German 88mm Flak Gun (Stalingrad 1942)

Hello, fellow World War 2 enthusiasts.

This may sound like a weird question, but could anybody tell me all of the uses of the German 88mm flak gun during the Stalingrad campaign, 1942. I am referring souly to the artillery piece on its own, and not the modified versions that were attatched to tanks.

I know that it was used primarily for anti-aircraft and anti-tank purposes, but what else would it have been used to target/destroy. (Please be specific to the Battle of Stalingrad)

Thank you for reading this, and I will be very grateful for anybody who is able to answer this question!

 

It was useful for line of sight attacks on buildings or strongpoints.

 

AFAIk there were no vehicle mounted 88s at Stalingrad, the few SPs on Sdkfz 8 chassis had been retired and Tigers were still to come. German doctrine included using the 88s to smash strongpoints with direct fire but this required the stronpoint to be suppressed by other weapons before the 88 was brought up. At Stalingrad it was nearly impossible to do that and an 88 would be very hard to manouver in the rubble congested roads inside the city making it an very tempting target for snipers and mortars, IMO e Germans were more likely to use SiG 33 or other lighter pieces inside ther city so the 88s were mostly used in the AA role or for AT strongpoimts outside the city itself. At urban combat ranges the 50mm PaK 38 could probably kill anything the soviets had, with the possible exception of the up armoured KV-1 (not sure there were any at stalingrad, IIRC most went to the Leningrad front), the 88 was overkill and much harder to conceal than the Pak.

 

The Luftwaffe's 9th Flak Division, commanded by Generalmajor Wolfgang Pickert, played a significant role during the Battle of Stalingrad.

In the Luftwaffe forces supporting Army Group South during 1942, the 88s were sent to both Stalingrad and the Caucasus, with lighter and medium calibre guns remaining to defend the Crimea.

At Stalingrad, the airfields ( such as Pitomnik, Gumrak and Tatsinskaya ) tended to be defended by 2cm Flak as most Red Air Force attacks were carried out at low-level.

Many of the 88s were sent forward toward Stalingrad where they augmented 6th Army's own artillery. In mid-September, the Flak guns were targeted on the Volga Ferry crossings, acting together with Stuka attacks to force the Soviets to use the crossings at night.The guns did indeed prove very useful against Soviet tank attack ; in late September when the Don Front attacked 6th Army to the North of Stalingrad the Flak 88s claimed just under 40 tanks in one day. On October 1st, Luftwaffe Wachmeister Gemued singl-handedly destroyed 21 Soviet tanks , and was immediately nominated for the Knights Cross.

October 14th saw the largest and final German assault on the City and during this action Pickert's 88s directly targeted the Dzerzhinski Tractor Factory, again operating in concert with Fliegerkorps VIII 's Stukas. Referring to this attack, General Zhukov stated that 'Those of us who had already been through a great deal will remember this enemy attack all our lives'.

I have gleaned all the above information from Joel S A Hayward's excellent 'Stopped At Stalingrad'.

 

I believe that also could be used in an indirect fire mode.

 

They could, but especially at Stalingrad where ammunition supplies were marginal, the flat-trajectory of the 88 made it most suitable for targets which were in plain sight. The 50mm PaK gun was also used in this way, much closer in to the City. Most indirect artillery work at Stalingrad was undertaken by the 10.5cm Le FH18.

 

Instead of just lobbing rounds down-range, a job that the 105mm and 150mm howitzers could do better, the 88s could be hooked up to the AA FDC and used to fire airbursts over the heads of Soviet troops.

 

The 9th Flack division was engaged in Stalingrad and at Chir river but there were more Luftwaffe FlaK units in the region where the Stalingrad battle took place: 10th FlaK division at Don Bend and Don River, 15th and 17th FlaK divisions at Kalmyck Steppe and Caucasus.


The above mentioned are only the Luftwaffe FlaK units. However, also the Wehrmacht units had their units like the FlaK-Battalion Feldherrnhalle of the 60th Infantry Division.

 

Every '88' used in the ground role was one less in the AA role.
A gun fitted with sophisticated central controls stripped and used as bog standard artillery is a criminal waste of resources.
Soviet aircraft must have had a field day when all this was going on.

 

Not so sure about that, while theoretically possible German shells were time fused so to get an airburtst you need a whole new set of tables that AFAIK were not standard equipment. The 88 could not vary the charge so would have to fire at riculously high elevation to hit a target at medioum to short range. Also while the 88/56 was not an extreme design lin this regard like all high velocity guns it woul wear the barrell pretty fast if used for continuous firing, so I don't think that use was encouraged, the Germans were not short of tubes, they werte short of ammo because of logistical constraints, so it made nore sense to bring up more 105 ammo than the less effective 88.

Dind't the Panzers and motorized units have 88s as part of the inherrent Flak batallion at the time? that would add some more guns to the LW ones and those would be more likely to be used in a ground role.

 

They came but a bit too late. 503rd Heavy Panzer Battalion had 20 Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf.E and 25 Pz.Kpfw.III Ausf.N. In November and December 1942 they engaged first in southern Russia within the Army group Don, during the Don campaign and the withdrawal from Stalingrad.


