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The FReeper Foxhole Reviews USAAF Night Fighters at War ~ Part 1 of 3 - Jan. 16, 2004
http://www.usaaf.net/ww2/night/index.htm ^ | Stephen L. McFarland

Posted on 01/16/2004 4:07:06 AM PST by snippy_about_it



Lord,

Keep our Troops forever in Your care

Give them victory over the enemy...

Grant them a safe and swift return...

Bless those who mourn the lost.
.

FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer
for all those serving their country at this time.



...................................................................................... ...........................................

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Conquering the Night - Part One



Nightfighters at War

"Cut short the night; use some of it for the day’s business." -Seneca


The United States never wanted for recruits in what was, from start to finish, an all-volunteer night fighting force.

For combatants, a constant in warfare through the ages has been the sanctuary of night, a refuge from the terror of the day’s armed struggle. On the other hand, darkness has offered protection for operations made too dangerous by daylight. Combat has also extended into the twilight as day has seemed to provide too little time for the destruction demanded in modern mass warfare.

In World War II the United States Army Air Forces (AAF) flew nighttime missions to counter enemy activities under cover of darkness. Allied air forces had established air superiority over the battlefield and behind their own lines, and so Axis air forces had to exploit the night’s protection for their attacks on Allied installations. AAF night fighters sought to deny the enemy use of the night for these attacks. Also, by 1944 Allied daylight air superiority made Axis forces maneuver and resupply at night, by air, land, and sea. U.S. night fighters sought to disrupt these activities as an extension of daylight interdiction and harassment efforts. The AAF would seek to deny the enemy the night, while capitalizing on the night in support of daylight operations.

Airmen Claim the Night Skies


The first true night fighter aircraft were British, struggling to hunt down German Zeppelins lurking in the night skies over England in 1915. These slow behemoths were sitting ducks in daylight, so they were used primarily after dark. For six months British airmen struggled to find the Zeppelins and shoot them down. This effort exposed several problems: once notified, how to ascend and reach the enemy’s altitude before he flew out of range; how to find the enemy in a darkened sky; and, finally, how to knock him down. Technology soon provided answers, allowing R. A. J. Warneford to use aerial bombs to claim the first Zeppelin in June 1915. British night defenses exacted an increasing toll, claiming 79 of the 123 airships Germany built for the war.



The enemy then switched from Zeppelins to a bomber airplane offensive against England. At first striking by day, German Gothas and Giants soon sought the night’s protection from British defenses. What airmen lost in bombing accuracy by flying at night they more than made up in safety against enemy defenses. The night assault caught the public’s imagination, but caused no serious damage. British planes performed well against German bombers protected by machine guns and the dark; in fact, the night itself proved the greater danger. In nineteen night raids, the defense, guided by radio intercepts, ground observers, searchlights, and blind luck, claimed twenty-four invading bombers, while thirty-six others were destroyed in unrelated crashes.



Together, German bombers and airships claimed about 1,400 dead on the ground and nearly 3,400 injured, enough to threaten the British sense of pride and breach the insular protection previously afforded by the English Channel. Though the German aerial offensive hardly threatened the British war effort, it did force a diversion of eight hundred British fighters from the Western Front, where they were sorely needed. Though primitive, this first “Battle of Britain” set the stage for the aerial night fighting in the next war.



Conquering the Night through Research


Because of inadequate funding and official disinterest, night fighting became the responsibility of regular U.S. tactical squadrons during the interwar years. These units had enough problems preparing for day war, much less confronting the obstacles of darkness. Yet, despite minimal budgets, pioneering airmen still strove to conquer the night by developing blind-flying techniques, primarily at the Army Air Service’s Engineering Division at McCook Field, and later at the Army Air Corps’ Materiel Division at Wright Field, both near Dayton, Ohio.

The research of 1st Lts. Muir S. Fairchild and Clayton Bissell in the 1920s showed that night operations required a specifically designed aircraft with great speed and maneuverability and an unobstructed view for the pilot. Test flights revealed that pilots became disoriented when they lost sight of the ground and the horizon. Human senses contradicted aircraft instruments, while vertigo magnified a pilot’s confusion. The biggest problems were how to land and navigate at night. U.S. airmen tested electric landing lights and flares without success, though the tests did reveal the need for illuminated instruments and flame dampers for engine exhausts.

