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Author: Donald Nijboer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 081176592X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
More than half of the U.S.’s aircraft losses in Europe in World War II were due to German antiaircraft artillery, and many of the American aircraft shot down by Luftwaffe fighters had first been driven out of formation by flak and made easy prey for the fighters. A world away in the Pacific, American flak guns aboard naval ships formed the last line of defense against Japanese kamikazes. Historian Donald Nijboer relies on firsthand accounts, newly discovered files, photos, diagrams, and maps to reveal the forgotten contribution of flak in World War II, from doctrine and tactics to combat stories on the ground and in the air about what it was like to fly into the teeth of antiaircraft fire.
Author: Donald Nijboer
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 081176592X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
More than half of the U.S.’s aircraft losses in Europe in World War II were due to German antiaircraft artillery, and many of the American aircraft shot down by Luftwaffe fighters had first been driven out of formation by flak and made easy prey for the fighters. A world away in the Pacific, American flak guns aboard naval ships formed the last line of defense against Japanese kamikazes. Historian Donald Nijboer relies on firsthand accounts, newly discovered files, photos, diagrams, and maps to reveal the forgotten contribution of flak in World War II, from doctrine and tactics to combat stories on the ground and in the air about what it was like to fly into the teeth of antiaircraft fire.
Author: Edward B. Westermann
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700614206
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
Air raid sirens wail, searchlight beams flash across the sky, and the night is aflame with tracer fire and aerial explosions, as Allied bombers and German anti-aircraft units duel in the thundering darkness. Such "cinematic" scenes, played out with increasing frequency as World War II ground to a close, were more than mere stock material for movie melodramas. As Edward Westermann reveals, they point to a key but largely unappreciated aspect of the German war effort that has yet to get its full due. Long the neglected stepchild in studies of World War II air campaigns, German flak or anti-aircraft units have been frequently dismissed by American, British, and German historians (and by veterans of the European air war) as ineffective weapons that wasted valuable material and personnel resources desperately needed elsewhere by the Third Reich. Westermann emphatically disagrees with that view and makes a convincing case for the significant contributions made by the entire range of German anti-aircraft defenses. During the Allied air campaigns against the Third Reich, well over a million tons of bombs were dropped upon the German homeland, killing nearly 300,000 civilians, wounding another 780,000, and destroying more than 3,500,000 industrial and residential structures. Not surprisingly, that aerial Armageddon has inspired countless studies of both the victorious Allied bombing offensive and the ultimately doomed Luftwaffe defense of its own skies. By contrast, flak units have virtually been ignored, despite the fact that they employed more than a million men and women, were responsible for more than half of all Allied aircraft losses, forced Allied bombers to fly far above high-accuracy altitudes, and thus allowed Germany to hold out far longer than it might have otherwise. Westermann's definitive study sheds new light on every facet of the development and organization of this vital defense arm, including its artillery, radar, searchlight, barrage balloon, decoy sites, and command components. Highlighting the convergence of technology, strategy, doctrine, politics, and economics, Flak also provides revealing insights into German strategic thought, Hitler's obsession with micromanaging the war, and the lives of the members of the flak units themselves, including the large number of women, factory workers, and even POWs who participated.
Author: Hans Seidler
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1783039183
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 183
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Book Description
This pictorial WWII history explores the evolution of the Third Reich’s Luftwaffe ground force through rare wartime photographs. From the outset of the Second World War, Luftwaffe Flak units saw extensive fighting with their 2cm, 3.7cm and deadly 8.8cm anti-aircraft guns. By the time of Hitler’s invasion of Russia, Luftwaffe ground forces had been expanded and were being used in both the army support and air roles. After initial success on the Eastern Front gave way to a costly quagmire, Hitler ordered the raising of Luftwaffe Field Divisions to bolster the Army. Initially under Hermann Goring’s command, they were reorganized under the Army in 1943 as standard infantry divisions. The most famous was the elite Hermann Goring Division, which was reorganized as a Panzer Division. By 1944 there were no less than twenty-one Luftwaffe Field Divisions, plus many similar regiments, fighting on all fronts.
