Schräge Musik

Common card · No. 354751

Schräge Musik (German pronunciation: [ˈʃʁɛːgə muˈziːk]) was a common name for the fitting of an upward-firing autocannon or machine gun, to an interceptor aircraft, such as a night fighter. The term was introduced by the Luftwaffe during World War II. "Schräge Musik" was previously a German colloquialism, meaning music that featured an unusual tuning and/or time signature (e.g., jazz). The standard usage of the adjective schräg is often translated as "slanting" or "oblique", but its slang usage is often translated as "weird" or "strange". The first such systems were developed (though not widely employed) in World War I as anti-Zeppelin defenses by the French and British, in an era when fighters struggled to match the altitude capacity of the German airships and were forced to devise means to attack from below. The later resurrection of the concept by the Germans was inspired by observed weaknesses in the standard British night bomber aircraft of the WW2 era (the Avro Lancaster and Handley...

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