In 1928 Edwin Link’s ground trainer made practicing for night missions safer and less expensive, but did not solve the basic problem of flying into inky blackness. Intrepid airmen such as 1st Lts. James Doolittle and Albert Hegenberger attacked the problem of blind takeoffs and landings in what the New York Times called the “greatest single step forward in [aerial] safety.” Newly invented illuminated instruments-a specially designed artificial horizon, directional gyroscope, turn indicator, radio beacon, and barometric altimeter allowed Doolittle and Hegenberger to make blind flights from 1929 to 1932 that opened the night skies to military operations.


Jimmy Doolittle


At the end of this critical period, 1st Lt. Carl Crane published the first U.S. treatise on night flying, Blind Flying in Theory and Practice (1932). Soon the homing beacon indicator and radio compass made possible night navigation, and flying the air mail across the country during the 1930s gave Army airmen practical experience in flying at night. Late in the decade, U.S. bomber squadrons were practicing occasional night missions, including mock interceptions in which fighter (pursuit) aircraft were guided by searchlights on the ground.

Obvious to aviators was the seemingly insurmountable obstacle of finding another airplane in the vast emptiness of the night sky. If the opposing crew took basic precautions to “black-out” their aircraft, the optimal range of an intercepting pilot’s vision declined to 750 feet or less, though on especially clear nights with strong moonlight three-mile visibility was possible.



Night fighters needed assistance from the ground to bring them within visual range of their targets. Until 1938 this help came from searchlight crews lucky enough to illuminate an intruding aircraft and from acoustical locators using conical horns to focus incoming sound. There were also vain attempts to detect radio waves emitted by the spark plugs of aircraft engines or infrared radiation from engine exhaust gases. Tests at Fort MacArthur, California, in 1937 and in Hawaii in 1940 proved the futility of such efforts.

All this development seemed to make no difference. A new generation of bombers such as the Martin B-10 could fly higher, faster, and farther than any fighter in the world, convincing a whole generation of Americans to agree with erstwhile British prime minister Stanley Baldwin that “the bomber will always get through,” whether day or night. On its test flight the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress set a world record, flying 2,270 nonstop miles at 252 miles per hour. Many airmen believed fighter aircraft could never intercept and shoot down such bombers in broad daylight, let alone at night. Since bombers could strike by day without peril, there would be no need for night missions and no need for a night-fighting capability. Only when the Second World War revealed these new bombers to be vulnerable to attack during the day and unable to “always get through” did the need for night fighters again become clear.



In the United States, air doctrine reinforced a disregard for night operations. At the Air Corps Tactical School, first at Langley Field, Virginia, and then at Maxwell Field, Alabama, the faculty developed daylight high altitude precision strategic bombing and advocated this concept as the offensive doctrine of the U.S. Army Air Corps. Large fleets of fast, well armed bombers would attack key chokepoints in an enemy’s industrial fabric by day-the most rapid, efficient, and least bloody means for defeating the enemies of the United States.

The revolution in bomber technology represented by the four-engine B-17 made axiomatic the belief that no defenses could stop such an attack. Brig. Gen. Oscar Westover expressed the conviction of most U.S. airmen when he declared that “no known agency can frustrate the accomplishment of a bombardment mission.” Norden and Sperry optical bombsights could locate precise industrial targets from four or five miles up under the proper conditions, but only during the day and in the absence of high winds and excessive cloud cover.

This strategic bombing doctrine and its advocates overwhelmed any airmen still concerned with defense and fighter operations, and encouraged the building of an air force committed to daylight bombing operations. Thus, the Materiel Division redirected its research in blind and night flying to the problems of aiming bombs through overcast. Defensive strategies reflected this emphasis on daylight precision bombing, and more defensive- minded airmen began to focus on the problems of daylight interception. Even the conflicts of the interwar period, including the Spanish Civil War, gave U.S. airmen no persuasive reasons to alter their thinking.




