Chapter 8
The campaign fought by the Luftwaffe over Germany at night to prevent the destruction of its industrial power involved thousands of aircraft and proved to be one of the fiercest fought during the Second World War.
The Luftwaffe’s reliance on a strategy of offensive operations to achieve air superiority over the enemy, rather than recognizing the need for an effective defensive system as well, meant there had been little investment in the defence of the Reich. During the early months of the war the Luftwaffe lacked an effective and co-ordinated air-defence system but this did not cause any great concern because the amount of aerial activity over Germany had been limited.
As the war progressed, the RAF was forced to conduct its operations at night following heavy casualties suffered by unescorted bombers during the day. The Luftwaffe started to allocate more resources to the defence of Germany but crucial weaknesses in leadership, and the failure to recognize that it was going to be a long war, meant that strategic decisions were often delayed and resulted in resources being committed too late. Furthermore, the combination of poor communications and co-ordination between ground and air units, the lack of training for ground-based personnel serving with defensive units and an overall ineffective ground-to-air control system meant that Germany’s industrial effort was not getting the protection it required.
The failure to protect Berlin from a number of small-scale raids carried out by the RAF during the summer of 1940 played a part in the development of an air-defence system that included the formation of Luftgaukommando III, under the command of Hubert Weise, to protect the area of Berlin. Weise formed Luftwaffen befehls haber Mitte, the Central Air Force Command, with the responsibility of protecting the area covering the Netherlands and northern Germany, and also created the Nachtjagddivision (Night-Fighter Division) under the command of Josef Kammhuber to combat the increasing number of night operations being carried out by RAF Bomber Command.30
An early influencer of Germany’s night war was Major Wolfgang Falck, Kommodore of the Luftwaffe’s first dedicated night-fighter unit, Nachtjagdgeschwader 1 (NJG 1), which was formed at Düsseldorf in June 1940 from elements of I./ZG 1 and IV./ZG 26. Until that point, a handful of Bf 109 and Bf 110 Staffeln had been designated as dual dayand night-fighter units because the Luftwaffe did not possess a night-fighter force at the time. There were no specialist aircraft or trained crews and there was no technical ability to aid the detection of aircraft at night, and so any night aerial activity was conducted using existing aircraft and methods, and by making the best of whatever weather conditions prevailed at the time.
Unsurprisingly, these traditional methods of trying to adopt daylight fighter tactics at night brought no success but it soon became clear that the twin-engine Bf 110 offered potential as a night fighter. Based in Holland, NJG 1 was part of Kammhuber’s Night-Fighter Division. The appointment of Falck as its Kommodore in the relatively junior rank of Hauptmann had caused murmurs amongst many senior officers within the Luftwaffe. But Göring had confidence in his junior officers and Falck’s appointment signalled the start of a number of rapid advancements for junior officers within the Jagdwaffe.
Setting up a new night-fighter unit was never going to be easy. There was no template to follow and a completely new training programme was required. The aircraft were initially standard daytime Bf 110s and in addition to painting the aircraft in an all-black scheme there were further modifications required, such as the fitting of flame dampers to the engine exhausts and modifying the aircraft’s cockpit lighting. Gradually, the Bf 110s were adapted for night operations as Falck worked on identifying an area from which to operate. He decided to move his unit to Gütersloh from where NJG 1 could provide defence of the industrial heartland of the Ruhr as well as offering some protection against any raids on Berlin.
Using searchlights and listening posts for detection, the concept was for the 110s to get airborne once a raid had been detected and to patrol to the rear of the detection area so that the night-fighters did not interfere with the detection methods being used. Once an enemy bomber was caught in the searchlights then the night-fighter could strike but it had to be quick because of the depth of the searchlight belt, and also because the amount of time the searchlights could be expected to maintain contact with an enemy bomber was no more than a few minutes. The first success for NJG 1 using this tactic occurred on the night of 20 July 1940 when Oberleutnant Werner Streib shot down a Whitley of RAF Bomber Command to claim the Luftwaffe’s first official night victory.
