"The 88mm a failed AA gun?" Topic

Was wondering about this reading about the Schweinfurt raids.

Between the lines I get the distinct impression that the 88mm was pretty ineffective as a flak gun against night intruders. Its vertical range did not enable it to engage higher flying targets, so that the 128mm had to be introduced. The small size of its warhead would limit the chances of its damaging bombers. As a barrage weapon, its accuracy was superfluous, because it was not aimed at individual targets; it was used to fire salvoes through which formations had to fly and a random gun might damage a plane.

It would have been more useful against US raids in daylight because they flew closer together for better concentration of defensive fire.

Was it a successful AA gun or was it fortunate to find a role in which it was effective, i.e. anti-tank?

There are pictures and movies of bombers getting hit by 88s, think if they had proximity fuse like allies it would be a fantastic AA platform. Maybe finding it in a duel role takes away it doing either job superbly

From what I have read, the 88 was highly successful as a Flak weapon in the anti-bomber defense of the Reich. Keep in mind that these guns (along with their 105mm and 128mm brethren) were all deployed in radar/predictor controlled batteries backed up by a nationwide radar surveillance network that tracked all intrusions into German airspace.
(search "Kammhuber Flak defense")

If you look around the web, there are several good studies of the efficacy of Germany's Flak defense system.

B

One will always find a different opinion on the web. In this case I agree with Blutarski.

From what I understand, Germany's air defences were pretty good, considering the the Allied advantages in material.

I was also under the impression that Flak wasn't only there to bring bombers down. My understanding is that Flak concentrations caused bombers to avoid certain routes, channelling them, and keeping them in enemy air space longer to give the German fighters more time to intercept.

For a pre war gun, the 88 was pretty good at what it was designed for.

Here is an interesting question –

What would have been the consequences if Germany had developed and fielded a successful VT fuze? It certainly would have had a majr influence not only on the Flak arm but also German field artillery.

B

Our "Skysweeper" radio controlled flak after the war was 90mm so we must have been impressed by that size of gun.

To Blutarski's question, in my opinion the marriage of a VT fuse on an air-to-air rocket projectile similar to the HVAR would be very effective against bomber formations, likely making daylight bombing prohibitively costly.

There is a USN study of Japanese aircraft losses to ship-borne anti-aircraft weapons which concluded that the VT fuse increased the lethality of the 5"/38 gun by a factor of seven.

Between the lines I get the distinct impression that the 88mm was pretty ineffective as a flak gun against night intruders. Its vertical range did not enable it to engage higher flying targets, so that the 128mm had to be introduced.

If the bombers chose to fly at altitudes beyond the reach of the 88 mm gun, I would suggest that this indicates that the bomber command considered it effective enough gun not to risk getting hit by. Flying at higher elevation makes the bombing less accurate, especially if there are clouds below the flight level.

The bigger guns (105 and 128 mm) might pack more bang and reach slightly higher altitudes, but they were also noticeably heavier than the 88 mm, limiting their usage with mobile field formations that also needed AA protection in a lot of German-conquered areas.

As a barrage weapon, its accuracy was superfluous, because it was not aimed at individual targets; it was used to fire salvoes through which formations had to fly and a random gun might damage a plane.

True, but to be able to fire barrage salvoes at great heights tends to require high velocity muzzle velocity, which tends to require long barrel. So the requirements are likely to result in a pretty accurate gun as a side effect.

Something must have contributed to the appalling losses of the 8th Air Force over Germany.
If average losses were 5% (or more) that adds up quickly.

But the bombing was never stopped…….

but to be able to fire barrage salvoes at great heights tends to require high velocity muzzle velocity, which tends to require long barrel.

which in turn means having to produce plenty of spare barrels. By 1945 the 8.8cm was at the limit of its ability v the aircraft it was meant to deter.

The VT fuses made the AAA fire about 7 times more effective. They did capture quite a few VT fused ammo during the Battle of the Bulge. However, the US already had a jammer to use against VT shells.

link

Wolfhag

"But the bombing was never stopped".
Has anti-aircraft artillery ever stopped a bombing offensive?

