Hell's Angels by Jay A. Stout

Author:Jay A. Stout
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-11-18T05:00:00+00:00

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AS EFFECTIVE AS THE GERMAN antiaircraft fire was, it would have been more so had the USAAF’s fliers not developed tactics intended to foil it. Those tactics were built upon an understanding of how the flak guns worked and how they were employed. A training film solicited the men: “Let’s have a look at this flak business.”3 It subsequently described in very basic terms how a typical German antiaircraft gun worked: “The heavy gun destroys aircraft by using a time-fuzed shell to put a large explosive burst in the near vicinity of the target [aircraft].”

The men learned that it took approximately one second for an antiaircraft round to climb a thousand feet. For instance, if a shell was fired directly at a formation at an altitude of twenty-seven thousand feet flying at two hundred miles per hour, the formation would have traveled nearly two miles before the shell reached the point at which it was originally aimed. Accordingly the German gunners were compelled to lead—or aim ahead of—their targets. This was explained by the training film:

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