FReeper Foxhole Armed Services Links




TOPICS: VetsCoR
KEYWORDS: armyairforces; freeperfoxhole; nightfighters; samsdayoff; usaaf; veterans
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To: PhilDragoo
Morning Phil Dragoo.

Thanks for the story on Bowen and the Tizard Mission.
161 posted on 01/17/2004 7:37:49 AM PST by SAMWolf (I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
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To: GATOR NAVY
Morning Gator Navy.

I've read some about Navy night fighters in the Pacific but hadn't ever heard of anything from Europe about that.

Yeah, I haven't seen much mention of American night fighters in Europe either. I was surprised to find out about the US too because you almost always hear about the Brit and Germans nightfighteres.

162 posted on 01/17/2004 7:40:28 AM PST by SAMWolf (I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
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To: U S Army EOD
ROTFL!!!
163 posted on 01/17/2004 7:40:53 AM PST by SAMWolf (I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
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To: GATOR NAVY
Thanks Gator Navy. I haven't seen too many pictures of the two seater P-38.
164 posted on 01/17/2004 7:41:53 AM PST by SAMWolf (I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
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To: U S Army EOD
LOL! A publicity stunt gone wrong?
165 posted on 01/17/2004 7:43:03 AM PST by SAMWolf (I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
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To: GATOR NAVY
I think I 'd have a heart attack flying in on of those pods.
166 posted on 01/17/2004 7:43:56 AM PST by SAMWolf (I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
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To: PAR35

North American P-82 "Twin Mustang" at Muroc Army Air Base, California. Official flight view of the "Twin Mustang", the Army Air Forces long-range fighter. Powered by two 12-cylinder Allison V-1710 engines, the P-82 is capable of a top speed of over 475 miles per hour. Rate of climb for the aircraft is over 5000 feet a minute. Standard armament is six .50 caliber machine guns, but the P-82 can also carry eight additional guns in a special center nacelle.

167 posted on 01/17/2004 7:46:24 AM PST by SAMWolf (I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
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To: U S Army EOD
I've seen both flicks and although I consider them sort of "chick flicks" I liked them, besides the flying scenes are worth it.
168 posted on 01/17/2004 7:51:06 AM PST by SAMWolf (I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
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To: Iris7
Morning Iris7, thanks for all the additional info on the radar and the engines. Snippy shouwed me the info she had on the development of nightfighter radar, she's right, she could make 3 threads out of it.
169 posted on 01/17/2004 7:53:08 AM PST by SAMWolf (I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
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To: SAMWolf
Especially after you notice the pilot bail out.
170 posted on 01/17/2004 11:11:33 AM PST by U S Army EOD (Volunteer for EOD and you will never have to worry about getting wounded.)
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To: Iris7; snippy_about_it; SAMWolf

H2S - A self-contained scanning radar. It consisted of three parts, a generator driven by the starboard outer engine, a rotating radar emitting and receiving scanner mounted in a pod under the aircraft, and a Plan Position Indicator, a cathode ray tube, in front of the Observer. The scanner rotated once per second, and reflected from buildings, etc. directly below and forward of the aircraft. The scan remained on the screen long enough to be updated by the next rotation. No reflection was received over water, but the coastline could be identified, as could reflections from towns and villages along the route. From these, a bearing and distance could be calculated and plotted, and this would be passed to the Plotter for his use in determining course, wind velocity and ground speed, which info he would pass up to the pilot with any changes required to keep us on track.

~~~

"H2S" was an downwards pointing radar scanner in the rear belly of the aircraft; a large Perspex black-painted blister contained the rotating scanner. It gave a reasonable "picture" of the ground below; water, buildings and roads showed up clearly. It could not be jammed, but specially-equipped Luftwaffe night-fighters could home in on any aircraft using it. Consequently it was only used by a bomber for very short periods. RAF intruders (counter-night-fighters) homed in on Luftwaffe aircraft using airborne radar, and shot them down, often over their own bases.

