Redux: are there any high-flying aircraft for heavy AA to engage?

[Brent Pollock]

Okay, since some folks commandeered my original thread ("What part of FlaK don't the 88's understand?!"), I've got to start a new one to try and redirect the discussion.

For those of you acquainted with the Holy Tome (i.e. Advanced Squad Leader Rule Book), Demoss mentioned the ASL model for AA fire. Since I'm a loooooooonnnnnnnnnnggggggggg time ASLer, this is part of the source of my confusion as to why the 88s, 76s , 90s, et cetera never fire at aircraft. In ASL, the heavy stuff gets to fire at the airplanes when they are NOT in the act of attacking. In ASL terms, the light AA fires during its own movement phase (when enemy planes may attack) and the heavy stuff blasts away during the prep and defensive fire phases (when enemy planes are presumed to be trying to sight targets or are circling for another pass).

So, what we get in ASL is planes which are never immune to fire. If they're beyond light AA range, the heavy AA gets to slam away at them; if they're coming in fast and low, the light AA spits at them while the heavy AA gunners just get dizzy.

So, a better way to phrase my question would've been, "why can't the heavy AA units engage the ground attack aircraft when they're searching for targets (which is what I presume is happening when you hear that "airplane" noise, the turn before they attack), or circling around for another pass"?

From the behaviour I've seen (ummm...I'm talking about the game engine, not "Seanachai"), the aircraft model always treats them as being too low and fast for the heavy (medium?) AA. Does anyone have reliable sources to swing us one way or the other on the accuracy of this model? It has certainly shown a hole in my decades of reading.

It seems a tad remiss of the rulebook not to have a wee note about which AA units you can expect to actually engage in AA activities. Or is it mentioned somewhere other than page 136? Is it part of the unit information?

[Lars]

Basically, because ground attack aircraft are to low and fast for them to hit.

B-17s and other high level bombers are not modeled in the game because they weren’t used for direct ground support in the time span represented by the game, i.e. when friendly forces were in close proximity. They were mostly used for interdiction behind the immediate front lines.

If you would like to shoot at aircraft with those 88s, design a scenario with only your forces and enemy high level bombers.

Won’t be very much fun.

Otherwise, shoot tanks with those 88s and enjoy.

[Redwolf]

In wide open areas (steppe) the 88s can certainly get single shots at airplanes flying in a distance when they happen to be deployed halfway int he right direction. I kinda speak from experience from for some time living in a military aviation training zone - at least what the Luftwaffe made a training zone and sure enough I wished I had a 88 sometimes.

However, in CM game terms single shots are a waste of ammo and only give your gun position away. No real gunner in its right mind would do that if enemy tanks are just about to show up at your doorstep.

Also, what I say above accounts for planes on the next or next-to-next CM size battlefield, not the planes attacking your local forces on *this* CM battlefield.

[Brent Pollock]

...so we need an offboard AA unit? Sort of a FlaK umbrella? Hmmm...cool, n'est ce pas?

I just wish the rulebook would clarify what it means by "dedicated" on page 136, "Besides dedicated AA (Flak) guns, vehicles equipped with AA machine guns will engage airplanes...".

[Redwolf]

And it's not a rulebook

[Lt Bull]

I would never have thought a Flak 88 deployed in an AT-gun role like we see in CMBB would ever bother shooting at even "hunting" local fighter bombers. The range and altitude seem to be too short/low. This results in the targets passing very fast across the LOS of any would be AA gun, requiring very fast traverses and elevation control and fast ROF. I do not know if Flak 88's deployed as AT guns can quickly switch to a AA gun role within a few seconds or if the gun crews were trained in/equiped for both AT and AA roles or whether they were specialists in one of the roles. Regardless, I wouldn't think a Flak 88 deployed in an AT role would consider itself wise to engage low flying FBs if it meant forsaking it's hidden ground "ambush" status.