The greatest challenge in Germany’s night war remained how to find the enemy bombers. Using searchlights to locate an attacking bomber was fine but searchlights were generally positioned in and around the target area, which meant the bombers could only be attacked once overhead the target, which was all too late. It was also quite difficult to spot a bomber caught in searchlights from above and so night-fighter pilots often chose a lower altitude from where the pilot could look up to see a bomber caught in the beam of a searchlight. This often resulted in the Nachtjagdflieger being dazzled by the searchlights and they almost invariably came under attack from overly eager flak batteries below. The searchlights were then moved away from the target areas to form a protective belt, which helped, but weather conditions often meant that cloud cover would make the searchlights completely ineffective.
Rather than rely totally on a defensive system over German-occupied north-west Europe, another early tactic favoured by Kammhuber was to fly intruder missions across the Channel and to engage RAF bombers over English soil. The fighters based in occupied Europe lacked the range for an intruder mission to be successful and so Junkers Ju 88Cs were used with a new intruder unit, I./NJG 2, being formed in September 1940 as a Nachtjagdgruppe for long-range intruder missions over England with the aim of harrying the RAF’s returning bombers and disrupting its training at night.
Based at Gilze-Rijen in Holland, I./NJG 2 was initially equipped with just seven Ju 88C-1 and C-2 night-fighters, although a few Dornier Do 215B-5s would later be converted and used for night operations. Early intruder operations used basic visual techniques to find airfields, such as spotting flare paths, and looking out for bombers returning from operations that had switched on their navigation lights once back over England. Use was then made of intercepted radio signals to pin-point active Bomber Command airfields in eastern England so that the intruders from I./NJG 2 could be scrambled to intercept the bombers as they returned home.
Within a year more than a hundred claims were made against Bomber Command aircraft and techniques were further improved by making use of German radio operators to listen to RAF transmissions. Those successful as intruder pilots included Feldwebel Wilhelm Beier who was credited with fourteen victories in this role; Leutnant Hans Hahn of 3./NJG 2 (not to be confused with the day fighter pilots, Hans ‘Assi’ Hahn and Hans von Hahn), who was the first Nachtjagdflieger to be awarded the Knight’s Cross with twelve intruder victories at night; Oberfeldwebel Alfons Köster with eleven; and Feldwebel Heinz Strüning of 1./NJG 2, who flew sixty-six intruder missions over England and was credited with nine victories.
The tactics used by the intruder pilots varied. Some would follow the bombers back across the North Sea and carry out an attack near the English coast whereas others had the audacity to locate the bomber airfield and then join the circuit to prosecute an attack at low level and from very close range. However, the intruder missions never really impacted on Bomber Command’s war against Germany and occasionally proved costly for the Luftwaffe. Hans Hahn, for example, was killed in 1941 when he collided with his thirteenth victim and, as technology improved, radar-equipped RAF night-fighters started to achieve success against the intruders. Furthermore, Hitler did not favour intruder missions as he felt the German people should see RAF bombers being shot down over Germany so that claims of success could not be doubted.
While intruder operations had their place, it was the development of a night-fighter force and an associated network of defence that was required to counter the increasing number of night raids by Bomber Command. Operational trials began using a Freya radar installation in Holland that was designed to be co-ordinated with ground stations to direct individual fighters against detected bombers. This form of close control achieved its first success on the night of 16/17 October 1940 when a Wellington bomber was shot down by Leutnant Ludwig Becker flying a Bf 110.
Becker was directed to the Wellington by ground control. He was fortunate as the conditions that night were completely in his favour and he could see the bomber silhouetted in the bright moonlight as he slowly closed in from astern. Once within 50 yards of his target Becker opened fire, scoring hits on the fuselage and starboard engine. The Wellington flew on for a short distance while losing height before it caught fire and spun into the ground.
