erprobung kommando, He111 and 88mm

[gibsonfndr]

A friend of mine, who unfortunately passed away a few years ago, was in the Luftwaffe during WW2. He told me he was part of a special unit, based in Normandy, that was suposed to try new equipments. One of them was a 88mm gun mounted on a He 111, the were sent over Great Britain to destroy the AA baloons that were making low altitude bombing impossible. He even told me about the way they could aim the gun and about some copper ring partly covered with rubber that would help keeping the gun from firing in the wrong direction as it was rotating and electrically fired.
has anyone heard of this unit ? and has anyone heard of this modified He111 ?

[Graham Boak]

I've not heard of this before.It would certainly be possible to mount an 88mm under a He.111, it was done on a Ju 88, but to do so on a moving mount would present major engineering problems with the recoil.

[gibsonfndr]

Originally Posted by Graham Boak

I've not heard of this before.It would certainly be possible to mount an 88mm under a He.111, it was done on a Ju 88, but to do so on a moving mount would present major engineering problems with the recoil.

what he said was something like "the gun was fired electrically. to keep the gun from beeing fired in evry position (some could damage the He) there was this copper ring, partly covered with rubber". of course the rubber was used as an on/off kind of switch. rubber = no firing; no rubber = firing.
this makes sense from an electrical point of view.
he also added "we were dying out of fear when flying this kind of planes" and eventually the prototype was not continued.
unfortunately he's not with us anymore to discuss this topic. Got any idea about his unit ? where was it based ? what did they actually do during the war ?