This kind of reminds me (not as bad though) of a most bizzare discussion at the IL2 Forum (our aerial WW2 gaming counterparts) where some folks were trying to justify, how in IL2, it is realistically plausible that basically ALL tanks can and should fire their main guns at aircraft. Although IL2 is a game similar in realistic/historical integrity to CM, it has the most unusual feature of allowing tanks to shoot their main gun (with surprising accuracy) at aircraft!! :eek: It would not be uncommon to swoop a column of tanks and suddenly have you plane explode with the message "You have been destroyed by a tank main gun".

Aparently they will be at least reducing (if not, eliminating) this bizzare feature in their eagerly anticipated forthcoming release, IL2:Forgotten Battles.

Lt Bull

[Brent Pollock]

Well, neither the Game User Manual nor the unit data window are very explicit about which AA/FlaK represent "dedicated" AA(Flak)" and which have been brought up specfically to smash ground targets.

Again, I ask, does anyone have any solid reference material one way or the other? Either way is fine by me: we all function under the same restrications. I'm just curious why one group of designers (the ASL cabal) gets a different model from another group (Battlefront). I can live with it, just like I can live with embarked troops not being able to fire or infantry not having smoke grenades. You've got to make some design decisions based on scant information.

[Battlefront.com]

There is no doubt that Flak 88s were not used to shoot down tactical aircraft. There is zero room for arugment here, even with ASL's manual clasped to chest Here is a very quick look at how flak works...

Basically there are four types of Flak:

Light - this would be MG based (i.e. 7mm-8mm)

Medium - 12mm (.50cal) to 40mm range

Heavy - 75mm to 90mm range

Super Heavy - 105mm to 128mm range

Light and Medium guns were designed to take on low flying aircraft (fighters). Heavy and Super Heavy guns were designed for slower flying high altitude aircraft (bombers).

The reason for these different guns is simple... there is a HUGE difference between shooting a small, fast flying craft at low altitude vs. shooting at a big target lumbering along miles into the sky. Think of it this way... if you want to hit a stationary target at 1000m you use a Barret gun. If you want to hit a running man at 50m you would want something like a sub machinegun. NOT the other way around.

The main reason the Heavy and Super Heavy stuff couldn't engage ground attack aircraft is because... simply put, they were completely incapable of doing so. They were not designed to do this and could not be made to do it as a rule (I am SURE there are exceptions).

Light and Medium guns achieved hits by individually tossing up a lot of lead/HE in a very short space of time through automatic loading systems. It was expected that a large number of shells would have to be expended in order to score a hit (lethal or not). The guns had excellent traverse/elevation abilities and sights designed to track such targets. Obviously Light was less capable of doing this than Medium, but Light was also easier to deploy and supply. Typical pro/con situation.

Heavy and Super Heavy guns achieved hits by using batteries of guns to put up fewer, but far more powerful HE rounds using MANUAL loading systems. They did not use sights but rather fire control systems to aim their guns and adjust their shell fuzes for the correct altitude. The battery would fire in unison at a place in the sky the plane was expected to fly through. Direct hits were only accidentally acheived. The guns had slow traverse/elevation mechanisms which wasn't a problem since they were tracking targets at great distances that weren't moving fast. The manual loading of rather heavy shells meant a slow RoF. The Super Heavy guns were designed to make sure that even the highest flying bombers had to be careful.

In a nutshell.... the Light and Medium guns were designed to individually take out small planes, the Heavy and Super Heavy designed to work in batteries under central fire control in order to take out large planes. The two were not intended, nor capable, of taking on each other's designated roles.

Now, why isn't this in the manual? Well, I guess it is because we assumed people knew this To us this would be the same as telling people SPW 251s were not designed to take out IS-2s

Steve

[ December 18, 2002, 01:18 AM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[manchildstein (ii)]

if memory serves you could use the 88 against aircraft in asl.... but... there was some kind of time (setup) penalty for switching between air and ground targets and vice versa...

still... it makes sense to me that an 88 would be pretty much useless against tactical aircraft...

it's probably an oddity that asl allowed this to begin with (again if i'm rememberly correctly)

[Stalin's Organ]

Does anyone know what the limitations are on the time fuse for 88 Flak ammo?