Ludwig Becker thus paved the way during the early night war against Bomber Command, and he would later carry out the Luftwaffe’s first night interception using airborne radar, but what was needed was a system that was not dependent on favourable weather conditions, and this required the development of a new method of radar detection, combined with a successful tracking and reporting system.
Radar installations were set up along the Dutch and German coastlines in front of the searchlight belt and Kombinierte Nachtjagdgebiete (combined night-fighter zones) were established around areas considered a priority. The stations used Würzburg gun-laying radar and searchlights; a tactic known as Helle Nachtjagd (bright night fighting). This idea would have limited success and so a second system, known as Dunkel Nachtjagd (dark night fighting), was developed using a Freya early-warning radar slaved to a searchlight.
Over the next two years Kammhuber set up a defensive chain of radar stations with overlapping coverage and divided into zones, which ranged from Denmark to central France. This was known to the British as the Kammhuber Line. Each zone was controlled by a control centre, called a Himmelbett, and used Freya radar that was capable of detecting aircraft out to a range of 60–70 miles. The concept was based on the fact that RAF bombers had to cross the line at some point and the radar would direct a searchlight to illuminate the bomber with a night fighter then being directed to intercept the illuminated bomber.
This system failed to yield any real success and so the next move was to use a Bf 110 in a pre-arranged holding area and in contact with the radar station. This also failed to achieve any results of note and so the idea was later refined using the more accurate Würzburg tracking radar. The system had its weaknesses in the early days because of the lack of air-mounted IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) equipment, meaning that only one fighter in the zone could be controlled from the ground at any one time. There were also inaccuracies caused by having to use one of the radars to track the bomber while another controlled the night fighter, which could lead to the night fighter ending up to half a mile away from its intended target.
Although the development of a night fighter-defence system was still in its infancy, there were successes and by the end of 1940 the Nachtjagd had achieved more than forty victories with Falck receiving a well-earned Knight’s Cross. Although this figure is modest when compared to achievements later in the war, it was a start and with an operational air-defence system now online tactics were further refined.
However, these tactics relied on ground-based systems rather than on the development of airborne radar, as the Luftwaffe lacked a suitable aircraft for the night-fighter role. Germany was well behind Britain in this highly technical branch of aerial warfare and it would be another year or more before operational radar sets were widely installed into German night fighters.
One of the earliest developments was the FuG 202 Lichtenstein B/C radar as fitted to the Ju 88R night fighter. The complex Matratze (‘Mattress’) arrangement of antennae meant the idea was not altogether popular amongst the night-fighter crews as the installation increased drag on the aircraft and reduced its performance. Many night-fighter pilots preferred instead to maintain the performance of their aircraft and seemed quite happy to be guided to the bomber stream from the ground, and then acquire their target visually once amongst the bombers.
The first successful use of Lichtenstein took place on the night of 9 August 1941 and was claimed by Ludwig Becker,31 now an Oberleutnant, flying a Do 215. Becker’s technique involved waiting above the estimated height of the main bomber stream and then positioning himself behind his target. He would then descend to just below the bomber, usually to within 1,000 feet but keeping out of the visual scan of the aircraft’s gunners, so that he could look up and silhouette the bomber against the night sky. Using any ambient light to his advantage, Becker would take up a position below the bomber and then edge his aircraft closer to his intended victim to a final position within a matter of yards. He would then open fire, aiming at a point where the bomber would fly through his burst of cannon shells and machine-gun rounds.
Ludwig Becker was a true pioneer of night air combat but he would not survive the war. As Staffelkapitän of 12./NJG 1 he was promoted to Hauptmann and awarded the Knight’s Cross in July 1942 but he and his radar operator, Oberfeldwebel Josef Straub, were posted as missing on 26 February 1943 during a daylight attack against American bombers over the North Sea. Their Bf 110G crashed off the Dutch island of Schiermonnikoog and Becker, with forty-six victories, all at night, was posthumously awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross.
