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May 20, 2014

Catching Flak


Flak comes from the German word for anti-aircraft fire - Flugabwehrkanone.

As a young man I worked with a WWII vet, a tail gunner in a B-17, who was shot down on his second mission over Nazi Germany and spent 18 months in a POW camp. He didn't like catching flak.

4 comments:

Undergroundpewster said...

According to one wartime survey, "Approximately 86 percent of the casualties were hit by flak fragments. Less than 4 percent were hit by shells or shell fragments fired from enemy fighter planes."
http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/woundblstcs/chapter9.htm

sig94 said...

Pewster - I m trying to remember where I ran across this statistic that the European Theater saw a casualty rate of over one third for the USAAF bombers.

If this source is to be believed, the USAAF lost 88,119 killed/missing and 17,360 wounded during WWII.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

The USMC lost the greatest percentage of their personnel (3.66%).

Kid said...

We need Flak for libtards.

sig94 said...

Kid - that won't happen as long as the liberal media is manning the guns.