If Wikipedia is correct, the M42 Duster disappeared from US forces in Europe during the early 1960's, for it was useless against jet planes. Yet it seems to have been common enough in some European armies in that era. So what exactly was the story?

Well, when it comes to AA the european countries always had a different concept than the USA. US had "we will own the air" while european countries added "maybe" and where concerned about stuff like helicopters (the french armed Alouettes with ATGM as early as 1956, operational use from 58 on)

Europe followed a two pronged aproach (missle and guns) resulting in systems like Rapier/Croatal/Roland in the missile and Gepard and the AMX-13 and AMX-30 AA variants in the guns section.

The Gepard was late since after the "HS30 fiasko" the germans wanted "everything perfect" and tested the next gen systems extremly well resulting in delays, retries and even resets both with the IFV (Marder 1 - the first and last prototypes have basicaly nothing in common) and AA tank (first Matador then Gepard). Hoping for "one platform" (initially IIRC the IFV one) added further delays(1)

Had the program worked faster chances are that the M42 would have left german service some years earlier.


(1) So much delays that the germans even used a second gen IFV prototype as the base for the Jagdpanzers (Gun and Missile) instead of waiting for the final IFV. Or getting M113 for the Panzergrenadiere as an interrim solution that later resulted in the cancelation of the Marder Mortar since the M106 based units where called "good enough" (and the Marder mortar would have been costly)

For what its worth the M42 didn't completely disappear from the U.S Army, it was used in Vietnam and National Guard units had them till the 80s'