Night Duel Over Germany

Bomber Command's Battle Over the Reich During WWII

Peter Jacobs

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Aviation
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781473897120
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Bomber Commands night offensive against Nazi Germany, which lasted for nearly six years, was one of Britains major contributions to the Allied effort during the Second World War. But the decision to conduct its main operations at night only came about following heavy losses by day, when its prewar medium bombers had been found lacking in modern air warfare. The Luftwaffe, too, had its early problems. Initially without a dedicated night fighter, it was ill-equipped to defend the Reich, and so the stage was set for what would become one of the most critical strategic encounters of the war.Things had to change on both sides. Soon there came new and more capable aircraft, in ever-increasing numbers, coupled with new tactics and technology, as each side strove to gain the upper hand. It became a fascinating encounter between the crews of Bomber Command and the Luftwaffes night fighter force, the Nachtjagd, with no shortage of courage and heavy losses on both sides. Amongst the epic encounters were Bomber Commands Thousand Bomber raids, the attack on the German V-weapons research establishment at Peenemnde, the campaigns against the industrial Ruhr, Hamburg and Berlin, and the disastrous raid on Nuremberg. This new publication consolidates accounts from both sides and from all ranks of service in an effort to provide a comprehensive account of some of the most ferocious nocturnal engagements of the Second World War.

Chapter One

Only Owls and Fools Fly at Night

Searchlights try to pick us up, but that’s useless, they can’t get through the cloud. On and on we roar passing an occasional track marker put down by the Pathfinders. They quickly improve on that and follow up with ‘REDS’ cascading into ‘GREENS’ gradually descending into the clouds. These are the ones we bomb. Already I can see the first wave unloading their bombs. At the same time a line of fighter flares goes down, brilliant and bright, parallel to our track about 2 miles away, but don’t panic, it’s a decoy laid down by our Mosquito boys. Things are getting larger and clearer as we approach the target. Then the final turn in – this is it!

It was November 1943 and the words are taken from the diary of one Lancaster bomb aimer flying his first bombing mission. It was the opening phase of the Battle of Berlin and the night war over Germany was being fought equally hard on both sides.

Bomber Command had been forced into conducting its main operations at night after suffering heavy losses by day during the opening months of the Second World War. Even then, it had not been best equipped to conduct a lengthy campaign at night. Its medium bombers were found to be lacking in modern air warfare with navigation and bombing techniques having changed little since the 1920s.

The RAF’s first night sorties of the Second World War were flown as early as the opening night, when ten Whitleys based at Linton-on-Ouse, seven from 58 Squadron and three from 51 Squadron, dropped leaflets over a dozen German cities, mostly in the industrial heartland of the Ruhr. With the packs of leaflets stacked inside the Whitley there was not much room left for the crew and the task of shoving the bundles down the flare chute proved quite tiring.

The dropping of leaflets, known as Nickelling, was hardly offensive and it would be a long time before bombs were dropped on German soil. Even though Britain was at war with Germany those early days were more about caution than aggression with the leaflets carrying a ‘warning message from Great Britain’, informing those who read them that the war had been brought about by the policies of the Nazis and was not in the interest of the German people.

During the first month of the war more than 20 million leaflets were dropped. Nickelling would soon become a secondary activity but for now propaganda leaflets were all the crews of Bomber Command were allowed to drop. Even when Blenheim and Wellington crews were sent to attack German warships at Wilhelmshaven and Brunsbüttel for Bomber Command’s opening raid of the war, the Operation Order included words of caution:

The greatest care is to be taken not to injure the civilian population. The intention is to destroy the German fleet. There is no alternative target.

For the Whitley squadrons the Nickelling sorties went on, with the monotony of leaflet dropping only being broken during the occasional moonlit nights, when the crews were tasked with carrying out visual reconnaissance of specific areas of Germany. During one of these sorties on the night of 1/2 October 1939, a Whitley of 10 Squadron flew over Berlin. It was the first Bomber Command aircraft to do so.

