Air attack, including tactical attacks against ground troops, ground installations, and naval targets as well as strategic attacks against cities, factories, and other ostensibly civilian targets as well as major military installations, was a major component of combat in World War II. Accordingly, the warring powers made extensive use of a variety of antiaircraft weapons. The antiaircraft artillery (AAA) of this period consisted of conventional artillery, sometimes improved to achieve greater muzzle velocity and, therefore, to hurl projectiles higher, and improved ammunition. Some ammunition was not only designed to maximize velocity and, therefore, altitude, but also to explode in the air, broadcasting hundreds of large, jagged-edged metal fragments, or shrapnel. This meant that a fired round did not actually have to hit an enemy aircraft to destroy it--and a distant, fast-flying target was extremely difficult to hit--but that the aircraft had merely to fly through a shrapnel burst to be damaged, perhaps fatally.

The German term for antiaircraft artillery was Fliegerabwehrkanone, typically contracted to the word flak. This contracted term was adopted by the Allies as well, not used to describe the artillery pieces themselves, but the bursting shells fired against the aircraft. Flak was most effective when fired by many massed antiaircraft guns, which thus created a "field" of flak into which enemy bombers had to fly. The likelihood of inflicting damage was multiplied in such flak barrage fields. Allied air crews often spoke of flying through flak thick enough to walk across. While flak was intended first and foremost to disable or shoot down aircraft, it was also effective directly against aircrews. Because of weight considerations, it was impossible to equip bombers with "flak-proof" armor, and many airmen were wounded or killed by pieces of flak (that is, shrapnel) that penetrated the fuselage or entered through windshields, cockpit canopies, and so on. Allied airmen were issued "flak jackets," heavy-fabric body armor, which afforded a degree of protection to vital organs. In 1944 alone, flak accounted for 3,501 American planes shot down, compared with about 600 shot down by fighter aircraft during this period.

Sighting and aiming (often called by artillerists "laying") were critical to antiaircraft defense. Early in the war, sights consisted of simple arrangements of concentric rings, which yielded little accuracy. More sophisticated optical sights were developed as the war continued, as was a rudimentary computer called a "predictor." This electromechanical device could be made to follow a target, calculating its course and speed as well as the projectile's direction and velocity with the object of predicting the future position where the two would actually meet. The predictor generated information on bearing and elevation, which was fed to the gun via a pair of motors, which, in turn, automatically adjusted bearing and elevation. Because the predictor was bulky and required a large generator as well as careful calibration to align the guns to coincide with the alignment of the predictor, this device was generally installed on more-or-less permanently emplaced guns. In the field, with mobile artillery, manual sighting ("open sights") were generally more practical, despite their shortcomings.

The single greatest advance in directing antiaircraft fire was radar, which was especially effective at night and in conditions of low visibility. Combined with powerful, long-range antiaircraft artillery, radar greatly extended the range of AAA fire, allowing gunners to commence firing--effectively--much earlier in an attack. . .

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