Thee would I salute in the threshing of thy wings
My heart foretells me triumph in thy name
Onward, proud eagle, to thee the cloud must yield
From The Prussian Border-Eagle by Theodor Körner
Inscribed on the gravestone of Heinz Wolfgang Schnaufer
“Gentlemen, we are no longer on the offensive; rather we shall find ourselves for the next one-and-a-half to two years on the defensive. Now these facts are becoming apparent to those in the highest positions of the Luftwaffe, and are being taken into account in their calculations. Naturally this will mean that we must now have many more fighters, and as many as we possibly can of the 110 and 410 ‘destroyer’ types.”
Generalfeldmarschall Erhard Milch, speaking in Berlin in July 1943
ROYAL AIR FORCE
In the early stages of the war, the RAF’s own night fighter force was very much in its infancy, relying on such types as the Blenheim I, with fairly primitive airborne interception (AI) equipment. Later, single-engine types such as the Hurricane and the Defiant came into use, the latter type especially finding its nocturnal niche after a disastrous baptism of fire as a day fighter during the Battle of Britain. Blenheims were subsequently replaced by Beaufighters and Havocs, but the ultimate RAF night fighter of the war was without question the Mosquito.
Michael Wainwright was among the pilots who experienced the shortcomings of the Blenheim at first hand, flying the type with 64 Squadron from Church Fenton in Yorkshire during the winter of 1939/40.
“The Blenheim wasn’t meant to be a night fighter although we had radar in the back, AI gear it was called. All we had was four machine guns under the belly. Those were Mark I and we started to use Mark IV; that was amazing because your normal flying was 87 octane fuel but with the Mark IV, you took off with 100 octane fuel and then you switched over to 87 once you got up in the air. It was a very nice aeroplane and I could take the dog up in it as well and keep him out of mischief! Yes, it was a nice aeroplane but no bloody good for fighting a war.”
Aircraftman R M Jones was a fitter based at St. Athan, but sent on working parties around the country to install AI equipment.
“AI was first fitted to short-nosed Blenheims. I was in a work party which travelled to Gravesend, and later Middle Wallop, to fit up the aircraft of 604 Squadron. When that squadron converted to AI Beaufighters, Flt Lt ‘Cat’s Eyes’ Cunningham gained the first night victories. (Gp Capt John Cunningham DSO and two bars OBE DFC and bar ended the war with twenty victories with 604 and 85 Squadrons). The AI programme was now stepped up and Beaufighters were flown in from Filton to a special installation flight at St. Athan to be modified before being ferried to the squadrons. At one stage they arrived only in undercoat paint after a heavy raid at Filton which badly damaged the paint shop.”
Before the advent of really effective AI radar, other means had to be found to locate enemy aircraft and guide the fighters onto them. Perhaps the most strange was the fitting of powerful searchlights to Havoc aircraft, intended to illuminate German bombers for accompanying single-engine fighters to attack. Tim Elkington flew Hurricanes on a number of such occasions.
“We worked with the Turbinlite Havocs where we took off in close formation with them at night, viewing an illuminated white-painted strip on their starboard wing. When they got a radar contact, we’d drop down below them, accelerate and then they would illuminate with their x-million candlepower searchlight. We were supposed to see the enemy! The best victory was when the enemy pilot thought that it was a ground searchlight, got disoriented and spun in.”
John Ellacombe flew both Hurricanes and Defiants in concert with Turbinlite Havocs when serving with 151 Squadron from Wittering.
“We had Turbinlite Havocs with a big light in the nose, and the Hurricane would take off first then as the Havoc took off, the Hurricane would come down. Squadron Leader Charles Wynn was leading the pilot in the Havoc and he got a vector onto an aircraft and as we got close to this one, an aircraft flew over the top of us, it was a Dornier, so I cuddled up behind him, fired and hit him a lot. He started to dive and I followed him down. I had to pull up because I was afraid I was going to crash into the sea and I reckoned he crashed into the beach on the coast of Lincolnshire. I couldn’t claim it as a destroyed because I didn’t actually see it because I was heading back.
“I also flew the Defiant, a nice aeroplane, good manoeuvrability, but not quite fast enough. It had the same engine as the Hurricane but of course you had an extra man and the four-gun turret; you didn’t have any guns at the front. I had a very good navigator who flew with me several times, Sergeant Stewart, and about six times we formatted onto what I thought were bombers, and Stewart would say, ‘Don’t shoot, sir, it’s a Wellington’, and I never managed to get onto a German.”
