My kingdom for a nightfighter

During the war, the first priority of air power was of course air supremacy. The second was interdiction. What this means is cutting off the enemy's supplies and ability to communicate and coordinate.

In WWII, the interdiction was good and forced the Germans to move supplies and relocate only at night. Even though sorties took their tolls in the day, the Germans survived as well as they did, they had to rely on the cover of darkness.

The answer to this? Nightfighters. The Jug (and it pains me to say this) was not a good nightfighter. Nightfighters were so specialized that they had to have a different configuration, large radar systems, multiple crew members to deal with the complexities of fighting at night.

For the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region>, they used A-20s, and A-26s to perform this role, until the P-61 black widow came along. It was similar to the Mosquito in its performance and capability and perfect for fighting at night, carrying heavy weaponry, a respectable bomb load, very fast, and excellent night radar. The only problem was that there were only 700 of the P-61s produced in the war and they were spread around in the ETO, MTO and PTO.

The time frame for nightfighters was small and the need for them not fully realized until late. General Weyland of USAAF XIX TAC was begging for them and constantly lamenting because he could not get them. They were not massed produced.

What would it have been like if they had mass produced the nightfighters? This means the Germans would have been constantly out of supply and not even able to get enough fuel to retreat. How quickly would the Western front have collapsed? <st1:State w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Berlin</st1:place></st1:State> by Oktoberfest? Would the war have ceased in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Paris</st1:place></st1:City>? Who knows?

I remember reading about the Black Widow long ago but have never known about their true value in WWII and the impact of not having them in numbers.

I also wonder why the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> didn't buy up Mossies and equip them for night fighting. Modern day militaries fight at night. It just goes to illustrate that the tactics of air power were new to war and had to be developed on the fly in WWII. Most of this is covered in the TAC retrospectives if wish to investigate more than reading a post.

Just thought it was interesting. Lack of nightfighters kept the German alive for much longer than necessary.<o:p></o:p>

 

I bet you were a goalie.

 

I think the main problem with nightfighters was the fact that radar was not as well developed as it is now.
The British Beaufighter (whilst a wonderful little war horse was absolutely useless) had a crew of two, but because the radar was in its infancy the kills were fairly low.
The Nachtjagdgeshwader (hope i spelt that right) however learnt fast and managed to clock up some amazing kill scores. They were constantly changing tactics and modifying aricraft. Who on earth came up with the sideways pointing guns? They would fly in amongst the bombers at night, sit there for a few minutes, and then shoot sideways.
I think in the end it came down to time scale. The British nightfighters early in the war didn't have the equipment or time to perfect their techniques, but by the time the nachtjagdgeshwader were fighting back the technology had moved on as had experience.
Kitty

 

Yeah for every Black Widow or HS219 there was a Bolton Paul Defiant. Putting a bomber turret on a fighter and expecting it to be a success was optimistic to say the least!

 

True! Do you not mean the upwards firing cannons in the Schage Musik (sp?) configuration Kitty, I have not heard of sideways firing guns on German nightfighters.

 

True! Do you not mean the upwards firing cannons in the Schage Musik (sp?) configuration Kitty, I have not heard of sideways firing guns on German nightfighters.

They were mentioned in the book Luck and a Lancaster by Harry Yeats (I think). He also mentioned the upwards/downwards and i think backwards firing as well. All experimental designs.

 

Who on earth came up with the sideways pointing guns?

the idea of the upward firing guns came from a Sgt, cant remember his name, the story is in one of my books, but I do not have time to look it up!

 

I think Jimbo is once again putting too much influence on air power and what they could have achieved.

For a start, the role of the night fighters is primarily to find, attack and destroy the enemy's bombers. They weren't out to dogfight other night fighters flying your own night fighters around your bomber formations at night looking for the enemy's night fighters and engaging them is just asking for 'blue on blue' every time, and they certainly weren't out to attack and destroy ground targets, that's the job of the bombers. Bombing at night at the time was only really possible on planned targets. To prevent the enemy from moving at night these would normally be rail yards, rail bridges major road bridges and road junctions. These targests would be specific geographical locations and would be bombed at night to disrupt them, there was no way of telling if any enemy would be there at the time. There was no way that oppertune targets in the way that interdiction strike sorties were flown during the day, could be found or engaged at night.