Hello,

the 88mm Flak was a gun, developt from ca. 1920 to 1933, longer bevor the start of WW2 1939. The idea was airdefense fire against airraids in a war against the french, the british or the poles. Italia or russia was on that list,too.
Designed for a war betwen 1938 till 1942. Latest. A very expensive weapon system for a poor mans army. Most other countries use older 75mm aa with wooden spoke wheels.
One big effekt of the 88 mm gun later in the war was to force US planes to attack very high. That means more fuel and less bombs.

mkenny is now treating everyone to his latest bit of Teutophobia, set to the melody of "Jingo-Bells".

> Yes, Germany DID lose the war

> No, the strategic bombing campaign never stopped (except for a couple of occasions in 1943).

But there is a great deal of scholarly analysis available regarding the high price exacted by the German Flak arm. A lot of it can be found on the web with a bit of searching. Here is a brief accounting, taken at random convenience, of the relative importance of the Flak 36/37 to the German Flak defending Hamburg between 1940-1945

Year – Percentage of 88mm guns

1940 – 81 pct of 178 guns
1941 – 78 pct of 186 guns
1942 – 66 pct of 254 guns
1943 – 75 pct of 374 guns
1944 – 71 pct of 236 guns
1945 – 75 pct of 254 guns

The balance (average per year – about 26 pct) was a mixture of 105mm and 128mm guns.

B

+1 Blaubaer.

B

which in turn means having to produce plenty of spare barrels.

Good point. Especially when the air raids keep coming and coming. Maintaining a barrage takes quite a lot of rounds.

By 1945 the 8.8cm was at the limit of its ability v the aircraft it was meant to deter.

And as the WWII turned into Cold War, the interest in high altitude anti-aircraft armaments started to move from heavy AA guns into surface-to-air missiles, even though the early missile systems tended to also be rather big and clunky.

BTW: my home city has a couple of heavy AA guns (including 88 mm ones) placed as monuments on former flak positions, providing memorials for the WWII air defense that helped to protect the city (especially from the Soviet bombings in early 1944).

AFAIK the 88mm performed well in any role …

I guess it depends upon what you mean by effectiveness.

Fortunately for the allies, the Germans didn't have a proximity fuse for their shells, so losses to flak really never exceeded 1% – 1.5% during the war.

Part of that though is due to allied tactics used against it, e.g. different tactical formations or the lack thereof at night, flying higher, changing altitude during bombing runs, other tactics, building heavy bombers, etc., etc.

For lower level attacks, flak could and would lead to heavy losses, though the 88mm was limited considerably vs. very low level attackers – Ploesti Raid.

Still, when a shell made a direct hit, or a nearby detonation, its destruction capability was quite impressive.

Only many raids, many, if not most bombers suffered some damage from flak detonations.

though the 88mm was limited considerably vs. very low level attackers

Heavy AA guns are not expected to operate in vacuum. Where there is a risk of low level attacks, they should be supported by lighter AA guns (20-40 mm) – and perhaps AAMGs – that are designed to engage low level targets.

Here is a brief accounting, taken at random convenience, of the relative importance of the Flak 36/37 to the German Flak defending Hamburg between 1940-1945…………..

You left out an important fact. How effective these guns were in protecting Hamburg. I presume Hamburg did not suffer too badly given the number of 'highly effective' 8.8cm dedicated to protecting it.

Nobody has touched the question of VT in a ground role, so I will venture an opinion: it would have helped, but the difference would not have been so marked as it was in the AAA role. The benefit of VT against surface targets is that it minimizes the need for adjustment of height of burst by an observer. If firing unit is successfully controlling for all of the elements of accurate predicted fire, this can mean a first-round air burst volley, which reduces the target's ability to take cover. That's an important benefit.

That being said, it would do nothing to erode the enormous advantage the US artillery enjoyed over the German- the development of a networked system that allowed the massing of multiple units under a single controlling observer or battalion fire direction center was an advantage the Germans never countered. The effect of that went far beyond any shell-fuze combination.

"I presume Hamburg did not suffer too badly given the number of 'highly effective' 8.8cm dedicated to protecting it".

Sarcasm I presume?

You are aware that Hamburg was virtually wiped off the map (yea, a bit of hyperbole, but the damage was very extensive, as were the deaths from the raids – one major involved in the US Strategic Bombing Survey conducted after the war commented that the Nagasaki atomic bomb attack wasn't as severe as the damage done to Hamburg – 30,000 – 40,000 people killed at Hamburg, and more than 60% of housing eliminated, as well as about 1/3rd of their factories) after multiple bombing raids by the RAF, and the firestorms that erupted in the largely wood-built city, right?

link

Sarcasm I presume

Trying to inject a bit of reality. The 8.8cm Flak was an average AA gun with average performance. It utterly failed in its task to prevent the devastation of German cities. In the aftermath of Hamburg it was realised that the 'deterrence' effect of an AA barrage (by making the bombers fly higher/ take evasive action) had failed and actual shoot-downs should now be the priority.

