Mitraillage au sol

Strafing is the military practice of attacking ground targets from low-flying aircraft using aircraft-mounted automatic weapons. Less commonly, the term is used by extension to describe high-speed firing runs by any land or naval craft such as fast boats, using smaller-caliber weapons and targeting stationary or slowly-moving targets. The word is an adaptation of German strafen, to punish, specifically from the humorous adaptation of the German anti-British slogan Gott strafe England (May God punish England), dating back to World War I. Guns used in strafing range in caliber from machine guns, to autocannon or rotary cannon. Although ground attack using automatic weapons fire is very often accompanied with bombing or rocket fire, the term "strafing" does not specifically include the last two. The term "strafing" can cover either fixed guns, or aimable (flexible) guns. Fixed guns firing directly ahead tend to be more predominant on fixed wing aircraft, while helicopters tend to use gimballed weapons which can be fired in many different directions independent of the direction the aircraft is pointing in (in most cases, flexible guns on a fixed wing aircraft are for defense purposes only, although they can sometimes be used to fire on ground targets to limited effect). Some fixed wing aircraft, like fighter-bombers, are capable of flying either air-combat missions or ground attack missions (P-47 Thunderbolt), while others are dedicated ground-attack types (Il-2 Sturmovik). In cases where an aircraft is capable of both types of combat, when it is assigned to a ground attack role, and thus expected to be using the guns mostly for strafing, the fixed weapons are often mounted so that the convergence point is lower and at a greater range than would be used for air combat. This is helpful because it allows the pilot to aim at a target without having to dive towards the ground as steeply, decreasing the risk of collision with the ground and increasing the amount of firing time available before having to pull up, and it also increases the range from the target, helping avoid anti-aircraft fire and potential damage from exploding targets.