What’s the worst threat - fighters or flak?

[Blimpyboy]

Hiya,

 

As it says on the tin, what’s worse and why?

 

Personally, I go with surface-to-air as the greatest intrinsic threat.

 

Let battle commence (politely)...

[tomprobert]

From reading numerous accounts of bomber crews, flak was worse as in their words: “the fighters you could shoot back at.”

[Giorgio N]

It's one of those questions for which there is no answer as this would depend on a lot of factors.

Do you have self defence capability against fighters or escort ? At what level are you operating ? What mission are you trying to accomplish ? How is the enemy surface based defence system organised ? What are the relative all-weather capabilities of the opponents ? When are you fighting ? And so on and so on....

Just as an example, USAAF day bombers in 1943 suffered higher losses to enemy fighters than to flak. In 1944 the ratio changed and by the end of the year flak accounted for more aircraft. By 1945 flak accounted for the vast majority of losses. What we saw was the effect of escort fighters in taking on the enemy interceptors, had the bombers not been escorted it is likely that fighters would have continued to shoot down more bombers than the flak did.

I don't have figures for RAF Bomber Command, but I would guess that by operating at night the effect of enemy night fighters would have been less critical and probably flak was found more dangerous.

Moving forward in time, before the advent of radars with decent shoot-down capability flying at low level was seen as a way to avoud detection but clearly at such levels flak was more dangerous. Yet flak is dangerous only in the areas covered by batteries and these can be avoided while fighters can cover wider areas...

Missiles have added a new dimension and for a while it was found to be better to operate at higher level as missiles can be dodged or jammed while gunfire can not (and today things are roughly along these lines).

I'd say that histoy has shown that without at least some level of local air superiority, the fighters will inflict heavy losses to any attack force and achieving air superiority is one of the very first goal of any air force in case of war. From this point of view it could be said that fighters are the worst threat, followed by missile systems. Once these are eliminated or the threat has been reduced to acceptable levels, flak becomes a very dangerous opponent that however can be in part avoided by selecting the best mission profile

[Blimpyboy]

10 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:

I don't have figures for RAF Bomber Command, but I would guess that by operating at night the effect of enemy night fighters would have been less critical and probably flak was found more dangerous.

I think they were broadly similar to the day bomber loss trend you mentioned - flak, shifting to fighters by mid 1943 and then back to flak by late 1944/early 1945.

 

12 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:

Yet flak is dangerous only in the areas covered by batteries and these can be avoided while fighters can cover wider areas...

To a degree, perhaps, but, fighters are not persistent and are very limited in comparison to defending an area for prolonged periods. GBAD is persistent and can be used to cover a wider range of ground. Plus, GBAD can only be avoided if you know where it is.

 

18 minutes ago, Giorgio N said:

histoy has shown that without at least some level of local air superiority, the fighters will inflict heavy losses to any attack force and achieving air superiority is one of the very first goal of any air force in case of war.

Air superiority/supremacy/dominance includes GBAD, just as much as fighters. Historically, if we look at most conflicts involving aircraft, GBAD has killed more ‘planes than fighters.

 

It is, of course, an issue that differs widely, based on billions of factors.

 I have always been intrigued by the fact that more emphasis is placed on fighters as a big threat, when GBAD has arguably had a far greater negative impact on most aspects of air warfare.

[Giorgio N]

2 minutes ago, Blimpyboy said:

It is, of course, an issue that differs widely, based on billions of factors.

 I have always been intrigued by the fact that more emphasis is placed on fighters as a big threat, when GBAD has arguably had a far greater negative impact on most aspects of air warfare.

 

The problem is that for the largest part of the history of air warfare, the conflicts that received most of the attention have been heavily "asymmetric", with one side having a marked air superiority over the other. Of course there's the big exception of WW2, although even during this conflict there have been periods of similar asymmetry: German forces met relatively limited fighter opposition in several of their early campaigns while allied forces enjoyed a vast air superiority during the last 6 months of the war.

In similar situation it's clear that whoever is conducting the air compaign, that is generally the side that has achieved air superiority, will suffer much superior losses to flak than to fighters.

It would also be useful to split GBAD, as long range missiles have a different place compared to short range SAMs and artillery directly covering the targets. I would bet on the latter accounting for more victims overall, yet if the former are not defeated first it becomes difficult to engage the targets. So short range defences may inflict more damage, but long range defences will prevent attacks on the target even without inflicting any damage. We immediately think of a threat based on the damage actually inflicted, but forcing an attacker to drop its bombs in advance and flee is in itself a victory for the air defence system even if this doesn't achieve a kill. In this sense long range missiles are closer to fighters and in many countries they are under Air Force control. The distruction of this kind of missiles (and/or their command & control system) is indeed part of the process to achieve air superiority.

