I frequently Hear/Read and see in videos about how effective and awesome the 88mm was for the Germans, especially at destroying tanks. But it is (almost) to the exclusion of all the other armies guns combined. North Africa is a frequent proponent of the 88.....how well Rommel deployed them and would seduce British/USA armor into killing fields built of 88 batteries.....not just once or twice, but many times. My question is, was the German 88 better or a lot better than what the allies had.? Did the Germans have a lot more of them than the Brits and Yanks...did they use them in a lot better/smarter manner during battles.? Or is the "truth" about the 88 superiority a little like The Tiger Tank....a great weapon that got better and better with each Recounting/Retelling of the history of WW2 fighting.? Did the allies employ as many anti tank guns that were similar in performance to The 88 and in as many numbers of battles.? Was the 88 somewhat superior to the antitank guns of the allies.? Thank You
The 88mm gun was very good, and it was better than what the British could easily deploy until the 17 pounder arrived (February 1943). The British had somewhat similar AA gun which could be fired in an anti-tank role, the 3.7", but it had a large and cumbersome carriage which took a long time to set up. Organizationally it was also generally set up to defend against air attacks further back, so that also limited its use - but the carriage would have still been quite a problem. The Germans did not in fact, at least early on, have many 88mm guns in Libya, but the exact number escapes me. They got quite good at digging pits into which the gun carriage was placed/driven so that the gun was nearly flush with ground level, making it quite hard to spot. Its performance was compounded by tactical errors i.e. the British armour pursuing German armour into range of the guns. There was also a lack of coordination sometimes (I think... I may have posted this opinion before and been corrected, so forgive me if the following is in error) between British armour and the artillery that might have been used to destroy those anti-tank guns. Sometimes the error was in communication and sometimes in the battle plan. IIRC for one of the early British operations against the Germans with a bunch of Matildas near Halfaya Pass, there were supporting artillery for the Matildas, but after they provided an initial bombardment they were supposed to leave and fire on something else, so they did so, leaving the Matildas without further supporting artillery. But it wasn't always the 88mm guns doing the damage - the German 75mm guns were very good as well. There's a little bit here like the Tiger in the sense of the success of German AT guns overall being bound up in the myth of the 88mm gun as opposed to the effectiveness German anti-tank artillery overall.
Any nation's AA guns would have the same effect if used as AT weapons. The Russian, British and US standard AT guns in 1940 would have done the same damage if they had been used against tanks. The 88 was not 'special' in its performance but in its use. A case of massive overkill/sledgehammer used to crack a nut. The normal attachment of 88 Flak guns in a Panzer Division was 12.
my eyewitness reports from around my home town and a town close to the Polish border include stories of a forced emergency landings of a Lancaster aircraft as well as attacks on Allied tanks just in May 1945. I never asked the question about mobility though. Stefan.
BTW.....sorry Moderator(s). I guess i did not look hard enough at the sub-forums and you had to relocate this topic. Thank You
Also remember that there were two German 88 rounds, 88mm x 571mm and 88mm x 822mm and many different types of anti-tank, AA, tank and SPG mounts for them.
