Category: Operations

Confusing the Nightfighters

~ Adam Purcell

Imagine you are a German nightfighter controller, sitting in a bunker during the Second World War. Listening posts have picked up radio transmissions from navigation beams, warning messages to British shipping, and signals from H2S or Fishpond radar devices as aircrew warmed up their equipment in England. You know the British are planning a big raid tonight and the nightfighter units have been warned. Now the first reports are coming in from observers and radar stations around the continent – large concentrations of raiders are approaching across Belgium and Northern France, heading south-east. But there’s another big force heading towards Denmark. Could they be after Berlin again?

The decisions you make next will play a significant role in the success or otherwise of the nightfighters defending the Reich. Is the force over Belgium a distraction? That’s been their tactic over the last couple of months. Or will the northern group just drop mines along the coast of Germany and scarper again? If you decide the northern threat is ‘just’ a minor mining operation you can send all your fighters to intercept the other force, which could be bound for anywhere in Germany. But then you run the risk of leaving Berlin undefended. So you might decide that the northern force is the real threat, and move your fighters to cover Hamburg from where they can quickly get stuck into any bombers crossing the top of the country. But that leaves the southern force free to attack any part of southern or central Germany untouched by fighters, should it turn out to be the ‘real’ bomber stream. Perhaps you should split your forces and send half to the north and half to the south?

This was the situation facing the German nightfighter controllers on 18 March 1944. As it happened the northern force was indeed a diversion, sent to drop mines in the Heligoland area off north-west Germany. The distraction kept many fighters to the north while the ‘real’ bomber stream slipped through almost unmolested, reaching their target – Frankfurt – having lost only four known victims to the fighters. In all the fighters accounted for just eight out of a total of twenty two casualties that night, a low loss rate probably influenced by the confusion brought about in the nightfighter control system by multiple apparent bomber streams.

A few days later two big forces of aircraft again appeared on German radar screens heading north east over the North Sea: a mining force headed for Kiel and the main bomber stream, which turned sharply south east halfway across the water. This time they flew a route that appeared to threaten cities like Hanover or even Berlin, reinforced by Mosquitos making diversion raids on both of those cities. The tactics successfully disguised the true objective of the bombers, which once again was Frankfurt (indeed, the running commentary that directed the nightfighters did not mention Frankfurt until seventeen minutes after the first target indicators went down there). Nineteen bombers out of a total of 33 that failed to return were seen to fall to nightfighters on this raid. This time the mining force did not distract the fighters unduly but the convoluted and somewhat novel route used still caused some confusion about the actual target and so the loss rate was relatively low for a city-busting raid like this one.

The Frankfurt raids demonstrate two facets of the tactics used extensively by Bomber Command in the spring of 1944 in an attempt to confuse the German nightfighter control system. Most raids carried out in this period were accompanied by aircraft on diversions, harassing raids or mining operations, and used elaborate routes designed to conceal the identity of the real target for as long as possible. On these two occasions the tactics appeared to have been successful, but there were many raids where despite the best planning and intentions, things simply didn’t turn out for the bombers as they were hoping.

One example came a few days after the Frankfurt raids, on 24 March 1944, when the Main Force bombed Berlin. They took a conventional route to the north via Denmark and were supported by Mosquitos attacking Kiel, Münster and Duisburg and a large force of aircraft from Training Groups making a diversionary sweep near to Paris without dropping any bombs. The controllers completely ignored the Paris sweep and nightfighters got stuck into the bomber stream from the island of Sylt all the way to the target and back out again. They accounted for sixteen victims – but worse was to happen to the bombers. A northerly wind that was far stronger than expected blew many crews off track and over the heavily defended areas that the route had been planned to avoid. Many, as a result, fell to flak and a total of 72 aircraft failed to return. The best-laid plans were brought unstuck by nature.

Perhaps the most infamous case, however, was the disastrous raid on Nuremberg a week later, on 30 March 1944. The bombers were routed from England down towards Charleroi in Belgium. There they would turn east for a long leg of some 250 miles, which was planned to thread the bombers safely between the heavy defences in the Ruhr and those of Koblenz to the south. The main force was to be supported by a group of Halifaxes simulating a large force possibly threatening Berlin that would actually drop mines in the Heligoland Bight before returning home, and small forces of Mosquitos to bomb Aachen, Cologne and Kassel as diversions from the main raid. The Germans decided, correctly, that the diversionary raids were just that and concentrated their fighters at two radio beacons between Cologne and Frankfurt. Unhappily for the bombers, their route passed smack between both beacons. Updated winds broadcast to the bombers were incorrect and many were off-track as a result, scattering the stream. In clear conditions over a very thin layer of low cloud, lit by a bright half-moon, and trailing spectacular white contrails caused by an unfortunate atmospheric quirk, their progress simply could not be missed. The bombers fought a running battle all the way to the target and more than sixty of the 94 that failed to return fell to fighters.

