This is more of a general world war 2 question rather than a specific band of brothers one. But in episode two during the invasion sequence, their planes come under heavy flak from German AA. So the sky is full of explosions. I'm jusr wondering, is that what AA shells do, explode at a certain altitude? I would've thought that the shells that they fire would've gone straight past the planes, unless of course they hit them. Can someone tell me what they actually do?
shareOriginally AA guns just fired at the targets in the vague hope of hitting one but later the Proximity Fuse was developed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze
Trust me. I know what I'm doing.
The shells did more damage with the shrapnel that the shells produced when they exploded. A close proximity hit did a lot of damage but it was hard to get. Shrapnel had a much larger radius and could take out the plane crew even if the damage to the plane wasn't that bad. But overall it was pretty inefficient and it took a lot of ordnance to bring a plane down.
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