The Peenemunde Raid by Martin Middlebrook

Author:Martin Middlebrook
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penn & Sword Books
Published: 2006-02-15T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

The Air Battle

Earlier chapters have described how the first two waves of bombers over Peenemünde were very little troubled by German fighter action. It is true that two Halifaxes of the first wave reported attacks by night fighters in the target area, and other crews said they witnessed a small number of further combats or heard ‘excitable enemy R/T’. But the two Halifaxes evaded the attacks successfully, and at least two of the further ‘combats’ were actually nervous Halifax gunners firing at each other. In one such incident, crews of 51 and 77 Squadrons opened fire on each other; in subsequent reports each accused the other of firing first. No harm was done. In the second incident, a 76 Squadron aircraft received a burst of fire in the nose from a Halifax ahead, and Sergeant K. R. Parry, the navigator, received a serious bullet wound in the arm. The ‘attacker’ was later identified as an experienced crew from 158 Squadron.

There were virtually no German fighters over Peenemünde during the first thirty minutes of the raid, despite the fact that there was a night-fighter airfield at Greifswald only eighteen miles away. It is possible that a few of the Greifewald aircraft – from the 4th and 9th Staffels of NJG5 – were patrolling local boxes; if so, they had little success. NJG5 was not an experienced Geschwader; it was the first night of action for the 9th Staffel. One German report says that these aircraft were looking for the bombers at the R.A.F.’s normal operational height of 18,000 to 20,000 feet, when they were in fact flying at less than half that height. Most of the local fighters had been at Berlin.

The final German instruction directing all fighters on the Wild Boar operation to go to Berlin was issued at 11.35 p.m., just before the last of the diversionary force of Mosquitoes left the city. There was no further development for thirty-five minutes. Some of the Berlin Flak continued to fire, to a restricted altitude, and the night fighters went on with their monotonous circling, waiting to pounce on the main bomber force whose flight over the Baltic was being tracked by the German control organization. Many of the fighter crews became anxious: the fuel tanks of some would soon be empty, and a few of the old hands began to think that the small number of Target Indicators and bombs, which is all they had yet seen of the R.A.F. over Berlin, bore the hallmark of a decoy operation. The suspicion began to dawn in some minds that the Luftwaffe had been comprehensively tricked, and that the main attack would develop elsewhere. Then, at ten minutes past midnight, new R.A.F.-type markers had been seen cascading, far away to the north but still visible in the clear conditions of that night.

Before proceeding, comment should be made upon certain aspects of the Luftwaffe’s prolonged presence over Berlin.

Over Berlin there was chaos, terrible and complete: the ill-trained day fighters were making daring attacks on every twin-ruddered aircraft in sight.

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