Flak: German Anti-Aircraft Defenses, 1914-1945: Westermann, Edward B.: 9780700614202: Amazon.com: Books

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Edward B. Westermann

Flak: German Anti-Aircraft Defenses, 1914-1945 Paperback – November 12, 2001

by Edward B. Westermann (Author)

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Air raid sirens wail, searchlight beams flash across the sky, and the night is aflame with tracer fire and aerial explosions, as Allied bombers and German anti-aircraft units duel in the thundering darkness. Such "cinematic" scenes, played out with increasing frequency as World War II ground to a close, were more than mere stock material for movie melodramas. As Edward Westermann reveals, they point to a key but largely unappreciated aspect of the German war effort that has yet to get its full due.

Long the neglected stepchild in studies of World War II air campaigns, German flak or anti-aircraft units have been frequently dismissed by American, British, and German historians (and by veterans of the European air war) as ineffective weapons that wasted valuable material and personnel resources desperately needed elsewhere by the Third Reich. Westermann emphatically disagrees with that view and makes a convincing case for the significant contributions made by the entire range of German anti-aircraft defenses.

During the Allied air campaigns against the Third Reich, well over a million tons of bombs were dropped upon the German homeland, killing nearly 300,000 civilians, wounding another 780,000, and destroying more than 3,500,000 industrial and residential structures. Not surprisingly, that aerial Armageddon has inspired countless studies of both the victorious Allied bombing offensive and the ultimately doomed Luftwaffe defense of its own skies. By contrast, flak units have virtually been ignored, despite the fact that they employed more than a million men and women, were responsible for more than half of all Allied aircraft losses, forced Allied bombers to fly far above high-accuracy altitudes, and thus allowed Germany to hold out far longer than it might have otherwise.

Westermann's definitive study sheds new light on every facet of the development and organization of this vital defense arm, including its artillery, radar, searchlight, barrage balloon, decoy sites, and command components. Highlighting the convergence of technology, strategy, doctrine, politics, and economics, Flak also provides revealing insights into German strategic thought, Hitler's obsession with micromanaging the war, and the lives of the members of the flak units themselves, including the large number of women, factory workers, and even POWs who participated.

Print length

408 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University Press of Kansas
Publication date

November 12, 2001
Dimensions

6 x 1 x 8.75 inches
ISBN-10

0700614206
ISBN-13

978-0700614202
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Don W. Alexander

