Flak too ineffective?

[41Sqn_Stormcrow]

My impression is that currently the flak is far to imprecise and most of the times miles off. Anyhow very ineffective imho. It currently seems just to be spay and pray as if the gunners even did not try to do some aiming and following of the enemy plane. They just carpet (in a very spread manner) the area somewhere around the plane but not really aimed. Absolutely no danger.

I think it should be a good deal better. I would like to have the thrill of flak when closing in on an enemy airbase or an important and heavily defended target.

Not good quality but at least some images from the time period of BOB.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx5VTJhmq5I

An interesting (and quite dramatic) clip from the battle of Okinawa. It is for sure lot later in the war than Bob but it shows quite nice the AA of a battle ship.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcIAgtmrDyk

[Strike]

Actually, I hope they combine the flak as an Anti-Air script together with spotters and rangefinding devices to improve accuracy, where the loss of the rangefinder would make the flak as accurate as they are at the time being.

[JG14_Jagr]

Flak at medium levles didn't really get nasty until it was radar directed.. If you have concentrated guns linked together to fire a pattern and can range and track well it can be really effective..

In 1945 the 90mm guns on the English coast were nailing Buzz Bombs like the were skeet at a range.. one volley...two volley...boom.. but that is several years away from this time period...

[AnarchyZG]

Interesting, in 1st clip 2:21 that actually looks like a Spitfire

[Buzpilot]

Actually, I hope they combine the flak as an Anti-Air script together with spotters and rangefinding devices to improve accuracy, where the loss of the rangefinder would make the flak as accurate as they are at the time being.

I think they already do.
Try this testfile at different times, at night they are terrible shooters.

[unreasonable]

If any changes are made to this I hope it is through some scaleablity in the mission builders rather than an overall "hidden" variable like in IL2 where flak was absurdly overmodelled.

Until someone does some empirical tests on the effectiveness of CoD's flak I would hestitate to judge - early war AA defenses were rather ineffective, eg:

"In Dec alone (1940) German flak forces accounted for 31 aircraft destroyed, at an average expenditure of 7,058 heavy flak rounds and 20,604 light flak rounds per aircraft". (source "Flak: German anti-aircraft defenses, 1914-1945" E.B. Westermann a book I recommend highly to anyone interested in the subject).

This period is one of no ground fighting (like the BoB) - so reasonably representative of what the BoB AA might have achieved against high level raids. Obviously low level ground attacks against heavily defended point targets like the Sedan bridgehead were much more dangerous than attacking RAF bases. While the BoB raids were in daylight and many RAF raids at night, the British AA was technically behind the Germans at this stage of the war, so the results are probably similar.

None of this is meant to underestimate how frightening it must have been to bomb a target with heavy AA defenses, especially when you had to do it over and over again.

[Bobb4]

I have flown countless online maps and I can honestly say i have only ever been hit by flak once, a bofors somthing or other caused a minor leak on my 110. :confused:
Not sure if that was luck or aimed. I know from experience in il2 that a lot of flak can be very resource hungry (server/bandwidth)
My guess is it may have been dialed down by the developers in a hurry to get the game out the door.
Expect it to hit you right between the eyes in a patch or two's time :grin: