German FLAK Dispositions: A Puzzle of Deployment Contributing to Final Defeat.

[Christos]

One of the telling points illuminated in his subsequent post-war memoirs, and in various interviews of Reich Armaments Minister ALBERT SPEER, was differing deployment of the 100,000 odd pieces of artillery controlled by the Luftwaffe for the air-defence of the Reich may well have made things very different indeed. The millions of rounds of ammunition that were used up (it is estimated to take over a thousand of these shells, on average, to shoot down just one American B-17). Any way you look at it, this is not very good economic warfare for a country chronically short of basic raw materials and strategic metals like tungsten.
The personelle controlled to man the Flak positions, the equipment required to make a significant portion of these assets mobile, and the economic cost involved.....all of this war effort produced little in the way of direct results at the principle target it was aimed at....the four-engined bomber, pulverizing, as they were, German cities and industry....Only one thing could stop these "TERRORFLEIGER" from doing just that.....the SINGLE ENGINED INTERCEPTOR....and FUEL was the key problem here.....but I digress...

Speer makes the point that these resources, properly mobilized and deployed against SOVIET TANKS, may well have equalled the balance of the early 1943 'Ost-Fron't battlefield, ruled as it was by weapons of German make of the period, but never in enough quantities to gurarantee a DECISION in the favour of Reich arms.......

I'M interested to hear what you good people have to say concerning this issue, something that Albert Speer could not stress enough when speaking of the Allied Bomber offensive and it's true effect. The net effect for the Reich Defence was that these Flak guns became, like the Atlantic Wall, yet another tool for Goebbels Propaganda Corps to make claims at being able to "HIT-BACK" at the very aircraft and aircrews who were making the Reich homefront such a misery for ordinary Germans....and the effect this must have had on the morale of the army in the field, and to soldiers who had lost relatives to bombing....

As Arthur "Bomber" Harris had predicted.....the German people were "reaping the whirlwind....." of the seeds sown by their own airforce and it's actions in the Occupation of Europe..........

[Christos]

Harry.....what do you think of this then?