Valuable contribution

Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2021

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Westermann provides a comprehensive, narrative of the contribution of German ground air defenses during WW2, with an almost exclusive focus of these capabilities as they were deployed in the defense of the German homeland. The chronological account details the numbers and types of German air defense guns, ranging from the heavy 128 mm and 88 mm to the lighter 37mm and 20 mm flak guns, along with the manner of their deployment in batteries and double batteries. Westermann extends his account to include the numbers and roles of searchlight batteries, the range of acoustic and radar acquisition and targeting capabilities; the constantly changing personnel employing the guns, radars, and searchlights, as manpower shortages forces upon the flak force to incorporate the home guard, workers, women, and even prisoners of war; employment of smoke generators--their contributions and drawbacks; impact of weather and day-night conditions on the force, the role of dummy targets deployed to confuse the allied bombers; and the success and failure of integration with German day and night fighters. Westermann provides even the most veteran historian of the European war with a wealth of knowledge, to include numbers of flak guns, allocation of resources to air defense materiel and munitions as compared to the total Wehrmacht effort; comparison of destroyed aircraft by flak versus aircraft, and the synergies achieved by combination of these two elements. I would have appreciated a bit more detail on warhead performance of the various types of gun munitions, but this is a very slight oversight.
I will take some issue with the metrics Westermann uses to evaluate the flak force. Westermann regards the primary German metric of aircraft shot down as understating the real contribution of flak. He argues that the principal contribution was the ground air defenses degrading allied targeting effectiveness. Flak forced the aircraft to higher altitudes; forced the aircraft to perform erratic maneuvers (as opposed to straight run) over the target to avoid search lights (at night) and gunfire; and increased the anxiety of the bomber crew over the target. Westermann admits this metric is hard to quantify. However, I believe Westermann has overlooked the obvious and real metric--were German defenses able to protect vital industrial, transportation, resource, and population centers so that Germany could sustain its war efforts. Answering this question also allows us to put in context the relative contribution to air defense of the ground forces compared with the air forces. At the end of 1943, despite the staggering blow Bomber Command inflicted on Hamburg, the Germans were successfully defending their vital targets, had inflicted a major defeat on Bomber Command in its offensive against Berlin, and forced the Americans to reconsider the viability of daylight bombing. However, with the introduction of American long range fighters (P-47 and P-51) the American Air Forces were able to initiate the successful battle of attrition in February 1944 with the so-called Big Week, during which the German day-light fighter force suffered irreplaceable pilot losses. With these fighters, the Americans could escort their bomber formations over occupied Western Europe, the Ruhr, and even to Berlin. With the German fighters effectively tamed, the allied bomber forces turned their attention to Operation Point Blank the effort to destroy German transportation capabilities in the West so that reinforcements would be fatally delayed arriving to the Normandy invasion force. Unfortunately, Westermann does not provide any details on the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the flak forces to protect rail marshaling yards and other key nodes. With the allied ground forces secure on the beaches, the Americans quickly shifted to a more critical resource target--the synthetic oil plants. This campaign put the German air force in a vicious cycle--the planes had to fight to protect their oil resources; the American fighters, now working with better-trained pilots and excellent aircraft, could accelerate the war of attrition; and as the defenses crumbled, so did the synthetic oil factories. Reduced oil meant less fuel for pilot training, so that the Americans grew stronger in the air as the Germans grew weaker (and on the ground as well). When the fighter force was defeated, the flak force could not protect vital transportation nodes, synthetic oil plants, or the myriad of other targets the allied bomber forces attacked in the last months of the war. The flak guns could continue to bring down planes, but, without the fighters, they could not protect the vital sinews the German war machine.
So, Westermann has provided us with a detailed account of the German flak forces and their efforts to defend the German homeland, giving the reader sufficient to draw his own conclusion about the overall contribution of the flak force to Germany's war effort.

One person found this helpful

Excellent book discussing the development, organization, and effectiveness of the German flak system.

Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2015

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Excellent book on the German anti - aircraft (flak) system. It discusses the development and organization of the flak arm over the years. It includes the development of radar and optical tracking systems before and during the war. The chapters on the decline and deterioration in capability versus the RAF and USAAF bombers were especially interesting. The decline didn't occur solely because the allies overwhelmed the Germans in numbers. The flak arm continuously lost its experienced and skilled officers and men to the army as the situation on the eastern front deteriorated in 1943 and 1944. By the end of 1944, the majority of the personnel consisted of teenagers, old and/or medically unfit men, women, and prisoner of war "volunteers." With little training and experience, those people were expected to operate complex weapons and equipment. The results were predictable. There is also much discussion and context in relation to the overall manpower and industrial needs of the Army and Luftwaffe and how Germany was much more resources limited than the USA was. That is, if (for example) anti - aircraft gun production were to be increased, then something else had to decrease. An amazing amount of data on numbers of gun batteries, ammunition consumption, industrial production, and budget in relation to the other German services is provided. Some information on the characteristics and performance of the anti - aircraft guns is provided in the text, but there are other books that provide more such information. For example, see "Weapons of the Third Reich" by Gander and Chamberlain(1978) and "The Heavy Flak Guns" by Muller (1990). The last chapter evaluates the overall effectiveness of the flak system in deterring allied bombing.

2 people found this helpful

If you buy only one book on German flak defenses this year ... :-)

Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2013

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In "Flak: German Anti-Aircraft Defenses, 1914-1945", author Edward B. Westermann details the history and workings of the German Flugzeugabwehrkanone (aircraft defense cannon, or Flak) defenses from their inception ~1914 through the end of World War II. He discusses the technical issues of the gun development and efforts to improve their accuracy against ever faster and higher flying aircraft, the amount of financial resources devoted to Flak, the German's efforts at integrating (or not) ground based defenses with aircraft/airborne defenses, and offers a year-by-year summary of Flak's effectiveness in damaging and destroying enemy aircraft.

