Post Description

Following Heiner Duske's release to me of the four sets of photographs and drawings of the FlaK weapons I began my enquiries to research these most unusual weapons. I returned to my brief description in Waffen Revue from 1980, the source of these comments was the Allies inventory of German weapons used in the Second World War and prepared in 1945 (Verzeichnis der bis 1945 cntwickelten und eingefiihrten Waffen). However this is a far from complete document. It seems almost beyond belief that the Western Allied Intelligence Services should have completely missed these weapons at the end of the war in 1945. I initially made extensive enquiries to public archives, production companies, etc.,all expressed extreme scepticism about whether these weapons ever existed until shown the photographs. All enquiries were to no avail and therefore I began to investigate my own archives. I have nearly one million documents on micro film, but not specifically referenced. Toward the war's end a great deal of effort was expended on experimental weapons, mostly abortive and I mistakenly came to believe that these were late war prototypes.