View attachment 18142

 

TOS,

I have read that dug in 88s were used both in the AT and anti-personnel role, firing air bursts, at Halfaya Pass in N. Africa. As far as wearing out the barrels in continuous fire, continuous fire is what they did in an air raid. I suspect that using air bursts against troops above ground but behind cover would be limited to just a few rounds in fire for effect. I agree that terrain could have limited this use.

 

An air raid lasts a few minutes, indirect artillery bombardment usually a lot longer guns almost never fire at full ROF for prolonged periods of time to preserve barrel life, at Halfaya it's likeky they were used for direct fire given the terrain configuration though most likely the 88 engaged the Matildas by preference while the other guns fired HE (there was an Italian 75mm battery at the pass). Setting the fuses for an air burst when you can observe the target is easier than computing flight time within some fraction of a second using indirect fire, 88 shells travelled fast even a small error coud will result in either a ground burst or a premature detonation.

Tamino are you sure about the dates for 503 arrival, many soiurces give it's arrival in Jannuary 1943 after the failure of the relief attempt.

 

You're quite right: they have arrived on 1st January and were first engaged on 4th at Stawropol.
PS: Mea Culpa! I went back to see the source of the wrong date. The reason is that I have superficially read this statement "503[SUP]rd[/SUP] being outfitted with 20 Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf.E and 25 Pz.Kpfw.III Ausf.N in November and December 1942"

They were outfitted in November and December 1943 with new tanks but have been engaged later, during the withdrawal phase.

 

There is yet another interesting episode involving the FlaK units at the Stalingrad battlefield. After 240 km advance over the steppe, on 23 December Badanov's 24th Tank Corps overran Skassirskaya and headed towards Tatsinskaya, the main Junkers base for Stalingrad. The Luftwaffe was ordered to evacuate just in case of artillery attack; they haven’t expected tanks at that region at all. All they could do was to divert seven FlaK guns towards the road, and prepare all serviceable aircraft for take-off.

Under the circumstances, the Germans had very limited choice after 19th November, even how to use their FlaK guns. In times of famine Devil feeds on flies.

 

My impression was that the following two reasons were as much or more important than preservation of barrel life:
1) Conserving ammo.
2) Decreased casualty causing efficiency.

In regards to 2. The first shells landing had a tendency to inflict the most casualties. The really long "bombardments" often amounted to not much more than harassing fire. At least during WWII and not counting some of the naval bombardments.

 

Late war Soviet style bombardments were more WW1 style as well, but even there I don't think the 76mm divisional guns fired as full ROF, ammo and barrel life are both important, a slower ROf will not overheat the barrel so it will last for a few more rounds before degrading. Note that for rolling barrages and other more "precision" work accuracy becomes critical as "shorts" will land amongst your own troops, and forcing the enemy to "stay down" duiring the attack was possibly more important than "softening him up" before it so it makes sense not to arrive at the assault with guns that are a risk to your own troops even if that means a less concentrated bombardment.

Massive bombardments are an attritional tactic, and when going for attrition conserving your resources is half of the equation.

 

In response to the Soviet mass bombardments the Germans adapted a WW1 tactic of leaving the first trench empty and then when the attackers hit the 2nd level they found the troops ready and unhit. One response by the Soviets in Bagration was to sendin a reinforced battallion as a recon first and then the bombardment would only hit those areas that resisted.

 

TOS and lwd: The established rate of fire was there so that permature barrel wear-out would be avoided. American artillery pieces (howitzers) were given a RoF that would give a barrel life of around 7,000 rounds. AAA were expected to have a shorter barrel life and so it was for the "88". That was just expected due to the high rates of fire and the higher muzzle velocities.

Interestingly, the German "88" had a barrel made in three sections. The sections were threaded and then screwed together so that the lands and grooves matched up exactly. A pretty neat piece of machining if you ask me. Originally, this was to allow the barrels to be made on smaller lathes, increasing the production of barrels. It also resulted in being able to replace the rear section (barrel weat starts just forward of the chamber) and keep the sections of the barrel that still had good rifling. It also resulted in a barrel with three different levels of steel quality, depending on which sections had the most stress.

 

When firing direct or against planes you try to get as many shells out as possible, when firing indirectly "suggested" ROF was probably a lot less. I have 15 RPM for the 88 (one round every four seconds) and I assume that to be the best achievable by a trained crew.
Any idea of what the "suggested" ROF was for indirect fire ?, they were not at Stalingrad proper but just a little later in the Mius and Chir river battles the LW field divisions used 88s as field guns to supplement the mortars and mountain guns in their arty batallion that was all they had as the Heer would't give Goering any LeFH 18 or SwFH 18, there must have been some doctrine on their usage.

I knew about the 3 sections, that was one difference between the Flak 36 the other 88/56 guns (the Flak 18 and Flak 37 had a two sections barrel), but didn't know they took streamlining down to the point of using different steel quality, if not for the huge numbers of 88s produced it would look like over-engineering, barrel change for field units was probably a rare occurrence, but for home defense guns, which may wear out in one day if involved in a major air raid, and then be "underutilized" for weeks it makes a lot of sense. Anybody knows if Flak 37 was deployed to mobile units or reserved for rear areas or even just home defense? I expect the front line units would have the FlaK 36 as IIRC the 37, beside the improved AA fire control, had no direct fire sights so was pretty useless for AT role.