It was called flak and was quite effective.  The Germans also deployed air to air missiles that were basically rockets with flak warheads on them.  See the bomber guns had an effective range of 1000 yards or whatever so if you stood off 1200 yards in your ME-109 and launched rockets that blew up in 1200 yards that worked pretty well.<p>I&#x27;ve read a couple memoirs of WWII pilots, interesting stuff.  I&#x27;m pretty sure they&#x27;re all dead now, whats documented out there is all we&#x27;ll ever have.<p>As for effectiveness, well, bomber aircraft losses were tremendous until the end of the war, yet they lost the war anyway.  So its hard to say.  If you can down 10% of the B-17 per bombing run against ball bearing factories, but still lose the war, was it effective or not?  Or looking at the staggering economic and logistics costs of the air war, skipping the air war and focusing on shipping over tanks that don&#x27;t suck might have ended the war in &#x27;44 or earlier, so maybe it was ineffective.  Imagine if the winter battle of the bulge never happened because the war was already over by winter rather than lasting till spring.  Or maybe no bombing would have meant more hardware would have meant the D-day invasion getting pushed back into the sea Dunkirk II style.  Its an evenly balanced enough argument that academics will never lack for discussion topics.