Airbursts were time fused (except for hte sallies after the proximity fuse was invented), and there's probably a minimum time they can be set for hence a minimum altitude.

Below that altitude teh gun would have to get a direct hit to do any damage - ie it wouldn't be any better than a tank gun firing HE!

There were basically 2 zone aircraft flew in - low (say up to 1000m??) and lower for ground attack and target aquisition, and 10,000 ft and higher for level bombing.

[Joques]

Originally posted by Brent Pollock:

So, a better way to phrase my question would've been, "why can't the heavy AA units engage the ground attack aircraft when they're searching for targets (which is what I presume is happening when you hear that "airplane" noise, the turn before they attack), or circling around for another pass"?

Uh Brent, even in ASL you need to roll snakes for that to happen. And even that is _way_ too generous.

[K_Tiger]

Hmm... for the "heavy" (75mm, 88mm) AA-Guns im not so sure with the statement that they can only hit "strategical" Bombers.

In one of my books, maybe Saenger & Etterlin, they say, "after introducing the "Brandgeschosse" they scored three times more hits! This ammo is somefink like incendary rounds or else, three times, sounds like they hit something, and im sure, it wasnt allways the "big boys"

As a second quote in this book (all about the 88`Flak) it was possible to hit incomming and outgoing low level aircrafts.

When was the introducing of the 88?? Around 1935/36?? At this time, there was no "High-Altitude-Bomber" in sight, so why such a big gun??

I accept it, that no one tryed to shoot at a diagonal flying fighter-bomber, but there were alot more targets on the front, i think JU87, IL2, Blenheims, He111 (in taktical mission and so on, are good targets to shoot at.

Damn, what would i give, to shoot with a 88 at aircrafts, doesnt matter if i could hit anything or not.

Also did the AA-Crews mostly know, where the attack came from. It wasnt always a surprise, if we belive, all Fighthers would start when the bombers are allready on her strafing run, they hadent found any targets!

But its still out of the "CM" scope, to implement heavy AA who shoot at aircrafts. In reality, they would start maybe at 5.000m-8.000m.

[K_Tiger]

Ah Steve, you forget to mention the 150mm AA gun...

[Redwolf]

Think of an open area where you shoot at a plane with 300 km/h at 100m hieght, but over a distance of 4000m horizontal.

Again, I don't want that in CM for the reasons I mentioned in the last posting.

[K_Tiger]

Huh?? 100 meters?? Do you know how flat this is?? The nearbe 20mm would love it..

Ground strafing highs are mostly 300-500 meters, but i talking about taktical bombers, a little bigger than FW190, Thunderbolts, Hurricanes...ect.

A Gun-Crew is able to fire 6 Rounds per minute (timefuzed or similiar) enough to get of some he`s.

Also, you dont need to hit allways, sometimes, its enough to confused or set the pilot to panicking...a 50-100 meter away exploding 88 shell isnt to lough about if you sit in a aircraft.

Maybe they need 100 shots to shoot down a plane, but hey, its a cheap exchange.. )

[jgdpzr]

I'll admit I was never a hardcore ASLer, so excuse me when I say that it completely surprises me that the rule book would suggest 88s would engage tactical aircraft. These guns were simply not capable of such things with any sort of efficiency. Keep in mind that in the AA mode, they relied on timing fuses. Even if you could see a low-flying aircraft (below 5000 feet or so) approaching you from thousands of meters on the horizon, setting a timing fuse for such a target would be virtually impossible. Shooting ammo at such targets would have been a total waste of ammo. Now, I'm not going to say it never happened as I am sure inexperience/desperate crews may have done such a thing. But to think a game actually accounts for efficient use of the gun in such a fashion leaves me scratching my head. I would love to see even one anectdotal report of an 88 downing a tactical aircraft in such a fashion.