As winter approached the weather made Nickelling sorties difficult and extremely uncomfortable for the crew. The temperature inside the aircraft fell to -20 degrees centigrade with the crew having to endure hours in freezing cold conditions with no heating and no way of alleviating the problem, other than bashing the extremities of the body to try and create some heat. The poor rear gunner, in particular, cramped in his rear turret and almost open to the elements, suffered most of all. George Dove, a gunner with 10 Squadron, later recalled:

The Whitley was ungainly but built like a tank, and never once let us down. I had great confidence in it. The trouble was that in the winter the tail turret was no place to be, no heating to speak of and no electric-heated clothing. I wonder how we were able to sit there for as long as nine or ten hours without moving. I was glad when I was finally able to move into the cockpit as first wireless operator, which we did after half a tour.

The Wellington crews, meanwhile, had been carrying out daylight sweeps of the North Sea in search of enemy shipping. The limitations of the Hampden had already become apparent and so it had been left largely to the Wimpy crews to carry out this task.

These missions had, so far, managed to avoid confrontation with enemy fighters but this run of luck came to an end on 14 December when a mixed force of forty-two bombers, the largest raid mounted so far, found an enemy convoy to the south-west of Heligoland. With the weather in the area poor, the crews were already down at low level beneath the cloud. But as they started their attacks several enemy fighters appeared and during the carnage that followed, five of the twelve Wellingtons were shot down.

RAF sources were reluctant to admit high losses to enemy fighters, choosing instead to state they were due to accurate flak from the warships, but just four days later there were further losses when twenty-four Wellingtons were sent to attack enemy warships docked at Wilhelmshaven. The outcome of the previous raid meant the crews were ordered to bomb from above 10,000 feet to avoid losses to enemy flak. In near-perfect conditions the bombers carried out their attacks but as they headed for home twelve Wellingtons were shot down by marauding German fighters.

It appears the Wellingtons had been detected by a Freya radar station located on a nearby island, after which it had been relatively easy for the German controllers to direct the Luftwaffe fighters on to the bombers, and so this engagement provides an early example of just how big a part technology would play in the air war ahead.

Developed by Gesellschaft für Elektroakustische und Mechanische Apparate (GEMA) for the detection of ships, Freya was the first operational early warning system introduced into service with the German Navy shortly before the war. It had a smaller antenna system compared with the British Chain Home equivalent, which enabled the detection of smaller targets, and with a range of nearly 40 miles (60 km) and a resolution of around 1.5 degrees in azimuth, it was more advanced than its British counterpart. However, Freya had no true height-finding capability and with only eight units deployed there would be large gaps in coverage. Improvements would see the detection range double and an angular resolution of less than one degree. Furthermore, it would soon be paired with another system called Würzburg, a more accurate radar using a rotating dipole antenna and a pulsed radar, with a concentrated beam for gun-laying and the control of heavy anti-aircraft batteries. These would be deployed to Germany’s industrial area of the Ruhr, the idea being that Freya would detect and track incoming aircraft while Würzburg would determine the exact range and height of the targets as they got closer.

The losses suffered by Bomber Command during December 1939 were not only disastrous for its squadrons involved but were also a major concern for the Air Staff. The Wellington was to be the RAF’s single-most important bomber of the early war years, but with seventeen shot down in just two raids – half of those that had carried out their attacks – it provided unwelcome evidence that the aircraft, and the other medium bombers for that matter, would not be able to survive daylight operations over Germany against determined fighter opposition.

Not everyone was convinced and some even suggested that it had been poor formation-keeping that had allowed the enemy fighters to get between the bombers’ zones of mutual defence. The reality was, however, that the German fighter pilots, the Jagdflieger, had found the close formations of bombers easy to spot and made shooting them down that much easier.

The first four months of war had seen little, if any, change in Bomber Command’s tactics. For the Wellington crews operating by day the losses would average an unsustainable 13 per cent in the first six months of the war, whereas Whitley losses while Nickelling at night had been as low as 2 per cent over the same period.

