January 22/23rd 1945 Jet activity?

[RodM]

my own conclusion is the "jet night fighter scare" (my words) in Bomber Command that started in early November 1944 likely originated with the Luftwaffe employing ground-to-air (and possibly air-to-air) signal rockets to visually communicate the position of the bomber stream. This system was introduced to negate the effectiveness of Allied jamming of Luftwaffe air-to-ground communications. The majority of the jet sightings/encounters during the "November scare" (my term, not Bomber Command's, and relating to night raids between 1 and 5 November 1944) occurred roughly within an area bounded by Tiel (Netherlands), Dortmund, and Namur (Belgium). On one particular raid on 4-5 November, Bomber crews also reported numerous jet sightings/encounters over the Netherlands and western Germany between Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Osnabrück.

The dozens of reported nighttime sightings, air combats and aerial victory claims against jet- and rocket-propelled aircraft between 1 and 5 November 1944, caused Bomber Command Headquarters to take notice and they investigated. Their conclusion was that the crews were witnessing phenomena other that actual piloted jet- and/or rocket-propelled aircraft and this remained their position to the end of the war. The 86 nighttime air combat claims against jet/rocket aircraft I mentioned in an earlier post were never recognised by Bomber Command Headquarters and are not included in that Command's official figures.

This then was the genesis of the trend of Bomber Command heavy bomber crews reporting sightings and encounters with jet aircraft. IMHO, it perpetuated the expectation in Bomber Command flying units, reinforced by its Intelligence organisation, that crews might encounter jet aircraft at night. Thus, many unexplained visual phenomena witnessed by bomber crews at night between November 1944 and May 1945 became rationalised as jet aircraft.

Unfortunately, there is no "smoking gun" that I know of to conclusively prove what the RAF crews witnessed en masse in November 1944, only circumstantial evidence. A British interrogation team specifically asked German night fighter crews in Schleswig-Holstein after the surrender, if they could explain the visual phenomena. They replied that they could not and claimed to have no knowledge of the phenomena or to have witnessed it themselves.

Cheers

Rod

PS - I have devoted a small essay to this subject for inclusion within the January 1945 section of the Nachtjagd Combat Archive series.