ON THE RECEIVING END
Of all the weapons ranged against them, the one that many of the RAF bomber crews feared the most was the night fighter, lurking unseen in the darkness. The range of armament and increasingly sophisticated radar and counter-measures meant that almost right to the end of the war the Luftwaffe’s Nachtjagd remained a force to be reckoned with. Henry Payne’s Stirling was attacked by a lone night fighter as he returned to base over East Anglia.
“As we got back to base, my gunner asked for permission to unload his guns, then suddenly he screamed out; ‘Corkscrew for Christ’s sake!’ Which I did, exceedingly quickly, but I didn’t know which way to go, and damn great cannon shells came past my cockpit within inches. An Me 410 had apparently got right under my tail and had followed us all the way to England totally undetected. Just as we were being attacked, one of 196 Squadron’s Stirlings was shot down, and he was on fire on the runway. (This was on 21 February 1945, the Stirling shot down was LK126 captained by Flt Lt Campbell.)
“So we flew around for about ten minutes, with occasional scraps with this damn ’410, he kept attacking us, but my gunner was awake, and gave me the right instructions, and we could out-manoeuvre him easily. Eventually we got a message to go to Foulsham. We landed, most unwelcome, because they were all getting ready for a peaceful day, and the Stirlings descended upon them.”
Les Weeks too, suffered a late attack on his 83 Squadron Lancaster on the way back to Coningsby from a raid.
“Just once we had an encounter with a night fighter. We got all the way to the target and bombed, and coming back we’d almost got to the English Channel, and ‘bom-bom-bom’, machine gun. It woke the two gunners up, and that was the only time they used their guns in anger. It knocked a chunk out of one of the tail fins.”
Not so fortunate was Jack Bromfield (JB), shot down on his twelfth operational sortie, a raid on Hannover, on the night of 5 January 1945. The attacking aircraft was a Junkers Ju 88G belonging to II./NJG.2 based at Twente in Holland, and flown by Hauptmann Heinz Rökker (HR), who claimed two aircraft shot down that night, and survived the war with a total of sixty-four victories.
In July 2004, Jack and Heinz met for the first time. Both men felt the same, that they were doing their duty and that it was the aircraft and materials that were the targets, not the people. This was a common view from many of the veterans; the majority said that they were trying to shoot down the aeroplane, not kill the pilot and crew. When asked how he felt on meeting Heinz for the first time, Jack simply said “Wonderful!”
Jack gave more details of that fateful night:
“My job was to listen out for transmissions at set times; recall, diversions, any information. Normally you’d hear nothing, just a long dash and a time signal, and in between those ten-minute segments, you were given a section of the 1155 dial to search. What you were listening for was: ‘Achtung Nachtjäger, Achtung Nachtjäger.’ What you would do then is tune your transmitter exactly to the frequency you were listening on, throw a little switch and press the key, and your set was then connected to a carbon mike in the starboard outer engine. So he’d just get engine noises on that frequency, and he’d go somewhere else.
“We had taken off at 5 o’clock and around two hours later we were about thirty miles north west of Hannover on the run-in to the target, having turned on course over Wilhelmshaven. The first I knew about the attack was when we were hit and there was a ruddy great bang in the fuselage. The tail gunner saw the fighter first and called out, ‘port go’ and the skipper said, ‘rolling, coming up starboard and resuming course’ and threw her into a violent diving turn to try and throw the fighter off. As we came back up we were hit again from below and it started a fire in the crew rest area.
“The escape hatch by my seat was jammed at first, but I eventually got shoved in the back and it fell away, taking me with it. I knew it was a Ju 88 that had got us, because I heard Jumo engines as I was dangling under my ’chute. Our bombing height had been 20,000 feet and after the first attack we were down to about 14,000 feet.”
Heinz described his view of a typical such encounter with a bomber and the tactics the night fighter force used:
“The first four-engine bomber that we saw, we couldn’t tell in the night what type it was, whether it was a Lancaster or a Halifax. A Stirling you could see but not those two-tailed, and so we always said, four-engined ’plane. The first I shot down over Berlin, two of them in 1943, December or so. I cannot remember all my successes, there are too many.
