Archie to SAM: A Short Operational History of Ground-Based Air ...

ANTIAIRCRAFT DEFENSE THROUGH WORLD WAR II
at a disadvantage. The unit lost 15 aircraft to German flak and
one aircraft to Allied antiaircraft fire; in addition, 13 of the 22
aircraft that returned home were damaged by flak. Eleven pilots,
three of them injured, returned to Allied lines, while three
others were killed and two captured. That day, the AAF flew
104 sorties against antiaircraft guns and lost 21 aircraft with
another 17 damaged. These missions claimed 18 flak guns destroyed.
78 In the entire Market-Garden operation, Allied airmen
claimed destruction of 118 flak positions and damage to
127 others. But the Anglo-Americans lost 104 aircraft on 4,320
sorties (excluding troop carriers and gliders), of which 37 were
lost on 646 sorties to suppress flak. Analysis of the entire operation
indicated that flak suppression succeeded only during
the first day of the operations. 79 Not surprisingly then, the next
month, US Strategic Air Forces in Europe recommended against
attacking heavy flak positions with low-flying aircraft as ineffective
and costly. The report concluded that alternative measures
(ECM, formations, evasive maneuvers, and fragmentation
bombing) were more practical. 80
The Fifteenth Air Force conducted an experiment that bombed
flak positions from high altitude. On two missions in April 1945,
B-24s dropped 260-pound fragmentation bombs fitted with
proximity fuzes on German flak northeast of Venice from about
25,000 feet. The Airmen considered the operations successful. 81
The Americans also employed artillery to blanket known flak
positions as the fighters approached. The American gunners
attempted to pin down the flak gunners so the fighters could
launch their initial attack against minimal resistance. The
Americans employed these tactics with mixed results during
the June 1944 siege of Cherbourg, France. 82
Another Allied effort at flak suppression occurred during the
Anglo-American airborne assault across the Rhine River at
Wesel on 24 March 1945 in Operation Varsity. Allied aircraft
and artillery attempted to silence or neutralize the 922 German
flak barrels in the area. Allied bombers dropped over 8,100
tons of bombs on flak positions on 3,741 sorties during the
three days before the airdrop. RAF Typhoons used bullets,
bombs, and rockets; and Allied artillery fired 24,000 rounds
(440 tons) at 95 German positions. Despite this awesome fire-
45