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Allied and Soviet Air Forces Please use this forum to discuss the Air Forces of the Western Allies and the Soviet Union.

 
 
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Old 31st May 2005, 23:34
JoeB JoeB is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2005
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JoeB
Re: Just how good was German Flak

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon
So were Shells with proximity fuses still set to detonate at a given altitude but would overide and explode lower if they passed and aircraft.
They just had the proximity feature and a self destruct switch: a centrigually operated switch that opened a circuit when the shell started spinning at firing, charging up a capacitor, then closed when the shell's rotation speed decreased sufficiently, discharging the capacitor and detonating the shell. It was factory set according to assumed flight time before the shell got dangerously close to the ground. When VT fuzes were used around Antwerp over populated areas (usually fired out to sea defending England), the switch settings had to be changed at the factory to prevent proximity bursts against the ground when firing at the lower altitude flight profile the V1's adopted at that time. In naval use the fuzes would frequently detonate on sea return if they missed low altitude targets, before the self destruct activated.

A common USN practice was to fire mixed salvo's with some time fuzed shells, even after there were plenty of VT fuzes, to detect gross errors in the fire control solution if the time bursts were visibly far from the target.

Joe

Last edited by JoeB; 31st May 2005 at 23:37. Reason: grammar
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