VT in a ground role might be of advantage for artillery, firing a conventional shell. It ensures an explosion near to the first solid thing it approaches.

But we all know the the 88 became a legend in its ground-based A/T role. Various techniques to penetrate several inches of armour, ranging from higher velocity to shaped warheads, but none relied on proximity fuses.

My point is simply that if a lot of aircraft were able to fly above the 88's range, and many returned with flak damage, it's been pretty unsuccessful in both cases. It either can't reach them, or if it can, it doesn't damage them enough.

The latter would happen because, as a barrage weapon, the idea would be to fire salvoes that create spaces in the air in which enemy aircraft cannot survive. To achieve that, you need formations of aircraft to fire at (so darkness wrecks this right away), and you also need the blast zone of each round to abut that of adjoining shells, a bit like depth- charging a submarine. The 88mm was unequal to this role because its accuracy was of minimal value, and the small size of its warhead meant it needed pretty much a direct hit.

To compensate for this, you would need more 88mm weapons than you would need of ones with a bigger warhead. We can kinda work out how many more. The 88mm HE round of a 128mm AA gun weighed about 28kg versus 9kg for the 88mm. If we make a Noddy assumption that the blast radius was proportionate to shell weight, then by my reckoning, for the bigger gun it would have been 50% greater in all directions. The deadly area would thus be about about an eight times larger volume. To put that another way, you'd need eight 88m rounds to create the same deadly space as one 128mm round

That may be an oversimplification, because it overlooks rate of fire, and my arithmetic may be off. My point in broad terms though is that a gun that was intended to put barrages up against daylight bombers but that couldn't often reach them, and that had to be deployed in large concentrations against night bombers, was not a very effective AA gun. It was perhaps as useful as an AA gun as the 2-pounder in an AT role: OK for 1935, and in 1945 better than nothing, but you had to be lucky for it to be effective, and you really needed something else.

Had it not had its other career as an AT weapon, would anyone ever have heard of it?

@ 14Bore: There are pictures and movies of bombers getting hit by 88s,
How do know they were 88s and not 105s or 128s?

@olicana …Flak wasn't only there to bring bombers down. My understanding is that Flak concentrations caused bombers to avoid certain routes
Some something less over-engineered would have worked as well or better?

@shagnasty "Skysweeper" radio controlled flak after the war was 90mm so we must have been impressed by that size of gun.
If each piece were aimed at an individual target by radar, and each round carried a proximity fuse, that could work, in the same way that you could also bring down a bomber with a fighter's 20mm. But the 88mm was a "dumb" barrage weapon relying on multiple rounds exploding in roughly the right area.

@Griefbringer If the bombers chose to fly at altitudes beyond the reach of the 88 mm gun, I would suggest that this indicates that the bomber command considered it effective enough gun not to risk getting hit by. Flying at higher elevation makes the bombing less accurate
Well, not necessarily. If you can fly above its range, you would do so to minimise casualties, and you just assign more bombers to achieve a similar hit rate. You can afford to do this because you're not losing so many to flak, and if we're talking about the USAAF, the amount of defensive fire is helpfully improved. There's much evidence that altitude made no difference at all to RAF bombing accuracy; Bomber Command were doing well to hit the right city.

to be able to fire barrage salvoes at great heights tends to require high velocity muzzle velocity
Unfortunately, barrel wear reduces the range even more. The loss of accuracy would have made no difference to effect, but would cause a reduction in range.

+1 deadhead …

"Nobody has touched the question of VT in a ground role, so I will venture an opinion: it would have helped, but the difference would not have been so marked as it was in the AAA role."

22 posts before someone skipped reading the OP!

Of course I read it. When I responded to Blutarski's comment about VT in the ground role, I presumed that my readers would have sufficient military knowledge to understand that a VT fuze in the ground role would of course have been useful only for field artillery (as he specified) delivering indirect fire. I can't imagine a VT fuze would be of much use for ground combat with flat-trajectory, direct fire weapons like antitank guns- you'd get muzzle bursts. The OP question was about the gun, not a type of ammunition that was never used with it.