While bombing at night offered much potential and had obvious advantages, the problems of navigation raised severe doubts as to whether targets could be found. In the absence of sophisticated systems, the primary method of navigation was still DR (dead or deduced reckoning), a technique relying on accurate flying and the ability to obtain positional information to update the navigational plot. By taking the wind into account it was possible to determine the aircraft’s position over the ground. However, any calculation errors when travelling over long distances, no matter how small, could easily result in the bomber straying many miles away from its intended position and so making it impossible for the crew to find their target.

As far as bombing techniques were concerned, there were essentially two options; either to bomb from high altitude, with the obvious disadvantage of lacking accuracy, or to bomb from low level, which offered better accuracy but put the crew at greater risk from the enemy’s ground defences. There was a third option too, and one that was better developed by the Luftwaffe, of dive-bombing yet this was seen by the RAF as a compromise.

While the training of RAF bomber crews focused on high-level bombing, other suggestions were put forward to help improve bombing techniques. These ideas included using flares to help illuminate targets at night, but without a trials and development unit these ideas were rarely taken much further. There was simply too much that needed doing and not enough resources to do it. In practical terms, Bomber Command was not equipped for the role that it had been assigned.

The early weeks of 1940 saw the Wellingtons and Hampdens join in with leaflet dropping, although this was more to give the crews valuable experience of operating at night rather than a desire to drop more leaflets. It was still the period of the so-called Phoney War and the bombing of mainland Germany remained prohibited. It was, more often than not, the weather that was the enemy.

The night of 19/20 March 1940 marked an early but important raid in the night war against Germany. German aircraft had dropped bombs on British soil two nights before while attacking naval shipping in Scapa Flow. One civilian was killed and several more injured, and so the British Government ordered Bomber Command to carry out a reprisal attack on a German seaplane base, but only where there was no risk to civilians.

The base chosen was Hörnum, on the southernmost tip of the island of Sylt and well away from civilian areas. With thirty Whitleys and twenty Hampdens taking part it was Bomber Command’s largest raid so far. More than 20 tons of high explosives and a thousand incendiary bombs were dropped, although a post-raid reconnaissance could not be carried out until the following month and so it was not really possible to assess whether the raid had been a success.

It had now been more than six months since Britain’s declaration of war, yet this raid marked the RAF’s first real bombing operation of the war and was the first time aircraft of Bomber Command dropped bombs on a land target. But the Second World War entered a new phase in April 1940 when German forces invaded Denmark and Norway.

While Britain immediately declared its support for the two countries, nothing in reality could be done to help Denmark. Although Bomber Command did what it could to slow down the German advance on southern Norway, it took the loss of nine bombers attacking enemy shipping at Stavanger to bring daylight bombing missions to an end. Finally, Bomber Command turned its attention to operating at night.

A directive issued to Bomber Command’s new chief, Sir Charles Portal, saw the first significant change in bombing policy, although it was more of a reaction to recent events rather than the creation of a long-term strategy. Two policies were put forward depending on which series of events transpired. As there had been no German invasion of the Low Countries at this stage, the directive called for general air action at night with the priorities given as: identifiable oil plants; identifiable electricity plants and coking plants; self-illuminating objectives vulnerable to air attack; and main German ports in the Baltic if specifically authorized. However, if the Germans were to invade the Low Countries then the entire plan changed, in which case the emphasis was:

To attack vital objectives in Germany, starting in the Ruhr, to cause the maximum dislocation to lines of communications of the German advance through the Low Countries.

In this latter case the stated objectives were troop concentrations, communications in the Ruhr, especially marshalling yards, and oil plants in the Ruhr, but there was still no suggestion of a general bombing campaign.

That night, 13/14 April 1940, Bomber Command commenced its first minelaying operations of the war. Given the codename of Gardening, fifteen Hampdens laid mines in sea lanes off Denmark between the German ports and Norway.

The early Gardening sorties were carried out by Hampdens of No. 5 Group with anything up to six squadrons at a time allocated to the task and with each aircraft carrying a single 1,500 lb mine. Although the idea of dropping mines into the sea sounds simple enough, it called for skill and precision to ensure that the mine, known as the vegetable, was laid in exactly the right place, with locations for the mines given suitable agricultural names.