Also, we must remember that when we see an 88 on a CM battlefield this represents a gun that is clearly designated for ground support. When in the AA mode, the guns were almost always emplaced in batteries (frequently, perhaps usually, hardened) in connection with a fire control system (as Steve mentions). Does anyone know if it was common for guns attached to ground units to be equipped with ammo or fuses for AA work? My hunch (admittedly pure speculation) is that they would not be so equipped, so you'd be talking about shooting a low, fast flying aircraft with contact fuse HE. Not a recipe for success in my book.

[Redwolf]

I said several times it is clearly a waste of ammo and shouldn't be modeled in CM.

This will not have prevented German gunners from trying in the real world for the example given - correct fuse or not, sometimes they shoot anyway.

[jgdpzr]

Originally posted by redwolf:

I said several times it is clearly a waste of ammo and shouldn't be modeled in CM.

Redwolf, I hope you didn't take my post as directed toward you. I was just wondering why ASL would allow such a thing. The contexts may be different, I dunno...just wondering.

[demoss]

I'll admit I was never a hardcore ASLer, so excuse me when I say that it completely surprises me that the rule book would suggest 88s would engage tactical aircraft. These guns were simply not capable of such things with any sort of efficiency.

Well, it was allowed, but the chance of any effect was pretty darn low. And generally speaking, if you had 88s in a scenario, you probably had better things to do with them than take shots like that.

I can't speak to WHY it's in there. For all I know, maybe it's not anymore, since the rules have been redone.

[Battlefront.com]

K_Tiger,

Hmm... for the "heavy" (75mm, 88mm) AA-Guns im not so sure with the statement that they can only hit "strategical" Bombers.

In one of my books, maybe Saenger & Etterlin, they say, "after introducing the "Brandgeschosse" they scored three times more hits! This ammo is somefink like incendary rounds or else, three times, sounds like they hit something, and im sure, it wasnt allways the "big boys"

I am not sure how you can conclude anything from that quote. In Flak terms, a "hit" is different than a "direct hit". Flak is obviously supposed to HIT something, otherwise what would be the point of having Flak? Think of Flak like depthcharges. A depthcharge is not designed to kill a sub by hitting it, only detonating close enough to cause damage. If a depth charge did score a direct hit, and they did sometimes, then the results were optimal (usually a death blow). Same thing with Flak. A near miss would result in a hit which could potentially kill the target. Good enough!

Also remember that Flak had another purpose... it was designed to throw bombers off from their bombing run, break up formations so fighters could get better targets, and generally cause mental anguish on the enemy aircraft crews. It did all of these things very, very well.

As a second quote in this book (all about the 88`Flak) it was possible to hit incomming and outgoing low level aircrafts.

Anything is possible, but that does not make it likely. Again, the Flak 36/37 was not designed for this role. 20mm and 37mm guns were.

When was the introducing of the 88?? Around 1935/36?? At this time, there was no "High-Altitude-Bomber" in sight, so why such a big gun??

The 88 development started in WWI and picked up steam in the 1920s. I am not an aircraft buff, but even WWI bombers could not effectively be shot down by small caliber rounds. One tidbit I read stated the Germans found that nothing smaller than 75mm was considered effective against bombers.

The 88 actually wasn't all that effective against WWII heavy bombers flying at max ceiling. In fact, I just checked and the 88 couldn't even hit a B-17. However, bombers generally had to come down lower to hit their targets so it was possible for 88s to hit them at that point. Even in the 1930s the Luftwaffe saw this coming which is why larger guns were made.

I accept it, that no one tryed to shoot at a diagonal flying fighter-bomber, but there were alot more targets on the front, i think JU87, IL2, Blenheims, He111 (in taktical mission and so on, are good targets to shoot at.

Correct. But only something like a HE111 would remain at high altitude when bombing, which would rule out lighter Flak guns. The others had to come down to low altitude, and therefore the 88 would not be effective.

Ah Steve, you forget to mention the 150mm AA gun

No, I didn't I did not mention guns which never saw service, like German 150mm and 50mm AA guns. The Germans found that the 150mm didn't give much benefit over the 128mm, yet it presented all sorts of technical and logisitcal problems. So the idea was dropped.

Steve

[MikeyD]

Sounds from this discussion like nobody's ever seen a plane flying past at 250mph and 3,000 feet before!