But the bombing WAS stopped, mkenny--or at least seriously paused--after Schweinfurt, until we came back with drop tanks for fighters and fuel-centered targets.

We could all sit around and argue how much of that was due to AA losses, how much to German fighters and how much to prep for OVERLORD, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone claim that 5% losses per mission were sustainable.

"VT in a ground role might be of advantage for artillery, firing a conventional shell. It ensures an explosion near to the first solid thing it approaches.

But we all know the the 88 became a legend in its ground-based A/T role. Various techniques to penetrate several inches of armour, ranging from higher velocity to shaped warheads, but none relied on proximity fuses."

You can achieve the same effect by skipping the rounds and using a set timer, which was a standard technique in the German artillery. VT is certainly easier.

All the best

Andreas

The FlaK 88 is a 1928 design. In 1928 they didn't have bombers accurately dropping bombs from 30,000 feet. It used a computerized central fire control, semi-automatic firing and an automatic fuse setter. It could be fired from it's carriage too. I don't think any other gun had this at the time. It was just part of an integrated air defense. Proximity fuses and better radar fire control would have made them much more effective.

In 1943 they did improve the effectiveness with the FlaK 41 enabling it to reach 48,000 feet. However, it was very troublesome to operate and only 556 were made.
link

I guess you could make a generalized blanket statement that all German weapons, personnel and tactics were completely ineffective because they lost the war. However, all of the KIA from Bomber Command and the 8th Air Force might have something to say about the 88 "effectiveness" as they made up over 50% of the guns firing at them.

You could also say that the 8th Air Force bombers were completely ineffective without long range fighter escort, the German Luftwaffe was completely ineffective in protecting German cities, the US Marines were completely ineffective without naval bombardment and air support, the Russian Army would have been completely ineffective without the T-34, etc. So what's the point?

Germany was overwhelmed by numbers in the air and on the ground. The 8th Air Force overwhelmed the German air defense with 1,000 plane raids. However, for awhile it looked questionable.

War is a combined arms effort and any weapon system can be neutralized or overcome with enough resources, tactics, manpower and courage. Germany was short on resources and manpower with a questionable overall strategy and was pretty much doomed from the start. I don't think the Allies that fought and died against them would agree with the "completely ineffective" comparison.

Wolfhag

But the bombing WAS stopped,--or at least seriously paused--after Schweinfurt,

You fall into a common trap. German tactical victories do not a war win. In the last 12 months of the war Allied bombers moved at will in German skies and the huge resource-heavy AA defences failed utterly. The 8.8cm was not (in 1944-45) a war-winning super-duper AA gun but just an average gun for its class. The 105mm AA was not considered a success either.

I don't think the Allies that fought against them would agree with the "completely ineffective" comparison.

All German AA systems failed because they did not prevent the devastation of German cities, factories and waterways. The standard retort -'look how many tanks /aircraft they knocked out'- only works if the Allied plan was to bomb Germany and take no casualties in return. They expected losses and whilst I am sure there will be a long laundry-list of excuses advanced as to why the AA defences failed, fail they most certainly did.

RAF official history comparison of estimated numbers of RAF aircraft destroyed by fighters and flak over Europe during night raids in the period between July and December 1942 -

MONTH – - – - – Fighters – - – Flak
JUL 42 – - – - – - – 45 – - – - – - – 51
AUG 42 – - – - – - 48 – - – - – - – 36
SEP 42 – - – - – - – 36 – - – - – - – 55
OCT 42 – - – - – - 12 – - – - – - – 24
NOV 42 – - – - – - 7 – - – - – - – - 9
DEC 42 – - – - – - 21 – - – - – - – 18

TOTALS – - – - – - 169 – - – - – 193

Note – "Furthermore, the modest numbers of aircraft destroyed in the last three months of the year resulted not from the decreasing effectiveness of German air defenses, but rather from a precipitous fall in the number of sorties conducted by the R.A.F. In fact, Bomber Command night sorties totaled 3,489 in September, 2,198 in October, 2,067 in November, and a mere 1,758 in December.

