Do you think they could literally smell the flak?

[Blackdog_kt]

I obviously don't have personal experience of it, but it seems possible under certain conditions. If you combine the distinct smell of chemicals they used back then (like cordite) with the volume of fire that was present in certain occasions, it could create a situation where invisible chemical particles covered entire cubic miles of the sky after being dispersed by thousands of flak shells bursting in the vicinity.

Whether one could smell the flak or not in such a case would depend on how high the concentration of these chemicals was in the air at the given time.