Comments by "William Cox" (@WildBillCox13) on "Flak 88: One-Shot Kill? How Effective was it really?" video.

  1. A personal observation: battlefield context is, indeed, important. A couple of questions might help weed out the confusion. 1) How many rounds missed? 2) What percentage of targets was stationary versus moving? 3) How many tanks/guns were firing at each target when it was killed? A personal opinion: those Ach Ach rounds that hit, often penetrated. Those rounds that penetrated often disabled. If multiple units were firing, all might have to register by firing until a hit was obtained. So, three Ach Ach guns shooting up one Sherman might expend, in combination, nine rounds simply getting the range and, possibly, a hit for penetration. On a bad day, with plenty of obscuration, in the form of burning buildings, dust, smoke from gun discharges, smoke grenades, blowing snow or rain and/or fog, it might take more than a few rounds to obtain a hit-and more than a dozen against moving targets. A slightly more nebulous opinion: Please correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe you've implied (an implication with which I wholly agree) that sensible tank guns (Sorry, UK) were primarily expected to engage soft targets, with hard target efficacy a desirable adjunct. If so, it might be claimed that most tanks*, advancing or retreating, would have an HE round "up the spout" and shoot that one off first, before loading AP, APHE, HEAT (8.8cm HEAT from the KwK36?!?!) for use against enemy armor. That automatically wastes the first round, as far as killing well protected tanks goes (impact angle and location aside). *As I understand it, 8.8cm FlaK was issued to SSPzDiv FlaK Abteilungen and Luftwaffe FlaK detachments. It was not a standard item of issue to Infanterie divsionen and was (I think) not all that common in non SS PzDiv. That suggests that most 88 shots fired were by Luftwaffe units in the early part of the war. And, correct me if I'm mistaken, the Luftwaffe units were intending to shoot at aircraft. So--a lot of HE (and time fuzes) and very few AP might've been the norm.
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