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Mike

The massed heavy flak was very off-putting to the crews and created evasive action inaccuracy even when it was only thought to be there. Once it started firing it pushed inaccuracy up over 68%.

Towards the end of the war it took 16,000 rounds of heavy flak to down one aircraft but this ratio did not matter because of its disruption to accurate bombing. The Americans solved the problem by using the formation bombing system under command of a Master Bombardier. The poor buggers could not manouevre and were just carried in perfect formation right into the clouds of flak.

The Americans reported 110,000 aircraft were damaged in some way by flak. This includes aircraft counted several times as they were hit on numerous different trips. They brought back dead and wounded crew in numbers equaling those lost in complete aircraft shoot-downs.

Fighters downed 59% and Flak 41% in the last years of the war but the crews feared the flak more.

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