Flak suppression

[fubar57]

Did an Image search for French water towers and came up with this picture from the always trusted Wikipedia site.

Given that the tower in the previous post was attacked just weeks prior to D-Day and the tower commands an outstanding view of the surrounding landscape, I'm thinking, legitimate target. Though there may not appear to be openings in the previous picture, from xthousand feet, what pilot is going to take a chance.

Geo

 

[Siegfried]

Do American water towers look much different?

 

[Siegfried]

I know that - but for one very large combat org, as well as 9th AF, it was the only flak suppression being done on any organized basis.

I think experience from a number of occasions showed that the costs exceeded the benefits.

 

[wuzak]

Do American water towers look much different?

It looks like they can vary a bit in appearence

 

[wuzak]

I think experience from a number of occasions showed that the costs exceeded the benefits.

Can you expand on this?

 

[wuzak]

A selection of water towers on the right:

Information and History for states in the USA

 

[drgondog]

Do American water towers look much different?

Yes - visualize an upside down spherical lollypop/mushroom for new ones last 30 years, cylinders with open frame support for most older ones. .

 

[drgondog]

I think experience from a number of occasions showed that the costs exceeded the benefits.

For strafers the 'cost' of not doing flak suppression meant dead fighter pilots - not sure how to quantify but April 1945 cost a lot of 8th and 9th AF airfield strafers.

 

[wuzak]

Yes - visualize an upside down spherical lollypop/mushroom for new ones last 30 years, cylinders with open frame support for most older ones. .

See photos above....

 

[fubar57]

To encourage the pilots to engage in very deadly airfield ground strafing, the 8th AF gave aircraft destroyed on the ground the same status as air kills. I think this was the only Air Force to do so.

Geo

 

[drgondog]

The trigger happy knucklehead is attacking the water tower on May 15th 1944. This is prior to D-day so its rather puzzling as to what is being spotted from the tower. There are no viable "observation ports" unless there are tiny portholes with frogmen behined them in the tower. Unfortunatly the frogmen wouldn't be able to see upwards or even shoot up due to the slate roof.

Unless he had been specifically ordered to straff these are the kind of out of control pilot that might on a boring day straff an lone ox cart carrying produce on which a school girl is hitching a ride on the basis that it might somehow be military. I guess they exist in every airforce.

Sorry, this is a picture of a slightly silly act with an even sillier caption. It would have caused great discomfort to the local French population and no doubt sanitation problems.

Perhaps the photo should have been titled "staffing a water tower vaguely suspected of carrying out an observation function"

A whole bunch of German airfields in France were fake: included were fake aircraft complete with plexiglass canopies. At least 50% of the straffed aircraft claimed destroyed would have been dummy. Producing decoy's was considered as important as camaflauge of real assets.

Source for 50% figure?

 

[drgondog]

To encourage the pilots to engage in very deadly airfield ground strafing, the 8th AF gave aircraft destroyed on the ground the same status as air kills. I think this was the only Air Force to do so.

Geo

You are correct

 

[Edgar Brooks]

Unless he had been specifically ordered to straff these are the kind of out of control pilot that might on a boring day straff an lone ox cart carrying produce on which a school girl is hitching a ride on the basis that it might somehow be military. I guess they exist in every airforce..

Especially the German air force in 1940.

Sorry, this is a picture of a slightly silly act with an even sillier caption. It would have caused great discomfort to the local French population and no doubt sanitation problems.

Unless it was situated on a German airfield, in which case it would cause discomfort to German forces, which is to be applauded.

A whole bunch of German airfields in France were fake: included were fake aircraft complete with plexiglass canopies. At least 50% of the straffed aircraft claimed destroyed would have been dummy.

Which is a total guess; real aircraft, when attacked, tend to burn, or, at least, smoke. On the pilot's return, his combat film would have been studied, and claims only allowed when verified by the Squadron's I.O.

 

[tyrodtom]

If that picture was taken in May 44, I doubt there were any dull days at low level during the prior to D-Day prep period.

High points like that tower are prime observation post, if that was just a water tower, the roof would likely be just concrete like the rest, and that gap between the roof and tower body, if you go by the likely size of the fence below, is a couple of feet. Perfect for a observation gallery all around the tower.