“We couldn’t say exactly where we shot down the bomber. It could be that there was a discrepancy of 50 kilometres. It is dark, and you cannot see aeroplanes under you, the only thing you can see is the target burning. You can see something under the ’planes, but you could see them only as a shadow. Everybody, including night fighters, had to look out for the enemy, called Wilde Sau. Zahme Sau: you had to try to come into the bomber stream and situate yourself in it. But we started far from the bomber stream. They told us where we should be able to see it, but it was not easy to find because you were coming up from underneath the bomber stream.
Wilde Sau (Wild Boar) and Zahme Sau (Tame Boar) were tactics allowing single and groups of night fighters to roam freely amongst the bomber stream with minimum control from the ground.
“We flew only single, we had no contact with others. I always had the same crew. For example, my ’funker (Bordfunker) – radio operator, – I was with him from the beginning until the end. Almost all shoot downs we did together, he was always my crew. It was not our target to kill people in the ’plane, for us it was the ’plane we shot down. We were surprised after the war that so many crews didn’t live. It was not so easy for the crew to jump out.”
Jack Bromfield took up this point:
“The Halifax was much easier than the Lancaster. Where the pilot sat in the Halifax, I sat underneath, and the hatch was under my feet, so the pilot, myself, the navigator and the bomb aimer could all go out of that hatch, with plenty of time for the others to go out of the rear door. The rear gunner, if his turret was still working, could just turn it through 90 degrees and roll backwards. Much easier than the Lanc to get out. In the Lanc they were all through the back door. There was a hatch in the front, but some guys had to come over the main wing spar, which was very high; but the others would go out of the rear door, which was on the starboard side as opposed to the port on the Hally. They had a ladder to get in there, which meant that the door was level with the tailplane, which I thought wasn’t as good.
“Only the flight engineer, George Dacey, did not survive and we think he did not get out at all (he has no known grave, and is commemorated on the RAF memorial at Runnymede). The tail gunner had found himself a fighter pilot’s parachute that he sat on, to save him having to go back into the fuselage, climb over the elevator bar, find his parachute and then get out of the rear door. He just turned his turret and rolled out backwards. Just the other day I cut myself shaving right on the cheekbone. At first I thought the foil had gone on my razor, but it was a tiny piece of Perspex from that last op, that had been just under the skin for all those years.
HR – “The bombers had a good chance to catch us because when we put on our radar they could find us.
JB – “The same worked for us. We had Monica (a tail-warning radar) which told you if there was an aircraft there. But it also told him (the night fighter) that there was another aircraft present! There were always measures and counter-measures, and counter-counter-measures.
HR – “The bomber had no chance to escape.
JB – “Most of the time we didn’t even know you were there. We always knew Heinz, when you were coming, because the flak stopped.
HR – “You couldn’t see us. English crews told me they didn’t know that we had Schräge Musik. Did you know of it?
Schräge Musik was a system of fixed, upward-firing cannons installed in the night fighters to allow them to approach from underneath the bombers unseen by the rear gunners.
JB – “Yes, I knew. We didn’t understand a great deal about it.
HR – “During the war?
JB – “Yes, I only knew what it was, I didn’t know what it did. How often did you come across Mosquitoes and Beaufighters?
HR – “I never saw them, only the one I shot down. It was landing and at that time in Belgium and France there were some airfields where the English landed and also the Americans. He was landing there and he had his lights on and so I could see him. I couldn’t say now what airfield it was; I said at the time it was St. Trond. I could only shoot the aircraft down when landing, not in the air as it was faster than we were.
“A piece of the Mosquito got in my motor and the motor didn’t work, so I tried to land at Twente, but there was fog and I couldn’t touch down there, and so they said I must fly to Diepholz. The water was very very hot, and so I couldn’t fly for a long time. I made a normal landing and suddenly saw another ’plane was belly landing next to me, and at the same moment they turned the lights out, as they thought it was my ’plane. Our enemy was the long-range night fighter – Mosquito and Beaufighter.
JB – “If you had Schräge Musik near the cockpit, did you also have forward-firing cannons built-in?
HR – “Yes, but it wasn’t dangerous for us. We could fly under the Lancaster or Halifax and he couldn’t see us; all was black and so we could fly five minutes or ten minutes with him. The pilots sometimes made quick manoeuvres and we stayed with him until he was level.
JB – “Did you always fly the Ju 88 or did you also fly the Me 110?”