A typical Gardening sortie was that of a Hampden of 49 Squadron from Scampton on the night of 21/22 April, flown by a 24-year-old Canadian, Flying Officer Wilf Burnett. The crew report reads:

On 21 April we were detailed to carry out Gardening operations in ‘Daffodil’ area. We took off at 1930 hours and set course for coast, climbing at 135 mph to 5,000 feet. At 1952 hours we set course 083 degrees for Sylt. We proceeded uneventfully at 5,000 feet above 8/10 to 10/10 cloud until we saw Sylt through a break in the cloud at 2150 hours. We continued on the same course and at 2205 hours observed a green light on our port bow which we mistook for a sea navigation light. It was, however, the navigation lights of another aircraft which we identified as an enemy aircraft. We descended through cloud at 2230 hours and at the ETA [estimated time of arrival] determined our position to be south of the target so set North and fifteen minutes later recognized the target area. We ascertained our target and dropped ‘Melon’ according to plan at 2315 hours. We set course of 255 degrees Magnetic for base and began climbing through cloud to 6,000 feet. At 0030 hours we crossed the German coast at Yarding. At 0136 hours we obtained fix from Heston and altered course at 267 degrees for base. Coast crossed at 0250. We received several homing bearings from base and landed at 0310.

The Daffodil area referred to in the report was the major strait separating the large Danish island of Zealand from the southern Swedish province of Scania, through which German shipping between the Baltic Sea and Kattegat Channel could pass.

As the war entered its ninth month Bomber Command was still constrained by politics and there was only so much that its crews were allowed to do. It was a difficult period, like a boxer having to enter the ring with one hand tied behind his back. But in a matter of days, not only would the boxer have both hands free to fight, the gloves would be well and truly off.

On 10 May Germany launched its long-awaited offensive in the West. Even now, Bomber Command was politically restricted to targets west of the Rhine as stated in the latest directive to Portal:

It is preferable not to begin bombing ops in the Ruhr until we have definite news that the Germans have attacked targets ... which would cause casualties to civilians.

It was only after the Luftwaffe bombed Rotterdam on 15 May that Bomber Command was finally let off its leash. At last its crews were permitted to cross the Rhine to extend their bombing operations into the heartland of Nazi Germany.

That night, a mixed force of ninety-nine bombers (Wellingtons, Hampdens and Whitleys) attacked sixteen different oil and rail targets in the industrial Ruhr, while a dozen more (Wellingtons and Whitleys) attacked enemy lines of communications in Belgium. It was the first time Bomber Command dispatched more than a hundred aircraft in a single night.

At last the RAF’s strategic bombing offensive was underway, but by the end of June France had fallen and Nazi control of the European coastline stretched from Norway to the border of Spain. Furthermore, Italy had joined the war to fight alongside her Axis partner. Britain now stood alone and was fighting for survival with the remaining need to maintain an offensive against enemy ports and shipping, spreading from Germany’s capital warships at Kiel and Hamburg to invasion barges in the occupied Channel ports.

With the priority being enemy ports and shipping, it was only when the weather dictated otherwise or there was any spare capacity that attacks were carried out against other targets, such as the German aircraft and oil industries, or key lines of communications such as road, rail and canal links. One raid to fall into this latter category took place on the night of 12/13 August when eleven Hampdens, six from 49 Squadron and five from 83 Squadron, were tasked with attacking the Dortmund-Ems Canal, a heavily defended and vital waterway in Germany.

The attack was to be carried out at low level and would hit a point to the north of Münster where the canal crosses the River Ems by means of an old aqueduct. The aqueduct had been attacked before and so German defences had been reinforced with additional anti-aircraft guns. The plan involved four of the Hampdens carrying out diversionary attacks against other targets in the local area, while the rest attacked the aqueduct with special high-explosive canister bombs, each fitted with delayed fuses and dropped at two-minute intervals to avoid aircraft becoming caught up in the blast from the attack before.

It was around 8 p.m. when the Hampdens took off from Scampton. Led by Squadron Leader Jamie Pitcairn-Hill of 83 Squadron, they were due over the target around three hours later. All initially went to plan with the four diversionary Hampdens carrying out their attacks, but...