[Blimpyboy]

Yeah, all excellent points. I like the bit about short-range stuff - it does seem to be statistically more dangerous, but one does need to deal with fighters and long range stuff first.

 

 I think what skews my thoughts (albeit simplistically) is that air-to-air combat is still based on, and viewed as a person-vs-person battle, while flak/SAMs is a more insidious person-vs-machine type battle.

 

Ultimately, they are at worst a complementary and layered threat (think of the Moscow region defences) and at best, a piecemeal one-or-the-other threat (think of the Korean or Vietnam conflicts).

Edited July 7, 2020 by Blimpyboy

[exdraken]

all interesting points!

 

but/ and :  the worst thing is always the one you are facing in the moment.....

 

most of the time you cannot choose, and modern self respecting armed forces have a good balance of fighters and missile systems for self defence.... or a good mix of fighters and anti air defence tactics (stealth, SEAD, low level, etc) for attack......

 

do not forget that both depend highly on situational awareness... i.e. radars, command and control centers... (on the gound, or in the air)

[jackroadkill]

Surely it's whatever is currently attacking you?

[John B (Sc)]

At one time when NATO was facing the Warsaw Pact and somewhat outnumbered, the basic ground defence plan was that any aircraft heading East was to be left alone and anything heading West low to medium level except in a few designated safe lanes was to be clobbered by ground - air missiles and guns. Anything high altitude was to be left to the fighters. The combined missile flak defences were felt to be enough to seriously degrade Warsaw Pact air attack. Fighters were not considered adequate defence for low level work. (By the army!)

 

If you read Pierre Closterman's account of Tempest flying late in WW2 when they tried to attack German airfields or shoot down Me262s, you will see that the intense anti aircraft fire was the big killer. On one airfield single high speed pass attack he lost 6 out of 8 Tempests.  

My father worked briefly in the REME setting up radar predictors fro AA guns, He  said that by late war if the target  held a straight or steadily curving track,, the gun would be hitting them on the third shot. Erratic weaving was the only worthwhile answer. 

 

So, personally I'd think 'flak' - though 'jackroadkill' has a darn good point!   

[Giorgio N]

The problem with Clostermann's view is that he's describing one of those "asymmetrical" situations: by the time Tempests were attacking German airfields, the Luftwaffe was a ghost of its previous past and allied forces dominated the sky. Had it been 1942, British fighters would have found it very difficult to even get near an airfield in Germany, they'd have likely been dispersed much earlier in their mission.

It's interesting to watch the problem from the other side, that is from the point of view of the target: without the presence of the outer layer of defence, that in WW2 only meant the fighters, what were the chances of survival of a target, even with good short range flak cover ? Not easy to assess in case of land targets, but when looking at naval targets we can see how even battleships with a good number of AA guns were at great risk in case of enemy air attack without a fighter cover. Sure AA guns took their toll on the attacking forces, but this did not prevent heavy losses of ships even to low performance aircraft types.

[Truro Model Builder]

Good point, Giorgio. Look at the wall of flak put up by Allied ships against Kamikaze attacks, and still many of them managed to get through.

 

[Blimpyboy]

16 hours ago, Giorgio N said:

what were the chances of survival of a target, even with good short range flak cover

I agree; even the curtains of ADA in Korea and Vietnam were - despite bringing down horrendous numbers of aircraft - largely insufficient to prevent most targets being seriously damaged.

[Blimpyboy]

On 7/9/2020 at 7:39 AM, jackroadkill said:

Surely it's whatever is currently attacking you?

Probably the most salient point in this discussion!

 

I suppose the starting question is a bit nebulous - the answer is predicated on so many different variables and circumstances.

Maybe I should have posed it in the light of 'why does the fighter threat seem to be highlighted as being the worst modern-day threat when GBAD arguably has a greater shaping and destructive effect'.

 

I s'pose that the lay person is generally drawn to the air-to-air aspect, given its - relative - glamour in today's press and in most historical accounts.

I think, too, that what I said about the man-vs-machine aspect is also something that is either too hard to discuss/get across, whereas we're mostly drawn to the more personal narrative of pilot-vs-pilot.

 

Never mind that a SAM firing can involve one person (pilot) vs anywhere from one-to five operators (SAM crew)!

