[SES]

Firstly, SES, thanks for your feedback on the Air Ministry report. As mentioned previously, such reports are the best estimate of what Air Ministry Intelligence thought was going on and you have highlighted perfectly the pitfalls of using such material - it can be used as a starting point but all such information should be checked and validated against another independant source.

How truly spoken. I was trying to make this point in another thread, but it got lost in personal quarrels. “These accounts cannot be trusted without cross reference to original German documents on the same subject”. http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showthread.php?t=1874&page=2&pp=10



Anoher such example are the Operational Research Section estimates of cause of loss for missing Bomber Command aircraft on night raids (as contained in the ORS Interception Tactics Reports and Final Reports of Night Raids). Of course, these are based on reports by returning crews but even in March 1945, for example, 30-50% of losses at night are still attributed to flak. IMHO, this figure includes attacks by night fighters from below using dim tracer (and thus being described as light flak by returning crews).

Yes a very odd conclusion. How on earth could anybody believe that 20 mm Flak could make it all the way to 20.000 ft AND be effective? But both parties did. During allied raids the light Flak was firing madly and I guess ineffectively, and allied crews concluded that 20 mm holes had been made by Flak.

However, some clarifying points:

The intrepretation by ADI of the captured Duisburg flak map was that it had the potential Oboe course lines marked on it, based on the positions of the Oboe ground stations. It was assumed that to correctly predict the course of an Oboe-equipped aircraft, the broadcasting stations being used would have to be known in order to know which course lines were being used. It was further assumed that this technique could be more accurate than straight plotting by interrogation. I am not saying this is neccessarily a correct assumption but only what the report is saying.

The Naxburg was very accurate, 1 degree in azimuth and elevation is the quoted figure, but the true give away was the Morse signals exchanged between the ground station and the aircraft.



With regards to the late war H2S usage, the operational orders and Interception Tactics reports that I have for Jan-Mar 45 make it clear that signals silence was imposed up to the frontier so that H2S etc was only used in enemy territory.

When doing shallow penetrations, the Stream was over newly liberated territory most of the way, here GEE and radio beacons could be used for navigation. For deeper penetrations H2S was used over enemy territory.

Signal silence may have been imposed by the higher-ups, but each crew had their personal opinion and it seems to me that they exercised that. A grievous example was the use of IFF. Early on a superstition spread among bomber crews that the IFF had some sort of interfering effect on the Würzburg used for directing Flak. So the crews left it on and the sets were even modified with a “J”-switch in order for the equipment to transpond even if it was not interrogated. This led to the German development of the Freya Flamme, which could receive the transponded signal and thus track a/c’s utilizing IFF.

I June RAFBC conducted an evaluation of the Luftwaffe Control and Reporting organization (Exercise POST MORTEM). The system was intact in Denmark and all the personnel had been retained with this exercise in mind. The evaluation consisted of a number of raids being flown by about 200 a/c with or without ECM support. “In all exercises except (1), (11) and (12) radio silence is to be imposed i.a.w. normal BC practice” (quote from OPORD). In spite of this IFF and H2S was intercepted and exploited by the German organization on almost all the exercises. Old habits die very hard indeed.



In March 1945, for example, the PFF was generally NOT laying ground markers (my understanding is that the route markers were Skymarkers) for turning points (and I have confirmed this with ex-aircrews) and the radar signals ban equally applied to them. Of course, individual crews did break the rules and thus gave the Luftwaffe the opportunity to detect signals. In the main, many bomber streams, based on W/T sigint, were not clearly plotted early, or at least not until after they had passed through the mandrel screen and when the usual tactics of ,firstly, sending in a shallow penetrating force, followed by a deeper penetration force, both via France and/or Belguim, the latter force was usually not heard to be plotted until well over the frontier. The trend that followed is that if the initial penetration was shallow (i.e. to the Ruhr), losses where generally light as the night fighters could not get into position to intercept in time but when the penetration was deep, or took a deeper route, the first bomber stream often suffered heavy losses while the later stream had a comparitively easier time of it.

I agree completely with this assessment.



IMHO, some of the successful inflitrations of night fighters into the bomber stream in March 1945, owed just as much to fortuitous initial positioning of n/fs around beacons and/or correct analysis of intentions (based on repeated operational patterns of Bomber Command) as to early and clear detection of the bomber stream route.

And you cannot argue with success. If in golf you do a “worm-burner” of 125 yards it’s actually immaterial how the ball got there. You are 125 yards closer to the pole (almost).

If you are prepared to wait for the publication of Dr. Theo Boiten's 'Nachtjagd War Diaries', late next year, you will find some quite detailed descriptions of the course of some of these nightly air battles, including details of the moves by the fighter controllers.

I will look forward to that with great expectations.
bregds
SES