The normal tactic when using Lichtenstein was to scramble the experienced night-fighter crews first because of the limited capacity of the control system, in order to give them the maximum time to get into the main bomber stream and shoot down as many bombers as possible. The number of successes at night continued to rise and by the end of 1941 the Nachtjagd units had claimed more than 400 aircraft, accounting for nearly 60 per cent of Bomber Command’s losses at night. The night defensive network had widened during the year with NJG 3 forming near Hamburg, under the command of Major Johann Schalk, to protect the port and Kriegsmarine (German Navy) installations.
Winter weather often made operating conditions most difficult. Climbing through seemingly endless layers of cloud, causing the night fighter to buffet and bounce around in the turbulent air, it would take several minutes to climb up to the altitude of the main bomber force. The close control from the Jägerleitoffizier (fighter control officer) on the ground rarely seemed to take into account the harsh conditions faced by the night-fighter crew. There was also the bitterly cold air from operating at such heights, which even managed to penetrate the thick, electrically heated flying suits worn by the crew.
Conditions were hard and opportunities for scoring success at night remained elusive but it was the RAF’s first thousand-bomber raid, against Cologne on the night of 30/31 May 1942, that marked the start of a new Allied intent to use large numbers of bombers concentrated against specific targets. Until then, Bomber Command crews had essentially been responsible for finding their own way to the target, which meant they passed through the night-fighter engagement zones in relatively low numbers. Now, however, Bomber Command had changed its tactic for night bombing and had chosen to saturate Germany’s defences in order to get large numbers of aircraft onto a target within a short space of time.
This change of tactic by the RAF came at a time when the defence of German airspace was still considered to be a low priority as the Reich continued to expand on all fronts. Nonetheless, the saturation of German defences during the raid against Cologne had presented a target rich environment and the 600th night victory was achieved. Amongst the successes that night were two bombers claimed by Hauptmann Werner Streib, now Staffelkapitän of 2./NJG 1 and holder of the Knight’s Cross; they were his twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth victories at night.
Another successful pilot that night was 23-year-old Oberleutnant Reinhold Knacke of 3./NJG 1, who scored his twentieth night victory, for which he would also be awarded the Knight’s Cross. The Cologne raid, while successful as far as RAF Bomber Command was concerned, was still seen by the German High Command as a bit of a ‘one-off’ as the RAF had failed to make much mark in other raids against Germany, and the United States had yet to enter the fray in any considerable numbers.
The night-fighter force continued to expand with the formation of NJG 4 and NJG 5 from elements of the earlier Nachtjagdgeschwader, and tactics continued to evolve as training improved. While the training carried out at the Nachtjagdschule (Night-Fighter Training School) taught the rudiments of night fighting, such as how to operate on and off the ground at night, and basic cross-country night navigation, there was still much to learn. The more advanced phases of training taught navigation using radio beacons, essential for operations in the Kammhuber Line when the night fighter had to hold in the right area, and integration with the network of defences, such as searchlight and anti-aircraft batteries. However, the advanced training syllabus was not helped by the lack of technical equipment. While there was some teaching of air interception, it was left to the operational units to teach the final and most decisive aspects of night fighting using the scarce specialist equipment that could not be released for the training schools.
The night of 5/6 March 1943 saw the beginning of what RAF Bomber Command later called the Battle of the Ruhr. Many night-fighter crews found themselves posted to Holland and Belgium as, for the next few weeks the Allies concentrated on industrial targets in the Ruhr, although Bomber Command did not limit its effort to Germany’s major industrial district and many other targets were hit, such as Munich, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Düsseldorf. The Battle of the Ruhr lasted four months, during which the RAF flew nearly 20,000 sorties and lost nearly 900 aircraft. Having suffered such high losses, Bomber Command temporarily brought a halt to large-scale night raids.