[Giorgio N]

There is sure a degree of "romanticism" involved in air combat, dating back to WW1 and the idea of noble officers dueling in the sky. The figure of the ace has always been a major factor in war propaganda and in the ensuing folklore. Flak or SAM operators in contrast are just a mass of common soldiers obeying someone's orders (not tjhat it actually is like that, it's more the common narration). The pilot always has a name, the gunners are an indistinct mass and as with all other soldiers their names are remembered only in the occasion of a particular act deserving a medal. Afterall even WW2 pilots with relatively small number of victories are well known through books and accounts while very few ground soldiers are known (unless they are special forces, who enjoy a fame all of their own).

 

Back to the actual "threat", I was re-reading the mention of Clostermann's accounts and at some point I noticed a certain irony: he mentioned how dangerous flak was during missions to attack airports... meaning that yes, they were losing aircraft to flak, but the goal of the mission was to destroy enemy aircraft or at least deny them the use of their ground facilities. And this further reinforced my view that figthers are really the worst threat, as an aircraft is still the best tool to kill another aircraft. Flak and short range SAMs can be lethal for any aircraft within their range, however fighters can be lethal through the whole duration of the mission and even before that ! They can kill an aircraft at any point along the route to the target and back and can also can kill an aircraft even when this is standing on its own airport.

 

Said that, I can understand how flak can be much scarier for the pilots: against a fighter at least they can try to fight back or rely on escort or try manouvering to evade the threat (even if actually most victims never even saw that they were under attack until it was too late). Against flak there's less that can be done if the mission profile requires flying into it. And there's the added psychological aspect that a pilot can see the guns shooting at him, and this is not a pleasant sight.

 

 

[dov]

It is an interesting absurd question.

The question by itself let me think about whom you want to approach. Us modeler, the surveyor, or the people who cannot talk about their experience.

We, who can talk, know nothing. Just guess.

They, who surveyed, you maybe will find one.

The others, who know are all gone!

In philosophical terms from L. Wittgenstein: Things you do not know, you cannot talk about.

Happy modelling

[alt-92]

On 7/10/2020 at 1:21 PM, Giorgio N said:

There is sure a degree of "romanticism" involved in air combat, dating back to WW1 and the idea of noble officers dueling in the sky.

...which is a bit of a crock, if you look at it more closely.

The point of air combat being to force down or shoot down one's opponent, preferably from an advantageous position (behind and not face to face i.e. head-on). It is more a hunt, with some well-known figures literally collecting hunting trophies.
Not that it's any better nowadays, with BVR capabilities

 

[Giorgio N]

17 hours ago, alt-92 said:

...which is a bit of a crock, if you look at it more closely.

The point of air combat being to force down or shoot down one's opponent, preferably from an advantageous position (behind and not face to face i.e. head-on). It is more a hunt, with some well-known figures literally collecting hunting trophies.
Not that it's any better nowadays, with BVR capabilities

 

 

Very true! In the end this view is just one of the many cases when human societies have built a myth to romanticize war and the men who take part in war. It's always been the case since ancient times, the figure of the warrior is glorified and his actions elevated to an example of all that is noble for a number of reasons. Not least important to try and make the whole business of killing and be killed more palatable to men that would generally by their nature be averse to the idea of being slain by sword/lance/gun/bomb.

It doesn't matter that the reality of combat is very different from the narration and that there is generally very little of noble in this business.

 

The advent of mechanized war also seem to have awaken another need in the narration of combat: to bring the human element at the forefront, Maybe it's because as humans we can't stand the idea that a "system" is more important than the individual, maybe it's because it is much more inspiring for propaganda purpose to declare that "our valiant men have won the day" rather than saying "our industrial system and availability of natural resources have proved superior to the enemy's", thing is that the feats of humans capture the imagination of everyone while matters like production and logistics raise the interest of only a few anoraks and scholars.

Edited February 11, 2021 by Giorgio N

[kiseca]

Interesting topic and I am glad to see it resurrected.

 

Giorgio, you mentioned not having figures for RAF bombers who, flying at night, possibly experienced a greater threat from flak than from fighters.

 

I recently read Roderick Chisholm's "Cover of Darkness". Chisholm was an RAF night fighter who was in the mid to latter part of the war increasingly heavily involved in night fighter strategy. The book reveals that the threat to RAF bombers from German night fighters swung back and forth with its own technological arms race. When German radar equipped night fighters had the upper hand, bomber losses overall were unacceptably high and so - and this is something I didn't know, RAF bombers at night also had a fighter escort, in this case it was radar equipped Beaufighters and Mosquitos, with the latter being much more effective.

 

The Mosquitos obviously weren't a squadron orbiting above the force but were sent over as aircraft operating alone, their task being to hunt for German nightfighters. They had radar, initially forward facing only but latterly rearward facing too, and they had radar detection. The Germans had devices that could home in on the electronic emissions of the bombers, which themselves often carried radar. In their case I don't think it was for detection of aircraft but they did start using radar to illuminate their ground target, and if I recall, some of their navigation electronics were also emitting.