This operation had all of the usual tactics applied to it with the diversions and indirect route, but it still resulted in the highest losses of the entire war for Bomber Command. Undoubtedly the moonlight contributed, and the unexpected contrails drew attention to the bomber stream, but luck also played a part. The German controllers guessed that the northern force was a diversion and sent their fighters to the south – and just happened to pick the two fighter beacons that straddled the planned route of the bomber stream. It was a lucky guess that brought so many fighters to the area transited by the bombers, and unlucky chance that conditions were just about perfect for nightfighting when they got there.

The choice about where to deploy their forces was one that the German nightfighter control system faced night after night. Sometimes they got it wrong, and the bombers slipped through unthreatened. But frequently they got it right, and the bombers suffered severely as a consequence. The tactical cat and mouse continued throughout the war and remains a fascinating part of the story of the bomber offensive.

© 2013 Adam Purcell

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Sources:

Details of German early-warning system from Isby, David C (Ed.), Fighting the Bombers: The Luftwaffe’s struggle against the Allied Bomber Offensive

Details of Nuremburg raid mainly taken from Martin Middlebrook (1973), The Nuremburg Raid

Frankfurt and Berlin raid details and additional information on Nuremberg from Bomber Command Night Raid Reports Nos. 556, 560 and 567.

Two Railway Attacks: Tours and Lille, April-May 1944

~ Adam Purcell ~ 2 Comments

By the beginning of April 1944, the crew of B for Baker had completed their first dozen or so operations. They had been members of 467 Squadron at Waddington for three months and their last time off had been in February. Consequently all seven spent the first week and a half of April away on leave.

But while they were away the war continued. I’ve been having a close look recently at the operations that were carried out during the period that the crew were at Waddington. On 10 April 1944 – the day that they were due back from leave – the rest of the squadron were part of a force of 166 aircraft that were sent to attack the marshalling yards at Tours in southern France. When I first saw the Tours raid in the Operational Record Books, I wasn’t intending to take too much time to study it closely because the crew of B for Baker were not themselves involved in it. But the Tours operation nevertheless shows some interesting parallels when compared with the operation a month later from which they failed to return, an attack on Lille on 10 May 1944.

Both operations were part of the so-called ‘Transportation Plan’, a series of attacks designed to cripple the Germans’ ability to move troops and equipment around France in preparation for the coming invasion of the continent. As such, each was one of a number of attacks made on railway targets on the same nights. 180 aircraft went to Tours, but only 89 went to Lille.

Interestingly, both were a little ‘different’ tactically when compared with the other raids they accompanied. While the four other raids carried out on 10 April (Aulnoye, Ghent, Laon and Tergnier) used Mosquitos to lay ground markers on the aiming point using the Oboe blind bombing aid, at Tours the marking was done visually by Lancasters under the light of white parachute flares, similar to the Pathfinders’ Newhaven tactics. Three other railway targets were attacked on 10 May 1944, each also using Oboe-equipped Mosquitos backed up by visual flares and using a Master Bomber to control the raid (Lens, Ghent and Courtrai). At Lille the same night, however, the marking was carried out entirely by visual means. At this stage in my research I can’t establish why Oboe was used for the other raids but not at Tours or Lille – perhaps it was a capacity issue, and the expected clear conditions and bright moonlight on each night meant that a visual technique was considered sufficient.

At both Tours and Lille, the first markers went down accurately. But on each operation problems arose after the first few bombs had fallen. At Tours, this was because the markers were laid on the actual aiming point itself, and smoke from the resulting bombing obscured the markers for later aircraft. The resulting delay before the target could be remarked caused some aircraft to circle in the target area for up to an hour. A new tactic was developed between the two operations so that markers were laid a short distance away from the actual aiming point, and bomb sights were adjusted accordingly so that bombs still fell onto the actual target, and Lille was the second time that this technique had been attempted. Unfortunately it failed when the first few bombs fell onto the target indicator anyway (perhaps because some early bomb aimers had not made the necessary adjustments to their sights) and it was extinguished or obscured by blast and smoke. A delay ensued, like at Tours, while the target was remarked and the appropriate wind correction was calculated for the bomb sights.

