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

ANTIAIRCRAFT DEFENSE THROUGH WORLD WAR II
tracted from his primary job. Flak defenses also decreased
bombing accuracy. The best measure, therefore, is the cost (effort
and losses) required to put bombs on target.
A sixth and final lesson of the war concerned the difficulty
of correctly identifying aircraft: the gunners never were able to
adequately sort out the friendlies from the foes. Not only did
friendly fire down friendly aircraft—most dramatically demonstrated
by the loss of Allied troop carriers over Sicily in July
1943 and German fighters on 1 January 1945—but also frequently,
friendly fire did not engage hostile aircraft. Despite
electronic equipment, codes, procedures, briefings, and restricted
zones, the problem persisted and accidents happened.
The end of the war brought two other developments that
seemed to override these advantages gained by the defense.
The first was jet propulsion that greatly increased aircraft performance,
further complicating the defender’s task. The other
was the atomic bomb that extended the prospect that one aircraft
and one bomb could destroy one city, which was very different
from the massive formations of hundreds of aircraft returning
day after day. This development overturned the
attritional concept of defense that dominated the air war. This,
then, was the air defense situation in the immediate post–World
War II era.
Notes
1. Edward Westermann, Flak: German Anti-Aircraft Defenses 1914–1945
(Lawrence, Kans.: University Press, 2001), 9.
2. Ibid., 10–16.
3. The Germans fielded almost 2,800 antiaircraft guns at the end of the war
with 30 percent geared for homeland defense. See P. T. Cullen, “Air Defense of
London, Paris, and Western Germany” (paper, Air Corps Tactical School,
Maxwell Field, Alabama, n.d.), 7, 9, 28, 99, table 5, Air Force Historical Research
Agency (HRA), Maxwell Air Force Base (AFB), Ala.; “Antiaircraft Defences
of Great Britain: 1914 to 1946,” appendix A, Royal Artillery Institute (RAI),
Woolwick, United Kingdom; “Antiaircraft Gun Trends and Scientific and Technical
Projection: Eurasian Communist Countries,” July 1981, 1–1; N.W.
Routledge, History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery: Anti-Aircraft Artillery,
1914–55 (London: Brassey’s, 1994), 22; and Westermann, Flak, 26.
4. Westermann, Flak, 27.
5. Another source lists the rounds per claim as United States, 1,055;
British, 1,800; and French, 3,225. See Ian Hogg, Anti-Aircraft: A History of
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