To say that this work stands virtually alone (in books published in English, anyway) in covering this critical aspect of World War II is in no way an understatement. The have been thousands of books written about the air war in World War II, but apart from some primarily pictorial books showing the German Flak or ones analyzing specific weapons (primarily the German 88mm anti-aircraft gun), I know of no book that shows how the German anti-aircraft defenses were developed, operated, and discusses in detail these defenses' efficacy.

The author shows the cost, year by year, both in marks and in the number personnel assigned, that the Germans devoted to this effort, and provides an analysis of the number of aircraft shot down by flak vice those shot down by German aircraft in defense of the German Reich, and shows how Flak helped make the fighters much more effective by dispersing and damaging enemy aircraft. He also touches upon other things the Germans were developing, such as anti-aircraft missiles and improved warhead fusing. He even shows how much the Germans were spending to bring down an aircraft versus what it cost the Allies to construct one.

The author implys that the German flak defenses did not consume a disproportionate share of the German war budget, although he shows it cost upwards of 25 percent of their armaments and munitions budgets during the war years. It would have been helpful if he had provided information showing what the other major powers were expending in their antiaircraft defenses as a comparison, although some of this would be like comparing apples and oranges, as the Allies were on the attack, thus spending more of their resources on strategic bombing rather than strategic air defense. He also shows that while the manpower used to man the flak defenses were substantial, a large portion of this was overaged men, teenagers too young to be drafted, foreign labor, POWs, and women, none of whom were eligible to serve in the front lines anyway, so the manpower drain wasn't as bad as it might appear.

This is an outstanding book that shows the real impact of the German's flak defenses on their battle to win the war in the air over Germany. As such, it belongs on your shelf if you're a serious student of World War II. Five stars.

One quick aside: While this book describes the evolution and effectiveness of the active German anti-aircraft defenses, it doesn't touch much on the passive defenses like shelters and underground factories. There is an excellent short book by author Stephen Zaloga titled "Defense of the Third Reich 1941-45" that focuses more on the nuts and bolts on how Flak batteries were physically deployed, as well as personnel and factory shelter construction. It does not discuss the battle in the skies over Germany, so it is a great complementary companion book to this work.

5 people found this helpful

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John Arthur Clements

Debatable justification for the German emphasis on Flak

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2020

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Very interesting and detailed (as required) study of German Flak in WW11 and it's successes. Clearly it failed to protect but it does seemed to have accounted for c.40% UK/USAAF bomber losses particularly at night and after escort fighters became available to the allies. Taking into account damage to other aircraft, etc it is argued that the investment was worthwhile.
If you are interested in this subject it is the book to buy.

B. D. Hitch

One of its kind...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 21, 2013

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Considering the multitude of books covering the Jagdwaffe [the fighter arm of the Nazi German airforce], it's odd that there are so few covering the less glamorous aspects of the Defence of the Reich. Westerman's book has no direct competitor, so if you want to find how the Nazi Flakartillerie operated, and how it responded to the multitude of allied threats - not just aeroplanes, but tanks as well - you need this book.

One person found this helpful

R. Stewart

would have liked to have seen a less studious approach to the ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 23, 2015

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A rather dry view of german efences, would have liked to have seen a less studious approach to the subject , figures are fine but the men , women and boys to manned the system have got lost.

One person found this helpful

J. Strickland

Most of what you need to know about flak

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 21, 2013

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Needs more photos particularly of associated radar systems, evenso I now know more about flak after reading it and can only reccomend this book.

al

Ottima opera di partenza

Reviewed in Italy on June 1, 2014

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Descrive le basi della contraerea tedesca soprattutto nella seconda guerra mondiale. Ne rimarca il ruolo e le sua "esternalità" positive nel suo funzionamento, al di là del numero di abbattimenti conseguiti (valutati con criteri restrittivi). Il libro propone una visione olistica del sistema di difesa antiaerea tedesco della WWII, chiarendo il ruolo dell'antiaerea - da non sminuire affatto - e la sua collaborazione con la caccia. Unico difetto è che poteva essere più in dettaglio, ma avrebbe richiesto più volumi.

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