German mega defense

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ThatZenoGuy
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Re: German mega defense

#121

Post by ThatZenoGuy » 11 Jun 2022, 02:50

Destroyer500 wrote:
11 Jun 2022, 02:37
How can this thing even shoot at anything flying above it ?
It can elevate to 85 degrees, and apparently had quite the rate of fire.

No idea how they squeezed a round out every 4.5 seconds though.

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Destroyer500
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Re: German mega defense

#122

Post by Destroyer500 » 11 Jun 2022, 02:52

ThatZenoGuy wrote:
11 Jun 2022, 02:50
Destroyer500 wrote:
11 Jun 2022, 02:37
How can this thing even shoot at anything flying above it ?
It can elevate to 85 degrees, and apparently had quite the rate of fire.

No idea how they squeezed a round out every 4.5 seconds though.
WOOOOW THERE.Could it also reload at 85 degrees ? Find more info and report back ! :milsmile:


ThatZenoGuy
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Re: German mega defense

#123

Post by ThatZenoGuy » 11 Jun 2022, 05:27

Destroyer500 wrote:
11 Jun 2022, 02:52
WOOOOW THERE.Could it also reload at 85 degrees ? Find more info and report back ! :milsmile:
I have no clue if it could reload at 85 degrees but typically AA guns are designed to reload at any elevation because...Well they're kinda expected to be looking 'up' all the time.

Not much is known about the 150mm AA gun, as I understand it.

They were a purely static mount and that gave them a lot of leeway with weights, thus it could've had a highly advanced reloading system...

Orrrrrr they just used like ten strong guys to strongman 150mm shells into the thing.

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Destroyer500
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Re: German mega defense

#124

Post by Destroyer500 » 11 Jun 2022, 12:47

ThatZenoGuy wrote:
11 Jun 2022, 05:27
Destroyer500 wrote:
11 Jun 2022, 02:52
WOOOOW THERE.Could it also reload at 85 degrees ? Find more info and report back ! :milsmile:
I have no clue if it could reload at 85 degrees but typically AA guns are designed to reload at any elevation because...Well they're kinda expected to be looking 'up' all the time.

Not much is known about the 150mm AA gun, as I understand it.

They were a purely static mount and that gave them a lot of leeway with weights, thus it could've had a highly advanced reloading system...

Orrrrrr they just used like ten strong guys to strongman 150mm shells into the thing.
Yea they hired Edie Hall and some of his cousins to reload the batteries xD

We can find more info if you find out were in the pacific they were stationed,i will do some research on my own but im really busy these days so youll save me some time

ThatZenoGuy
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Re: German mega defense

#125

Post by ThatZenoGuy » 11 Jun 2022, 16:08

Destroyer500 wrote:
11 Jun 2022, 12:47
Yea they hired Edie Hall and some of his cousins to reload the batteries xD

We can find more info if you find out were in the pacific they were stationed,i will do some research on my own but im really busy these days so youll save me some time
Only two were completed, and both were located in the Japanese home islands, specifically Kugayama.

They shot down 2 B29 in a single engagement, which is very impressive as the 29 was a state of the art bomber.

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Destroyer500
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Re: German mega defense

#126

Post by Destroyer500 » 11 Jun 2022, 18:18

ThatZenoGuy wrote:
11 Jun 2022, 16:08
Destroyer500 wrote:
11 Jun 2022, 12:47
Yea they hired Edie Hall and some of his cousins to reload the batteries xD

We can find more info if you find out were in the pacific they were stationed,i will do some research on my own but im really busy these days so youll save me some time
Only two were completed, and both were located in the Japanese home islands, specifically Kugayama.

They shot down 2 B29 in a single engagement, which is very impressive as the 29 was a state of the art bomber.
With just quick research i found this https://military-history.fandom.com/wik ... _cm_AA_Gun
What does in a single engagment mean though ? How many engagements for example would there be in a bombing of a city ? Im also gonna search how many rounds they fired in that single engagment

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T. A. Gardner
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Re: German mega defense

#127

Post by T. A. Gardner » 11 Jun 2022, 20:11

Flak alone will not come close to stopping a WW 2-style bomber offensive of the sort the Allies did. A combination of good tactics against flak by maneuver, planes that increasing are flying faster and higher, and a crescendo of jamming--particularly at night and in cloudy conditions--means that no matter the size and rate-of-fire of the guns, the bombers will get through and few will be shot down.

As an example of this, on 10/25/44 the US sent 720 bombers to Hamburg, one of the heaviest defended cities in Germany by flak. There were 44 heavy gun batteries defending the city. Conditions were overcast and the US bombed using radar.
The defender's radar was blinded by a massive jamming and chaff barrage leaving the majority of the batteries without a means to accurately aim on the attackers. The Germans resorted to box barrages.
The German batteries fired 24,416 rounds (88, 105, and 128mm) during the bombing attack shooting down just one bomber. It was a rate of ammunition consumption the Germans couldn't afford or sustain.