Author: Frank Farr
Publisher: Author House
ISBN: 1467042579
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
Flak over the target only stopped-or slowed-when Nazi fighter planes attacked the bombers of the 8th Air Force in World War II. Flak was anti-aircraft fire, and some 8th AF airmen hated it worse than fighters- "You can fight back against the fighters," they said, "but not the flak; we're just sitting ducks." Like many others, Lt. Frank Farr, B-17 navigator, experienced both and fell victim to both. "Flak Happy" tells the story of his sixteen and a half bombing missions over Nazi Germany. And it describes the mind-numbing consequences of flying repeatedly through that flak and how he and others dealt with them.
Author: Pat DiGeorge
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780998257013
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 514
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Book Description
LIBERTY LADY is the true story of a WWII bomber and its crew forced to land in neutral Sweden during the Eighth Air Force's first large-scale daylight bombing raid on Berlin. 1st Lt. Herman Allen was interned and began working for his country's espionage agency, the OSS, with instructions to befriend a businessman suspected of selling secrets to the Germans. Soon Herman fell in love with a beautiful Swedish-American secretary working for the OSS, their courtship unfolding amid the glamour and intrigue of wartime Stockholm. As Swedish newspapers trumpeted one of the biggest spy scandals of the war, two of the main protagonists walked down the aisle in a storybook wedding presided over by the nephew of the King of Sweden.
Author: Devon Francis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 418
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Book Description
Author: Jonathan Bernstein
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472846303
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 149
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Book Description
Since the end of World War 2, the tactical air war over Europe has been largely overlooked by historians and authors alike in favour of analysis of the higher profile strategic bombing campaign. Involving just as many aircraft as the daylight heavy bombing campaign, the fighter-bombers (principally of the Ninth Air Force) wreaked considerably more havoc on German ground forces. Indeed, Thunderbolt units undertaking such missions effectively complemented the strategic campaign, ensuring the defeat of Nazi Germany. P-47 pilots paid a high price to achieve this victory, however, as the German flak arm was well equipped (nearly a quarter of all war-related production was devoted to anti-aircraft weaponry) with weapons of various calibres to counter tactical air power's low to medium altitude threat. The USAAF four numbered air forces that saw action over the European continent suffered significant fighter-bomber losses to flak. The principle fighter-bomber from the summer of 1944 through to VE Day was the P-47D, with both dedicated ground attack units and squadrons that had completed their bomber escort tasking seeking out targets of opportunity across occupied Western Europe. While heavy-calibre anti-aircraft fire was intended to both shoot down enemy aircraft and force bombers to drop their ordnance sooner or from higher altitudes, thus reducing bombing accuracy, low-altitude flak batteries put up a virtual 'wall of steel' for enemy fighter-bombers to fly through. Damaging a low-flying fighter-bomber made it easier for other flak gunners to track, engage and destroy it. Innovations like lead-computing gunsights gave gunners a higher probability of intercepting low-altitude fighters. Conversely, the appearance of air-to-ground rockets beneath the wings of P-47s gave pilots better standoff range and a harder-hitting punch when dealing with low and medium altitude flak units. This volume analyses the tactics and techniques used by both P-47 fighter-bomber pilots and German flak gunners, featuring full-colour illustrations to examine the Allied tactical air power in Europe from 1943 and how German defences were overpowered by the air threat.
Author: Devon Francis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424
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Book Description
Author: Steven J. Zaloga
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1849085943
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 66
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Book Description
Starting in 1940, Germany was subjected to a growing threat of Allied bomber attack. The RAF night bombing offensive built up in a slow but unrelenting crescendo through the Ruhr campaign in the summer of 1944 and culminating in the attacks on Berlin in the autumn and early winter of 1943-44. They were joined by US daylight raids which first began to have a serious impact on German industry in the autumn of 1943. This book focuses on the land-based infrastructure of Germany's defense against the air onslaught. Besides active defense against air attack, Germany also invested heavily in passive defense such as air raid shelters. While much of this defense was conventional such as underground shelters and the dual use of subways and other structures, Germany faced some unique dilemmas in protecting cities against night fire bomb raids. As a result, German architects designed massive above-ground defense shelters which were amongst the most massive defensive structures built in World War II.
Author: Werner Müller
Publisher: Schiffer Publishing
ISBN: 9780887407581
Category : Antiaircraft guns
Languages : en
Pages : 48
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Book Description
All variations on the 20mm FLAK anti-aircraft gun, including towed versions, and self-propelled as used by all arms of Wehrmacht.
