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.