HR – “Yes, most of the time, I only spent a short time with the Me 110. The first success, Lancaster or a Halifax, I had with Me 110, was over Berlin; the only one with that type. We came back to Germany from Sicily and there we changed from the Ju 88 to ’110. It was ordered for some crews to go to Glize-Rijen in Holland. Some crews who were there had already some success with the aircraft, and we were told we should try them in the Himmelbett. I had only one flight there in a Himmelbett, in Gorilla I think. It was an ordinary night flight, not for attack but for exercise, and there we were given ’110 for these exercises, but only four or five crews.
Himmelbett was the original night fighter control system, which restricted aircraft to patrolling in defined areas and flying as directed from the ground. Each area had a code name, such as ‘Gorilla’.
“They gave us the order to fly to Berlin when there was an attack, because we couldn’t fly in these Himmelbetts because there was Window. (Bundles of foil strips thrown out by the bombers to confuse the enemy radar.) And so began the Wilde Sau and Zahme Sau. Later on we came together with the whole group, and they tried the ’110. Then we were in Kassel. We went there, only some of our group, not a Staffel, just four or five – a flight. We had the order to go to Kassel and there we got the Ju 88, and the other part of the group, they were at Parchim, came back to Kassel and they got also the Ju 88.
JB – “Which did you prefer, did you think the Ju 88 was better?
HR – “Yes, better, it was a very safe aeroplane. I think I could fly it now! It was so good to me I had no problems with the machine, ever.”
Peter Spoden, a fellow Nachtjäger, agreed with this view:
“I liked the Ju 88 more than the ’110. Not all night fighters felt the same. In my opinion, the Ju 88 had certain advantages. Firstly, we were four in the cockpit and had contact. We could help each other when wounded, and were not separated like in the ’110. Secondly, we had two radio-operators, one for radar, and one for navigation. With eight eyes you see more! The engine handling (one lever) was better than in the ’110, and the Ju 88 was better with one engine out. The emergency exit, which was below, was better than the difficulty of jumping out in the ’110.
“Of course, I would have loved the Me 262 NJ version. I moved to the ’88 in early summer 1944 from Me 110 G-4 to Junkers 88 G-1, and later on G-4. We always had one ’plane and one crew. I lost my flight logs when becoming a POW; it was a crazy time, and thank God so long ago.”
HR – “The ground crew were very good, they had much experience, since 1940, and with me. Some new men came but from 1940 till the end of the war, they gained much experience.
JB – “Also, if you don’t keep the same men all the time, you’ve probably got to weed out one or two bad ones, but if you keep the same men, that’s when you get esprit de corps. I found our ground crews were second to none.
Heinz – “From the middle of 1944 to the end of the war I always had the same aeroplane, and the same ground man. He had the duty to make it fit, and had pride in keeping it ready. Prinz Wittgenstein was our commander of the Geschwader. I only met him once, during his role, but we had heard of his great heart and how he only thought of shooting down the enemy. He took off when nobody else would.
Major Prinz Heinrich zu Sayn-Wittgenstein scored eighty-three night fighter victories before being killed in action attacking his fifth Lancaster of the night over Magdeburg on 21 January 1944, possibly falling victim to a Mosquito.
Peter Spoden also came across other outstanding night fighter pilots:
“After the night missions we landed at the NJ-airports nearby and I met Herrmann, Schnaufer, Sayn-Wittgenstein and others just for a short talk and returned after refuelling at our home bases. After the war we met at different fighter reunions.
Oberst Hajo Herrmann was the instigator of the Wilde Sau tactics; Major Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer was the top scoring night fighter pilot, surviving the war with 121 victories.
“Oberst Herrmann was an outstanding officer; I admired his attitude. A highly experienced officer and excellent bomber pilot, Hajo Herrmann, the sort of old campaigner that wars have produced since the dawn of time. He had advised Göring and the senior echelons of the Luftwaffe that in addition to the twin-engined night fighters, singled-engined Me 109s and Fw 190s should go into action above the burning targets. This, then, was Wilde Sau, which often enough put the fear of death into us twin-engine men by their pilots’ wild manoeuvring. Both systems would cause the RAF great trouble during the next months.”