Bomber Command’s next major offensive, the Battle of Hamburg, began on 24 July. This new offensive saw the RAF introduce a new radar countermeasure known as Window. This deception tactic made use of strips of aluminium foil, cut at a specific length and packed into bundles, dropped from bombers to create a cloud of false radar returns by re-radiating the radar signal and making it almost impossible for the German defences to distinguish real aircraft from the false returns generated by Window. Unable to track individual bombers, all the ground controllers could do was to make a general assessment of the position of the main bomber stream.
No longer able to rely on ground radar, the German night-fighter crews found their task had become much harder and were forced to change tactics. The ground controller was now required to provide a running commentary to the night-fighter crews to try and get them into the right area from where they could make an attack. This form of loose control of the night fighter took some time to settle down but it did start to meet with success and the number of bomber losses soon started to mount.
Nonetheless, approaching an enemy bomber from the rear was still a risky manoeuvre and would not always guarantee success. The bomber’s rear gunner maintained a watch for night fighters and if one was spotted then he was able to warn his pilot to take defensive action. Furthermore, approaching the rear of the bomber from below would mean having to pull up sharply to open fire and this caused the night fighter to lose valuable speed while also making it vulnerable to the bomber’s defensive fire.
In response to the growing threat of Bomber Command’s night raids on the Reich during mid-1943, which had started to see the RAF gain the ascendancy over the Nachtjäger, through the tactical use of Window and other decoy methods, Kammhuber looked for solutions and the result was a concept known as Wilde Sau (‘Wild boar’).
The Wilde Sau tactic was developed by Major Hans-Joachim Herrmann, a former bomber pilot who had gained a reputation while serving with the operational staff as one of the leading tacticians. His idea was to form a new unit equipped with single-engine day fighters manned by experienced night-fighter pilots with the freedom to hunt the bombers visually in the target area. They would use a combination of the light created by searchlights and fires below, and special flare-equipped Ju 88s that would position themselves at the rear of the bomber stream.
Standard FW 190As and Bf 109Gs were initially borrowed from dayfighter units, mainly from JG 1 and JG 11, and used to test the theory. The tactics were used operationally for the first time on the night of 3/4 July 1943 during a raid on Cologne with twelve bombers being shot down in the target area, although some of these were jointly claimed with anti-aircraft batteries on the ground. The tactic had proved successful and led to the formation of JG 300 the following month. JG 300 enjoyed much early success and so two more units, JG 301 and JG 302, were formed along the same lines, which then led to the formation of 30. Jagd Division under Herrmann’s command.
When the tactic was first used, the single-engine fighters were not specially equipped but once the tactic was proven as a concept variants of the Bf 109G were adapted for the night-fighter role eventually using the Naxos Z passive homing detector and an interception radio system. In addition, a number of Bf 109Gs and FW 190A-6s would be fitted with the FuG 217/218 Neptun active search radar and serve with NJGr 10 and NJG 11 as radar-equipped night fighters.
One of the most successful of JG 300’s Wilde Sau pilots was Oberleutnant Klaus Bretschneider of 5./JG 300. Bretschneider had joined the unit when it first formed and had claimed his first victory, a Lancaster to the south of Mannheim, on the night of 5/6 September 1943. By early 1944 he had been credited with fourteen victories and appointed Staffelkapitän of 5./JG 300, and would eventually be credited with thirty-four victories, including fourteen RAF heavy bombers at night, for which he was awarded the Knight’s Cross.
Hans-Joachim Herrmann went on to fly more than fifty night-fighter missions and claimed the destruction of nine enemy bombers but the introduction of radar for the main night-fighter force and the high wastage of pilots and aircraft due to accidents during the winter months brought a close to Wilde Sau tactics at the end of 1943, after which Herrmann became the Luftwaffe’s Inspector-General of Night Fighters and was awarded the Swords to his Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves.
The first radar sets were fitted to German night fighters in September 1943 and by early 1944 the majority of aircraft, such as the Ju 88R-1 and Bf 110G-4, had been suitably equipped. The eight-dipole-element Hirschgeweih (‘Stag’s antlers’) antenna was an improvement on earlier designs but the installation added considerable weight to the aircraft and reduced its performance, which in turn made the night fighters a target for the RAF’s own night fighters that had now gone over to the offensive.
