An 88mm set up to defend the Zeiss optics works is one that would not be
available to the invasion front. Multiply that by thousands of 88s and every
other caliber - these were being set up around various military targets in

A War To Be Won says there were more 88s defending the homeland air
than were holding off the Russians. If they had been moved east?

1940-42, long before the stars and bars arrived overhead. The flakhelferrinnen
did indeed include boys and women - although women usually served in other
roles and boys were physically unable to lift and load an 88mm shell, so men
were used that would otherwise be employed in the war effort elsewhere.

At the Overseas Weekly we had a motorcycle runner name Bodo who'd been
one of the flak gunners. He claimed that his sergeant? would tell
them: "If we don't shoot at them, they won't shoot at us." But then it
was impossible in Germany at that time to find anyone who'd shot at
the Americans. They'd all served on the eastern front, been PWs, or
looked the other way when the planes came over, like Bodo.


all the best -- Dan Ford
email: (put Cubdriver in subject line)

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