~~~

By this time, all the NF.IIs had been converted into NF.XIIs and NF.XVIIs. NF.IIs had been performing night intruder sorties over Occupied Europe since mid-1943 to help Bomber Command deal with German night fighters. The British had decided that the Germans had little to learn from the old AI.V longwave radar, but worries that the Germans might learn the secrets of centimetric radar kept the NF.XII and later night-fighter marks out of enemy airspace until May 1944.

In fact, the Germans had pulled an H2S centimetric bombing radar out of the wreck of a British bomber over a year earlier and the secret was pretty much out of the bag anyway. It did the Germans little good, as they never managed to put a centimetric radar into large-scale service, though they did build a device named "Naxos" that could home in on centimetric emissions.

~~~

In February 1943, a Stirling bomber with the H2S radar was shot down near Rotterdam and the radar was found by the Germans. The Germans tested this radar.

~~~

A Stirling fitted with H2S was shot down near Rotterdam on Feburary 2, the H2S were retrived by the Germans. But the German Scientists were never able to make a receiver in 2-3 months, as suggested by Watson-Watt. It was 8 months’ time before a Naxos-U receiver was made against ASV III systems, thanks to the huge gap in technology between the British and the German.

Alan Blumlein was head of the EMI team which was responsible for developing electronic circuitry for the H2S radar programme. It was while working on H2S that Blumlein and several of his colleagues were killed during a demonstration flight in a Halifax bomber.

Despite the loss of Alan Blumlein and other key members of the H2S development team, the project was completed. H2S went on to become one of the most important radar developments of the Second World War, allowing accurate bombing of enemy targets with a precision never before achievable.

171 posted on 01/17/2004 7:05:30 PM PST by PhilDragoo (Hitlery: das Butch von Buchenvald)
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To: U S Army EOD
LOL! I sure hope the pilots never mistook them for drop tanks or a bomb loadout
172 posted on 01/17/2004 7:20:43 PM PST by SAMWolf (I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
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To: PhilDragoo
Your Beaufighter and H2S pieces are not only interesting but have links I am systematically searching. The Internet has come a very long way in the last two years!

Most of my early effort was spent in libraries and specialty bookstores, and such a richness of aviation materials I have never experienced.

The land war materials are thinner than the aircraft, though, and really very poor before the 1861-65 war. Naval war materials are too skimpy even as recently as 1798-1812, no real Mahan related materials and their derivatives, for example. People sure like their photos!

There are excellent Great Patriotic War materials in English at Russian web sites. One has a history of the theory associated with armor piercing projectile terminal action, very useful. I'll go dig it up if anyone is interested, but, you know, my interests are eccentric (just ask my wife!) and don't think my interest in such thing is widely shared, hey!

Came across a magazine article about Kursk, the Pokrovka area in particular. Manstein very nearly destroyed Vatutin there in a remarkable Panzer battle nearly unknown by historians. The US Army classified materials on this subject were just released in 1998. So much good material, only one lifetime, but I am going to make 101 years old, and get reasonably knowledgeable in my areas of interest!!
173 posted on 01/18/2004 3:12:34 AM PST by Iris7 ("Duty, Honor, Country". The first of these is Duty, and is known only through His Grace)
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To: Iris7
The story of Bletchley Park and the enigma is amazing. I got to see an enigma on display at the Imperial War Museum. The impact of that little box on the outcome of the war was incredible. There were also some interesting eccentrics who worked there. I read a book that told the story a few years ago, I think it was just called "Bletchley Park."

The impact of the sub hunting radar was immediately felt. Tonnage losses reversed their trend and began trending downward right when the radar was deployed.

174 posted on 01/19/2004 2:22:39 PM PST by colorado tanker ("There are but two parties now, Traitors and Patriots")
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To: PhilDragoo
Thanks for the additional detail, Phil. The fact that the Brits gave us their most closely guarded secrets about radar underscores the extraordinary nature of the Anglo-American alliance.
175 posted on 01/19/2004 2:29:39 PM PST by colorado tanker ("There are but two parties now, Traitors and Patriots")
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