The biggest difference between the two raids, however, was that while the defences of Tours failed to take advantage of 180 bombers circling for up to an hour, at Lille it was rather a different story. Few fighters and little flak was encountered on the Tours trip and only one bomber was lost. But at Lille, while the delay was ‘only’ about 20 minutes and there was slight to moderate flak over the target, the fighters put up stiff opposition and twelve aircraft out of 89 failed to return.

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Sources:

467 and 463 Squadron Operational Record Books for the Tours operation, 10APR44, and for the Lille operation, 10MAY44

Night Raid Reports Nos. 576 and 602

Lawrence, W.J. 1951. No. 5 Bomber Group, R.A.F. 1939-1945, Faber and Faber Limited, 24 Russell Square, London W.C.1, p. 185

© 2013 Adam Purcell

Air Traffic Control, Bomber Command-style

~ Adam Purcell

Around the time that Jack Purcell and his crew were on active service with 467 Squadron (January – May 1944), Bomber Command was routinely sending forces numbering six or eight hundred aircraft on large-scale raids against German cities. Even the ‘smaller’ raids on French targets still involved a couple of hundred aircraft each. Landing everyone safely at their airfields after the operation, in the dark, with no lights or radar, and contending with fatigued aircrew, battle damage and the odd German intruder attack, required the development of some remarkably sophisticated and highly efficient systems, and thus laid the foundations for what we now know as air traffic control.

There were a number of local variations depending on which Group the airfield fell under, but the basic procedure was that incoming aircraft would call up the control tower as they approached their home airfield to identify themselves. Flying Control would respond with instructions to either land immediately if there was no-one in front of them, or to circle the airfield, stacked above earlier arrivals at 1,000’ intervals. As No. 1 was in the circuit at 1,000’ and preparing to land, No. 2 would be circling at 2,000’, No. 3 would be at 3,000’ and so on. No. 1 flew around the circuit, following the ‘Drem’ lights located around the airfield, and the pilot would report on the radio as he passed each position: ‘crosswind’ as he passed over the upwind end of the runway, perpendicular to it; ‘downwind’ as he passed the mid-point of the runway, flying parallel to it (which is also where he would begin a slow descent from 1,000’ to land), and ‘funnels’ as he made the final turn to line up with the runway, facing into wind. Then he would wait for the green light from the aerodrome controller (who was located in a caravan parked next to the landing end of the runway) before landing and taxying off the runway to dispersal. Meanwhile, No. 2 became No. 1 and would leave the stack. He would adjust his circuit spacing and speed to position himself one reporting position behind the aircraft in front. As each aircraft left the bottom of the stack, everyone else still circling above them could be stepped down a level until, in turn, they were at the bottom and next to land.

Arrival over base could be inside 10/10ths cloud. In this case, according to 49 Squadron veteran rear gunner Hugh McLeod, the navigator would use the ‘Gee’ navigation aid to home in to the airfield. He would be calling instructions to the pilot in much the same manner as the bomb aimer would while over the target: “Starboard a bit, Skipper… hold it there… should be coming into view now”. Hugh says it was accurate enough to take the aircraft all the way to ‘funnels’ – quite astounding accuracy for the time. In the event of an intruder alert (“this happened to me on three occasions,” Hugh said), an emergency call would come over the radio, lights everywhere would be turned off and the arriving bombers would all scatter until the all-clear sounded or they diverted to other ‘dromes.

It’s interesting to study how the ‘Quick Landing Scheme’ worked in practice on a typical operation. My interest was piqued by an entry in the 467 Squadron Operational Record Book, following a Berlin raid on 15/16 February 1944. Pilot Officer Clive Quartermaine, flying in Lancaster LM338, said this in his interrogation report:

Had to circle base for 40 minutes before landing. Quick Landing Scheme disappointing.

This was an intriguing comment, I thought, and warranted further investigation. Happily, the ORBs for both 463 and 467 Squadrons record landing times for each aircraft at Waddington. I plotted reported landing times in five-minute blocks, for all aircraft landing between midnight and 1 a.m. LM338 landed at 00.53 (in red). The resulting table looks like this:

Time Aircraft   Landing Times
0000-0004 0001 0001 0003 0004
0005-0009 0008
0010-0014 0010 0011 0012 0014
0015-0019 0015 0015 0015 0017 0019
0020-0024 0022 0023
0025-0029 0025 0029 0029
0030-0034 0032
0035-0039 0036 0039
0040-0044 0040 0041 0043
0045-0049 0045 0047 0048
0050-0054 0053
0055-0059 0056

During this hour, thirty aircraft landed at Waddington. The longest gap between arrivals is five minutes (it comes immediately before Quartermaine landed). Without a modern-day radar controller judging approach paths and in darkness, the odd ‘blow out’ of a few extra minutes in the landing sequence is quite understandable. Shorter intervals are far more common and, assuming the times recorded in the ORB are indeed accurate, there were an amazing three arrivals in a single minute at 00.15. Tellingly, this was about 40 minutes before Quartermaine landed, so was quite possibly about the time that LM338 arrived overhead – to find a large stack of aircraft already awaiting their turn to land.