Thus, by late 1944 the only realistic option forward was a SAM. Once jet bombers were the norm, these flying at 35,000 to 40,000 feet at around 500 knots became virtually immune to any sort practical of antiaircraft gun.

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Re: German mega defense

#128

Post by Richard Anderson » 11 Jun 2022, 23:42

Destroyer500 wrote:
11 Jun 2022, 18:18
With just quick research i found this https://military-history.fandom.com/wik ... _cm_AA_Gun
What does in a single engagment mean though ? How many engagements for example would there be in a bombing of a city ? Im also gonna search how many rounds they fired in that single engagment
Just a slight problem with that...there was no raid on Tokyo on 1 August and no B-29 were recorded lost that date. B-29 44-86344 is the closest. It was lost on 2 August, but it was shot down by Captain Haruo Kawamura of the 18th Squadron, Imperial Japanese Army Air Force and crashed between Kisarazu and Sodegaura in Chiba Prefecture, so southeast of Tokyo rather than west of the city. Otherwise, three B-29 were lost on 27 July and four on 8 August. The 1 August 20th Bomber Command raid was an area attack on Nagaoka in Niigata Prefecture, 150 miles away from Kugayama and no aircraft were recorded lost in that raid.
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ThatZenoGuy
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Re: German mega defense

#129

Post by ThatZenoGuy » 12 Jun 2022, 03:49

http://www.alternatewars.com/Archives/T ... 5cm_AA.htm
This website has some nice pictures inside the gun mount. It has loading tray and system.

I am curious where the claim of shooting down B29's comes from.

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Destroyer500
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Re: German mega defense

#130

Post by Destroyer500 » 13 Jun 2022, 15:25

T. A. Gardner wrote:
11 Jun 2022, 20:11
Flak alone will not come close to stopping a WW 2-style bomber offensive of the sort the Allies did. A combination of good tactics against flak by maneuver, planes that increasing are flying faster and higher, and a crescendo of jamming--particularly at night and in cloudy conditions--means that no matter the size and rate-of-fire of the guns, the bombers will get through and few will be shot down.

As an example of this, on 10/25/44 the US sent 720 bombers to Hamburg, one of the heaviest defended cities in Germany by flak. There were 44 heavy gun batteries defending the city. Conditions were overcast and the US bombed using radar.
The defender's radar was blinded by a massive jamming and chaff barrage leaving the majority of the batteries without a means to accurately aim on the attackers. The Germans resorted to box barrages.
The German batteries fired 24,416 rounds (88, 105, and 128mm) during the bombing attack shooting down just one bomber. It was a rate of ammunition consumption the Germans couldn't afford or sustain.

Thus, by late 1944 the only realistic option forward was a SAM. Once jet bombers were the norm, these flying at 35,000 to 40,000 feet at around 500 knots became virtually immune to any sort practical of antiaircraft gun.
In a conventional warfare scenario of the time you are going to get attacked by many bombers flying high.They target infastructure and unfortunately civilians.Missiles cannot be your only solution and if radar was jammed for ground flaks then what stops missile systems from not working ? Apart from that Germany could not afford to have a couple hundred thousands of missiles.I guess that in that air raid you mentioned both parties missed their shots by a great margin,especialy the flak-ers.Now hitting civilians is not something i would do and it doesnt require accuracy but i guess the American bombers mostly hit their targets ? If it was a specific important target like lets say a factory i doubt they would have hit anything with bad weather.

Missiles
The positive aspects of the missiles (mostly as AA) are;1)mostly big ranges 2)great hit chance 3)great portability but this depends on the missile size (with human carried versions becoming better portability gets greater) 4)anti missile potential for certain types of threats
The negatives are;1)high tech involved in making them 2)they are not perfect and can malfunction just like a gun can jam 3)especially nowadays there are plenty of way to defend against them if youre flying something high tech 3)their purposes are mostly singular 4)if advanced nations fought a "big war" their advanced missile countermeasures would severely reduce the weapon systems effectiveness 5)more expensive than projectile type guns in the long run

"Projectile" type AA
The positive aspects;1)cant outsmart a "bullet" 2)with advanced radar,as advanced as the missile radar and advanced shells you can hit almost anything at max 4km and kill it 3)really portable,up to a caliber of course 4)as multi purpose as it gets 5)more sturdy can take more of a beating 6)they can more effectively take down incoming missiles and if the caliber of the guns was bigger and the targeting system good enough then even bigger missiles could be taken down 5)anything low flying is toast
The negatives are;1)not as big a range as missiles 2)expensive,because you have to expend lots of ammo,but not more than most missiles due to projectile type ammo being cheaper to produce (for the most part) 3)hit chance not as great as that of the missile 4)not man portable