Nonetheless, the Bf 110 proved an ideal aircraft for development as a night fighter. It was fast enough to chase down the RAF’s bombers and its benign handling, endurance and relatively heavy armament made it adequate for such a role. Most importantly, though, it was big enough to accommodate the new technology and an additional crew member to operate the radar and to assist the pilot with getting the Bf 110 into the right part of the sky to make his attack. In addition to the Bf 110, the Ju 88 and Do 17 were also performing well; although designed as high-speed bombers, both had been suitably adapted for the night-fighter role.
Following on from the success of Wilde Sau, the development of Zahme Sau (‘Tame boar’) as a night-fighter tactic gave freedom to the radar-equipped night fighters to operate alone rather than under the direction of the Himmelbett. The concept behind Zahme Sau was for the ground-based radars to detect a raid and night fighters to be scrambled to designated holding points where the crews would wait to be directed into the main bomber stream in large numbers. Once amongst the stream the night-fighter crews would use their own radar to detect an individual bomber and to press home their attack.
Bomber Command losses started to rise once more but the fact remained that the Luftwaffe was still some way behind the RAF when it came to the technological war. The limited capability of the technology during the early days of Zahme Sau meant it was not an easy tactic to execute well but it did become more successful over time as radar detection ranges increased, particularly with new equipment such as the FuG 220 Lichtenstein SN-2, operating in the low VHF band and therefore impervious to Window.
As technology and night tactics continued to evolve, the improved Bf 110G-4 was fitted with the upward-firing twin-cannon installation known as Schräge Musik (from the German colloquialism for ‘Jazz Music’ with schräg meaning ‘slanted’), mounted just above the rear cockpit, which allowed the night fighters to attack RAF bombers from below and outside the scan of the bomber’s air gunners. The idea was not entirely new as it had been first trialled during the First World War32 but the concept of using upward-firing cannons for night fighting during the Second World War was developed by Rudolf Schönert who had first experimented with upward-firing guns as early as 1942 while Kapitän of 4./NJG 2. The first installation was in a Lichtenstein-equipped Do 17Z but the idea was initially rejected by his Gruppenkommandeur, Helmut Lent, although Schönert persisted with his idea and managed to convince Kammhuber of its potential. Further trials were carried out during the following months, and when Schönert was given command of II./NJG 5 his armourers mounted two MG FF 20 mm cannon in the rear compartment of the upper fuselage of one of the unit’s Bf 110s and designed to fire through the canopy. Schönert’s first success using his modified aircraft came in May 1943 and from the following month modifications were also authorized for the Ju 88 and Do 217.
The introduction of Schräge Musik now meant that the night fighter could approach the bomber from the rear and below without the need to pull up sharply. Instead, the pilot slowed down his approach speed and then rose up gently underneath the bomber. Holding formation, the optimum firing position was with the bomber positioned at 65–70 degrees above the fighter where the pilot could clearly see the silhouette of the bomber. The fighter’s gunsight was modified by placing a reflecting mirror above the pilot’s head, in line with a similar mirror behind the actual gunsight. It was complicated in theory but the final positioning of the night fighter was achieved by the radar operator giving commands to the pilot until the pilot could see the large silhouette of the bomber above him and take up his final position to open fire. For a well-practised and experienced crew the whole manoeuvre could be done in seconds rather than minutes.
When first used, the tactic came as a complete surprise to the unsuspecting crews of Bomber Command but the RAF was slow to react because initial losses were believed to be due to flak. It was only when detailed analysis was done of returning bomber aircraft that the damage was acknowledged to have been caused by night fighters firing from below. The only real problem for the night-fighter crew was that they had to get out of the way quickly once they had carried out their attack. Their guns were so accurate and the ease of the firing solution from such a position meant that any damage to the bomber, such as debris or parts of the aircraft falling off, or even worse its bomb load exploding, presented a real risk to the night-fighter crew. Many chose to aim at the wing to cause structural damage and hit the wing fuel tanks rather than aim at the central fuselage where the risk of hitting the bomb bay was too great.