In the next 40 minutes, as Quartermaine and his crew circled overhead the field, a total of 21 aircraft landed. At a rate better than one aircraft every two minutes, this is actually a reasonably efficient use of the runway given wartime conditions (blackout, no lights, no radar control, fatigued crews etc). There is insufficient evidence about the timing of when other aircraft arrived over the field, but there is a good chance that other captains faced similar waiting times.

So while P/O Quartermaine may well have felt a little hard-done-by having needed to wait for so long, it was a simple case of too many aircraft arriving at once and not enough runways for them to use. This basic cause of airborne delays is still a common occurrence in modern-day air traffic control. Nothing ever changes… someone still has to wait!

Descriptions of aerodrome control come from C07-014-123, The Trenches in the Sky by Dan Conway, and C07-050-023 Takeoff to Touchdown by Don Charlwood. Hugh’s recollections were related in a phone call in May 2013.

© 2013 Adam Purcell

Motivations

~ Adam Purcell ~ 1 Comment

Daily life at a Bomber Command airfield could not exactly be described as ‘calming’.

I learned what the target was about midday, and for the whole afternoon I wandered around with a feeling of having half a pound of cold lead in the pit of my stomach. – Bill Brill, 467 Sqn skipper and later CO – C07-036-142

In an effort to explain their feelings about what they were to do, some airmen turned to thoughts of sport – as Hank Nelson wrote in his excellent book Chased by the Sun, for many airmen “sport was one place where their capacity to perform at their best under stress had been tested”. Nelson quotes Arthur Doubleday comparing the lead up to an operation to waiting to go into bat in cricket: “You know, the fast bowler looked a lot faster from the fence, but when you get in there it’s not too bad” (C07-036-142).

But as tours dragged on, as airmen witnessed more and more empty places at the Mess tables, it would have been only natural to begin to feel the cumulative tension of one operation after another. On his eleventh operation, Bill Brill was ‘getting a little accustomed to being scared’ (C07-036-159). And there is no doubt that airmen knew very well exactly how low their chances of surviving a tour were. Gil Pate wrote to his mother in November 1943 (A01-409-001): “It seems an age since I last saw you all + I guess I’ll need a lot of luck to do so again, the way things happen.”

So why did they go on?

Much has been made of the ‘stigma’ of being branded ‘LMF’ (Lacking Moral Fibre), a fate seemingly worse than death. And certainly there were instances of aircrew who had gone beyond their breaking point being publicly stripped of their ranks and their aircrew brevets, and given humiliating menial duties for the rest of the war. The loose stitching and unfaded spots left on their uniforms were a cruel reminder of what they once were. Certainly the threat of being branded LMF was a big motivator for some aircrew to carry on. But despite how much it was feared by the aircrew, a very low number of verdicts of LMF were ever officially handed down – Leo McKinstry quotes about 1200 in all, or less than 1% of all airmen in Bomber Command (C07-048-225).  There were also instances of compassionate squadron Commanding Officers recognising an airman at his limit and quietly moving him off flying duties, without the humiliation of accusations of cowardice. One veteran I know told me of the case of a mid-upper gunner who had been so traumatised by discovering the mutilated remains of his rear gunner comrade after an attack by nightfighters that he was clearly not in a state to continue flying. He was given a month’s compassionate leave on return to base, and on his return from leave was transferred to the Parachute Section of the same Squadron where he worked for the rest of the war (C03-021-051).

One of the most significant motivators, in my view, was the bonds shared by the crews themselves. Dennis Over – a 227 Sqn rear gunner, writing on the Lancaster Archive Forum in December 2010 – says “our greatest fears may well have been not wanting to let our crew down”. When I visited Dennis in June 2010 he said that he could not remember feeling fear while actually on an operation. That, he said, came later.  He had instead, he told me, “a sense of complete concentration on my duties, for the benefit of my entire crew”. No matter what the enemy could throw at them, no matter the hazards of weather or mechanical failure, their crew came first. That bond carries on today with many veteran aircrew still very close to surviving members of their crews. It’s one of the unique aspects of the Bomber Command experience and goes a long way to explaining why, in the face of dreadful odds, they pressed on regardless.

© 2012 Adam Purcell