I found it ironic that the USAAF Bomber Mafia had to discount anti-aircraft artillery and enemy interceptor aircraft--but then had to eat their words. For example, ack-ack or flak pushed bombers to bomb from high altitudes, out of the reach of AAA fire. This reduced bombing accuracy and scattered bomb patterns. The Norden bomb sight could, in good weather, drop a bomb on a football field from 10,000 feet altitude. Bombing as low as 5000 feet was more accurate, but the limit of the Norden was about 15,000 feet. In order to avoid being shot down by cannon fire, bombers had to fly above 20,000 feet, fly around the fire fan of flak, and use the evasive maneuvers pioneered by the world's navies, only in four dimensions rather than three. Time is a dimension, even though time is basically linear and one-way. Before I forget, bombers had to protect themselves from enemy fighter aviation by flying where there were no fighters, flying high, flying fast, then making the bombers bulletproof and adding defensive machine guns to discourage the enemy, flying in convoys for mutual protection. Sounds as if the bomber was threatened by the two things that the Bomber Mafia promised were harmless.

Escort fighters eventually gave bombers the defence they needed against enemy fighters, at which point flak took over as the main cause of bomber losses.

Don't you mean "worked"? Or are they still active?

@@mattiasolsson2354Still does. There are several light anti-aircraft cannon still in service. Warships have dual-purpose cannon ranging from 75mm to 130mm that can target both airborne and surface targets. In this age of inexpensive drones, AAA can provide air defense without firing million-dollar missiles.

Does it really take 27 seconds to fire that far up?

I don't know if I'm more worried by how spot on this comment is for me personally, or the fact that in 2 days, we have 12 pple in the same situation on the same video 😅😂

❤

men would watch this and say : heil yeah

Right now high as heck eating biscuit

Right there with you

I mean in a gross oversimplification they did. For accurate fire, they needed visual acquisition, radar wasn't positionally accurate enough for good fire control, especially not early in the war. They got visual acquisition, held it with the rangefinder, and the rangefinder did the complex math to hit the aircraft. But without visual acquisition, that rangefinder was kinda useless

I tried to simulate flak in a 3D game using Bullet physics and found this the hard way...

and thats only 70-90 year old technology imagine how sophisticated modern warfare is

During the First Gulf War I was attending DeVry after a decade in military intelligence and chanced to see random Iraqi anti-aircraft fire over Baghdad during a nighttime air raid. That told me the command center for the anti-aircraft artillery had been knocked off-line and the guns were local control--probably at the individual gun position. They were firing blindly at cruise missiles and F-117A "stealth fighters." That was during 1991, four decades of flak evolution. The Iraqi air defense system was far more advanced than Germany's in 1944 and would have been more effective had the command centers and the radar sites not been damaged. There are multiple ways to disable flak. During the Second Gulf War Baghdad didn't bother with air raid blackouts. Anti-bomber defenses have become more sophisticated, too.

That was a pretty dumb assumption to be honest with you

I adore the old animated tutorials of the Americans. So down to earth, simple language, clear intentions. 0 wasted words. Check out the one on differential gear. One of my favorite

Sad, isn't it? So much brain power to murder each other.

8⁸

These days our college educated students can't even tell you the difference between a man and a woman. This is how the medieval people must have felt after the fall of the Roman Empire, so much intelligence lost.

Does AA batteries of WW2 related to AA batteries used in our wall mounted clock? I am confused why they're called batteries

It was pretty much just the US, british, and germans condensing decades of research and development into a few years.

Interesting history. Thank you for sharing.

Fascinating, thanks for the additional information and history bit.

Thank you for this information, you should make a video yourself so we have both sides. German military technology was very advanced and was the basis for post war weapons development for both US and the Soviets.

Thank you for your fathers service

@@sublimeade excuse me 💀

The "Animagraffs" video on WWII U.S. submarines is something I believe you would enjoy, available on You Tube.