Within the year a third of all German night fighters were fitted with Schräge Musik and later installations included more powerful MK 108 30 mm cannon. While these more powerful guns meant that only a handful of hits were required to bring down a large bomber, the extra weight and drag reduced fighter performance and heavier cannon were also criticized by crews because the low muzzle velocity meant that the fighter had to get even closer to its target to achieve success. Nonetheless, Schräge Musik proved to be a great success. Schönert went on to serve with NJG 100 on the Eastern Front and was eventually credited with sixty-four victories, including eighteen using Schräge Musik, making him the seventh-highest-scoring Nachtjagdflieger, for which he was awarded the Knight’s Cross and Oak Leaves.
The combination of Lichtenstein SN-2 and Schräge Musik had made the German night fighter an extremely effective weapon and Bomber Command losses continued to mount. The Germans also used intercept stations to listen to and track the IFF devices fitted to the RAF bombers. Bomber Command belatedly directed crews to turn these off when over Germany but the night-fighter crews were then able to track the Monica and H2S transmissions of the RAF bombers; H2S could be tracked by Naxos radar detectors and Monica could be tracked on Flensburg radar detectors, both of which were mounted on the night fighters.
Bomber Command’s latest offensive, the Battle of Berlin during the winter of 1943–4, failed to win the war outright as had been hoped, and cost the RAF more than 1,000 bombers with a similar number severely damaged. The Luftwaffe lost just 250 fighters during the campaign but amongst those killed was the high-scoring Heinrich Prinz zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, Kommodore of NJG 2, who was shot down while taking part in a Zahme Sau mission on the night of 21 January 1944. Having already claimed four Lancasters during the mission, Sayn-Wittgenstein was engaging a fifth when his aircraft was hit. Although his two crew members managed to escape the stricken aircraft, the Ju 88R crashed near the town of Stendal to the west of Berlin; the body of Sayn-Wittgenstein was found near the wreckage. Credited with eighty-three night victories, Sayn-Wittgenstein was the third-highest scorer at night and was posthumously awarded the Swords to his Knight’s Cross with Oak Leaves two days later.
The death of Sayn-Wittgenstein had been a loss to the Nachtjagd and the same night there was another when Hauptmann Manfred Meurer, Kommandeur of I./NJG 1 and holder of the Oak Leaves with sixty-five night victories, was killed after colliding with a Lancaster attacking Berlin. These losses were hard to take amongst what had become a very close and compact night-fighter force.
Although the RAF had inflicted severe damage on the Big City, Berlin proved to be a difficult nut to crack. For the Luftwaffe, its losses were not entirely unexpected from such a long and intense bombing campaign but the psychological effect on its night-fighter crews, having regularly seen their capital city ablaze as Berlin’s citizens took a seemingly endless pounding, must have been considerable.
Night-fighter operations were now being directed from Berlin under Wolfgang Falck, by this point an Oberst and Kammhuber’s representative within Luftwaffenbefehlshaber Mitte. In his appointment as Einsatzleiter Nachtjagd (Head of Night Operations), Falck was responsible for the night fighter defence of the Reich and was updated at his headquarters on the developing night air war by using a large map divided into a system of grid squares so that he could direct the air battle each night as it evolved.33 Falck was able to evaluate the number of bombers taking part in the raid and where the likely target was so that he could direct the German night defences accordingly.
The demands of the night war were quite different from those of fighting by day. A successful night interception was often the result of teamwork rather than operating in isolation. It not only depended on the skill of the ground controller to position the night fighter in the right place and at the right time; the introduction of airborne radar now meant in addition that better crew co-operation was required between the radar operator and the pilot. It took skill and patience to get the night fighter into a position from where it could strike, and closing in on a large aircraft at night, often in bad weather, meant that any misjudgement could be fatal.
