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Howdy, Snippy!

The night interdiction run by the USAAF and the RAF produced a lot of stories, and I have spent a little time looking for German ones. Night visibility of the ground was so bad that German trains were rarely attacked. Germany was dark from end to end, except where it was burning, of course. (The Brits often used burning cities as navigation aids.) The attempts to destroy German aircraft in the landing path were pretty successful, but navigation was mostly by radio aids and not eyeballs.

Most of the Me 262 German jet fighters killed in the air were attacked as they were attempting to land.

There were so many night interdiction aircraft landing on the German Autobahns (our youngsters patrolled the Autobahn looking for targets, flying at very low altitudes, and just started thinking, as young men would, that "I could land on that road!") that the the Germans put up log barriers every 500 feet or so, first blocking one lane, and then the other, so landing was impossible. Ground vehicles had to continuously change lanes to avoid these barriers, and of course could not use lights or they would be strafed and bombed. (I have this story from two German vets, and some years apart.) Later all the German gas was synthetic, and had to be saved for tanks and aircraft, so trucks and cars were strictly for the big Nazis, and the Autobahn became slim pickings.

The Beaufighters were pretty cool airplanes, actually. Not near as fast as Mosquito but very stout and well armed. Don't suspect they ever had self sealing tanks, though I don't know.

I like the credit given to radar. Night interdiction was hopeless without it. So was the U-boat war, since after a bit the Germans ran surfaced only at night. Even in daylight the 420 mhz surface scan radar (forget the device nomenclature) would pick out a U-boat way out of visual range from reflection from the conning tower.

Morning Iris7.

Despite enormous political and numerical difficulties, in late 1943 and early 1944 the Nachtjagd came close to the decisive defeat of Bomber Command. There ingenuity and determination despite their limitations cannot be overvalued.

The "Wild Boar" concept was created by Major Hajo Hermann in July 1943. "Wild Boars" or "Wilde Sau" was the code name for operating single engine day fighters against the bombers as they were making their bomb runs into the target and illuminated by the defense's searchlights.

While initially successful due to encountering nearly perfect circumstances, the difficulties of operating single-engined fighters without blind flying equipment at night became overwhelming, and losses in landings and accidents became prohibitive.

The "Wild Boars" were rapidly eclipsed by the "Tame Boars" or "Zahme Sau", which were twin engined night fighters that were scrambled to orbit a visual beacon as soon as the approximate course of the bomber force was known. Ground Controllers directed the "Tame Boars" into the Bomber Stream by a radio running commentary. In the final stages of interception, the air turbulence created by hundreds of aircraft warned the fighters that they were near their targets. On clear moon lit nights they could search visually for their targets, otherwise they relied upon their airborne AI Radar. By 1944 the Lichtenstien SN2 Radar, that was highly resistant to jamming by Windows was in use by the Luftwaffe.

Windows was strips of tin foil cut to the same length as the frequency of enemy Radar, and dropped from the Bomber streams by the tens of thousands, filling the enemies Radar Screens with false Radar returns.