Have you heard about the problems with the new ifv tank here in germany? There was an electronic update by the weapons factory on the tanks system and later all of these tanks were unable to work. That has happened some years ago on an exercise in the baltic area. It was the Puma IFV that got an update from Rheinmetall defence

​@@GAPphp He talking about ww2 not Morden day

@@paisuk6566 yes I know. What do you think works better? There are even old Mercedes Cars equipped with less electric stuff, driven 300.000 to over 400.000 kilometers and more. My new Honda Jazz from 2012 went 140.000 kilometers and gear went damaged. My Smart car broke down because water had intruded the electricity.! Even had some dangerous Problems with the chip that control the electricity!!

@@GAPphphe’s not talking about modern day bro. He’s talking about 1940s dude wake up

Abwehr,, not Abwher. Sich wehren - to defend yourself. Die Wehr- dated the weapon. Das Wehr- a kind of dyke in small rivers, to lead some water into turbines or oldfashioned water mills.

abwehr*

And if you ever stumble over the word "Flab", that's Flug (flying) Abwehr (defense, to ward off) Batterie (battery), so basically an entire air defense setup. In more modern settings there is also Flarak: Flug (flying) Abwehr( defense) Rakete (rocket or missile)

@@sgt_wills5742 Correct...I knew that. Thank you.

I thought it was Flugzeug Abwehr Kanon. (Antiaircraft gun).

The question I have is how well followed were the flac countermeasures by the bomber crews. From 1943 on?

@@bingcoteeagle6932 That can be demonstrated by the effects of The Big Week in February 1944. Bomber loses from fighters dropped. Your question was on flak and without giving you numbers I can only impart a generalized picture. Germany had to shift fighters to the Russian Front to hold the line in the east and to keep American and British fighter sweeps from destroying the entire German air force. By June 1944 American and British aviation had free reign over occupied France and limited opposition over Germany. Italy was another place where Allied air power did whatever it wanted. One of those missions was flying photo recon--to find the flak. A number of missions to locate enemy flak included some flak suppression. Germany was launching V-1 and V-2 raids and heavy bombers were "diverted" to pummel tactical targets with carpet bombing missions--limited flak. A number of raids were decoys--fly a formation and then return no flak. Permanent flak batteries took months to build and needed scarce steel and concrete--and attracted low-level air raids to suppress them. Mobile flak needed time to move at night--moving by day risked those fighter sweeps. The flak batteries had to be emplaced, a matter of hours, usually less than a couple of days including time to pack the flak up and move it to a new location. All this had a synergetic effect because Germany could have a strong flak defense in a few places or be weak everywhere. As the strategic bombers had the freedom to pick which city would become charred rubble today, the Hobson's choices were leave cities undefended, put up weak defenses, or use the few flak guns as a mobile fire brigade an guess which targets the Allies would hit today and tonight. It got worse. There was a severe fuel shortage. It took something like 10,000 heavy shells (88mm, 105mm, 128mm) to destroy one bomber--the major effect of flak was forcing bombers to take countermeasures against flak, which reduced bombing effectiveness. All those flak guns in Germany could have been used on the Russian Front busting Soviet tanks and shelling Red Army infantry--no, had to stop British bombing by night and American bombing by day. Shells had to be manufactured and moved to the guns. The hardest part about bombing is finding the targets. Jimmy Doolittle commanded 8th Army Air Force and employed a shuttle system of fighter escorts--when the escorts competed their part, they were released to snoop and shoot if they still had fuel and bullets. Anything moving on the ground was a target. I had several Germans who lived through those days complain that American fighters would dive out of the sky and machine gun a girl on a bicycle. When there were fewer Luftwaffe fighters in the sky, some of the American and British fighters bombed up so they could attack ground targets harder. In the days leading up to D-Day Luftwaffe airfields in France were so dangerous that the German aircraft moved out of reach--which meant that D-Day was conducted with virtually no interference from the Luftwaffe. No Luftwaffe--fighter pilots had to file reports on where they shot things up, which often was followed up with a photo plane or two to see if there was anything else worth shooting up. Some of those things were flak guns. Trains were a major transportation system in Germany and locomotive busting became a game--no flak shells reached the guns. Trucks suffered from lack of fuel, too few trucks, and night-time only. The P-61 Black Widow was supposed to clear the night sky of Luftwaffe, but when there was no enemy in the sky, those radar-equipped night fighters would drop down and scan the ground with their radars and shoot up night movement. Good thing I didn't print out tables. You can see from my brief description that there were many different things suppressing flak ranging from simply bombing where there was no flak to starving the guns of ammo by busting locomotives and trucks by day or night. All this reduced flak losses to the point where after Operation Boilerplate (the German air force's part of the Battle of the Bulge, carried out on New Years Day 1945) flak losses and fighter losses combined were lower than losses due to bad weather or mechanical issues.

