88mm artillery

[Gryphon]

Hiya,

How often was the 8,8 cm FlaK used in an indirect artillery role? i saw some episodes of Band of Brothers ( :/ ) and the Germans use 88 all the time, now my question is how common this was in real practice? because if it was common why don't we have it in CMBO?

Regards,

Gryphon

PS I tried a search but it didn't work.. my internet connection is somewhat messed up :/

[CMplayer]

I'm really weak in this dept. (as in many others) but if 88's had timed fuses and were high velocity, wouldn't it make more sense to use them in a direct fire role, but use the timed fuse to make a low airburst above a crossroads or suspected assembly point?

[von Murrin]

I seem to remember all sorts of reports of "fire from 88's" coming from Omaha beach. A lot of people dismissed them until it was discovered that there was an entire brigade(?) of flak-guns behind the beach. It stands to reason that they were indeed capable of short-range indirect fire, and were so used from time to time.

Nathanael

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by CMplayer:

I'm really weak in this dept. (as in many others) but if 88's had timed fuses and were high velocity, wouldn't it make more sense to use them in a direct fire role, but use the timed fuse to make a low airburst above a crossroads or suspected assembly point?

All HAA weapons can do this to some extent (as, for that matter, can lots of tanks).

The characteristics of HAA that you rightly identify, high velocity and availability of mechanical time (more reliable than pyro time) fuzes, give them their tactical characteristics.

Disadvantages are that they are quite hard to range, especially for observation officers accustomed to howitzers; they are severely limited by crest restrictions, having a low trajectory and no charge system; and they have a very long 50% zone.

Advantages are that they have a high rate of fire, produce reliable airbursts, and, as they arrive supersonically, may succeed in producing casualties among exposed personnel before they can take cover from surprise fire.

Both British 3.7" and American 90mm HAA were, towards the end of the war, employed "in the ground role" for want of air targets. One of Ian Hogg's books recounts the incident where the commander of a 90mm gun in such a role during the Battle of the Bulge shot down a German fighter at low level with a single shot -- especially remarkable as the AA sights had been removed, the only known example of a kill by "AA in the ground role in the AA role", and I think a candidate for the luckiest shot of the war. There are some things you wouldn't dare allow in a simulation.

All the best,

John.

[M Hofbauer]

althoug possible in theory, it is highly unlikely that the 88 gives indirect fire.

It does not have seperate seperate propellant charges but uses cartridge full-charge ammunition. It has no instruments or method of aiming indirect.

now if someone says every gun is capable of firing indirect it just has to fire at a highj angle then let me remind you that high angle fire is exactly what the 88 was built for: shooting at high altitude aerial targets at over 30,000 feet.

to me all the talk by verterans about coming under fire from 88s when coming under indirect artillery fire is in the same category as identifying every tank as a Tiger and calling every machine gun a Spandau. IOW, when they say "88" it is not to be taken technically but as a synonym for coming under fire from "heavy guns".

[Bullethead]

I've read of many instances where the Germans used 88s at very long range, but this was always direct fire from commanding terrain. At the ranges involved (several thousand meters) pinpoint accuracy wasn't possible. However, the guns were quite capable of getting shells close enough for HE work against soft targets. So the net effect was very similar to indirect fire, even though it was direct fire.

A good example is the Heurtgen Forest battles. In that mess, the villages were on bald hilltops so it was possible to shoot from one to another, even though the range could be 3-5000m. Also, in some areas guns on hilltops commanded long stretches of creekbeds below, so could effectively interdict units attempting to cross them several miles away.

[Gryphon]

I saw the 8,8cm being used at a range of about 500-2000m in indirect fire in BoB, and it was definately an 88, so someone made a mistake

Regards,

Gryphon

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by Bullethead:

I've read of many instances where the Germans used 88s at very long range, but this was always direct fire from commanding terrain. At the ranges involved (several thousand meters) pinpoint accuracy wasn't possible.

That reminds me of the scene in _The Big Red One_ where the squad is sent to silence an 88 which had been 'sniping' from a commanding position in Italy. The gun, which was tank mounted, was well camouflaged inside a monastery on a hill, and was taking long range potshots at the good guys.

Once I tried setting something like that up in a little scenario I played against the AI. I set up a standard small attack scenario, but stretched out the map an extra few thousand meters to a hill where there was a German 88. Sure enough, as I attacked, shells came sailing in from time to time seemingly at random. It was quite a hassle.

[CMplayer]

Originally posted by John D Salt:

[snip useful facts and explanations]

As Winecape recently said, I'm amazed by the quality and speed of the answers you can get on this forum. Cheers,

[Eric Young]

Many Luftwaffe Feld Divisions had 88's as their entire artillery ToE. They did fire indirect in a mannor but it was not optimal. On page 68 of Danny Parker's book "Battle of the Bulge", Parker discribes the use of flak cannon in an arty role in the first barrage of the Bulge battles.

