Tigrii Posted November 20, 2002 Share Posted November 20, 2002 Why can't heavy flaks (88mm and 85mm) shoot at aircraft? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foxbat Posted November 20, 2002 Share Posted November 20, 2002 Because they fire in groups at 'brackets' in the sky at high-altitude. By the time you have one aimed at a flyboy it will have zoomed by, and even if you get a shot off it'll be ahit n miss thing while light AA can bracket even small & fast planes. In other words, because there's no point in shooting at them anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wol Posted November 20, 2002 Share Posted November 20, 2002 They would have already fired at the target. In any case Heavy AA fires by battery through centralised fire control - with the aid of predictors, quite often firing salvos together. The crew just "follow the pointers". The most you might expect is a nice message saying you shot down/aborted/drove off an attacking a/c and lose a few dozen rounds of ammo! Not really in the scope of CMBB. (Satisfy yourself by saying "I got three others , it's up to the light flak now"! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgdpzr Posted November 20, 2002 Share Posted November 20, 2002 Think of it like this: The big guns fire ONE round at a time, while the smaller guns fire clips of around five rounds. It's similar to the choice of guns/ammo according to the hunting target. Solid shot is not used against ducks, is it? Same deal here. The guns and the way they deliver ammo simply are not congruous with firing at generally low-and-fast-flying aircraft. The heavy calibre AA guns are intended as high-altitude interception weapons, relying on mass and target-prediction to fill the sky with puffballs of shrapnel through which enemy bombers (usually) must navigate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Mike Posted November 20, 2002 Share Posted November 20, 2002 Because they're optimised to fire at higher altitudes than the planes fly - I wouldn't be surprised if their fuzes were unable to be set for low altitudes at all. In practice there were light and heavy AA guns - 20-40mm, and 76+mm. the light guns were useful agaisnt low altitude flyers say up to 1000m/30000 feet, the larger guns against high altitude flyers, say over 3000m/10,000 feet. There was a gap in the middle which the Germans tried to close with a 5cm AA gun that never really worked properly. I think no-one else bothered with trying to cover the gap mainly because few aircraft actually operated there! Tactical aircraft all operated at low altitudes, adn level bombers all operated above 10000 ft. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Renaud Posted November 20, 2002 Share Posted November 20, 2002 fyi...german 20mmAA uses 20 round clips. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silvio Manuel Posted November 20, 2002 Share Posted November 20, 2002 That would explain the ROF of the towed 20mm used in the Ramelle scene in SPR...many, many "pow-pow's," far more than 5 in a bunch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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