Thank you .I was aware of much of what you related but was unsure just how enforced the course and height corrections were. Although, with the lack of enemy fighter cover, the reduction of flack weapons, a lack of ammo for the same, the increase of friendly fighter cover, the need for evasive flight doctrines would become much less than in say 1942/1943. The New years raid by the dregs of a hodge podge of Franken fighter groups seems to be about the end of the German fighter/bomber threat to the allies. Oh, a few units still hunted right up to the end of the war, yet any cohesive threat of attack was finished. I find it fascinating to see just how quickly the German political and military machine fell apart. As with all institutions on the decline, it still functioned dysfunctionally for a short time, but in two short years, crumbled into chaos and ruin. To return to the army air force, what a tragic learning curve they had. As a boy, I grew up with the survivors of that war . My family was navy, but I met and knew people from both theater's of conflict. Also, more than a few holocaust survivors. When I could gain their trust to open up to me, the stories they had to tell made my blood run cold and one or two nightmares.

@@alancranford3398bombed up?

avoid flak by flying to a neutral country. Stay there and pick flowers until the war is over.

You should check out the videos on proxy fuse development. It's probably the single wildest piece of WW2 tech. Internal chemical batteries which activated when the shell was fired to keep the explosives from arming prior to it. The liquid part of the battery only made contact with the lead plates when the round was spun after the liquid vial was broken during firing. Micro transistors using the doppler frequency to tell when a plane is as close as its going to get.

Armor battle* car (or wagon, if you will). That's the beauty of most Germanic languages, you can make new words by just pasting existing words together. Same goes for Flak.

an accurate translation would be Armoured Fighting Vehicle

It pretty much just means armored fighting vehicle. Just because a wagen is a car doesn't mean that every wagen is a car. In the context it's a vehicle. The definition of the word "Panzerkampfwagen" just is "armored vehicle to fight things"

@@ikat_tracer If you're looking for a meaningful translation of Panzerkampfwagen to English, that translation is just "tank". An armored fighting vehicle ("AFV") could be many more things (IFVs, APCs, SPGs, etc).

Yes because of the range, small guns are for low flying so it makes sense

@@marcos14223 My great-grandfather owned a farm on the edge of the airfield. There was a light FlaK location just 100m from his house. And incidentally, Ju-88s parked right in front of his farm...

The clouds are just smoke from the shell exploding, the dangerous part of flack is the shrapnel from the case surrounding the the explosives

​@@8vantor8 And the shrapnel loses velocity very quickly after the shell burst. You'll hear it impacting against your aircraft like heavy rain, but it won't do much damage.

That’s all that was going through my mind watching this. Insane.

Its absolutely nuts.

And luck! Bomber crews didn't have a high life expectancy...

And on top of that there were still pilots that did exactly what they needed to and by luck they still perished. War is cruel.

You should. Never a reason not to.

The americans did, not the allies as a whole. And only used it in the pacific until d day. Else they were manual calc and twist to set fuses

Hey, me and a few buddies were wondering if you still loved old clips like this?

Excellent video, but why did he steal it ?

They didn’t have, friendly fire, back then. It was all serious.

Wait until you find out how sophisticated warfare was in the 19th century.

