Flak suppression

[wuzak]

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

View attachment 198802

Geo

Except this thread is not about strafing.

 

[wuzak]

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.

Snippers? Are they the soldiers that infiltrated the enemy's lines during the night and cut the balls off the enemy soldiers?

 

[tyrodtom]

Flak suppression, or at least light flak suppression is going to envolve strafing, or low level anti-personnel bomb drops.

The Luftwaffe had some pretty advanced weapons they used on the eastern front, cluster bombs of various makes, downward firing gun packs that could be mounted under the wings. They were just as useful in flak suppression as they would be against massed troops and tank riders.

The 12 gunned B-25's were used for flak suppression over airfields in the Pacific, along with para-frags.

 

[drgondog]

Except this thread is not about strafing.

So what other methods have been introduced for Flak Suppression.

 

[wuzak]

So what other methods have been introduced for Flak Suppression.

Rockets and bombs?

No doubt strafing is a big part of flak suppression, especially the way it was done.

But strafing is a wider topic altogether.

 

[drgondog]

Rockets and bombs?

No doubt strafing is a big part of flak suppression, especially the way it was done.

But strafing is a wider topic altogether.

I can't speak for other 8th/9th AF Fg's but the 355th used fragmentation clusters of 100 pound frag bombs for both anti personnel and flak suppression in June/July 1944.

 

[Edgar Brooks]

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..

Ignoring of course those Luftwaffe pilots seen deliberately flying over Allied parachutes, over Malta, to deliberately collapse them and kill the pilot.

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.

In fact I listen to other people's experiences, like the woman who, as a 5-year-old schoolgirl, related how her class heard an aircraft flying overhead, so rushed out to see. Having no thought of danger, they waved to the (German) pilot, who waved back, then turned his machine back towards them, and machine-gunned the children. My "critical attitudes" are directed towards those revisionists who desperately try to tell us what "good ol' boys" the Nazis really were.

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.

We didn't build an Auschwitz or Buchenwald in this country.

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

.
Since we're dealing with WWII, perhaps you could keep it on subject?

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.

So the soldiers, making their way to Dunkirk, who saw bodies, on the road, with bullet holes, were dreaming, then?

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.

Or maybe he heard from the woman above?

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.

Do you have any evidence of an Allied pilot deliberately strafing schoolchildren?

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

Like the German pilots who devastated London, Coventry, Liverpool, Manchester, Hull, Exeter, Birmingham, Plymouth, Portsmouth, presumably?

 

[Njaco]

Everyone will stop with the politics and the sarcasm and get back on topic or the thread will be closed and infractions given.

 

[Tante Ju]

So what other methods have been introduced for Flak Suppression.

I vote napalm.

 

[wuzak]

I vote napalm.

Napalm may suppress the flak in the short term (ie kill the operators), but will it affect the long term (ie damag/destroy the gun or emplacement)?

I suppose the same could be said of the strafing method.

A reasonably accurat delivery of HE bombs should at least damage the flak weapons so that they need to be replaced/repaired?

Also, was napalm widely used in aerial weapons in WW2?

 

[Njaco]

I was surprised when reading about the Ardennes Offensive in Dec. '44 that napalm was used a lot with the Allied ground attack like IX TAC. I believe they called them 'blaze bombs'.

 

[Edgar Brooks]

The C.F.E. carried out trials in 1944/5, with the Typhoon and Mustang, using torpedo tanks in the first instance, and the standard droptank on the latter. There were two mixtures used, and the report gives the impression that they were not impressed, since the mixture didn't penetrate slit trenches that had metal coverings, and the flames died down very quickly, meaning that observers were able to walk over the area within 45 seconds.

 

[tyrodtom]

The C.F.E. carried out trials in 1944/5, with the Typhoon and Mustang, using torpedo tanks in the first instance, and the standard droptank on the latter. There were two mixtures used, and the report gives the impression that they were not impressed, since the mixture didn't penetrate slit trenches that had metal coverings, and the flames died down very quickly, meaning that observers were able to walk over the area within 45 seconds.

That must not have been napalm as it was eventually developed, because the napalm i'm familiar with would certainly no be burnt out in 45 seconds.
In the USAF in the late 60's we used napalm premixed already in tanks from Dupont, but we also mixed our own using some equipment left over from the Korean war.

It was a hopper, similiar to a grain bin, that we'd pour, what I think, was styrene beads, from Procter&Gamble, while 80 octane gas, was metered by below the hopper. The mixture would then take on a texture like honey, in a few hours, it'd be like applesauce, if it could cure 24 hours,( it usually never got the chance) it'd be like jello.

A few time we ran out of 80 octane Mogas, and had to mix it with 115/145 aviation gas. The pilots didn't like it. If a munition didn't work, or not work well, we got feedback. The pilots didn't like risking their lives to drop duds. The 115/145 gas based napalm didn't burn as violently, they could tell the difference.

The best napalm mixture probably took time to develope, I've seen films of it used at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and it doesn't look the same as later napalm, as napalm as used by flame throwers is different also.

 

[Edgar Brooks]

The mixtures were Perspex in Benzole and Aluminium Laurate Creosole in Pool Petrol.

 

[tyrodtom]

The thickness or clinging properties would vary with however much of the mixture we used. So they were probably still experimenting with different mixture ratios in WW2.

 

[Kryten]

Napalm is a poor option as just like bombs you have to overfly the guns to deliver it, the benefit of cannon/MG attacks is you deluge the target before you get there, and if you want to supress a whole position or flakship then multiple guns are the way to go, take a look at the starafing runs on flakships on you tube, the beaten area encompasses the whole ship, a twelve gun hurricane iib for instance, would have been a very effective supression plane 12x 1200rpm!

 

[drgondog]

Napalm was used by 8th FC, but not extensively. Mostly in 1945.

 

[wuzak]

Napalm is a poor option as just like bombs you have to overfly the guns to deliver it, the benefit of cannon/MG attacks is you deluge the target before you get there, and if you want to supress a whole position or flakship then multiple guns are the way to go, take a look at the starafing runs on flakships on you tube, the beaten area encompasses the whole ship, a twelve gun hurricane iib for instance, would have been a very effective supression plane 12x 1200rpm!

But as the pilot flies towards the flak position he will be vulnerable to the small calibre (20mm) guns used for protect the big guns?

I think guns or rockets followed by bombs would be the go - the guns/rockets would temporarily quieten the position, allowing time to drop some bombs and, hopefully, more permanently knock out the position.

 

[drgondog]

But as the pilot flies towards the flak position he will be vulnerable to the small calibre (20mm) guns used for protect the big guns?

I think guns or rockets followed by bombs would be the go - the guns/rockets would temporarily quieten the position, allowing time to drop some bombs and, hopefully, more permanently knock out the position.

Flak suppression was developed as an artform by Wild Weasel Thud drivers dueling Radar and Sam Sites during Vietnam - but the goal was not to mangle the 23, 37, 67 and 85mm artillary in the rings surrounding the Fan Song sites - it was to kill the gunners and kill the radar site and guided Sam II's. Their load was CBU-24 cluster bobms, 20mm and Shrike missles plus Mk118 and/or M117 iron bombs

 

[tyrodtom]

I think it would be easier to replace the guns, than the trained gunners.

Of course it's much better if you can destroy both, but I think you'd need some pretty heavy and accurate bombs to destroy heavy flak guns.