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the lancaster kicks ass said:and RAF tactics called for long streams of bombers in very loose formations, no mutual protection, if you're jumped you try and corkscrew or take evasive action, something the B-17 couldn't do, by day a lone unescorted B-17 would be picked off, it'd be no different at night..........
Lightning Guy said:I would have to take exception with Flak being useless. Most bomber crews were far more affraid of Flak than of fighters.
Lightning Guy said:It may be inefficient, but inefficient is a long way from being ineffective. American bomber crews had an extremely difficult time facing Flak. Flak was far more terrifying than a fighter attack since flak was so random. At least when facing fighters, the crewman could shoot back. Against flak all they could do is watch and PRAY. Many crewman admitted they would rather face a sky full of fighters than fly through the flak. Much the same could be said of the escorting fighters who stated they would have hated trying to fly through that stuff.
plan_D said:Those people in the bombers that saw aircraft falling out of the sky due to FlaK shots would disagree completely. And I'll take their word for it.
To be ineffective, they had to fail in shooting down bombers. Take 'Black Thursday' for example, over Schweinfurt, the bombers had awful time due to FlaK and lost a lot of men. On top of actually bringing the bombers down, often crewmen would be hit and killed while in the bomber.
And neither did enemy fighter aircraft.. It wasnt a deterrant... Does that mean that the Luftwaffe was also ineffective?????Flak didn't stop them from bombing the targets nor did it force the USAAF or the RAF to abandon bombing of German cities. To me, that means it was ineffective.
RG_Lunatic said:Artillery (including rocket launchers)has inflicted more casualties than any other weapon system on post-19th-century battlefields. More specifically, mortar and artillery killed more soldiers during last century's major wars than any other system. Even during the Vietnam war, where North Vietnam lacked extensive artillery, 65 percent of all U.S. casualties resulted from artillery or mortar fragmentation.plan_D said:Soldiers were more afraid of those wirblewiffer (whatever they were called) rocket launchers than of machine gun fire too (sreaming meanies), but they were no where near as deadly. Those kind of opinions are often based upon perceptions far more than reality.