Quote:
Originally Posted by T. A. Gardner
The foot at the end is adjustable to level the mount. Being flat and level is important to accuracy in three dimensions.
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Definitely. My father commanded among other things a battery of Brit 3.7" AA guns (Lisbon defence perimeter. '43-'44 thereabouts) and he used to tell me that the battery was rarely if at all moved, as it was a pain having to reconnect the Director to the guns.
Gun levelling was very important, as the guns were aimed (2 operators, one Elevator and one Trainer) by each looking at an optic visor at chest level and adjusting the crosshairs to the aiming spot provided by the Director. No looking at the target at all, the Director (an analogue computer, full of brass wheels) itself took care of that, either by direct visual acquisition or sound detection (radar was top secret and besides we couldn't afford it!).
If the gun was not duly levelled it would fire outside the box, or worse.
One of the good things about the 3.7" was that the shells were put on a fuze timing device (again with data fed from the Director), then automatically fed in the gun, so there was no manual shell handling. As a consequence the fuze timing was always correct and subject to no errors induced by using human loaders (that is, if the guy took another 1/10 of a second to move the round the shell would be exploding 100m behind it's optimum predicted point).
The 88mm AA Flak battery also had a similar system (although less sophisticated/complex), so when you lower the barrel to fire at tanks then you are simply wasting all this technology and extra cost built in the gun. You're using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. But when the rest of your AT guns are crap (mostly 3.7cm or 5cm PaK) then you have to pay the premium.
Re: FlaK 88 in action