As always theres no magic bullet and no one weapon can do all and even in this thread i said that a good,advanced and in any way strong airforce will complement the ground AA.I believe that the massive flak i proposed could be fitted with rocket propelled projectiles and later on become advanced enough to shoot anything they want.If the caliber is big enough and an area doesnt get really over saturated even nukes could be destroyed because the blast of something like a 40cm flak (and even smaller variants of course) would be big enough to not require a direct hit to an ICBM to destroy it and the IBCM although advanced and able to decoy and what not cant make a 40g u turn and avoid the projectile-es.Hitting an ICBM with a another missile and actually killing it is like trying to shoot a bullet with a bullet as someone once said.Imagine big guns mounted on ships and if you want to go gargantuan mount something smaller than the long Gustav and have it shoot at 200km range,that would be a low cost tomahawk (of course im talking about rocket propelled munitions for big ranges).Up to 150-200mm guns could be mounted to artillery and with the projectile being rocket propelled and guided they could double as AA,AT and very long range artillery.For smaller targets flying closer,lower and faster just go with something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwjcayPuag along with missiles.Imagine a munition like the AHEAD on bigger guns :D
Im even going to say that laser or energy directed weapons (microwaves,diferent types of rays) are the true way forward because they just cant miss but for now the energy required is big and the beam gets weaker at range so more advancements are needed to kill hard targets.There are already things like this (looks the pics below) but i doubt they can do more than start a fire or kill a prop
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Destroyer500
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Re: German mega defense

#131

Post by Destroyer500 » 13 Jun 2022, 15:30


Just a slight problem with that...there was no raid on Tokyo on 1 August and no B-29 were recorded lost that date. B-29 44-86344 is the closest. It was lost on 2 August, but it was shot down by Captain Haruo Kawamura of the 18th Squadron, Imperial Japanese Army Air Force and crashed between Kisarazu and Sodegaura in Chiba Prefecture, so southeast of Tokyo rather than west of the city. Otherwise, three B-29 were lost on 27 July and four on 8 August. The 1 August 20th Bomber Command raid was an area attack on Nagaoka in Niigata Prefecture, 150 miles away from Kugayama and no aircraft were recorded lost in that raid.
ThatZenoGuy wrote:
12 Jun 2022, 03:49
http://www.alternatewars.com/Archives/T ... 5cm_AA.htm
This website has some nice pictures inside the gun mount. It has loading tray and system.

I am curious where the claim of shooting down B29's comes from.
Nice pictures man,is that mechanism there to help you lift the shell or what ? We have to find who made that claim and why.Could those bombers have indeed been taken down but the thing kept off record to not anger anyone above or to hide their mission or is it more like the Japanese wanting to claim some kills with their new toy ? I dont know which to accept since i have not searched the topic myself but id like a more informed opinion.In the American report Takao shared its said that the Japs did report wrongly many times

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Re: German mega defense

#132

Post by Richard Anderson » 13 Jun 2022, 17:44

Destroyer500 wrote:
13 Jun 2022, 15:30
We have to find who made that claim and why.
Some unknown person on a random website made the claim. They may base that on an actual claim made by the Japanese military, but then that is a wartime claim, which can be notoriously unreliable. They may have fired on an echo from the bomber stream directed at Nagaoka that night. They may have seen flares. They may have seen bursts of other antiaircraft fire. They may have seen nothing other than their own shell bursts and decided they had hit. There are numerous other reasons they may have made a claim. That does not mean the claim equals reality.
Could those bombers have indeed been taken down but the thing kept off record to not anger anyone above or to hide their mission or is it more like the Japanese wanting to claim some kills with their new toy ? I dont know which to accept since i have not searched the topic myself but id like a more informed opinion.In the American report Takao shared its said that the Japs did report wrongly many times
So now instead of Occam's Razor you would rather indulge in bizarre conspiracy theories?

1. Why would anyone "above" be angered at wartime losses? Dozens of aircraft were being lost and the loss recorded.
2. Why would they "hide their mission"? Dozens of missions were being flown and recorded.
Richard C. Anderson Jr.

