Aces of the Reich by Mike Spick

Author:Mike Spick [Spick, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War II, Aviation, Europe, Germany
ISBN: 9781473877528
Google: IhEmDAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Frontline Books
Published: 2013-10-23T04:11:41+00:00

Radar Interpretation

Whereas a day fighter pilot could see where his target was and what it was doing, at night things were much more difficult Radar showed the sparker where the target was; he had to work out what it was doing from a succession of contacts, then steer his pilot close enough to within visual distance. Depicted is a very basic problem. In (A) the sparker gains a contact rather higher and off to starboard. He instructs his pilot to begin a gentle turn, but as the fighter banks, (B), the contact appears to be almost dead ahead but much higher. This is due to orientation of the fighter vis-a-vis its target. Only when the fighter levels out on its new course does a true relative position appear, but further contacts will make it appear to be drifting to port. And had the contact initially been on a radically different course, the problems would have been compounded. Only the most gifted sparkers could handle the mental gymnastics involved. The fuzzy spot in the centre of the radar screen indicates minimum radar range. Once this is reached, the sparkers voice goes up an octave, as the fighter is very close to an unseen target, and a midair collision is a distinct possibility. The key to night fighting was teamwork and trust!

The Himmelbett system had been tailored to the threat, which consisted of a hundred or so bombers wandering through the night sky in an uncoordinated manner. The result was that only rarely did a defended box have to deal with more than one at a time. With practice, the defenders improved. At the end of 1941, Werner Streib led the field with twenty-two night victories, closely followed by Paul Gildner (the first NCO night Experte to be awarded the Ritterkreuz) with twenty-one and Helmut Lent with twenty. British losses started to rise, reaching four percent in April 1942.

In war, nothing ever remains constant. British tactics changed on the night of 30 May, when almost a thousand bombers raided Cologne. Tightly spaced in time and distance, they surged through the Himmelbett belt on a narrow front. The defending fighters in the few boxes they flew through were swamped, while the rest were left patrolling impotently far from the action.

At a stroke, the effectiveness of the Himmelbett system had been reduced by seventy-five to eighty per cent. While a more flexible free-hunting defence was needed, this would produce a scenario in which twin-engined night-fighters roamed freely amid a bomber stream which was still largely composed of twin-engined Wellingtons. Haunted by the thought of own goals, which on at least two occasions had occurred over England, Kammhuber could not approve this. Instead, he reinforced the Himmelbett system, deepening it with more boxes and patrolling each box with two fighters instead of one. This was a waste of scarce resources.

By now, only two-thirds of the Nachtjagdwaffe consisted of Bf 110s. More than a quarter were Dornier Do 215s and 217s, while nearly ten per cent were Junkers Ju 88s.

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