Before and After

My Dad rarely talked about his WWII service, but he did tell the story of approaching a German town and having to deal with the 88's. He was part of a Mortar unit (platoon? squad?) with the Third Army, and this would have been after the Battle of the Bulge.

Now, if only the Italians knew how to take care of Captured War Booty, as the folks in Ft. Knox, life would be much more beautiful.

That second pic makes me shudder. If I just remember where I hid the barrel of my Star PD, dammit! I didn't bury it, but this is Florida, and no matter how well-oiled, I can imagine the rust! (I had to leave town for a coupla weeks, didn't trust aged Daddy with firearm, got horribly sick while gone and apparently lost some neurons.)

JTG - It will be in the last place you look, you know ... *grin*

Say, Sanger, I've always wondered how much of the dreaded 88's reputation had to do with its efficiency as a gun, and how much with the doctrine of its tactical employment. I mean, we had some 90mm AA guns at about the same time, which could depress ( Are you reading this, Marvin?) enough to shoot at tanks and things. Oh, and the ammo. Maybe that 88 just shot a better shell than some other guns? I advert to the recent 3"-50 thread, here.

If I remember my Dad's stories well,I don't think you would have wanted to be on the receiving end of the 88s. His most memorable one concerned a squad of British tanks against a dug in battery. The results weren't pretty.(as in a total wipeout on the Brits)

JTG, one of the 'lessons learned' by the Germans during the Spanish Civil War was that a smaller, hardened, shot was a better anti-tank round than the larger HE shell. The development of AT weapons in the newly-armed Third Reich followed this premise... other nations were slower to learn. WWII German AT munitions formed the basis for every development since...

SangerM wrote: "I always figured the Vulcan would have made a nice ground system too, but hey, what do I know..." Actually, it did. When I was in the 82nd in the late 70's and early 80's, we regularly planned fires from Vulcans on suitable targets. My infantry battalion (3-325th AIR, to be precise,) got to go play with the BAOR up around Hanover during Reforger in 1980. We were part of the "Orange" forces, playing the role of a Russian airborne unit dropped in advance of a Soviet advance to sieze Class 60 bridges over the Hildesheim and Mitteland canals. About day three of the exercise the Brits finally got the situation figured out and put a dismounted company from the Irish Guards across the canal about a mile above where we were holding onto our bridge with teeth and toenails. The Micks came slipping down through the little forested area that ended about 300 meters from the bridge. They stepped out of the treeline in, I swear to God, a classic skirmish line, looked left and right to check their dressing, and started across the field toward us. At which point the haystack next to the bridge rotated 180 degrees and began going "WHIRRPPP! WHIRRPPP! WHIRRPPP!" One of our Vulcan crews had cranked up the landing gear so that the towed Vulcan was sitting on its flat base and then done a bang-up job of camoflage, and they caught our British friends flat-footed. Set the burst selector to 30 rounds, fire, traverse right 5 degrees, fire, traverse right five degrees... ...repeat as required until there aren't any more targets to service. The umpire stationed on the bridge threw his clipboard up into the air and said "Well, there's not much point in even trying to assess this one, is there now? The whole blasted company's out of action." At which point our backup, an infantry company from a Territorial battalion of the Worcester & Sherwood Foresters, showed up and became right put out that we hadn't left them anything to do. So we sent them across the river to play with a mixed gaggle of Chieftans and Scimitars that was being annoying. They all died gloriously, but it was evidently great fun while it lasted.

Neff - You hit it right on the head. While the Germans took their que from their AA experiences in Spain. We ignorantly took our que from the Navy. Our thinking was, if a 3"/50 was good enough for a ship at sea, it is good enough for a ship at land. Costly mistake.