E

[ March 02, 2002, 04:41 PM: Message edited by: Eric Young ]

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by M Hofbauer:

althoug possible in theory, it is

highly unlikely that the 88 gives

indirect fire.

It does not have seperate seperate propellant

charges but uses cartridge full-charge

ammunition.

Right premise, wrong conclusion.

All that means is that it is a gun, not a

howitzer; guns are not precluded from firing

indirect just because they don't have a charge

system. They are, of course, more limited in

their choice of trajectories, which is why they

suffer more from crest restrictions.

It has no instruments or method of aiming indirect.

This is an error of fact. According to Hogg's

"German Artillery of WW2" entry for the 8.8cm

FlaK 18, 36 or 37: "Sighting was arranged for

either gun or predictor control, with additional

sights for use in the ground role... The ground

shooting sight was the Rundblickfernrohr fur

Flak, a typical dial sight..."

[snips]

to me all the talk by verterans about coming

under fire from 88s when coming under indirect

artillery fire is in the same category as

identifying every tank as a Tiger

[snips]

That's a good point as far as it goes, but it

doesn't prove a thing. Some of the tanks

reported as Tigers were in fact Tigers, and I

don't doubt that some indirect fire was

conducted by 88s.

Philip Toynbee's "The Distant Drum", sub-titled

"Reflections on the Spanish Civil War", includes

a piece called "The Blond Moors are Coming!"

by Alfred Lent. He was a gunner in an 8.8cm

FlaK battery in the Legion Kondor. It contains

the following passage:

"The long barrels of our guns are like

pointers indicating the progress of the

battle. The higher the elevation, the farther

the enemy has been driven back. We should

be closing up shop soon, as we always do at

nightfall in this war. Our chief, with one

lieutenant and a wireless crew, is still on

his advanced observation post watching the

heroic little 'Spaniacs' carrying their battle

flags from one mountain top to the next.

He corrects our fire from what he sees through

a trench telescope. The adjustments made with

a protractor on a survey chart are radioed back

to the gun-layers. Our 'old' men remember how

they once outgunned a howitzer behind hills,

a dreaded adversary because of its steep

trajectory."

Now, I suppose it might be possible that German

HAA gunners forgot how to do indirect shooting

after the Spanish civil war, despite the fact

that their US and UK opposite numbers had no

such difficulty; but I very much doubt it.

All the best,

John.

[Bastables]

Post war Manuscripts bey Wolfgang Pickerts commander of the III.FlaK Korps on experiences in Normandy

'First and formost, the Korps was employed int he air defence role. This was its main mission and it extended initially from the front to a line from Falaise to Le Beny Bocage. The second important mission of the Korp was to provide indirect fire to support the ground combat units. The chief reason for this was the shortage of GHQ artillery. Due tot he range of the 8,8cm guns, this could often be provided from the same positions where they provided air defensive protection.' (2000 Zetterling pg153).

[Michael Dorosh]

Every German tank was a Tiger, according to veterans, and every shell was an "88". That's just the way it is - I suspect the majority of reports of "88" fire was really something else. Allied troops continually and habitually referred to the MP40 as a "Schmeisser", an MG42 as a "Spandau", and any unknown source of artillery fire as "88 fire".

I have wondered for years about whether or not 88s were even capable of firing indirectly - I will be watching this thread with keen anticipation.

[Patgod]

considering that its unlikely for a german officer to have Panzer Penis Envy(as in every tank a tiger, every gun an 88) if the above german air officer says he used his 88's as indirect arty i would assume its true.

[ March 02, 2002, 09:23 PM: Message edited by: Patgod ]

[Bastables]

I think it should be noted that III. Flak Korp was a unique unit and its deployment in the indirect fire role was highly unusual. It was a GHQ unit, none of the divisional 8,8cm FlaK partook of indirect fire during the Normandy campaign. The desert campaigns where the legend of the 88 (FlaK) was born also did not have a single incidence of FlaK used in the indirect fire role.

[c3k]

Bastables,

I do not think that the III Flak Corps was a unique unit. The Luftwaffe had several such Flak Corps deployed on various fronts. If you'd like me to come up with verifiable sources, it would take awhile, but I specifically recall that several of these units existed. (By several, on the order of a dozen).

Ken

[JonS]

III. Flak-Korps

Other Flak-Korps

[Bastables]

Originally posted by c3k:

Bastables,

I do not think that the III Flak Corps was a unique unit. The Luftwaffe had several such Flak Corps deployed on various fronts. If you'd like me to come up with verifiable sources, it would take awhile, but I specifically recall that several of these units existed. (By several, on the order of a dozen).