So how would an increase in the night fighter force have prevented the enemy from moving at night? How would they have drasticaly shortened the war? How does Jimbo suggest that close support aircraft find and destroy oppertune targets at low altitude in the dark?

 

The Germans got a lot of mileage out of the otherwise very unsuccessful Me 110 fighters in the night role. The British converted their equally unsuccessful Boulton Paul Defiants to nightfighters as well, with some success. The Mosquitos and Beaufighters did better. The Germans also used Ju 88s and Do 217s in the role.

Dr. Alfred Price's "Instruments of Darkness" is a pretty good book on the whole radar-nightfighter war. It's actually fascinating stuff.

 

http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/types/uk/boulton_paul/defiant/Defiant.htm

Here is a weblink to info about the Defiant

and also a link about the nightfighter version of the JU88:
http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/types/germany/junkers/ju_88/Ju_88_nf.htm

 

I think Jimbo is once again putting too much influence on air power and what they could have achieved.

For a start, the role of the night fighters is primarily to find, attack and destroy the enemy's bombers. They weren't out to dogfight other night fighters flying your own night fighters around your bomber formations at night looking for the enemy's night fighters and engaging them is just asking for 'blue on blue' every time, and they certainly weren't out to attack and destroy ground targets, that's the job of the bombers. Bombing at night at the time was only really possible on planned targets. To prevent the enemy from moving at night these would normally be rail yards, rail bridges major road bridges and road junctions. These targests would be specific geographical locations and would be bombed at night to disrupt them, there was no way of telling if any enemy would be there at the time. There was no way that oppertune targets in the way that interdiction strike sorties were flown during the day, could be found or engaged at night.