- – -

Bomber Command loss/damage statistics for 1st Quarter 1943 -

MONTH – - – - – Fighters – - – Flak
JAN 43 – - – - – - 10 / 23 – - – - – - – 21 / 160
FEB 43 – - – - – - 22 / 22 – - – - – - – 23 / 179
MAR 43 – - – - – 64 / 36 – - – - – - – 46 / 385

TOTALS – - – - – 96 / 81 – - – - – - – 90 / 724

Despite the success achieved by Allied forces in North Africa, R.A.F. aircrcews were still paying a heavy price in the air war over the continent. In fact, in the early months of 1943, only seventeen percent of Bomber Command aircrews could be expected to survive thirty operation missions., and the life span of a bomber was a mere forty flying hours. In his post-war memoir, Harris, the commander-in-chief of Bomber Command observed that between 1942 and early 1943 the Germans "brought their radar-assisted night fighters and anti-aircraft guns to a point of extreme efficiency".

The losses experienced by the R.A.F. in this period demonstrated that flak forces continued to hold an advantage over the Luftwaffe's fighter forces during the periods of traditionally poor winter weather.

- – -

In 1943, German industry produced 4,416 88-mm flak guns, (122 of which were Model 41 flak guns), 1,220 105-mm flak guns, 282 128-mm single flak guns, and 8 128-mm double-barreled flak guns.

- – -

Reviewing and extracting relevant data from a 595 page document is rather taxing. The end of the story is that German homeland air defense was ultimately swamped by ever-increasing numbers of Allied aircraft in the air over Germany and an inescapable ever-increasing rate of attrition (90+ pct of the bomb tonnage dropped on Germany occurred in 1944/1945!). The 88-mm models 36 and 37 represented the large majority of front-line heavy flak through to the end of the war and performed satisfactorily (note – the German flak arm had certain criticisms of the 105-mm and 128-mm flak guns, which is one reason why they were not produced in greater numbers and failed to supplant the 88-mm guns).

Anyone interested in reading through the entire six year story of Germany's homeland air defense effort should be able to locate the following document on the web –

DEFENDING HITLER'S REICH: GERMAN GROUND-BASED AIR DEFENSES, 1914-1945
By Lt Colonel Edward B Westermann
(Doctoral Dissertation – University of North Carolina)

It is one of several research documents I have accumulated over the years and gives a reliable and readable overview of the topic.

B

All German AA systems failed because they did not prevent the devastation of German cities, factories and waterways.

Well for that matter Nazi Germany and it's allies failed overall too. Fortunately …

Let's all thank mkenny once again for reminding us all that Germany lost the war. Insightful, as always.

B

Anyone interested in reading through the entire six year story of Germany's homeland air defense effort should be able to locate the following document on the web –

DEFENDING HITLER'S REICH: GERMAN GROUND-BASED AIR DEFENSES, 1914-1945
By Lt Colonel Edward B Westermann
(Doctoral Dissertation – University of North Carolina)

It is one of several research documents I have accumulated over the years and gives a reliable and readable overview of the topic.

There are two versions available. His Thesis:

file:///C:/Users/Mick/Pictures/suitcase%20bbb/Downloads/Defending_Hitlers_Reich_German_Ground-Based_Air_D%20(1).pdf

and the published book:

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/viewer.html?pdfurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.murrellsmodels.co.uk%2Ffiles%2FFlak-German-AntiAircraft-Defenses---1914-1945-.pdf&clen=5951505&chunk=true

The Thesis is the 595 page one you appear to have. The book pdf is 311 pages whilst the book itself (paperback) is 394 pages. The Thesis has 38 tables whilst the book only has 16.
I have all 3 of the versions.

RAF official history comparison of estimated numbers of RAF aircraft destroyed by fighters and flak over Europe during night raids in the period between July and December 1942 ……………-Bomber Command loss/damage statistics for 1st Quarter 1943…………..In 1943, German industry produced………………..,

Is there any reason why you picked '1942/43' for your quotes. Is it perhaps the 'worst' year for Allied losses?

What about the 1944-45 numbers?

Actually, no.

Bomber Command lost a lot more bombers during the late 1943 to early 1944 period, so much so that they had to cut short their bombing raids over Berlin, and much of Germany, and start attacking more short-range targets for a while to "rest" their bomber crews.

That is due largely to the increasing effectiveness of the German Nightfighter force, but also due to German radar controlled flak effectiveness too. Losses were so great for the RAF as to be unsustainable, with some raids exceeding 10% losses per sortie.

So when did the Allies stop bombing completely (as in no raids ever again) thus vindicating the effectiveness of the AA guns?
Try and see beyond the 'one side takes the advantage-then the other side reclaims it only for the other side to regain it' cycle. Think strategic rather than tactical.