Ken

It was the only one that was fully motorised which for a unit stationed is France, a backwater before Normandy is highly unusual. None of the FlaK Korps that fought in Russia had anywhere near the level of motorisation of their sibling in the west.

Also a very nice chap (Phan) has asked to post a find of his detaling the III FlaK Korps jaunt in Normandy. It seems he's unable to post due to not owning his own computer. http://home.swipnet.se/normandy/gerob/othghq/3flak.html

That JonS posted before me any way. Bah it's the same information contained in my book, feeling slightly ripped off. Whats the point of buying a book if the info is for free on the net.

[ March 02, 2002, 10:06 PM: Message edited by: Bastables ]

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

...I suspect the majority of reports of "88" fire was really something else.

Most likely 105s would be my guess. For one thing, it was the most common artillery the Germans had. And the shell is fairly near in size to an 88. Might have been hard for inexperienced GIs to distinguish between them solely on the basis of the explosion.

[shrug]

Michael

[M Hofbauer]

Originally posted by John D Salt:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by M Hofbauer:

althoug possible in theory, it is

highly unlikely that the 88 gives

indirect fire.

It does not have seperate seperate propellant

charges but uses cartridge full-charge

ammunition.

Right premise, wrong conclusion.

All that means is that it is a gun, not a

howitzer; guns are not precluded from firing

indirect just because they don't have a charge

system. They are, of course, more limited in

their choice of trajectories, which is why they

suffer more from crest restrictions.</font>

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by M Hofbauer:

so what you are saying is that every rifle is (or, rather, could be used as) an indirect fire weapon.

and I a agree that in theory yes it is, but in reality such a use would be highly unlikely / uncommon.

Any weapon equipped with a dial sight is capable of indirect fire, if you can arrange for data from a remote observer to be put on the sight. Alternatively, fixed points (Defensive Fire or DF tasks) can be registered and recorded, and the data for them applied to the sight when the command is received to fire a particular DF.

All field artillery and medium or bigger mortars have dial sights. Many sustained-fire machine guns do, too. (To take a modern example, the same C16 dial sight is used on the British Army's 105mm Light Gun, 81mm mortar and FN MAG GPMG in the SF role.) The most extreme example I know is that of the SMLE Mk III*, the rifle the BEF went to France with in 1914; this could be equipped with a dial sight, so, yes, indirect fire was theoretically possible with rifles (I'm not aware of any case where this was done, but then I'm not a WW1 buff).

you misunderstood me. the reference to the Tiger syndrome was made fully intentional. I did not mean to say that it was never the case that it really was a Tiger. What I meant is that Tiger was more of sa synonym for big fat tank, in the same way that "88" would be a grunts name for "badass german artillery fire", and that in most (by far the most) instances it would not be a "Tiger" (or in this case an 88).

Indeed, which is why I said it was, as far as it went, a good point. The same effect is observable when all SMGs become Tommy-guns, all British fighters become Spitfires, all SSMs become Exocets and all assault rifles become Kalashnokovs or Armalites. The misreporting effect is well attested -- I have seen an analysis of British tank casualties where kills by 7.5cm PaKs were often misreported as being by "88"s which says "the opposite error never occurred", and an intsum from 30 Corps which mistakenly deduces that Schurzen on the Pz IV are a disguise to make it look like a Tiger.

The same linguistic phenomenon seems to occur even in stress-free situations where there is no particular reason to identify a general kind of article by a specific trade name -- here in the UK, all vacuum-cleaners are Hoovers and all ball-point pens are Biros, and all over the world brown oversweetened fizzy pop is called Coke regardless of what it really is.

ok, again the analogy to the rifle comes to my mind. in effect, what you are describing is that a cannon is shooting roughly at a high angle in the general direction where the enemy is at, and then the observer (gun commander?) walks the rounds in shot by shot by telling the gun crew whether the rounds are far or short, left or right, and the crew turns the gun, elevates and depresses it a bit, fires another round, in a method of "bracketing" the target.

I took the "chief" referred to in "The Blond Moors are Coming!" to be the Battery Commander (BC). The fact that the BC was performing the job of observation officer rather than having it done by a more junior officer employed specifically for that purpose is, I think, a pretty good indication that indirect fire was not considered a primary mission for the battery. AIUI the BC might be the only officer capable of controlling the battery's fire in the field artillery of the Russian or Italian armies, but in the French, German, British and American armies one would expect one or two specialist FOOs to be part of the organisation (corrections welcome from those who know).

such a method is possible, but IMO very uncommon even though your example (and that of Bastables) shows that it *did* happen.

Nevertheless I still stand by my original statement that most likely the veteran was not receiving fire from "88"s but "regular" artillery fire.

