Aaa

[devil22]

Hi Ya Folks:
What is the deal with the AAA? is it powered by rockets and guided by lasers? From what i can remember about WWII the AAA was lucky to reach past 9,500, let alone kill you at that height. Why is that when I was flying a B17 two days ago at 31,000+ feet, AAA was bursting unconfortably close to my flight? let alone bursting nearly a thousand feet above me?? I had 3 AAA burst strike both me and my two other buffs!!! AAA should not be able to reach that DA@#ed high and get that DA@#ed close to its target. One should be safe from AAA at 20,000ft, but no in AH your still fare game. Even my Grandfathers best friend who flew on a B17 as the left waist gunner would agree with me about the AAA in this game. he flew on missions that had them as low as 15,000 and they were outta the reach of AAA, with only the stray AAA even getting with in 500 feet of them. the only thing they had to contend with were enemy fighters and the weather. so why is it that the AAA is reaching so high and hitting so accurate. even when one is in a field gunner spot in this game you can barely make out a b17 at that height, and you need one helluva graphic card and draw distance, let alone being able to hit them from that distance. so why is it the comp controled aaa is getting so lucky???
just wonderin

devil22

[davidpt40]

This post is a joke right?  German large caliber AAA could reach at least 30,000 feet high, and thats fired from an angle.  Flak guns ranged from 88mm to 150mm.

In 1944 Flak accounted for 3,501 American planes destroyed, 600 less than planes lost to enemy fighters in the same time period  Each shell exploded when reaching a preset altitude.  A true proximity fuse or variable time fuse was never developed by Germany despite extensive efforts to do so.  Allied planners estimated that German flak would have been about  three times more deadly  if they had proximity fused shells.   The German Flak firepower was strengthened by increasing the size of the 88 mm light batteries from 4 guns to 8. To guard the more important targets “GrossBatteries” comprising 2 or 3 of the enlarged single batteries were created (up to 40 heavy flak guns) firing rectangular patterns of shells known as box barrages that proved deadly. Each battery, large or small, was controlled by a single “predictor” (a device used to estimate where the aircraft would be by the time the shell reached it and thus provide information as to where to aim) which meant that up to 18 guns might engage one bomber a time.   When the flak batteries pinpointed an aircraft the guns were fired in salvoes designed to burst in a sphere of 60 yards in diameter in which it was hoped to entrap the target. Each gun, usually of 88mm calibre, could project a shell to 20,000 feet and could knock out an aircraft within 30 yards of the shell burst. However, the shrapnel from the explosion was still capable of inflicting serious damage up to 200 yards   In January of 1944 there were 20,625 FLAK guns (7,941 heavy guns and 12,684 light/medium guns) with 6,880 searchlights defending Germany.. Flak ammunition consumption soared to a monthly average of  3,175,400 shells in December 1944! By some estimates… the cost of the shells to bring down each bomber was $107,000.  At peak strength over 2 million soliders and civilians are involved in ground anti-aircraft defenses. 30% of all gun and 20% of heavy ammuninition production went for air-defense in 1944.

http://pages.zdnet.com/vancell/b26tailgunner/id17.html