For real man. Those guys back then were brace as hell. I would of been crapping my pants I think.

The U.S. 8th Air Force, stationed in England, lost 26,000 airmen, more than the U.S. Marines in the Pacific island hopping campaign.

Yes, guessing that a lot of those conventional flak shells were whizzing past very close to bombers before exploding out of range. Allied development of proximity fuzes and US production was a closely guarded secret that provided a significant advantage. Later in WW2, British antiaircraft batteries were shooting down V1s with US proximity shell firing guns. The technology was based on miniature valves (tubes in the US) originally developed for hearing aids!

Very fascinating indeed, they always put a lot of effort into their training videos

​@@PremierHistoryEven today, there probably is no better way to teach for things like this. You only need to look at KZfaq. And with plenty of excellent animators available, who could all be repurposed because of the almost "total war" mentality of the time, I think the Americans made a good call on the training videos.

​@@TheLukasDirector any other as good training videos as this one?

​@@Steve-GM0HUU can you say more about those valves from hearing aids?

Hey, me and some buddies were wondering if you still thought this was an excellent upload?

Hey, me and some buddies were wondering if you were still scared of this video?

I would say a lot of communication between the lead aircraft and those following, but given the size of the formations you are right, great point

​@@PremierHistory There was no communication between them, radio silence was maintained even when they were being shot at and the Germans obviously knew where they were at, this was because any kind of communication where the lead aircraft would be calling out maneuver commands could be monitored by the German flak batteries and used to anticipate where to aim the guns. It was done simply by everyone else in the bomber box maneuvering off the lead bomber, that's how they trained and how they flew.

@@dukecraig2402 Thank you.

It's called coordination by the lead aircraft within the group. That was one of three purposes of the lead aircraft.

The same way a naval convoy knew when to go from a zig to a zag.

@@danielebrparish4271 ….annnnddd how did they know?!

Every preflight briefing ended with the syncronization of the crew's watches. The briefing officer would give the time at the mark. Pulling out the wind stem stopped the watch and twisting it with the stem pulled out would move the minute hand. On the mark the stem would be pushed in thus restarting the second hand. In flight they changed direction according to their watches. The navy syncronized their clocks with that of the lead command ships clock by a signal. From then on the ship's clock alarm was the signal to change direction. It took a lot of skill to avoid colliding with other ships. Even modern naval ships still rely on sailors serving watch duty around the ship to warn the bridge of potential collisions.@@johns3106

If I were to hazard a guess, the crews paid attention to the mission brief when the planned evasion timeline was covered. Then they made the planned course changes at the appointed times. When in doubt, they played follow the leader with the lead aircraft.

I cannot even imagine what doing that must be like. Great grandpa had some balls.

It really was a well thought out and informative production

@@PremierHistory Very much so, I was very impressed, not to mention your videos being just as good!

True.

Glad you liked it!

Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the support Wilde Wolfe

Glad you enjoyed it!

You mean British proximity fuzes.

"If" If my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle but she doesn't so she's my aunt. And it's not like the proximity fuse would have made that big of a difference because the German system already worked spectacularly well without proximity fuses, the biggest thing is getting the rounds close to the aircraft in the first place, and the proximity fuse has nothing to do with that, it's not like it guides the round to the target like how a smart bomb is guided by a laser, the proximity fuse doesn't do you one bit of good if you can't get your fire close to the bombers in the first place and the Germans radar system took care of that, it even set the time fuse on the rounds so it'd blow up in relative close proximity to the bomber anyway, all those flak bursts that you see that are too far away from the bombers to harm them, the proximity fuse wouldn't have changed anything about each one of those rounds, they still would have been too far away from the bomber to harm it, but instead of the timed fuse detonating the round (and you'll notice they're detonating at the correct altitude anyway mostly) a shell with a proximity fuse wouldn't have detonated at all, not until it hit it's self destruct feature. Something they don't cover in this is that part of the German system was a device that set the fuse on the shell to detonate at the correct altitude, the shell handler would stick it into the device and it'd set the timer, then it'd get loaded into the gun that would get fired by the system at the correct time so the shell would be where the aircraft would be at the same time, the only thing the proximity fuse would have done was detonate a shell that was passing close to a bomber but would have gone past it and detonated above it, but as explained the computer had that worked out anyway and is why you see all those flak bursts at the same altitude as the bomber, they just weren't close enough to do anything and the proximity fuse wouldn't have changed that.

