This article discusses taking on Tigers and 88's:
http://www.daileyint.com/wwii/picwar8.htm
A fifty calibre bullet would go right through any destroyer and come out the other side. So an armor piercing 88-mm shell fuze was not likely to detonate if it hit a destroyer like the USS Edison. It could raise a little havoc on the way through.
The 88mm gun, employed in a radar-controlled battery of four, almost nailed us in September of 1944. But this day was September 9, 1943 and it was used against the Edison by Tiger tanks proceeding in column toward the sea down to the beach at Paestum, where the tank column would pivot parallel to the beach, and enfilade our assault waves coming onto the beaches. Usually, artillery shells give off a fluttering sound and one hears them moments before they hit. But the 88-mm gun had a muzzle velocity higher than the speed of sound. When you heard the shell at close range, and I heard plentyof them, it was like a whistle and it had already passed. And at the ranges we dueled with Tiger tanks at Salerno, the 88-mm trajectory was so flat that "a miss was as good as a mile." We did not really know all that then, and even if we had, it would not have made us less nervous.
http://www.daileyint.com/wwii/picwar8.htm
A fifty calibre bullet would go right through any destroyer and come out the other side. So an armor piercing 88-mm shell fuze was not likely to detonate if it hit a destroyer like the USS Edison. It could raise a little havoc on the way through.
The 88mm gun, employed in a radar-controlled battery of four, almost nailed us in September of 1944. But this day was September 9, 1943 and it was used against the Edison by Tiger tanks proceeding in column toward the sea down to the beach at Paestum, where the tank column would pivot parallel to the beach, and enfilade our assault waves coming onto the beaches. Usually, artillery shells give off a fluttering sound and one hears them moments before they hit. But the 88-mm gun had a muzzle velocity higher than the speed of sound. When you heard the shell at close range, and I heard plentyof them, it was like a whistle and it had already passed. And at the ranges we dueled with Tiger tanks at Salerno, the 88-mm trajectory was so flat that "a miss was as good as a mile." We did not really know all that then, and even if we had, it would not have made us less nervous.
Comment