Why was the German 88 so great?

[RFalvo69]

ORIGINAL: Sniper31

Well RFalvo69, I very much enjoyed the movie Fury, so you are not alone in liking it. Sure, it has it's moments that ymake you question certain things. But as a career light Infantryman myself with 28 years of active service and counting, I am past the point of judging movies based on reality. They are movies, and therefore entertainment. Fury is a movie that very much entertained me. I thought the producers and cast did an impressive job with that Tiger scene, setting the level of stress under fire, high tension, and the life and certain death struggle going on in that field. That aspect I can directly relate to, and I feel they did a great job conveying that. I also thought, in my opinion, that they did a serviceable job of demonstrating the strength of the Tiger and her 88 as well as the amount of respect and sometimes fear the Tiger gave the Allied tanker crews.

I really liked the realism of the tactics. The Tiger fires first from a concealed position against the last tank of the American column: this way the smoke and the flames didn't block its line of sight. The American try to do just that (reverse behind the burning wreck) and fire smoke ammo so to blind the Tiger.

At this point the Tiger commander is in a quandary. Are the Americans approaching and flanking or are they retreating? He chooses to advance beyond the smoke and sees that the Americans are advancing too, trying to pull an envelopment (center, right and left). The Tiger fires and aces another American tank. The third one misses and is smoked. At this point the Tiger and Bad Pitt's M4 are so clolse that they enter into a "turning battle" - where the slower turning speed of the Tiger's turret puts the Germans at a disadvantage. Still, the M4 fires against the Tiger's rear and misses; at the end only the ability to turn the turret and the tank - paired with Brad Pitt's character ability to stay cool under fire allows for the M4 to destroy the German tank - by an hairbreadth.

True, the 76mm gun was stronger, the engagement ranges were cut short etc. But nothing can beat how the director managed to show how tank's tactics worked like in that scene - which is what really counted IMHO.

I remember motoring to Gamesquad after watching the movie, and the Advanced Squad Leader forum was full of people using the movie as a way to explaining how they were better than Patton, why the director should have directed snack commercials and such. And in all fairness I have absolutely nothing to say against, given that the opinion they have of the movie is the same I have of their comments [:)]

[pellejoens]

Most ppl know about the Swedish 40mm bofors gun. An interesting fact about the 88 is that Sweden was also involved in the early development of the Gun.

"The development of a new gun was funded secretly by the Reichswehr.The resulting 75 mm gun proved adequate to the Swedes, but extensive trials of two German prototypes (the 7,5 cm Flugabwehrkanone L/60 and 7,5 cm Flugabwehrkanone L/59) by the German army proved unsatisfactory and the Germans requested a heavier design. The 75 mm was then modified to include a larger calibre barrel, which was further developed into the 8.8 cm Flak 18/36/37/41, one of the best-known AA guns of World War II.

Nevertheless, despite the German unwillingness to buy the 75 mm variant, the Swedish company decided to start serial production anyway. There were many notable differences between Krupp's design and the one eventually produced by the Swedish company, but both guns shared a similar layout and a cruciform firing platform, which allowed the gun to traverse full 360 degrees and fire in all directions.[1] The platform was lowered to the ground from two wheeled axles, which had to be removed before firing.[1] One of major advantages of the Swedish design over the 88 eventually adopted by Germany was its simplicity: it lacked complicated fire-control mechanisms, but was easy enough to operate by less-well trained crews in poorer countries. (Wikipedia)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bofors_75_mm_Model_1929

[Lobster]

ORIGINAL: Meyer1

I should do some digging to back it up, but I'm pretty sure that what stopped the British attack was the divisional artillery, the Flak guns had little to do with that.

Arras.

"The Allied attack was contained, because Rommel improvised a gun line of anti-tank guns and anti-aircraft guns, that managed to stop some of the lighter British tanks. Rommel also used wireless to order another gun line quickly to be set up with artillery and several 88 mm Flak 36 anti-aircraft guns much further back, which knocked out 24 tanks in a few minutes on the flat ground between Mercatel and Tilloy. Just after 6:00 p.m., Ju 87 Stukas of Fliegerkorps I and VIII arrived and made 300 attacks on the retiring tanks by 8:30 p.m. Rommel ordered Panzer Regiment 25 to return and cut off the British tanks but south of Duisans met French tanks covering the British right flank and only broke through after a long and costly engagement. When the German tanks had broken through a British anti-tank gun line between Duisans and Warlus, the British tanks had already returned; the British attack had turned into a disaster and only 28 of the 88 tanks committed returned to their start line."

[kch]

An additional factor in the claim to fame of the 88, is probably the overall German use of AT weapons. Germany used the AT guns as the main tank killer, instead of other tanks, and therefore German AT guns (and 88s) amassed a lot of kills. The AT guns were pushed forward all the time, and the German tanks often acted as bait in order to draw enemy tanks into range of the AT gun screens.

As for the gun itself then it lost some of its efficiency once the enemy learned how to manoeuvre, and the Germans were forced to move it around in response to the enemy (rather than moving forward and making the enemy react). The high profile meant that it was a very visible target if you were forced to relocate within view of the enemy and the larger calibre weapons in mid/late war meant that HE shells packed a lot of punch causing problems for the 88 AA guns

[demyansk]

The 88 as written was good due to training and tactics of the soldiers who used it. Especially, the training of German tank commanders who had the ability to use communication between tanks to their benefit. Plus, most of the time, the Tiger was overwhelmed by numbers. Take a look at the book by Otto Carius, Tigers in the Mud.

[spinecruncher]

Happenstance: I turned on Netflix and a great movie came up from Italy: El Alamein, in the Line if Fire. It portrays a college student volunteer into the Italian Army in '42, well anyways I am only about 20 min into the movie. He is escorted to his unit when bombarded by English 88's. This 88' appears to be the dread of the Italian Corp.

[JapLance]

This "English 88" is a completely different kind of gun:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_QF_25-pounder

[spinecruncher]

I recommend this movie:


https://www.amazon.com/El-Alamein-Line- ... ne+of+fire

[LiquidSky]

Because of the allied bombing, there was an awful lot of 88's around Normandy..... And because they followed a different supply chain through the Luftwaffe (not suggesting it was flown), they were also sitting on ample supplies of ammunition.

Reports of 88's are usually not from Tigers...it is from these flak guns. They were used as AT guns, but also as artillery at Omaha.