HR - “Towards the end of the war we were running out of gasoline. We had enough machines, and enough gasoline until 1945. But only some crews were allowed to take off. Crews who had success were allowed to fly. Three or four machines would fly only; we had twelve in our gruppe. We still had new crews coming in. Younger crews had flying, starting, landing, and flying in the night, rather than the day. They had not much experience; because there was no gasoline to allow them to practise therefore we had many losses from these young crews. We had so many Ju 88s in the last part of the war, but all were destroyed.
“Fighters were led by radar from the ground, to the enemy all over the coast. Himmelbett was Kammhuber’s idea and his work; but when the big bomber stream came it was not so effective. It was only a little piece of the ground, a 50 kilometre box, and it was only one fighter. Gorilla – they all had different names for different areas. Then came Window, and when Window was dropped you could not follow the bomber to the target. (General Josef Kammhuber was the first commander of the night fighter force, and the instigator of the Himmelbett system of ground control.)
JB – “We threw out little strips like tinsel, they were wrapped in very poor quality cardboard, with a piece of string which went in and out of the side and when you opened the hatch, the string pulled the cardboard and they all fluttered out. But you had to have a piece of plywood or something to put over the hole, because if not, they all came back again. At one time they used to drop them out of the flare chute, then they discovered it was much more effective for the wireless operator to do it.
HR – “We had radar for night fighters. It was Lichtenstein and then came SN2. It was not so effective because we were not leading from the ground, we led with our eyes. We looked to where there were bomb bursts, before they were at the target, so we could see where the bomber stream was. When an aircraft went down, it was visible from about 100 kilometres away, when it was burning in the air it meant we could see where the enemy’s flight was.”
Peter Spoden again:
“When flying Himmelbett we used code names with the ground controller. However, in Zahme and Wilde Sau we were on our own. The ground people gave all night fighters the directions of the bomber stream, which very often was wrong. But we saw the ‘abschuss’, intense flak-fire and ‘christbaum’ (flares), and followed those with our own SN2 and Naxos radar until contact. During an attack we did not talk except for intercom with our own crew.
“In the old Luftwaffe the procedure with claims was quite difficult and very strict (at least with the night fighters). As pilot you had to make a written report about how the shooting happened, time, type of enemy aircraft, how much ammunition was used, kind of attack (Schräge Musik etc.), witnesses and most important: exact time and location where the enemy aircraft crashed. The radio-operator made a fix with radio-bearings which was not always possible in the heat of the fight.
“All this went to the RLM (Reichsluftfahrtminister) for checking, and after in the above case, seven months later I got a record and an acknowledgement of the claim. This did not work anymore at the end of the war. Most RAF bombers crashed over Germany or occupied country, so identification was not difficult. Of course in some cases there was over-claiming. As a night fighter you got the Iron Cross when you had at least four successes. The Ehrenpokal you got with ten, the Golden Cross with fifteen and the Ritterkreuz with twenty-five. Crazy times. If you weren’t dead already!”
OPERATION GISELA, MARCH 1945
In a last desperate attempt to stem the endless bombing raids, the Luftwaffe launched a large force of night fighters against English airfields to seek out and attack bombers at their most vulnerable, as they were in the circuit to land after a raid. Heinz Rökker took part in the operation, which was code named Gisela.
“At the latest by early 1943, German long-range intruding over Great Britain should have been built up again, because it was a well known fact that the British operational aerodromes were fully lit up during their take-off and landing procedures. Furthermore, during the assembling process of the bomber stream, the bomber crews, against regulation, often switched on their navigational lights for fear of collision. To hunt them under these conditions would have been the ultimate dream of the German long-range intruders.
“At the end of the war they said we should fly over England because there was no defence from the English. Many of the flyers put on their lights and so we could see them and when they landed we tried to find them. I saw one with lights, and I tried to shoot him down. But the distance was too great. Because I could see them very well and was beneath them, I fired a burst, but was behind, and too low. At the same moment he switched off his lights. I could not see him anymore and so I could not get him.
“We stayed over England for one hour. Twice I went, and we had ten bombs. We threw the bombs on the airfield, they were lit but there was no flak, nothing. I was flying over Norwich, Grimsby and Lincoln; I’m not certain though, the English people didn’t tell me where I was! We would fly very low over the sea, because you couldn’t be got at with radar. It was very dangerous to fly 100 metres over the sea. You always thought you would hit the water. But we had a very good method to see the height, at short distance. We could see the foam, but to see the aircraft at 50 metres, 100 metres or even 20 metres, that was special. When we saw the coast we climbed and then flew at 1,000 metres and saw nothing, no flak, no night fighters. Finally I dropped the bombs on an airfield that was lit up. I fired forward with my cannons and all was lit at that time, so we shot at the light; then, the lights went out.
