 18 inch shell of significantly greater than a ton actually hit any sort of aircraft, there is no doubt the aircraft would have a problem. Unlike a 20mm shell, it won't just pass through and let the plane still fly either. It probably would not happen very often - but given enough shells and enough targets - it would happen sooner or later. [Again, I remember the lead Harrier pilot on the first day of air combat over the Falklands: he said "the number of missiles they were shooting meant, sooner or later, we were going to be hit." Fortunately for the British, the Mirage IIIs never returned to air combat because a raid on Buenos Aries diverted them to being assigned to defend it. Most analysts have said the French missiles were combat ineffective - and in a technical sense they were because they failed to score. But that does not mean they would not have scored had a statistically significant number been fired. And the lead pilot believed - if they did - some Harrier pilots would surely die. Sandy Woodward was cautious - and stood back so far that no more than one pair of Harriers were ever on station: a typical raid was a flight of four - and some raids were multiple flights of four. But only the Mirages attempted air combat as such - the rest were attack missions. The pilot was right: those weapons were dangerous.]

The only reasons the 18.1 inch guns of IJN Yamato were not a great AAA threat is that they could not fire very often, and they could only engage aircraft with no significant bearing drift. If the concept of very heavy AAA was not sound, then the RN was wrong to fit its heavy cruisers for it, and the RNN was wrong to fit their light cruisers for it to the extent of not fitting any other heavy AAA guns at all. The French compromised: they did the same thing with their Jean Bart class battleships - but they concluded from testing that the weapons would not be effective enough to warrant being the only heavy AAA on board - so they increased the number of tirtiary guns. Evidence from Tokyo and Singapore suggests that six inch AAA (in the first case) and eight inch AAA (in the second case) were potentially decisively combat effective - sufficiently so we decided to avoid putting them to the test. In fact, in air defense theory, that IS a form of combat effective: when the enemy avoids attacking a target due to the defenses, every raid NOT mounted is counted as a victory for the defenders. However, these were land based weapons - and land based AAA does not move around - it knows exactly where it is - and it does not roll with the sea either. Ship based air defense is a more difficult problem - and all other things being equal - it will score less often because of that. It appears that the long 5 inch guns of the IJN "cruiser" destroyers were not usually effective either - due to inadequate training rate and due to the tactic of turning the destroyer when under air attack. The one time we know of that did not happen - the destroyer stayed on course - the guns also scored a fatal hit. I bet the lack of effectiveness for all Japanese super heavy AAA was more due to the tactic of circling than that their shells would not hurt a plane if they hit it.

US commentators have always maintained the shells were of a wholly useless design - that you could "fly right through them with no damage." The Zero case shows this is false. It is probable this is yet another example of hubris - typical of that era - and continued to this day in many circles. We now have hard evidence - you could not "fly through the burst" and remain undamaged. If that does not change our opinion from grave doubt to tentative affirmation - it changed mine - then we are not respecting the data we have. It is like those "midget subs that failed to score at Pearl Harbor" - a great feel good story - but also quite false - as the only one to penetrate to the inner harbor did manage to hit USS Tennessee - and get caught doing it on film to boot. One in firing position for one hit is not a horrible achievement. It is close to the norm (look at Sydney and Diego Suarez - where at least one got into position and score a hit on something - every time it looks like).

[spence]

Evidence from Tokyo and Singapore suggests that six inch AAA (in the first case) and eight inch AAA (in the second case) were potentially decisively combat effective - sufficiently so we decided to avoid putting them to the test. In fact, in air defense theory, that IS a form of combat effective: when the enemy avoids attacking a target due to the defenses, every raid NOT mounted is counted as a victory for the defenders

The firebombing of Tokyo must therefore count as another one of those glorious Japanese victories (like Midway).

[el cid again]

Well - yes it does. But you are confused by my reference to Tokyo. Above you will find someone posted material on a unique battery of IJA 149 mm AAA guns - which brought down a B-29 the first time one got near enough. We ordered the area of that battery avoided thereafter. Since the site was the Imperial Palace - and since it indeed survived all the raids - it actually was a significant victory for the defense. No single AA battery ever can be expected to do more than defend one target with total effectiveness - and that is very unusual. But there is a similar case - in Singapore - only those were eight inch singles - long lost but just found covered by foliage in a park - so you can go look at them.

Now the firebombing of Tokyo was one of my very first lessons when in Japan. I ran into a US demographer who was trying to figure out the casualty count. The records were burned. The civil defense organization and police organizations were destroyed. So he had to work from other data: the population before the raid was 3.2 million; the population after the raid was 1.2 million; the surrounding districts report an increase in population of 1.0 million. From that he concluded that on the order of a million people perished in two days. For various technical reasons, he lowered that to 3/4 of a million with a great uncertainty factor. A two sigma probability spread runs from 0.25 million to 1.25 million with 0.75 million as the centerline value. It has been whitewashed since the war - one travel book I have says only 40,000 died - and many histories in the USA say only 80,000. This was an unusual firestorm - it emptied the rivers - it burned even the bones so you could not count bodies - even in the rivers. And probably it turned people into soup in shelters - like happened at Hamburg - no bodies there either. This was the only serious demograpic investigation I have ever encountered of this raid. But note that firebombing is not "precision bombing" - it is a blind dropping of thousand if incendiaries to start so many fires they form into a firestorm - a natural phenomena that is the worst thing a nuclear weapon can cause - one that will move as long as it has fuel - potentially over vast distances. We burned out the vast majority of Japanese urban areas using this tactic in the last eight months of WWII - and killed far more civilians doing it than Japan had lost soldiers in ten years of active warfare. And that using official statistics - which I think are grossly understated. We probably killed more people in this one raid than our total for the eight months campaign officially admits. But that lower total STILL is far higher than the total military casualties of the war on all fronts for Japan - a multiple in fact. I regard the firebombings as worse than the atomic bombings in terms of effect (the Tokyo raid was certainly more damaging and caused more deaths than any other human caused event in history) - and as both a moral and a technical failure of the USAAF (which both my parents served in - in bombers - so I grew up surrounded by USAAF people and their families). The "precision bombing" and the miracle of the "Norden bomb sight" didn't turn out to work as expected, hoped, advertised. Japan was "socked in" 85% of the time - and when it was not the bombs usually were deflected by winds when dropped from 5 miles in the sky. Low altitude bombing was adopted because it was hard to miss the general urban area, and because it makes air defense almost impossible: you get very little time to acquire the target. In spite of that - there is not a single recorded case that air raid sirens were not sounded two hours BEFORE a bombing by conventional bombers. [The atomic bombers were detected too - but only three planes were thought to be weather sniffers or recon - not an attack - so no alarm was sounded] Not bad for "primitive" air defenses - 100% detection of incoming raids with sufficient time for people to reach shelters. But firebombing made shelters worthless - it eats all the oxygen in the air - and it tends to heat an area so much it cooks shelters in its intense area. [In my view, investing bombers in minelaying, ship hunting, army cooperation and destruction of military targets of opportunity is far more effective, costs fewer casualties to own aircrews, and is a better strategy. But it was not politically correct in USAAF of that time.]