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wuzak
Captain
Except this thread is not about strafing.
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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
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.
Except this thread is not about strafing.
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.
Ignoring of course those Luftwaffe pilots seen deliberately flying over Allied parachutes, over Malta, to deliberately collapse them and kill the pilot.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..
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.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.
We didn't build an Auschwitz or Buchenwald in this country.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
So the soldiers, making their way to Dunkirk, who saw bodies, on the road, with bullet holes, were dreaming, then?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.
Or maybe he heard from the woman above?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.
Do you have any evidence of an Allied pilot deliberately strafing schoolchildren?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.
Like the German pilots who devastated London, Coventry, Liverpool, Manchester, Hull, Exeter, Birmingham, Plymouth, Portsmouth, presumably?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
So what other methods have been introduced for Flak Suppression.
I vote napalm.
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.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.
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.