Sorry, whose was "the 'completely ineffective' comparison"?

The claim that the 88mm was effective because it shot down X aircraft resembles the very similar claim that the Spitfire's 8 x 0.303" were effective because in the BoB Spitfires shot down Y aircraft. In each case, the relevant question is whether the weapon was optimised for the task at hand, and whether more might have been done.

Had the weapons been optimised, the Luftwaffe would probably have lost more than the 1,900 aircraft it actually did lose to the defenders had the RAF's fighters been armed with 4 or 6 x 0.50". The allies would have given up on bombing altogether had the defences been able to stand them so far off that the bombers became unable to do any worthwhile damage for the losses they were taking.

As far as I can see, this latter never occurred. Schweinfurt was a disaster because the bombers proved unable to defend themselves against fighters, even when fitted with so many defensive turrets that the B17s' payload was only about 30% of a Lancaster's. Once the defending fighters were able to be eliminated, however, the bombing intensified to staggering levels.

The prevalence of a lot of 88mm AA seems to have had no bearing. A bomber has to fly to the target, the defenders know this, they can plant AA all around likely targets, and once it's there the bombers have no means of either evading or replying to the AA. AA is a free shot at the attackers and it never went away, despite which it proved unable to threaten bombers on its own once the fighters were taken out of the equation.

Fighters repeatedly defeated daylight attackers and forced them to abandon it as simply too costly. The RAF and Luftwaffe were forced to bomb inaccurately at night because they had been defeated by day. No such reverse was inflicted by AA.

I suggest that, even if you had no other information to hand, you would probably say this must have had a lot to do with the shortcomings of the main AA weapon being used.

Hello,

please don't forget that in the most of that bomber attacks the big killer was the fire, not the explosives. European city centers, the old towns, were built with a lot of wood, dry frameworks and conservated with oil and tar. Hamburgs city center burnt down 1842, after a small fire.
It is just not possible, to defend such old struktures against a massive fire attack. In ww2 the attack on Hamburg create something they called firestorm. Many people just die, because there was no oxygen in the air, or poisen smoke (from burning coal). Other persons get killed by the heat.
It was more easy to attack city centers at that time of the war, big enough targets for night attacks, to hit even from higher above, out of reach off the 88 mm.
One other thing for Battle of Britain; a very big number of the german Bf 109 was not shot down, they run out of fuel and fall in the chanel, sometimes 7 of 10. Even with only 2 MG + 2 cm MC they had only fuel for around 10 minutes air combat.

My point is simply that if a lot of aircraft were able to fly above the 88's range, and many returned with flak damage, it's been pretty unsuccessful in both cases. It either can't reach them, or if it can, it doesn't damage them enough.

The latter would happen because, as a barrage weapon, the idea would be to fire salvoes that create spaces in the air in which enemy aircraft cannot survive. To achieve that, you need formations of aircraft to fire at (so darkness wrecks this right away), and you also need the blast zone of each round to abut that of adjoining shells, a bit like depth- charging a submarine. The 88mm was unequal to this role because its accuracy was of minimal value, and the small size of its warhead meant it needed pretty much a direct hit.

To compensate for this, you would need more 88mm weapons than you would need of ones with a bigger warhead. We can kinda work out how many more. The 88mm HE round of a 128mm AA gun weighed about 28kg versus 9kg for the 88mm. If we make a Noddy assumption that the blast radius was proportionate to shell weight, then by my reckoning, for the bigger gun it would have been 50% greater in all directions. The deadly area would thus be about about an eight times larger volume. To put that another way, you'd need eight 88m rounds to create the same deadly space as one 128mm round

That may be an oversimplification, because it overlooks rate of fire, and my arithmetic may be off. My point in broad terms though is that a gun that was intended to put barrages up against daylight bombers but that couldn't often reach them, and that had to be deployed in large concentrations against night bombers, was not a very effective AA gun. It was as useful as an AA gun as the 2-pounder in an AT role: OK for 1935, and in 1945 better than nothing, but you had to be lucky for it to effective and you really needed something else.

Had it not had its other career as an AT weapon, would anyone ever have heard of it?

