Anti-aircraft warfare Facts for Kids

American soldiers with an anti-aircraft gun in Algeria in 1943

Anti-aircraft warfare, or air defence, is any way of fighting military aircraft in combat from the ground. Different guns and cannons have been used for this since the first military aircraft were used in World War I. They have become more powerful over the years. After World War II, guided missiles began to be used too, like the "surface-to-air missile", and today both are used to fight against aircraft.

Nicknames for anti-aircraft guns include AAA or triple-A, an abbreviation for anti-aircraft artillery, and flak or flack (from the German Flugabwehrkanone, aircraft defence cannon). An anti-aircraft missile is another name for a surface-to-air missile, also said SAM for short.

Images for kids

1909 vintage Krupp 9-pounder anti-aircraft gun
A Canadian anti-aircraft unit of 1918 "taking post"
A French anti-aircraft motor battery (motorized AAA battery) that brought down a Zeppelin near Paris. From the journal Horseless Age, 1916.
A Maxim anti-aircraft machine gun in the anti-aircraft museum in Finland, 2006
A No.1 Mark III Predictor that was used with the QF 3.7-inch AA gun
Shooting with anti-aircraft gun in Sweden 1934
German 88 mm flak gun in action against Allied bombers.
German soldier manning a MG34 anti-aircraft gun in WW2
A USAAF B-24 hit by flak over Italy, 10 April 1945.
British QF 3.7-inch gun in London in 1939.
US Coast Guardsmen in the South Pacific man a 20 mm anti-aircraft cannon.
One of six flak towers built during World War II in Vienna.
A British North Sea World War II Maunsell Fort.
A USAAF B-24 bomber emerges from a cloud of flak with its no. 2 engine smoking.
Flak in the Balkans, 1942 (drawing by Helmuth Ellgaard).
A 1970s-era Talos anti-aircraft missile, fired from a cruiser
A three-person JASDF fireteam practices using a rocket target with a training variant of a Type 91 Kai MANPADS during an exercise at Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska as part of Red Flag – Alaska.
A Gepard in motion at the 2015 Military Day in Uffenheim. The Gepard is an autonomous all-weather-capable German self-propelled anti-aircraft gun.
Soviet 85mm anti-aircraft guns deployed in the neighborhood of St Isaac's Cathedral during the Siege of Leningrad (formerly Petrograd, now called St. Petersburg, ) in 1941.
The Royal Navy's Type 45 destroyers are advanced air defence ships
Soviet/Russian AK-630 CIWS (close-in weapon system)
Layered air defence missile launchers and radars of Dutch Armed Forces in 2017.
A RIM-67 surface to air missile intercepts a Firebee drone at White Sands, 1980.
A USAF F-22A Raptor firing an AIM-120 air to air missile.
The Russian Pantsir-S1 can engage targets while moving, thus achieving high survivability.
AGM-88 and AIM-9 on a Luftwaffe Tornado.
Ballonabwehrkanone by Krupp
Ballonabwehrkanone by Krupp
Ballonabwehrkanone on the Prussian corvette Nymphe 1872.
20 mm Becker-Oerlikon Model 1917 AA-Gun

Anti-aircraft warfare facts for kids

Images for kids

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