Hey, me and some buddies were wondering if you still had no idea?

@@wizcorn9958 Well I do Now. Thanks fer giving a fuck.👍🏻

I always knew those guys were one of the most important people in the plane and now I that reinforces it for me. Actually they were probably the most important.

By the time they were that close to the target the navigators job was done, at that point it was up to the lead pilot to quit jinking at the last minute and line the bombers up with the target at which point he would engage the auto pilot system and them the bombardier would slave the bombsight into it to make right or left corrections to line up the target. By the time all this evasive maneuvering started they were close enough to the target that they knew where it was, the navigators job was already done at that point.

@@dukecraig2402 I don’t think they were that close though because when they are, it’s straight and level flight until they drop the payload. There were enough flak batteries scattered throughout Europe at the time that those maneuvers could be applicable hundreds of miles away from the target.

@@Wurdswurth No, that's not how it worked, mission planners had their routes so that they'd avoid any fixed positions, and the Germans didn't have enough fuel and the other resources to have non fixed batteries moving their guns and the thousands of rounds for them all over the countryside all willy-nilly just to have surprises for Allied bombers in the off chance they might fly over them, listen to the mission briefings, they knew exactly where the batteries were at and had their routes planned to avoid them until the rings of air defense around the actual targets, by the time they got to them the bombers, the Germans, God and everyone else knew exactly where they were at, after coming off the target then the navigator needed to start picking up landmarks to plot their position to run the planned route back.

Same

No, Hedy Lamarr had nothing to do with the proximity fuse, her contribution was a radio guidance system for torpedoes that used broad spectrum and radio hopping frequency technology to prevent being jammed. Although it's still controversial whether or not she thought it up as she claimed or stole the idea and technology from a high ranking Nazi military scientist she was involved with before she left Europe and came to America, I myself find it kind of hard to believe that a woman who at the age of 12 fell in love with theater and at that age determined she wanted to be an actress and as such put all her efforts into that and never received any kind of technical education whatsoever came up with that, according to her she supposedly learned about technology from her father who explained high tech principles of the era to her when they'd take walks in the woods. Sounds like a fairytale story to me, everyone else has to spend years in higher education to learn thing's like electronics and the principles of radio waves but she picked up everything she needed from walks in the woods with her dad, yea right, then years later she just happened to be screwing around with a high ranking German military scientist who coincidentally happened to be the guy who developed radio guided torpedoes for the German navy, but she didn't get the idea or steal plans off him then flee to America, no, she just happened to parallel develop the same thing herself out of the clear blue after she arrived in America. Maybe she left a tooth under her pillow and the next morning it was gone and a set of plans for a radio guided torpedo that used frequency hopping technology was in it's place, I'd say that's more likely than her version of things.

That brings back a flood of memories.

Really interesting question !

it doesn't, it explodes thanks to the time fuse

The flak burns up during re-entry and descent through the atmosphere. (Okay, it doesn't, but I'll bet 9 out of 10 Americans would believe me.)

@@TttTtt-zo7kt I am trying to understand if people on the ground will feel the effect of Flack when it is fired into the sky 🤔❗I know that when WDW fires fireworks every night. Stuff falls to the ground, we wear hard hats 🤠

Not autonomous, it just told the gunners where to aim

Flak is the acronym for Flug Abwehr Kanone= Aviation Defense gun.

You might get some "flack" for that comment

Hey, me and some buddies were wondering if you’ve had a chance to make it to Germany yet?

@@wizcorn9958 Yes I did. The guys of the FLAK had a party and weren't wachting ;-)

@@JTA1961 🥵