The barrage fire was used against the plane because the attackers switched of the radar with "düppel" stripes, staniol stripes. They reflekt the radar signal, so they fire controll can not give high, speed & direktion to the guns, they only have snow on their instruments.
The defence was organized in "levels".Low level was blimps at wires, center level was air defence fire and high level was fighterplanes directed by searchlight.
The airdefence in ww2 means not to destroy any enemy plane at once. It means to defend an objekt against air attacks.
The nukes make it necesary to kill any attacking plane, the radar guided rocket systems had been just the consequence.

A last point; for the real big number of things the german forces had to defend in the war, specialy smaĺler installations like local fuel ore ammo dumps, railyards ore military hqs some flak guns are the best choice. On the game table that means 2 × 88mm + 4 × 20 mm is a real (to strong?) set up.

As I mentioned earlier, anyone interested in the six year story of Germany's homeland air defense effort should read the below document, which is freely available on the web –

DEFENDING HITLER'S REICH: GERMAN GROUND-BASED AIR DEFENSES, 1914-1945
By Lt Colonel Edward B Westermann
(Doctoral Dissertation – University of North Carolina)

It is a fascinating, well documented presentation that deserves study. Readers will find numerous interesting (and surprising)insights.

Definitely worth a read.

B

Excerpt from DEFENDING HITLER'S REICH: GERMAN GROUND-BASED AIR DEFENSES, 1914-1945

Here is a link to a pdf of it: link

My point is simply that if a lot of aircraft were able to fly above the 88's range, and many returned with flak damage, it's been pretty unsuccessful in both cases. It either can't reach them, or if it can, it doesn't damage them enough.

I'm finding it hard to locate many references of bombers commonly flying above the flak and the 88 being ineffective, many, including the Allies, considered it the best AA gun at the time. Why?

With FlaK you are always going to get more damage than shot downs. I think stating the maximum altitude any AA gun can engage a target is "it depends". What seems to determine is the slant range. Based on the sources I've been able to find the 88 could engage from 25,000 to even 30,000 feet but with decreased accuracy above 20,000 feet determined by a 20 second time of flight. However, as the slant range increases the maximum altitude decreases. They could even fly above the 105 and 128 FlaK if the slant range were great enough too. I'm sure there are other sources.

This is a good comparison: link

B-17 formations flew at 25-30,000 feet and B-24's at 20-24,000 feet. Lancaster at 21,000 feet, depending on the bomb load. Some guns had worn out barrels with a lower engagement altitude. I just don't see how the 88 was negated by commonly flying above it, especially when over the target at up to 25,000 feet. The 88 round has a small burst area but a higher rate of fire too. With a 20 second time of flight a formation could make a slight turn after a barrage so the next one 20 seconds later is off, unless flying into an AA box of flak or on the final bomb run and you can't turn. The 88 would be most effective around the targets and the heavier ones just outside the target area. The rapid rate of fire of the 88 would have the best chance of throwing off the bomber aim.

It's obvious the 88 was not the best overall gun but since there were so many, easy to manufacture and move around they were probably as much danger to bombers as the heavier ones. It would have been easier to fly round 88 batteries than the 105 and 128.

So my conclusion is that just like any other weapon, it's effective within it's engagement parameters and I'm not finding any references or proof the Allied bombers commonly flew above the 88 making them ineffective a majority of the time. However, it does appear their effectiveness decreased over 20,000 feet making them less effective but not totally effective..

I don't see effectiveness as an all or nothing thing. All weapons have some level of effectiveness and none on their own would have stopped the bombing. Not every mission was attacked by fighters but they were engaged by AAA into and out of the target area. Bomber crews thought FlaK represented the greatest danger to them. Evidently, they were not thinking strategically.

Wolfhag

Bomber crews thought FlaK represented the greatest danger to them. Evidently, they were not thinking strategically.

Allied tank crews/soldiers had the same mindset about the '88'. Every tank was knocked out by an 88 and every German artillery barrage was by the '88'. There can be no doubt about this because all the soldiers recognised the distinctive 'crack' of the '88' personally aimed at them.
It makes you wonder what the 10,000 times more common 75mm/105mm German artillery guns achieved as it appears (from personal accounts of those targeted) they never fired at or hit anything.
I also repeat what I said earlier. There were always going to be Allied casualties and pointing out that the flak caused Allied casualties is not a trump card and a complete vindication of the weapon system.

Apparently the AA guns around Bristol (a significant target for the Luftwaffe) managed to down two (2) aircraft duing the war. Would they have downed more if they had had 88s? We will never know.