Was the primary purpose of heavy AAA during WWII not to force the enemy to climb and distract his attention from his objective and force him to drop his bombs from so great a height that he will probably miss his target by a large margin.

BTW found this.

Flak - Evading anti-aircraft Fire

With the radar using the Doppler effect to determine the aircrafts speed it is very easy to see how a radar directed AAA battery could lead the bombers by enough distance to make up for the delay in the arrival of the shell so as to explode upon the arrival of the plane. Very good video.
The evasive maneuvers is another story. This basically requires some complex mathematics since the radar can not predict dramatic changes in the bombers flight pattern, but only tract them, which for the AAA battery happens after the fact. All they can do is to try and predict the evasive maneuvers mathematically and use these calculations to alter the azimuth and elevation of the AAA battery. Note this posting refers only to the radar controlled heavy AAA battery.

Originally Posted by Kesse81

Was the primary purpose of heavy AAA during WWII not to force the enemy to climb and distract his attention from his objective and force him to drop his bombs from so great a height that he will probably miss his target by a large margin.

BTW found this.

Yes that was excellent. I wish my mother was still here to see that. She was posted to an AAA battery located in various places in the South and East of England from 1942/3. She told me about all this. Some predictors were directly linked to the guns, although I think this was for shorter range units.

I'm surprised the shell only travels at 1000 ft/s though, I guess that is an average assuming high altitude targets.

Here's an interesting link regarding shooting down V1s

Originally Posted by perseus

Yes that was excellent. I wish my mother was still here to see that. She was posted to an AAA battery located in various places in the South and East of England from 1942/3. She told me about all this.

Surprised the shell only travels at 1000 ft/s though, I guess that is an average assuming high altitude.

Wow I didn't know the British women actually took had a place in defending against the Blitz.
My Great grandfather was killed by a V2, while my great uncle flew a Spitfire in the battle of Britain. He was later shot down in the Pacific theater and believe it or not was the only survivor. An experience that left him emotionally scared.

hell all, i am a new member here! enjoy my stay!

strictly speaking the Blitz finished in 41 but not all the bombing of course.

she is on this list as a predictor operator

The predictor could be classed as a mechanical computer which, with the other instruments mentioned was operated by women in order to control the guns of the heavy ack ack batteries. In this sense there is a very fine line between stating these ladies did not fire the guns and the work they actually did. To all sense and purpose, the operators of today are considered to 'press the button' even though they are doing this remotely by computer control. It was rather deceitful of the Government of World War 2 to state that women 'did not pull the trigger' when they knew jolly well that what they did was as close as you could possibly get to actually firing the guns.

http://www.atsremembered.org.uk/

You must have some tales there JOC, and you must be a bit younger than me. My Dad was in the desert army in WW2 and both my Grandfather and great Grandfather was in WW1! So I'm the first generation not required to go to war (although three out of four were volunteers).

Actually my father in law served in the American army at the very end of the European conflict. He was posted in Germany for several years after the war and said the devastation was terrible. He did give the Germans credit for being quick to rebuild.
But other than him all my relatives that served were great uncles, one under Patton, one in the RAF. Those are the 2 I remember the most, there were others. I don't want to get to far off the topic I'm sure many on the forum had relatives "alive or having since passed" that served in WW2 (actually that could be a interesting tread).
The part about an mechanical computer is interesting. Particularly since the English actually had the technological lead in radar for the most part during WW2. The velocity of the shell would defiantly have to be factored into the equation.
And since your Grandmother ran this predictor she had to be a part of the team that fired the round.

Originally Posted by JOC

Wow I didn't know the British women actually took had a place in defending against the Blitz.
My Great grandfather was killed by a V2, while my great uncle flew a Spitfire in the battle of Britain. He was later shot down in the Pacific theater and believe it or not was the only survivor. An experience that left him emotionally scared.

A couple of days ago in doing the "This day in history" research I saw a notice that the 1st mixed sex AA Battery (50/50 male/female) had been activated/deployed in the London area. Don't recall what year

Originally Posted by George

A couple of days ago in doing the "This day in history" research I saw a notice that the 1st mixed sex AA Battery (50/50 male/female) had been activated/deployed in the London area. Don't recall what year

You are correct to a point, women were not allowed to actually fire the gun for some obscure reason.

My Mother used to tell me that the American army women sent over to the UK were amazed at what the British Women were expected to do. Women also flew aircraft between manufacturer and bases. The Russians also expected a lot, putting women in the front line air squadrons and tanks, although perhaps they were desperate for personnel, and less concerned about life than gender equality!

This was probably the Germans greatest mistake, not putting women to work and supporting tasks in the military, although they relaxed this rule when it was too late.