AHC: RN Heavy Cruiser - late 1930s

hipper

Banned
Also, HACS was a piece of shit system.

which shot down more aircraft than any other AA system in say 1942.

there's considerable evidence that its practical advantages more than compensated for its theoretical disadvantages - which mostly had been over come by a considerable amount of modifications in the late 30's and the early forties.
 
Over on warships1 that comment about HACS would generate another 20-page thread comprising mostly of someone raging at USN overclaiming! He'd have something to say about the 5.25"'s rate of fire too...
 

hipper

Banned
Over on warships1 that comment about HACS would generate another 20-page thread comprising mostly of someone raging at USN overclaiming! He'd have something to say about the 5.25"'s rate of fire too...

oh yes educational reading.. and for some reason the HACS seems to have generated a lot of heat.
As I see it any ship borne HAA system was not sufficiently effective to prevent air attacks even during the later stages of WW2 in the pacific.
Late war German experience with land based flack suggested that variations in the timing of mechanically timed fuses rendered predicted fire mostly irrelevant thus several thousand shots per one hit. They improved matters by removing the timing and firing sabots s at higher velocity designed to explode on impact.

I suspect the techniques used by the RN tended to minimise the Bad points of mechanically timed predictive fire
1) quickly calculated firing solutions using estimated predictions rather than mechanically calculated Tachometric solutions
2) firing salvos so that all the shells exploded in a similar time and space making a larger area lethal to enemy aircraft.

The best solution was of course proximity fuses but they were not available until 1942

in the meantime a look at the AA casualties inflicted on the LW by convoy PQ18 and the AA casualties caused by the USN at midway one to suggest that If HAC's was a piece of Shit system then the Ml 33 & Mk 37 systems were indescribable.

Just of course an opinion and many will disagree.
 
Over on warships1 that comment about HACS would generate another 20-page thread comprising mostly of someone raging at USN overclaiming! He'd have something to say about the 5.25"'s rate of fire too...

Well the USN was very succesful they managed to shoot down every plane the Japanese owned at least twice.
 
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