Early anti-aircraft artillery guns used in World War I were primarily adaptations of existing medium-caliber weapons, mounted to enable fire at higher angles.

By 1915, the German military command realized that these were useless for anything beyond deterrence, even against vulnerable balloons and slow-moving aircraft.

[2] With the increase of aircraft performance, many armies developed dedicated AA guns with a high muzzle velocity – allowing the projectiles to reach greater altitudes.

The first such German gun, the Flak 16, was introduced in 1917, using the 88 mm caliber, common in the Kaiserliche Marine.

The gun had a semi-automatic Krupp horizontal sliding-wedge breech to boost its rate of fire.