One of the best was Major Helmut Lent, Kommodore of NJG 3. Lent had been the first to reach fifty night victories in January 1943 while Kommandeur of IV./NJG 1, and in July 1944 he became the first to pass a century of victories at night to earn the coveted Diamonds; the first Nachtjagdflieger to be so recognized. Lent’s life would soon be cut short by a fatal accident on 5 October during a routine transit flight to visit Hans-Joachim Jabs, Kommodore of NJG 1, at Paderborn. As Lent was making the approach to land, his Ju 88 suffered an engine failure and then struck a power cable before it crashed. Also on board were Lent’s long-term radio operator, Oberfeldwebel Walter Kubisch, a second radio operator, Oberleutnant Hermann Klöss, and a wartime correspondent, Leutnant Werner Kark. Although all four were pulled out of the wreckage alive, Kubisch and Kloss died soon after while Kark died the following day. Lent finally succumbed to his injuries two days after the crash.
Lent was given a state funeral in Berlin with the guard of honour consisting of Hans-Joachim Jabs; Oberstleutnant Günther Radusch, Kommodore of NJG 5; Major Rudolf Schönert, Kommandeur of NJGr 10; Hauptmann Heinz Strüning, Staffelkapitän of 3./NJG 1; Hauptmann Paul Zorner, Kommandeur of III./NJG 5; and Hauptmann Heinz-Martin Hadeball, Kommandeur of I./NJG 6. Ahead of the coffin and carrying his impressive array of decorations was Oberstleutnant Werner Streib, now Inspector of Night Fighters, while Göring took the salute.
At the time of his death, Lent was twenty-six years old and had been credited with 110 victories, of which all but seven were achieved at night. Lent had been the first of only two Nachtjagdflieger to receive the highest recognition of the Knight’ Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds. The other was Major Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer who surpassed a century of victories just two days after Lent’s death. Schnaufer had begun his night-fighter career with II./NJG 1 at the end of 1941, claiming his first night victory in June 1942 before being appointed Staffelkapitän of 12./NJG 1 in August 1943. As an Oberleutnant he was awarded the Knight’s Cross at the end of the year, having been credited with forty-two victories, after which he was promoted to Hauptmann and appointed as Kommandeur of IV./NJG 1 in March 1944. The award of the Oak Leaves soon followed and then the Swords a month later when his personal score had reached eighty-nine victories. Then, in October 1944, came the coveted Diamonds and Schnaufer would go on to become the Luftwaffe’s youngest Kommodore at the age of just twenty-two, ending the war as the highest-scoring Nachtjagdflieger with 121 victories.
In addition to the achievements of Schnaufer, Lent, Sayn-Wittgenstein, Streib, Meurer and Schönert, others to achieve success during the night war over Germany included Oberstleutnant Günther Radusch, Kommodore of NJG 5, with sixty-four victories at night for which he was awarded the Oak Leaves, and Hauptmann Heinz Rökker, Kapitän of 2./NJG 2, with sixty-three night victories, another holder of the Oak Leaves. A further thirteen pilots achieved fifty victories or more at night, including Paul Zorner with fifty-nine, Martin Becker and Gerhard Raht (each with fifty-eight) and Wilhelm Herget (fifty-seven).
There were others who also achieved fifty victories but not all at night, although they proved to be great leaders of their night-fighter units and formed a small elite group who demonstrated skill and ability by day and by night. One was Hans-Joachim Jabs, Kommodore of NJG 1 and a former Zerstörer pilot with ZG 76, who added twenty-eight night victories to his twenty-two by day for which he was awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knight’s Cross. Extremely intelligent and a master when it came to assessing a tactical situation quickly, Jabs was an excellent leader and was always held in very high regard by his crews.
The night war was a hard, and at times horrific, campaign for both sides and proved to be a titanic struggle for survival in the air.