“We saw the town was full of light and we saw a tram; we were not so high! In the far distance another German night fighter shot down on English ’plane. I couldn’t see properly, because you saw tracer from underneath and going up and you saw when it was burning. But I didn’t observe an aeroplane, it was probably Lancaster or Halifax I think.”
THE FINAL WORD
The following was written by Heinz Rökker in 2000, and eloquently summarised the whole night war experience from the German viewpoint.
“The evening sun sets low on the western horizon and shoots rays of light through dark clouds, a sign for the experienced flier that the weather will worsen. For us, this is familiar. The British usually time their raids so their take-off and landing conditions are favourable, whereas we German night fighters struggle with bad weather over our hunting grounds. That is exactly the case tonight.
“After our meal in the officers’ mess at approximately 18:00 hours, we head to the gefechtsstand (operations room) for a briefing. First Met gives us the weather forecast for Holland, Belgium and northern Germany, warning us of heavy thunderstorms, and he gives us special information for tonight regarding flak-defended areas, searchlight positions, radio frequencies and tonight’s possible targets (set by the high command at the town of Stade, sixty miles west of Hamburg). Afterwards, the crews retire to their readiness rooms, and the officers remain in the operations room, where the ground-control officers – and many radar girls – wait for the enemy bombers to appear on their screens.
“Now begins a time of increasing nervous tension. In a way, the attackers are better off, as they have definite orders when to take off, where to fly, etc. The defenders have to wait, wait and wait. And this tension rises to a peak and then fades again. The telephone rings, but the call is unimportant.
“To understand the pressure we live with at this stage of the war, consider the following facts: most of us are still flying the Bf 110, which is heavily armed but slow. Readiness is absolutely for experienced crews only, (just Oberleutnant Schmidt and me). From the summer of 1944, there was an alarming shortage of fuel, and under doubtful weather conditions, we did not expect the younger crews to have any success.
“My crew, Bordfunker (wireless/radar operator) ‘Schani’ Pinter (an Austrian) and our so-called ‘third man’ Emil Mathan have already arrived at the hangar by crew truck. The 1.Wart (first mechanic) has checked our ’plane (G9+ES), and it is ready for flight. We squeeze ourselves into the cockpit, fasten our parachutes and seatbelts and wait for further orders. Fortunately, the rain has stopped and the thunderstorms have moved away to the east. Will we be ordered to take off? Or is this just another false alarm?
“24:00 hours and we are still waiting. The weather has deteriorated; from time to time, lightning flashes light up the night and are followed by thunder and heavy rain. Suddenly, the ’phone rings again; Oberleutnant Schmidt answers it. Immediately we can see from his face that something is happening, ‘Erhohte Bereitschaft’ (readiness). We quickly put on our flight suits and wait for the order to rush to our aircraft in the hangars. A couple of minutes later, the order comes through.
“Suddenly, at 00:13 hours, the sleeping airfield comes to life. A white flash rises into the sky to indicate, ‘Start befehl’ – our order to take off. At the same time, the loudspeaker in the hangar announces the order: ‘Start befehl each Funkfeuer Quelle’ – take-off to radio beacon ‘quelle’ (fountain) – the code word for the letter ‘Q’, situated 150 miles west of Hamburg. My technician closes the roof of the canopy; I start the engines. Taxiing to the departure point must be done in absolute darkness, there are no identification lights or taxiway markings. In case intruders are patrolling the area, we sometimes have to take off without the runway being lit by the flare path. At such times, a dim light at the end of the runway guides us in the proper direction.
“The first one airborne is Oberleutnant Schmidt. When I see the sparks coming from his exhaust pipes, I know he is away and it is my turn. When I push the throttles forward, my ’plane immediately roars down the runway and into the night. I am surrounded by absolute darkness. We are in clouds with our course set for 70 degrees; we climb at full power and are shaken by the ever-increasing storm clouds around us. Lightning occasionally illuminates the cockpit in a ghostly, pale colour. All of a sudden, a mauve light flickers on our aerials and propeller tips, ‘Elmsfeuer’ – St. Elmo’s Fire.