There's at least 2 aircraft going after this "whatever" tower, the aircraft shown, and the aircraft taking the pictures. Not very believable they're just doing it for fun.

 

[Airframes]

Legitimate target, and probably recognised for what it was. Disrupting the enemy's communications and supply is just as important as hitting military targets. Destroy or damage a water tower on, or near, a German base and it causes disruption.

 

[TheMustangRider]

For strafers the 'cost' of not doing flak suppression meant dead fighter pilots - not sure how to quantify but April 1945 cost a lot of 8th and 9th AF airfield strafers.

This is today's input of 8th AF operations in April '45 from the ArmyAirForces website:

April 16th, 1945
"During morning 486 B-17's bomb tank ditch def line at Pointe de Grave on S side of Gironde estuary in spt of ground assault in that area. In the afternoon 715 HBs bomb M/Ys at Plattling, Regensburg, and Landshut, and rail bridges and siding at Regensburg and Straubing. 15 ftr gps provide uneventful close and area spt and then strafe over 40 landing grounds and installations in Czechoslovakia and Germany, claiming a record 747 parked ftrs destroyed. 34 ftrs are downed mostly by automatic AA weapons."

The difference in escort sorties which for the most part were uneventful due the LW's precarious state by early 1945 and the high losses of pilots being inflicted by AAA fire is quite telling.

 

[drgondog]

As the German perimeter shrank, the concentration of aircraft (and AAA) tended towards fewer airbases - largely in SE Germany and Czechoslovakia.

 

[PJay]

The thread seems to moved away from Flak Suppression.
Possibilities in WW2 seem to me include unguided rockets or maybe toss bombing.
Of course these would be planned raids with more than one formation being involved.
And I don't know whether toss bombing was used in WW2.

 

[fubar57]

This may be the be all, end all book for this thread. Had it for about 4 months but things get in the way for reading it. 272 pages with loads of photos

Geo

 

[Siegfried]

Especially the German air force in 1940.

These would be the same Luftwaffe pilots that not once shot down a British parachute during the BoB, despite the fact that it was not a war crime to do so and despite the fact that it would have benefitted the Luftwaffe's campaign. The only case of shooting down of parachutes was of RAF/Polish squadrons of Luftwaffe pilots over British soil, which most definetly is a war crime.

Oh Edgar, most of the 'atrocity' propaganda is just that, propaganda. Perhaps you've just not developed the critical attitudes needed to detect baloney or like many folks prefer to keep these preconceptions as part of your identity. Creation or mongering of atrocities is perhaps the only way a population can be brought to war. Your own country is a highly accomplished, brilliantly subtle and very shameless practitioner of this art. That's why one of your primeminsters left in disgrace and was known as Tony Bliar. The fabrication that Germans (in WW1) were rendering the dead into soap being one of the first such lies.

Focusing propaganda on the non event of Stuka's dive bombing and straffing civilians detracts from the reality that the kind of campaign the German General Staff was waging was outstandingly successfull and quite frightening. That was the purpose of this 'lie'. Propaganda, public relations is the most important aspect of a war; more important than aircraft. The US found this out in Vietnam and as a result its military analysts dusted of books by von Clausitwitz whose country Prussia had suffered under Napoleon noting that a population had to be prepared mentally and attitudinally for a war.

I recall browsing Anthony Bevoirs "history" of the Spanish Civil war. There he thoughlessly regurgitates the allegation that Luftwaffe pilots straffed school girls (nothing less than school girls with their pig tail hair will do). Despite lots of endnotes and footnotes everywhere else Bevoir doesn't footnot or reference this at all, he just slips it in thinking no one will notice. He is one of those thematic Historians in which and affected style of haughtly sarcasim and dripping opprobrium is more important than integrity and research. In his case mostly from other peoples books. A Wikipedia article is far more trustworthy.

No doubt these straffing incidents did happen on both sides but they were relatively rare and when they are traced back there is little evidence for them.

Incidently it was folks that practiced area bombardment and dehousing, not STUKA pilots that killed civilians just like it was not snippers (the most hated of soldiers) that killed civilians.