ORIGINAL: Telumar
14.Armee's war diary clearly states that a non-trivial amount of Flak was used in a ground combat role and i.e. lists the amount of Flak assigned to the various Kampfgruppen for the attack against the Campoleone salient.
This leaves out the question of whether they then had to go back to their day job, but even aside from that, those figures might give you some idea of what the max assigned to ground combat was, and perhaps which of the flak units were actually considered ready for ground combat. It's a tough call -- but at the end of the day, it's simply unrealistic to have flak always serving in a ground combat role.
In HvH games all German players that i've seen also used their Flak for protecting their artillery.
I could be erring, but it would never occur to me to do that. Can the Allies profitably bomb these units in the first place? In TOAW, that is. Unless I was taught different, I wouldn't waste that lovely 9-4 by having it sit with an artillery unit that
might be visible to the Allied player and
might get bombed and
might suffer serious damage as a result that the flak unit
might avert. It'd go help the boys at the front.
From the Allied point of view, I'd be strongly inclined to suspect that my aircraft could be more profitably supporting an actual ground attack than wasting themselves pounding some artillery unit for a problematical return. As I say, it'll be news to me if this would actually be a wise use of airpower in TOAW. In fact, in TOAW, if I really want that flak unit to notch a few P-40's on its belt, the place for it to be is right at the front. That's where the Allied aircraft are going to go -- and then it can serve in both roles at once.
If you look in the editor you'll see that most Allied AA is set to garrison orders around the beaches and Anzio harbour. And i think it's also clear that Allied AA Wouldn't have sat idle had German tanks rushed down the Via Anziate.
Good stuff. However, as to the Allied flak not sitting 'idle' had German tanks rushed down the Via Anziate, I wouldn't bet on it. There were large quantities of flak in Tobruk when Rommel overran it in 1942. A few guns opened fire on the advancing Germans, but they were the exception, not the rule.
Aside from doctrine, the crews also need the shells, the training, and the experience. They also need to be in the right location. Guns that are sited to protect the harbor from air attack probably
won't be where they need to be to fire on those German tanks advancing down the Via Anziate, and in the crisis, if moving them isn't in the playbook, it may well not happen.
The system in TOAW mishandles flak, and while Anzio isn't something I'm especially familiar with, I'd vote for critically examining how it was actually used. In general, if it seems that the average German flak unit only spent 25% of its time serving in a ground combat role, there's a strong argument for only giving the German 25% of his flak units to employ in that capacity -- particularly as given Allied air superiority, they really would usually be needed to provide some protection to lines of communication, etc.
Certainly the German has vast quantities of flak at the beginning of the scenario. Was it all really rushing to help hold the front, or was a good deal of it simply deploying to make it possible for other units to get there and receive supplies once they had?