An 88 sitting in a plane's flight path would certainly have plenty of time to bang away at approaching and departing targets, but if the gun is off-line from the flight path the problems of leading the target as it crosses the horizon compound the difficulty of hitting anything exponentially. Using an 88 on a CMBB map would entail allowing it to follow and fire on the target long-long after it's departed the actual map area. I doubt plane flight paths are actually modeled to that extent in the game.

[Brent Pollock]

Wow - what a difference a repost makes! Thanks to all who chipped-in on this discussion.

Fusing, fire direction infrastructure, ammo loadouts - those are the kind of points I was hoping people would bring to the "table".

I especially appreciate Steve for giving a direct Battlefront.com perspective, which I find is one of the strengths of these fora.

[Battlefront.com]

MikeyD,

Sounds from this discussion like nobody's ever seen a plane flying past at 250mph and 3,000 feet before!

Yup, and that reminds me that I did want to say something else...

Fighters and fighter bombers would fly at what I would call medium altitudes (2000-3000m) at decent speeds (300-400mph) before getting to their target areas. This was, of course, because it was safer from a flight path standpoint, better fuel consumption, and out of effective range of light AA fire. Flak like 88s could be quite effective against such formations. Very effective in fact. But these aircraft would NOT be in the process of performing CM style attacks and therefore this fact is not relevant.

Brent,

Glad we can help. Not the first time we have had a discussion about some of the, uhhhhhmmmmm, questionable design decisions in SL/ASL

Steve

[K_Tiger]

Thx Steve for the quick response and not kicking my but around here, for my semi-groggie statements..

Like i sayd in the same CMBO thread long, long time ago, was a land....aehem..back to the topic..

For me its ok like it is, not to let the 88 shoot at aircrafts...It still drives me crazy to hide-unhide those smaller flaks..and then there died..without to scratch anyone.. If this would happen to my 88`s they are to expensive and my hair will start faster to change into grey..

I still belive, 88`were used against tactical bombers, maybe not so often in the attack or strafing phase, more when they are on her way and after the attack. Still not in the CMBB scale....

I saw pics from 150mm AA guns..maybe only a few were build...or this are handpainted pics (Arg..where are the sources, when you need thems).

Steve.. know what you mean with the deep charges thingy...but this implements a "blast-round", Brandgeschosse are far away from this concept and where more meant for direkt hits....(doesnt read about AA-Flamethrowers, too)..

No, i know exactly how fast, or not so, do a low and fast flying aircraft looks like. Here, only two miles away, we have a small airport. Once i saw a film about a 88`in action and i was verry impressed how fast they traverse this big gun, not only around, also in elevation in the same time.

[Earl]

WWII fighter attack aircraft, cruising around looking for targets at about 500 ft and a minimum of 240 KIAS (which is 4 miles per minute). Much above 500 ft you can't see much in the way of tactical targets (aircraft in CMBB have really good eyesight). LOS horizon at 500 ft is about 27 nmi (with no obstuctions). So horizon to horizon is about 6 minutes. On a good day you can spot a fighter at about 10 nmi max (yes I know Chuck Yeager did 50 nmi once, that's why he's Chuck). Giving you about 2.5 mins of vulnerability. Inside of about 3 nmi the LOS angle changes are probably going to exceed any large gun's tracking capability (unless you are the target). So of the 2.5 minutes of vulnerability you have about 30 seconds to detect, track, and engage an inbound aircraft with any reasonable probability of kill and about the same for revenge shots as he departs.

All that being said, when there are aircraft overhead, everyone hides. When you are on the ground with aircraft attacking, I was taught that everyone shoots back, with every weapon you can bring to bear. Golden BB rule applies. More aircraft have been lost in every war to small arms fire than any other cause.

I haven't seen a vehicle mounted MG (or infantry)engage an attacking aircraft, will this happen in CMBB? Yes I know the Pk is fairly small, but I think it is historically accurate.

Feel free to correct me if this is full of dung, I hardly qualify as a grog.