Basic AA defence (or defense if you prefer)

[vimconfused]

Moving AA around (in long German 43 campaign) but don't have any idea of what constitutes a "reasonable" amount of flak for particular targets. Can people please give me an idea of the sorts of flak they concentrate on targets, perhaps as they vary by distance from enemy fighter/light bomber attack?

Obviously there is the option of "flak traps" but how much flak do you need for such a thing? My current experience is that I've had a few airfields shot up despite having a vast amount of flak there (but is it vast... come to think of it I don't know what constitutes "vast" in this game!)

I've also been moving plenty of flak into the ground units holding southern italy (in september 43), but again although enemy FGA losses are going up, I'm still losing a lot of ground stuff to air attack. Also, is there any point in adding the heavier flak to the ground units (88s and 105s) or is it only worth having the smaller calibre stuff? My experience (such as it is) so far, is that the heavier flak is simply destroyed at radar stations, airfields and ground units and I'm not getting the feeling its doing anything (but of course could be wrong!)

Edit: flak has been very successful shooting down my own aircraft... I'm assuming there's nothing I can do about this? I'm often getting 10 to 20% of my daily casualties from my own flak! I wish I could just issue a directive not to do air to air combat over the Ruhr where the flak seems to pick out my aircraft more than the enemy!

[wernerpruckner]

you have two ( really three) different kind of AA - light and heavy
light AA has a range from zero to max altitude
heavy AA has a minimum range to max altitude

=> you easily can fly below known heavy AA (does not always work with big missions, because the heavy AA can fire from a vast distance
or you can fly above the light AA
( there is medium AA in BoB.....in Btr only the 37mm FlaK can be defined as medium AA)

Against sweeping and dive bombers the light AA is very useful, because these missions drop down to low level for their attack!

Usually I go with a mix of AA guns.....
example A/F: 10 AAMG, 10 20mm, 16 37mm and 4 88mm

tactical targets get more light AA than strategical targets!
frontline targets get more light AA than it would usually have, because the enemy may and will attack it with divebombers......