[jvmasset]

The closest night fighter bases were Saint Dizier (I./NJG5), 75 km away and the much further located Laon/Athies (III./NJG5), Juvincourt (III./NJG4) and Florennes (I./NJG4) in Belgium, all of them more than 200 km away.
It would seem plausible that fighters from St Dizier were routinely patrolling in the area, but if the weather was this horrible this particular night, nightfighters would have been quite unusable, especially at this low an altitude.
Furthermore if the Stirling was carrying special troops it was probably flying alone, not within a bomber stream and at 2000 ft anyway very difficult to detect...

I believe it just stroke the hill in bad weather like many other bombers engaged in these highly risky missions (just out of my head I can think of at least 5 Halifaxes and 1 B-24 lost to weather conditions or danger of low flying at night in hilly/mountainous terrain for which I knew of the crash sites).

Incidentally I do not think that there was an airfield in 1944 in Neufchateau, and certainly not a nightfighter base...AFAIK the only Neufchateau airfield used by Luftwaffe was in Belgium, in 1940.

Cordially

JVM