“My aircraft, ‘ES’, becomes increasingly difficult to fly as the grip of ice takes over, and we are tossed like a toy by the forces of nature. ‘Sitzbereitschaft für spitzenbesatzungen’ (cockpits start to lose altitude). After several agonising minutes, we break free into a shaft of clear air. The ice loosens its grip, slips away, and we are now safe and can fly freely again to 21,000 feet. The hunt begins.
“Shaken up and down, I am concerned as we are slower and inferior in every way to the Mosquito, and are sometimes slower than the four-engine Lancasters without their bomb load. The Heinkel He 219, equal to the Mosquito, is supplied to only twenty to thirty crews. Far superior to all allied aircraft is the new, jet-powered Arado 234. (A night fighter version of the Arado was proposed, but it came too late and was used only as a reconnaissance aircraft at altitudes of over 30,000 feet during the last three months of the war.) Furthermore, radio communication and radar (ground/air, board/board and the airborne radar) are often completely jammed by specially equipped RAF bombers that fly in the formations.
“To overcome the jamming, the German controllers sometimes use other methods to pass information about the anticipated target to pilots. Radio stations transmit music typical of the area that the controllers thought were to be bombed. For example: Viennese waltzes if Austria (then part of Germany) was suspected; shanties for Hamburg; carnival songs for the Rhineland; typical Bavarian melodies for Munich and operettas from well-known Berlin composers for Berlin.
“Thus, little information about the bomber formation’s course, altitude or main target (there are always diversionary raids) was available to us. Furthermore, the increasingly effective action of the Mosquito intruders, with their superior radar and flying performance, coupled with poor weather and inexperienced crews, contribute to many of our losses. All this while facing defeat within the foreseeable future! In spite of it all, the crews’ morale remains high; nobody speaks about the terrible end. Everybody secretly hopes for the ‘wonder weapons’ promised by our political leaders.
“We do not hate the British or the Americans; these boys are doing their duty just as we are. Neither side can change the political situation, so we have to carry on with our job to prevent as many allied bombers as possible from destroying our cities and killing our people.
“When we reach radio beacon ‘Q’ the first RAF pathfinders are dropping their target indicators. We see cascades of red, green and white flares marking the aiming point. They light up the area and descend slowly on little parachutes. We call them ‘christbaume’ (Christmas trees). From now on, it doesn’t take long for the terrible spectacle to begin! Thirty miles away, we can see the first explosions on the ground in Hamburg, and they’re followed by widespread fires. These eventually combine into one enormous fire that covers entire suburbs with a disastrous firestorm. The updraft brings wind velocities of 120 miles an hour, and the firestorm consumes everything in its path; there is no chance at all!
“Soon, we see the first kills by night fighters and flak: Lancasters, Halifaxes and our own comrades go down as orange-coloured torches, descending in steep dives to explode on impact with the ground. We see the parachutes of the lucky men who manage to bale out; there are not many. Searchlights move all over the night sky, looking like pale arms of an octopus in search of prey. In addition, explosions of anti-aircraft shells at all altitudes make life difficult for friend and foe. Over the city are many aircraft from both sides, and there are collisions.
“Altogether, it is an inferno-hell for everybody. We night fighters can easily be seen by enemy bombers’ gunners and by the marauding British night fighters, and we are hit by our own flak. We have to be cautious to avoid colliding with other aircraft, as all around us are at least fifty to eighty four-engine bombers and a similar number of night fighters. Bombs, incendiaries and target indicators fall between us. The fires send up their light to 20,000 feet. It is as bright as day; you could read a newspaper! The smell of smoke fills our cockpit.
“While the raid is in full swing, I see a Halifax and follow it into the darkness. I slowly close into position under it so I can use my Schräge Musik, two 20mm MG/FF upward-firing cannon. I am almost in firing position when a nearby aircraft catches fire and lights up the sky for me, a dangerous situation, so I quickly move to the darker side and wait. After a couple of minutes, I close in again and aim between its two port engines where the fuel tanks are. A short burst of cannon fire causes a small bluish flame, but the bomber immediately goes into a steep dive and crashes in an explosion twenty miles west of Hamburg. We see two of the crew bale out.