 

The initiative swung back and forth throughout the bombing campaign as each side developed an advantage either in detection equipment, or in countermeasures. The deception war was also significant, with various radio signals, Window and other tactics used to try fool the Germans into sending their night fighters to wait in the wrong area (where they'd often meet Mosquitos.)

 

It was a fascinating to-and-fro which doesn't answer the ops question about whether the fighters or the flak posed the greater danger - Chisholm may have said as much in the book but I don't remember - but certainly confirms that even for the night bombers of the RAF, the German fighters were an unacceptably high threat and the RAF put a lot of effort into neutralising them.

[Hook]

Nice discussion.

 

Then again, when pilots heart beats and stress levels of UN Navy pilots were monitored, flak, SAMs and MiGs paled in comparison to night carrier landings...

 

Cheers,

 

Andre

[Troy Smith]

On 08/07/2020 at 23:15, John B (Sc) said:

On one airfield single high speed pass attack he lost 6 out of 8 Tempests.  

Clostermann's book has been described as 'a roman',   as in it's more of a , to use a modern phrase, a docudrama, he describes actions as having taken part in that he didn't, but did happen.

Re the loss of 6 out of 8 Tempests,  IIRC this didn't happen, it's not in the records.  

 

see 

 

 

specifically 

  

On 17/08/2012 at 16:01, Test Graham said:

This is an area in which to be careful, as legal action has been taken against historians in France to protect Clostermann's reputation. However, there is no doubt that The Big Show exaggerates a number of aspects of his career, for example the shooting down of the recce Bf109 over Scapa, a flight in which he was not present. Other examples include the accounts of heavy losses to Tempests due to flak, and aircraft kills in the book that are not found in squadron records. This aspect of his work was noted, and disputed, before the Falklands War. He was a somewhat controversial figure in France, partly due to his postwar political career but also because in some quarters he was blamed for the loss of the highly-respected Rene Muchotte. Which is perhaps why he ended his career in RAF squadrons rather than the Free French units?

What has to be borne in mind is that the work is not a minute recounting of the details of history: it is a "roman". A tale that tells what it was like, that gives the flavour and is told from the point of view of one man, even if that means putting him in action he really missed - note that he does not claim to have shot down the recce 109 himself, only that he was there. He was in the unit on Orkney. From this point of view it is like many books that were written immediately postwar or indeed wartime, although censorship played its part there. It is a great read, just don't take it all as gospel.

 

not that i wasn't totally engrossed by the copy of The Big Show I was given as child....

 

HTH

[John B (Sc)]

A most interesting discussion -

 

 I think several different areas, several slightly different topics, are being mixed up together here. Not surprisingly.

 

The original question is in a sense too simple – the only sensible answer is ‘it depends’. 

 

For the late war daylight tactical European operations which Pierre Clostermann describes and which my father mentioned to me when discussing radar predictors, clearly flak was the greater threat.

For night time operations over occupied Europe by Bomber Command for most of the war. It is clear that while the crews appear to have mostly thought that flak was the main worry, in fact quite a high proportion of the losses were due to fighters.  The comments by Len Deighton in his book ‘Bomber’ and elsewhere are interesting; the low speed advantage of the Me110 night fighter over the bombers was not fully appreciated at the time. Had it been, different tactics could have made interceptions much harder.

Which was the greater hazard for daylight USAAF bomber operations over Europe – I wonder. I think it changed with time as escorts became more capable.

 

One other comment – I do not think the purpose of air combat is primarily to shoot down other aircraft. Its principal intent is to prevent the opposing air force from carrying out its tasks – so if an enemy  bombing raid is thereby disrupted without loss, that is a success.  If escorting fighters can drive off opposing fighters intending to attack your own bombers, so allowing their mission to go ahead, that is success. Actually shooting things down is a bonus, not necessarily an aim, except in so far as it helps deter & demoralise the opposition.

Ultimately air only exists to support the ground arms !

 

(Troy Smith - I agree.  'The Big Show' enthralled - an appalled me - me as a kid. A terrific story. I asked myself if I could l have climbed into a Tempest to do what those pilots did. My best, honest answer?  - not twice !)

[Paws4thot]

On 16/02/2021 at 18:40, kiseca said:

The Germans had devices that could home in on the electronic emissions of the bombers, which themselves often carried radar.

Good try, but not every bomber, or even every formation, carried H2S.

[Paws4thot]

Actually, isn't the real answer now "how good are your jammers?"