Light and medium AA guns useless angainst planes?

Hi!

In the rules and the reference sheet only very light guns are mentioned for anti-air defence.

What about light and medium guns like the 88mmL56 and the british 3,7" AA ?

Cheers

Wellington

Based on historical precedent, the 88mm Flak18/36/41 being designed to work against medium to high-altitude level bombers, I'd suspect they were too cumbersome to be used effectively against low-level attacks which is essentially what the Battlegroup aircraft rules portray. I cannot recall reading about them effectively engaging low-level ground attack planes, but I'm not positive that it wasn't the case, and light level bombers e.g. the JU-88 might be engaged thusly given the time to switch from an AT role, which is what they are assigned to if they are made available as (improvised) AT guns in the army list in question.

For this battlefield AA role, on would use small, rapid-fire weapons up to 37mm, possibly 50mm calibre, which can be trained quickly on a fast-moving target moving at a deflection angle, which are covered in variety in the specialist support sections, mostly.

Medium & heavy AA guns are out of the scope of these rules.
They have no value vs low level flying aircraft.

They are not able to engage fast, low flying aircraft as they neither the sights nor ammunition to do so. The guns fired time fused airburst shells at a predicted target course which was sent by a battery fire direction unit: basically shooting at the bit of sky where they hoped the bomber(s) would be when the shells arrived. Tracking high speed, low altitude (below 5000 feet) just wasn't possible, let alone hitting anything. Also, banging off heavy airburst shells directly over the heads of your own troops isn't going to win you many friends among the ground pounders.

German divisional flak batteries had organic platoons of 20mm and 37mm light flak cannon with them to protect the 88's from low level attack