“Later, Schani has a blip on his cathode-ray tube; he takes over and guides me. ‘Marie 800 (distance 800 metres), a bit higher, left, left, straight now, Marie 500, straight ahead, a bit higher and to the right, now you should be able to see him!’ And so it is, another Halifax flying home, straight and level, no evasive actions. Again I close into the same position and fire. This time, the tanks in the right wing immediately catch fire, which quickly extends along the fuselage to behind the tail. We can clearly recognize the code letters ‘W-BM’ on the camouflage-coloured Halifax (433 Sqn Skipton-on-Swale). The burning aircraft flies onward for another two minutes, and again, only two crewmen bale out. Eventually, as if in agony, the Halifax turns slowly upside down and falls to the ground. It crashes at 01:28.
“We are right in the middle of the returning bomber formation and look for our next victim. Again, Schani sees a blip on his screen, so we start the chase for the third time, however, we are having trouble closing the distance. I give my ‘ES’ full power. There are some polar lights in the north that enable me to see the bomber quite early: another Halifax, recognisable by its bluish exhaust glow (the Lancaster’s exhaust glow looks orange). This time, I close in from astern and then give a burst from my two forward-firing Mk 108 30mm cannon. Its right wing immediately bursts into flames, and I notice the code ‘EQ-P’ (408 Sqn Linton-on-Ouse). The Halifax inclines to the left and slowly goes down.
“Suddenly, something unexpected happens: diving away, the brave British rear gunner gives me a burst from his four Brownings, and my ’plane is hit in the right engine, which immediately catches fire. To watch the bomber go down, I had to lower my left wing, and that saved my life. The bullets passed over my head and into my right engine. While the burning Halifax goes down (at 01:36), I try to extinguish the fire. Unlike the British, we have no fire extinguishers. The only means of putting out the fire is a steep dive with a strong relative wind that we hope will extinguish the flames. Thank God, it works!
“Our altitude is now 6,000 feet; I shut down the engine and manage to feather the propeller. Only now do we realise that our chase has brought us far out over the North Sea. We have no Mae Wests nor dinghies and only one engine left to take us home. To fly with one engine is not usually a problem for the Bf 110, as long as we don’t have to climb. I set a heading of 180 degrees to reach the Dutch coast to the south, and I’m very cautious to avoid the heavy flak-defended areas around Bremen and Bremerhaven on one side and the East Frisian Islands on the other side on my return flight.
“Schani calls the tower at Twente, still 150 miles away. Luckily, they hear us, faintly, but they warn us that an intruder Mosquito is patrolling the area. This could be fatal for us, but I must take the chance, as no airfields are nearby with a runway long enough to allow a single-engine landing by night; the only other suitable airfields Leeuwarden (Holland) and Wittmundhaven are fogged in. When the intruders are on patrol, all lights on the airfield are dimmed to an absolute minimum. But because of our emergency, these restrictions are now ignored and all help is given to us. The runway is fully lit, and the flak searchlights form a ‘dome’ that is visible for quite a distance as a white patch on top of the clouds. This gives us absolute priority for communications and landing, and the fire brigades and medical personnel are prepared to rush to the site of a crash.
“By now, we are flying at 5,000 feet, partly in the clouds and with a speed of only 180 miles an hour. It is not at all easy because our artificial horizon is out of order; the dead engine powered it. Again, we are lucky, as after about forty-five minutes, the tower radios that the Mosquito has left the area. I prepare for an instrument landing, and my only remaining problem – to avoid an additional circuit – is to meet the main beam of our ILS at a point and altitude at which we usually begin our approach. To fly another circuit with the Bf 110 at low altitude and on one engine is not a good idea.
“Fortunately, I manage to hit the main beam at the favourable height of 600 feet. Still in the clouds, I lower the flaps and landing gear. At 150 feet, I break free of the clouds and realise that I am short of the runway. So I start the right engine again, but it immediately begins to shoot sparks and flames, so I turn it off; it does, however, give me the necessary few metres I need to reach the airfield and cross the 200 yards to the runway, where we land safely. Our blood pressures go back to normal!
“Now, fifty-six years later, I sit in Hamburg airport on a warm summer evening after thunderstorms have passed over the city. I watch as airliners take off and follow the traffic with the tower over the intercom. My memories go back to a time when Lancasters and Halifaxes took off from their airfields in England to bring their deadly loads to Germany. Fortunately, this belongs in the past; the allies and Germans have become partners and, in many cases, even friends. But we should not forget to honour the brave airmen on both sides, who did their duties and were not as lucky to survive as we were.”