@boys_ian@Steveho25139795@clark_aviation Radar proximity fuzes were a UK concept & engineering development that it took American industrial capacity to make real. (photo)
Time fuzes came in 2 flavors.
Flavor 1 was mechanical like an old Swiss watch. Flavor 2 was a burning pyrotechnic fuze.
This was compensated for by firing "box barrages" ahead of American bomber formations which were ungainly clots of A/C that could not turn quickly.
@boys_ian@Steveho25139795@clark_aviation The problem that most people have -- including on Adolph Hitler! -- is understanding the mission of AA defenses is not to shoot down planes, but to prevent planes from destroying their assigned target.
The attached table is from an 8th AF report on the accuracy of USAAF bombers
It was the fall of the occupied French territory used as a early warning & fighter base glacis that tubed German AA killing %.
RAF Bomber Command WW2 loss rates attached.
@boys_ian@Steveho25139795@clark_aviation It was not until the Allied strategic bombers went after all the German Reich Bahn railway marshaling yards _Simultaneously_, starting with Operation Clarion in Mid-Feb 1945, that German AA gun defenses collapsed from a lack of ammo.
Oh heck yes, AFU is hunting Russian H2O trucks! ⬇️
@secretsqrl123 has sussed out the Russian potable water supply chain and it involves a thrown together bubba engineering with palletized IBC containers used by restaurants for vegetable oil.
I've been asked to post my four appearances on Paul Woodadge's @WW2TV youtube channel to X.
This was about MacArthur's "Wild Weasel" radar hunters before the term was invented.
Dr Bellamy was PhD heavy lifter here.
Section 22 Radar Hunters
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This is the story of Master Technical Sergeant Dermott H. MacDonnell and how his performance as chief radar operator for Marine Air Group 23’s (MAG-23) SCR-270 radar...
The Horseshoe Nail of Victory of the Guadalcanal Air Campaign
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...made the difference between keeping and losing daylight air superiority over Henderson Field in the darkest days of the Guadalcanal campaign.
Incendiary devices were 10 times as effective at destroying urban areas than high explosive per unit mass per the US Strategic Bombing Surveys'.
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Sending twice the warhead mass of incendiaries of a unitary explosive warhead Tomahawk for the same price is 20 times as effective and requires 10 times the air defense missile warshot or gun based ammunition to protect any target.