Raid on Lützkendorf 14/15 March 1945

[Sylvester Stadler]

In the excellent book, Nachtjagd War Diaries, Vol. 2, Dr. Theo Boiten includes the account by gunner Lt. Johanssen of how he shot down three Lancasters and with Hptm. Martin Becker accounted for a further six Lancasters for a total of nine. Johanssen tells that the ground control confirmed the nine kills for this night. Then Boiten indicates that the force which raided Lützkendorf lost nine bombers and that NJG 6 had claimed a total of 16 kills which might indicate that Becker and his crew had not shot down nine bombers.

On the other hand, Martin Middlebrook in his book, The Bomber Command War Diaries, states that this same force lost 18 Lancasters out of 244 Lancasters or 7.4 % of the force and that the Bomber Command lost a total of 23 aircraft on this night, which if correct, would probably confirm all of Becker's kills.

It would be interesting to know what methods or sources each author used to arrive at the BC loss statistics. Are both accurate and that the lower figure is arrived at using only aircraft known lost to night fighters and the higher figure for all losses, no matter what the cause.

[RodM]

Hi Sylvester,

the figure in Middlebrook's work is a 'typo' and the information on total losses in The Nachtjagd War Diaries Vol II is correct.

Cheers

RodM

[Sylvester Stadler]

Rod:

Thank you for your reply.

As co-author of the book, you would have seen the actual BC records of individual losses, but I am still wondering if both the statistics of 18 and 23 are wrong and if Middlebrook did his own math in calculating the 7.4% loss out of 244 Lancasters which translates to 18 bombers lost. In other words, was the mistake on the part of Middlebrook or his publisher or was the mistake in the records which Middlebrook consulted?

[RodM]

Hi Sylvester,

of course, I do not know the reason why the typo and resultant error in calculation exist in Middlebrook's book. I can only presume that the erroneous figure was used, not picked up and then used in the percentage loss calculation. The error does not exist in any official document that I've consulted.

For The NJWD Vol II, I wrote the 1945 narratives based around extensive documentary research, much of the raw data was databased and then plotted geographically. The information on bomber losses derives from many, many documentary sources, but a primary aid for checking overall attrition was the Bomber Command Operational Research Section logs of aircraft lost or damaged on operations, in conjunction with a range of other official raid reports. Specific loss information mostly comes from casualty investigation files, German/Luftwaffe records, repatriated RAF PoW questionnaires, and various snippets gleened from offcial records at the British National Archives. Where no specific information could be found on a loss (either because an aircraft and crew was lost without trace or because the only available source of data is the still classified MRES Investigation files), this is usually mentioned within the narratives of the book.

As a general trend, Nachtjagd Zahme Sau operations invariably resulted in initial overclaiming, and, by 1945, the once rigid claims verification system appears to have broken down. Many of the most successful nights for the Nachtjagd during 1945 resulted from actions where a number of night fighters infiltrated a bomber stream at a point concentrated in space and time. That there would then be muliple claims made against aircraft seen hitting the ground is a natural consequence of this concentration as attacks by multiple nightfighters were made upon multiple aircraft within the space of a few minutes. In the monthly summaries for 1945, where monthly Bomber Command attrition statistics have been presented, you will notice that a large number of aircraft returned home damaged following night fighter attacks, and it is reasonable to suppose to a number of these were most likely claimed as destroyed by the attacking Nachtjagd crew.

In the case of the Becker/Johanssen claims of 14-15 March 1945, there is simply no correlation against an extensive range documentary sources to validate a full nine 'confirmed' victories. The same applies to the eight claimed by Jung/Heidenreich two nights later.

cheers

Rod

PS - below is some of the data on lost and damaged Bomber Command aircraft on the night of 14-15 March 1945, used in the writing of NJWD Vol II:

Losses: total 16
Homburg Raid - three losses (including one in UK)
Lutzkendorf Raid - nine losses (including one in UK)
Zweibrucken Raid - one loss in UK
Bomber Support - three losses

Damaged: total 33
Berlin Raids - one (by flak)
Homburg Raid - none
Lutzkendorf Raid - twenty-nine (twenty by flak, three by night fighters, five non-combat, one by friendly fire)
Zweibrucken Raid - one (non-combat, hit by falling bomb)
Bomber Support - two (both listed as by flak)