American Thunder: U.S. Army Tank Design, Development, and Doctrine in World War II
Cracking Hitler's Atlantic Wall
Hitler's Last Gamble
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T. A. Gardner
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Re: German mega defense

#133

Post by T. A. Gardner » 13 Jun 2022, 17:48

Destroyer500 wrote:
13 Jun 2022, 15:25
In a conventional warfare scenario of the time you are going to get attacked by many bombers flying high.They target infastructure and unfortunately civilians.Missiles cannot be your only solution and if radar was jammed for ground flaks then what stops missile systems from not working ? Apart from that Germany could not afford to have a couple hundred thousands of missiles.I guess that in that air raid you mentioned both parties missed their shots by a great margin,especialy the flak-ers.Now hitting civilians is not something i would do and it doesnt require accuracy but i guess the American bombers mostly hit their targets ? If it was a specific important target like lets say a factory i doubt they would have hit anything with bad weather...
Actually, it is possible to build a missile system that is difficult to impossible to jam. For example, you use more than one acquisition radars on dispersed frequencies making it hard to jam all of them. Add in higher power for 'burn through' and the plane(s) can't carry powerful enough jammers. Then you can use radar systems that are difficult to jam by their operation such as a monopulse beam and using a beam riding missile. Many early SAMs used this sort of system (British Thunderbird, Swiss RBC, as two examples) for just that reason.

Another is to use a system that doesn't make the target aware it is under attack. Nike and Talos could do this to one degree or another. Both guided the missile in flight to the target using a separate radar that tracked and guided the missile only on a ballistic flight path. This was mostly done to make the flight energy efficient to give greater range. But it also meant that the target didn't know it was being engaged as the target illumination radar didn't have to paint it until the missile was terminal. Another advantage of this system was the missile engaged the target from above, not below, as it was falling on it in a ballistic flight path.

The biggest advantage of missiles is engagement time. For guns, their engagement time is very short, minutes at most. So, they have to be placed close to potential targets or in locations the enemy aircraft must fly over. Missiles on the other hand have ranges anywhere from tens to hundreds of miles and can engage aircraft for much longer periods of time.
This means you are potentially shooting down aircraft after aircraft and more batteries of missiles can engage the enemy while the batteries themselves can be better dispersed to cover more potential targets.

Of course, you might also put an ARM (Anti-Radiation Missile eg., radar homing missile) that homes on jamming or radar the plane is carrying in the mix. Cross-coupling the radar information between batteries would also make things more difficult for the attacker. Here, one battery is jammed but can use radar from another battery that isn't to track and fire on targets.

It really isn't the radar that's the weak spot in all this, it is the range and time of engagement. For guns, the practical limits are out to maybe 6 to 10 miles and about 35,000 feet with the time of engagement getting shorter as altitude and speed of the aircraft goes up. As the late 1950's- early 60's BOMARC SAM shows for a missile it's possible to get one that can engage targets to 80,000+ feet at ranges of well over 200 miles.

The result is that your SAM screen can be well forward of any potential targets and engage enemy bombers for an extended period. Since losses on the order of 6 to 10% are prohibitive, achieving those is far more doable with a guided missile than any gun. Once you make losses prohibitive--that is the attacker can't replace the losses as fast as they are occurring and the cost is to high to sustain production at--that means the attacker will have to radically change tactics and / or equipment to overcome those losses and reduce them.

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Destroyer500
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Re: German mega defense

#134

Post by Destroyer500 » 13 Jun 2022, 18:43


So now instead of Occam's Razor you would rather indulge in bizarre conspiracy theories?

1. Why would anyone "above" be angered at wartime losses? Dozens of aircraft were being lost and the loss recorded.
2. Why would they "hide their mission"? Dozens of missions were being flown and recorded.

Well dont take it that seriously since for the most part i was trying to find a reason in my head for the Japanese report to not be wrong.The reasons i found cant really stand on their own and are wrong but lets just say that i was being verbal about some thoughts.Any opinion on the missile theme ?

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Re: German mega defense

#135

Post by Richard Anderson » 13 Jun 2022, 19:35

Destroyer500 wrote:
13 Jun 2022, 18:43
Well dont take it that seriously since for the most part i was trying to find a reason in my head for the Japanese report to not be wrong.
Why shouldn't I take it seriously, since you are the one who raised the notion that a conspiracy might explain why the Japanese report was incorrect?
The reasons i found cant really stand on their own and are wrong but lets just say that i was being verbal about some thoughts.
Thinking out loud is fine, and we all do it, but don't get in a huff if someone reacts to it. I can only analyze what you write down, since I can't read minds.
Any opinion on the missile theme ?
What "missile theme"? The Germans never developed a practical antiaircraft missile system and neither did the Japanese, so whatever "missile theme" there might be is irrelevant to wartime antiaircraft defense.
Richard C. Anderson Jr.

American Thunder: U.S. Army Tank Design, Development, and Doctrine in World War II
Cracking Hitler's Atlantic Wall
Hitler's Last Gamble
Artillery Hell

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