Introduce myself + 88 mm Flak

[Harrie Aerts]

Hello everybody,

I'm actually new in here, so maybe it's a good idea to introduce myself first.
I'm Harrie Aerts, I live in a small town in the Netherlands. I'm 19 years old and I'm studying in Belgium at the moment.

I'm interested in all army related things for a long time already. My granddad had a few trucks of the Dutch army years ago and as a little child I played a lot on them, I guess that's why I'm so fascinated in these things.

I've spend a lot of time building all kinds of models of army vehicles as a kid, most of them aren't really beautiful but we all have to start somewhere. Meanwhile I learned to turn, mill and weld at school, and I created my own metalworking shop. Now a friend of mine challenged me to build a model of the famous German 88mm gun. Because of my failures in my previous models, I really wanted to make this project almost perfect, no matter how long it would take. So I decided to draw the whole gun on the computer so I had a very accurate drawing of each part of the gun. Most of the outside of the gun is done at the moment, but I'm drawing the gears inside of the gun now, and at this point I don't have any help from walkarounds or anything like that. I need a specialist who wants to help me, and maybe there is one around here?

So anyone who has anything that can help me, please let me know!! I'm looking mostly for information about the elevation and traverse mechanism, and the gears in this mechanism. I contacted Imperial War Museum already but didn't receive an answer. I'm drawing an early version of the Flak 18, this version has a slightly different mechanism to change the rotating speed of the gun. That's why I can't really contact other museums, most of the surviving Flak guns have the late mechanism of the 36 and 37 versions.

Thanks in advance,

Harrie

P.S. If there are things incorrect within my spelling please let me know, English is not my first language and sometimes very hard to write for me.

[Jamie Tainton]

Hi and welcome, sounds like an interesting project for sure, (maybe share some images?)
I'll take a look if I have anything to offer in help.

[Dario Risso]

Hello, Harrie, wellcome to AW. It would be interesting to see your drawings.
Please take a look at my webpage; I have some links to walkarounds in the section. Be in mind there was some different types, like flak 18, 36, 37 and 41

BEst regards from Argentina
Darío

[Harrie Aerts]

Hello,

Thanks already, I need to go to school now so I don't have really much time to watch all of the pictures, but I'll sure do as soon as I can!

For them who wanted to see my drawings, here they are (if everything turns out right??).

You can see I still have a lot of work to do, there are still a lot of "flying" parts, but someday it'll all be done











For some reasen I saw most of the pictures have a missing part at the right side, I don't know why, but when I know I'll post a better version.

Harrie

[GMARTI]

Possibly you have the zoom at 125%. Change it to 100%.

[Tim Coulson]

Welcome Harrie,

Below are some of my photos of the Flak 88 at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in the USA. I think this is a Flak 18 but I'm not 100% sure. Hope they are of help to you.













Don't worry your English is excellent. Great work so far.

Tim

[Harrie Aerts]

Thanks for the pictures, the picture of the "Lampenempfänger" is very useful This flak is actually an early Flak 36 on a Flak 18 carriage (Sonderanhänger 201, special trailer 201). There are two possibilities: The original Flak 18 barrel has been damaged and is replaced in the field by a Flak 36 barrel, OR, this is one of the first Flak 36's that left the factory and it's mounted on an early trailer that hadn't a gun already.

You can see on the pictures this is an early version of a flak, because the seet at the right side of the gun is welded to the elevation mechanism. Later types have a bolted connection. Another difference is the pointer at the elevation triangle, this one is made with two square tubes at the top side, but later types had an ajustable bolted connection.

There are a lot of other differences I didn't see at the beginning of the project, but now I do.

Harrie

Edit: maybe I can better explain everything with a picture:

Early
vs.
Later

The elevation pointer:

http://data3.primeportal.net/artillery/ ... _of_55.jpg (this is a Flak 36 which is later converted to a Flak 37)
vs
(this is a 37 with a barrel of a Flak 18)

The seet:

http://data3.primeportal.net/artillery/ ... _of_55.jpg (not very clear, but you can see the weldments at the bottom of the picture)
vs

[Jamie Tainton]

cool thanks for posting, you did see the two albums in the gallery section on 88's? Later models but maybe of use?
gallery/album.php?album_id=84
gallery/album.php?album_id=56

The cutting off off images is because you may need to make the window bigger or the image is too large- 800 pixels wide is the happy medium.

[Harrie Aerts]

[Jamie Tainton]