I tend to agree, for most cases. There's a lot of difference between something being recorded as happening and something being an everyday occurrence (although if I took it into my head to challenge the board to provide specific instances of an s 10cm K 18 being fired indirect, could anyone furnish any? Would that be a reason for thinking it wasn't done?).

think about how probable it is that all the talk of veterans being under indirect fire and calling it "88" is true. How would they even know it is an 88 when it is firing indirect and all they witness is the impacts?

The probability of *all* of it being true is zero; that some of it is true seems certain; and so we are left with the less-than-useful information that some proportion, more than zero but less than 100%, of such reports are true.

I think that it is fairly well accepted (as has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread) that a lot of what is loosely called "88" fire is probably from 10.5cm weapons such as the 10.5cm leFH 18.

As to how the sharp-eyed vet could in principle tell the difference, I should think that supersonic arrival and the use of airburst shells would be good indicators of "88" fire (high rate of fire doesn't tell you because you don't know how many tubes are firing). Supersonic arrival would be likely to be commented on in personal accounts because of an understandable feeling of annoyance at the lack of warning. It would not in itself certainly indicate an "88", as there were other supersonic weapons. A lot of the "88"s in the Western Desert were in fact 7.62cm PaK 36®s, a good tank-killer and an adequate light field-gun, better suited to tank-shooting than the FlaK 18/36/37 because of its low silhouette. Gudmundsson's "On Artillery" mentions Gen. Ludwig Ritter von Eimannsburger, author of the 1934 book "Kampfwagenkrieg", who put forward the idea of the TuF-Kanone, "TuF" indicating "Tank und Flieger". To some extent both German and Russian artillery pieces seem to have reflected the TuF idea immediately before WW2, possibly because of common experience in Spain.

A high-velocity fixed-ammunition gun is not the ideal weapon for field artillery use, but ISTM that there are two reasons why one might use one.

The first is that there is nothing better available; if improvisation is the art of war, then it is as well to be able to press weapons into service for tasks other than their primary intended one. I can imagine the Germans being in this situation a lot towards the end of the war. The need for a dual-purpose field and ATk weapon was shown by the 7.5cm FK 7M85 and 7M59, essentially PaK 40 tubes on field artillery carriages.

The second is that specialist weapons have too little to do in their specialist roles, and so had better fulfil secondary ones than sit idle. This is the motivation for British 3.7" and US 90mm HAA being used in the ground role (no aircraft to shoot at), for tanks and tank destroyers firing indirect in the Italian campaign (where the terrain was unsuited to mechanized maneouvre), and for 17-pounder ATk guns to join in with HE in the fire support for the Rhine crossings (no tanks to shoot at). It became pretty much customary towards the end of the war in NWE for British arty commanders to gather a bunch of underemployed weapons capable of indirect fire into a "pepper-pot" to thicken up the fires of the conventional field artillery.

As a final footnote to my ramblings, I have received a note by e-mail from someone called CROWBAR60, pointing out that 3.7" HAA were used for counter-bombardment (CB) tasks, where the use of airburst shells meant that craters and skip-burrows would not occur, making it harder for the enemy's CB staff to pinpoint the guns responsible. That makes sense, and is a further tactical advantage of HAA in the ground role that I hadn't thought of.

All the best,

John.

[JonS]

Other Flak-Korps. This one shows where they served, and their commanders.

[Andreas]

Sydney Jary in 18 Platoon has an interesting anecdote about coming under fire from105 (indirect) and 88 airburst (DF) simultaneously in Holland. He seems to have been able to distinguish quite well between one and the other - then again, he was the longest-serving infantry platoon commander in 21st Army Group IIRC, so he must have learned something...

As a rule, I would think that 8,8 would be primarily used in a DF role when used in ground combat. It was well-suited to that with the easily arranged airburst capacity, a high-velocity shell (meaning the explosion occurs before you hear the crack of the gun being fired = no warning), its long range and its AT capabilities.

Having said that, I have a picture of British gunners using captured 88s in what suspiciously looks like an indirect role on the Maas.

Does anyone know how much barrel wear was an issue for the 8,8? That would probably come into consideration when used regularly as indirect artillery.

[JonS]

Originally posted by Andreas:

... I have a picture of British gunners using captured 88s in what suspiciously looks like an indirect role on the Maas ...

Kiwi gunners formed a battery of 88s for the indirect role in the later parts (post-Alamein) of the desert campaign. You usually see reference to them in conjunction with Takrouna.

Regards

JonS

[Skipper]

> Does anyone know how much barrel wear was an issue for the 8,8?

Quite an issue. Especially when firing AT rounds - iirc, we are talking about about life expectancy less than 100 shots then. Several times more if firing HE.