Flak: German Anti-aircraft Defenses, 1914-1945University Press of Kansas, 2001 - 394 pages Air raid sirens wail, searchlight beams flash across the sky, and the night is aflame with tracer fire and aerial explosions, as Allied bombers and German anti-aircraft units duel in the thundering darkness. Such "cinematic" scenes, played out with increasing frequency as World War II ground to a close, were more than mere stock material for movie melodramas. As Edward Westermann reveals, they point to a key but largely unappreciated aspect of the German war effort that has yet to get its full due.Long the neglected stepchild in studies of World War II air campaigns, German flak or anti-aircraft units have been frequently dismissed by American, British, and German historians (and by veterans of the European air war) as ineffective weapons that wasted valuable materiel and personnel resources desperately needed elsewhere by the Third Reich. Westermann emphatically disagrees with that view and makes a convincing case for the significant contributions made by the entire range of German anti-aircraft defenses.During the Allied air campaigns against the Third Reich, well over a million tons of bombs were dropped upon the German homeland, killing nearly 300,000 civilians, wounding another 780,000, and destroying more than 3,500,000 industrial and residential structures. Not surprisingly, that aerial Armageddon has inspired countless studies of both the victorious Allied bombing offensive and the ultimately doomed Luftwaffe defense of its own skies. By contrast, flak units have virtually been ignored, despite the fact that they employed more than a million men and women, were responsible for more than half of all Allied aircraft losses, forced Allied bombers to fly far abovehigh-accuracy altitudes, and thus allowed Germany to hold out far longer than it might have otherwise.Westermann's definitive study sheds new light on every facet of the development and organization of this vital defense arm, includi |
Table des matières
A Theory for Air Defense 19191932 | 29 |
Converting Theory into Practice 19331938 | 49 |
First Lessons in the School of War 19391940 | 79 |
Winning the Battle 1941 | 109 |
Raising the Stakes 1942 | 139 |
Bombing around the Clock 1943 | 183 |
Escorts over the Reich JanuaryMay 1944 | 233 |
Aerial Götterdämmerung June 1944May 1945 | 257 |
Conclusion | 285 |
Notes | 303 |
Bibliography | 373 |
| 387 | |
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Expressions et termes fréquents
addition aerial AFHRA air defense forces Air District aircraft destroyed aircrews Allied altitudes April areas attacks August aviation Axthelm BA-MA balloon barrage balloon barrier fire Berlin Bombardment Division Bomber Command British combat crews damaged Despite diary entry dummy installations effectiveness Eighth Air Force enemy equipment Fifteenth Air Force fire directors flak arm flak artillery flak defenses flak forces flak gun batteries flak guns flak reports German air defenses German Anti-aircraft Germany's Göring ground ground-based air defenses gun-laying gun-laying radar heavy flak guns Hitler Höppner Ibid increased January losses Luftwaffe Luftwaffe's air defenses Luftwaffe's flak March Milch military missile Monthly Flak munitions NARA night fighters October Operation Gomorrah operations percent personnel pilots production raids Reich Reichswehr Renz result RL 3/Folder Rüdel searchlight batteries searchlights shootdown smoke sound detectors Strategic Bombing Survey tactical targets tion United States Strategic USSBS weapons Webster and Frankland Wehrmacht