Unregistered
(11/9/00 8:33:00 pm)
Reply Flak
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Where can I find information on the german flak defenses? It tends to be ignored in many books.
Valdemar
Gareth Collins
Member
Posts: 43
(11/10/00 1:26:20 am)
Reply Flak Guns
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Here is some info on the guns;
37mm Flak 18
WEIGHT IN ACTION: 1,748kg.
WEIGHT OF SHELL: 0.6kg.
MAXIMUM RANGE: 4,800 metres.
MUZZLE VELOCITY: 820m/sec.
50mm Flak 41
WEIGHT IN ACTION: 3,100kg.
WEIGHT OF SHELL: 2.2kg.
MAXIMUM RANGE: 5,600 metres.
MUZZLE VELOCITY: 840m/sec.
88mm Flak 18-37
WEIGHT IN ACTION: 4,985kg.
WEIGHT OF SHELL: 9.4kg.
MAXIMUM RANGE: 8,000 metres.
MUZZLE VELOCITY: 820m/sec.
88mm Flak 41
WEIGHT IN ACTION: 7,800kg.
WEIGHT OF SHELL: 9.4kg.
MAXIMUM RANGE: 10,675 metres.
MUZZLE VELOCITY: 1,000m/sec.
105mm Flak 39
WEIGHT IN ACTION: 10,224kg.
WEIGHT OF SHELL: 14.8kg.
MAXIMUM RANGE: 9,450 metres.
MUZZLE VELOCITY: 881m/sec.
128mm Flak 40
WEIGHT IN ACTION: 13,000kg.
WEIGHT OF SHELL: 14.8kg.
MAXIMUM RANGE: 9,450 metres.
MUZZLE VELOCITY: 880m/sec.
Regards,
gfc
Goggi
Member
Posts: 67
(11/12/00 5:22:02 am)
Reply Flak
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I do not know where you got the details, but there appears to be some mistake:
1) A 12.7 cm Canon can not have the same Ballistic as a 10.5 cm Canon! There has to be a difference, otherwise why a bigger cannon, if nothing is improved?
2) The Ballistics of a 10.5 Flak 38/39 was a shooting distance of 18,000 Meters and a shooting height of 13,000 Meters.
I will dig in a little more, perhaps all together we can establish some truth.
The German Flak had also 2 kinds of search lights: A 60 cm Searchlight with a luminosity of 150 Mill. HK at 87 Volt and 9o Ampere with appr. 8 kW Power ; weight about 750 Kg. The heavy Flak had a searchlight with 150 cm Diameter, output 1100 Mill. HK at 110 Volts and 200 Ampere with approx. 22 kW Power. Weight 4200 Kg.
As the war startet there were approx. 2600 heavy and 6700 medium and light Flak Canons.
Goggi
Mr L L
Unregistered
(11/12/00 6:20:39 pm)
Reply searchlight search
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How were searchlight units organized and deployed?
Mr. L. L.
Marcus Wendel
Webmaster
Posts: 730
(11/13/00 11:27:51 am)
Reply Re: Flak
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Valdemar,
Try "German Flak in World War II 1939-1945" by Werner Muller.
There is a chapter in "The Luftwaffe Databook" by Alfred Price dedicated to the Flak defences.
/Marcus
Edited by: Marcus Wendel at: 11/13/00 11:28:18 am
Marcus Wendel
Webmaster
Posts: 731
(11/13/00 1:01:35 pm)
Reply Re: searchlight search
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Mr L.L
For info on searchlights, try "Sound Locators, Fire Control Systems and Searchlights of the German Heavy Flak" by Werner Muller.
/Marcus
Scott Smith
Member
Posts: 17
(11/13/00 9:10:01 pm)
Reply Luftwaffe Data Book
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Price's Luftwaffe Data Book should be in everyone's personal library. It's an excellent and handy reference!
Goggi
Member
Posts: 69
(11/14/00 3:32:32 am)
Reply Flak
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Some more equipment: 1942 a searchlight with a mirror diameter of 2 Meters was introduced. Luminosity was 2.4 Billion HK at 110 Volt and 450 Ampere; power was 49.5 KW.
1945 there was a real monster with 3 Meters diameter and 10 Billion HK!
By the way, there was in 1944 a developmment of a 40 mm Flak with an electro-magnetic shell propulsion system up to a speed of 2000 m/sec! The barrel lenght was 10 Meters and as carriage the carriage of a 12.8 cm Cannon was used. I would appreciate to hear more details of this model, if available somewhere.
