Hello,

I have seen in some pictures that the late flak 88 gun trailers only used two tires on the boggies instead of four. Any idea how this was done? Was the inner rim on , but no tire added or was the inner rim just not used?

Thanks,
Sam

Without seeing pics, it's hard to generalize, but the FLAK 18 (the earliest model) had only two tires on the front trailer half. In fact, it's one of the easier ways to make a quick ID of a FLAK, the other being the gun was towed muzzle-forward.

Now, late in the war, I'm sure the Germans were using whatever equipment still worked or they could get parts for, so you might see a FLAK 36 or 37 being towed on the earlier trailer. There are a variety of ways to tell the later FLAK 88s, including whether the ground stakes or inboard or outboard of the cruxiform leg pads. These pads are also round for the 18 and square for the later 36 and 37 models.

Don't be fooled by the designations on the gun tubes, as you can find FLAK 36s, for example, with the earlier FLAK 18 tube (a one-piece affair, unlike the two-piece version seen on the Tamiya kit, for example).

Bill: you're right about the two wheeled trailer bogie on the Flak 18. It was called the sdAnh 201.

However, they mounted specifically to the Flak 18 carriage which was very different than the Flaks 36 and 37. The mounting points were completely different from the 18 to the 36/37. These later guns used only the SdAnh 202. I think Sam is speaking about an ersatz 202 with one set of wheels removed.

Roy, that's a good point about the incompatibility of the cruciform mounts and the various trailers (whose identification numbers I thank you for). But I also can't be sure Sam's gun is really a FLAK 36 or 37 without seeing the photo.

It is also possible some sort of field modification was made to the trailers (a long shot in my estimation, but can't rule it out).

I don't know enough about the tech specs, either, to rule out mounting a FLAK 36/37 on an 18 cruciform mount. If you were in the Wehrmacht motor pool and had a broken FLAK 18 gun and a broken FLAK 36 base, could you mix and match? I don't know the answer to that.

The key identification factors for IDing the gun in question are things like:

Asimuth sights
automatic reloading mechanism
gun tube (the FLAK 18 only took the FLAK 18 one-piece tube if I'm not mistaken)

My "hunch" is the gun is a plain, vanilla FLAK 18 mis-identified, but without seeing the photo, I'm just blowing smoke up my own #$@.

Perhaps Sam can list the reference and we can chime in. I agree w/you Bill. Without seeing it we can only speculate. On a reply on TL, Frank Forster mentions he's seen a pic of clearly an SdAnh 202 on a Flak 41 which had been modified with two wheels removed.

As for field mods cobbling of different: I'm not sure. I do know that the 8.8cm Flak at the WW2 Victory museum in Indiana has a Flak 18 carriage but Flak 37 upper parts. I don't know how it got like that however -- it's definitely a frankenstein -- whether it saw action like that or not, I don't know.

By the way Bill: Did you ever read my "identifying Flak 8.8cm guns" in a recent Boresight? If not, I'll forward it to you. I included a long list of captions errata of most known 8.8cm Flak gun books.

Sounds good to me, Roy.



Anecdotal evidence seems to show the Germans scrambling to keep whatever they had in the field working, so in theory, anything is possible. But my guiding rule is PEC: plain, everyday, common. While there might have been what ther Germans call gemixt Pickels, it's dangerous to use the exception to nullify the rule.


No, I didn't and would be thrilled to have a look at it. I will PM you with my email. My knowledge of the gun is limited to Doyle book published by Ampersand.