Goggi
Scott Smith
Member
Posts: 41
(11/23/00 9:17:03 am)
Reply 40mm Electric Autocannon
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Goggi,
What is the searchlight luminosity unit HK? How does this candlepower compare with the Systeme Internationale (SI) units of lumens or lux (lumens/square meter)?
Also, I found some info. on the 40mm electric Flak gun (not much). Apparently, during the First World War, an experimenter named Fauchon-Villeplee came up with the idea of using a winged dart that was propelled electromagnetically from the barrel of linear motor at extreme velocity. The idea was dropped in 1918 at the end of the war.
In 1944, out of desperation, the Germans took a second look at the idea and in October, the Luftwaffe agreed to a preliminary specification of a 40mm electric antiaircraft gun with a velocity of 1,980 m/sec (6500 ft/sec) and a rate of fire of 6,000 rounds/min. Each winged dart was to carry 450 grams of high explosive, and six barrels were to be connected to a common power supply. A sabot with electromagnetic bus bars separated from the projectile and was thus discarded upon leaving the barrel.
Only small laboratory experiments were carried through. The gun demanded 1.59 million amperes of current at 1,345 volts to get the velocity and range desired (over 200 megawatts), and each gun would have needed its own large electric powerplant! Even today this would be hard to engineer with cryogenic cooling and superconducting magnets.
Paraphased from: German Secret Weapons of the Second World War, by Ian V. Hogg. Greenhill Books, London; Stackpole Books, PA: 1999, (pp. 98-99). ISBN: 1-85367-325-0. (This is an extremely interesting book!)
Edited by: Scott Smith at: 11/23/00 10:27:33 am
Goggi
Member
Posts: 84
(11/25/00 10:04:35 am)
Reply Flak
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Scott,
HK = Hefner Kerze, an older German unit for light strength. The conversion is 1 cd (=Candela) equals 1.1 HK. I have to dig in with the conversions a little more to get the terms correct! Patience!--- The power demand of the wonder flak is really amazing: One big Nuclear Power Unit could just support 6 canons!
Goggi
Goggi
Member
Posts: 89
(11/28/00 3:05:18 am)
Reply Flak
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Scott,
A little History about Mr. Friedrich von Hefner-Alteneck, the fellow who was lending his name to the oldfashioned Measurement of Light strength. He was born 1845 in Bavaria and joined the Siemens Factory in Berlin 1867 (you see that he swallowed his disgust of the Prussians!). There he invented the Differential Electric Arc Lamp and other gadgets like the wound Rotor of the Siemens Dynamo Machine. He also designed a Dynamometer for electric motors. I took my wisdom from a German Encyclopaedia which was published 1888. I inherited the volumes, 25 of them, from my Grandfather! Since no date of his death is shown, he must have been still alive at the publishing date.
He is forgotten now and also the light unit which carries his name.
Goggi
Scott Smith
Member
Posts: 52
(11/28/00 8:06:48 am)
Reply Re: Flak
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Goggi,
Thanks for the information. This is very interesting; the history of technology is one of my interests. I think that one candela is approximately one lumen. The older unit, candle, is equal to 1.02 candelas, according to one reference source. A footcandle, then, is equal to one candela at a distance of one foot, or one lumen per square foot.
It's interesting to have some perspective with regards to archaic technical units. I was reading some of Nikola Tesla's papers once and had a hard time with the obsolete terminologies for familiar electrical terms.
Do you know what some of these other units are for German WWII technology? For example, I assumed that the American style of "cycles per second" or cps (of those times) would be followed on German radios, but I was surprised that the modern SI unit of Hertz was used. (I know that Heinrich Hertz was German of course.) Do you know of any other examples of German technical terminology that would be interesting to share with the board?
I still can't believe the German 40mm magnetic Flak! I wish there had been more detail in the book that I referred to--how long the barrel was and so forth. I don't see how they could have aimed it! Was it intended to put up a barrage to guard the powerplant that ran it? It is almost funny. If anybody is interested in other German secret weapons projects like I am, I'll be glad to post them here.
Best Regards!
Goggi
Member
Posts: 90
(11/28/00 9:27:39 pm)
Reply Flak
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Scott,
I am a buff of historical Technology,too! I recognize the change of the units myself: I went to university in the mid-fifties. We had: at, atue und ata. All gone! We had the metric Horse power, PS,(equal to 75 mkg/sec) as the unit of Power. Now all is based on electrical units with gut-wrenching conversion factors! As an old engineer you developped a gut feeling for facts and units, you just had always a feeling what's right or wrong. Not anymore! It was time to retire!---
The barrel length of the 40 mm Flak was 10 Meters. That's what my source is claiming, but that's about all! Perhaps, when we keep digging, some day we can sell a new improved version!
Best regards,
Goggi