So how would an increase in the night fighter force have prevented the enemy from moving at night? How would they have drasticaly shortened the war? How does Jimbo suggest that close support aircraft find and destroy oppertune targets at low altitude in the dark?
No-no folks. Again you have misunderstood. Old paradigms and complete lack of understanding of ground-historians has led to an almost universal ignorance of what happened in WWII. The term night-fighter is a bit of a misnomer. The US DID NOT go after bombers with their night-fighters as almost every response has suggested. There is a reason for that. German had virtually no bombers flying over the tactical areas at night. If they had a Jug would have been a good weapon. Simply AI mount radar to it.<o:p></o:p>
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We are talking about WWII from the Allies perspective. Primarily the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> perspective. The <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> doctrine set by FM 100-20 was that the first priority was “air supremacy” (which had been accomplished) and second was “interdiction”. This is very import to understanding how a <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sherman</st1:place></st1:City> beats a Tiger. The Tiger must have no ammo, no fuel to maneuver or no food for the tank crew. This is the only way a <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sherman</st1:place></st1:City> beats a Tiger. In the early stages of the Battle of Normandy, we didn’t have the mythical 5:1 ratio of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Shermans</st1:place></st1:City> to Tigers. Sometimes we were outnumbered. <o:p></o:p>
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The interdiction campaign was effective evidenced by the fact that we had <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sherman</st1:place></st1:City> crews that lived. You would be surprised to know this but Tigers had little fear of <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Shermans</st1:place></st1:City>. They feared “Jabos” because a fighter-bomber could melt metal. In fact some of the Jug squadrons were named things like Tiger Tamers and Hun Hunters. In fact, Bradley made the statement that attacking front lines with 250lb fragmentation and 500lb general purpose bombs was far more destructive than lengthy artillery barrages. But interdiction was destroying the snot of German supplies. The numbers are incredible. Some days they would destroy 1000s of trucks hundreds of locomotives and 1000s of railway box cars. That’s a heck of a lot of supplies that would never reach the Germans to kill Allied soldiers. This forced the Germans to move supplies at night. You really need to start reading books by tactical air commanders/pilots or German soldiers. The real way to determine what WWII was all about is to talk to the German Quartermasters or the Allied pilots. Tankers pass burned out trucks and armor all the time and in droves, looking like the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Iraq</st1:place></st1:country-region> highway of death, but they wouldn’t have the slightest idea how those trucks and armor were destroyed. They would probably think it was their artillery. They might to assume that it was some other tankers doing it. Few ground fighters ever really understood how much more daunting the German army was because it simply had a severe reduction when they got to it. They simply didn’t have the perspective. They can only see what’s around them. <o:p></o:p>
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An army fights on its belly. Napoleon said that and he didn’t even have real machinery. Another said “without supplies, an army is useless”, though I don’t remember who said that. The interdiction worked well in that it greatly reduced the amount of supplies, but the counter for the Germans was to drive at night with their lights off. <o:p></o:p>
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No-no folks. The <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> simply didn’t give a crap about ME-110s, they were a joke the USAAF. They were something you shoot down on a quick pass in the day just to get another German flag on the side of your plane. They rarely saw them at night. At night the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s singular objective was interdiction. You are thinking of the British. The British saw them at night because they were bombing at night. I am sorry, I thought you understood that PP. The <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> bombed during the day. <o:p></o:p>
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Answer to your claim of putting too much emphasis on air, how can you put too much emphasis on cutting off supplies and isolating a battlefield? That’s irrational. That’s what the game is all about. Your choices are to disarm your enemy (which we did by interdiction) or slug it out with your cap-gun tanks. No-no, that’s not WWII, that’s WWII according to historians. Quite a different distinction as I have tried to point out many times. One is real WWII the other sells books by creating goosebumps on the reader of intense tank battles where Shermans stood their own against the German heavy artillery, 88s, heavy armor and pak guns. That’s a fictitious war that only idiots would have fought if they had alternatives, which of course, air supremacy gave you. You are missing the point. Air was not some of the reason we drove a far, far superior trained and equipped army across <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">France</st1:place></st1:country-region> in a few months as though they were fleeing in terror, it was the singular reason.<o:p></o:p>
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Follow the bouncing ball…your choices here are simple: 1) The Germans were terrified of the 75mm guns on the Shermans which bounced off their armor like rubber balls so much that they fled like cowards back to Germany and then surrendered their homeland and possessions, or 2) Tactical air analysis is indeed telling the truth and air took out the lion’s share of the enemy’s strength before the Shermans ever got there. You can believe whichever you want, but believing, like wishing, does not make something true. Tell yourself whatever you have to to help you sleep at night, but it really is common sense to me. I sincerely do suggest some folks start reading TAC books, they are fundamental to understanding why the Allies won. There are some historians that have written some of these books so you can feel good about what you read, but some are excellent retrospectives and I know how some feel about accepting the analysis of people who were there making the calls in WWII. It is interesting to see a different war where you don’t have to disregard what you know about the wimpy Allied armor and the prowess of the German armor. Where you really don’t have to wonder why we faced so little German artillery (virtually none by comparison) when the Germans had so much of it. You don’t have to ignore gnawing questions like “Why were the Germans not smart enough to fire their massive artillery?” and think that they had just not figured out the effectiveness of artillery by WWII. It’s a much easier read. PM me and I can tell you some good tactical air books, retrospectives and analysis books, to buy that explain things in logical rock-paper-scissors fashion. They require no glowing myths about <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Shermans</st1:place></st1:City> or gypsy curses placed on Tigers. Things are so much easier to understand when you don’t have to pretend. <o:p></o:p>
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No-no, a P-61 was a much better night-fighter than the ME-110, it just didn’t have bombers to hunt like the ME-110 did. The P-61 was much more heavily armed and the P-61C (superchargers added) was as fast as a Mustang, Jug or Spitfire at 430mph (the 110 could only muster 370mph), and could carry a little over 3 tons of bombs (the ME-110 could carry only 1 ton). It was also equipped with SCR-720A radar which had a five mile range in the AI mode and had different scan modes and resolutions for ground strikes as well. Don’t get me wrong, the Black Widows would be more than happy to shoot down any ME-110 it spotted, but its primary role in the US TAC was interdiction, which was far more important. <o:p></o:p>
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Also, PP, you made a mistake in saying close air support. That’s not what you did with night fighters. That would be suicide to your own troops. It was interdiction that was more critical. Patrol roads and look for trucks and armor moving at night or hiding in the vegetation. Disarm your enemy and isolate him by cutting off his supply. You know, the modern version of “divide and conquer”. That’s the name of the game. Close support was 3^rd on the list of priorities for US TAC behind interdiction. <o:p></o:p>
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Anyway, I was simply telling you what General Weyland’s, the head of USAAF XIX TAC, concerns were. He desperately needed nightfighters bad, and he needed them for interdiction. Part of this was production and lack of radar equipment. I can refer you to book, chapter and verse if you wish so you won’t say “Jimbo thinks too much of air” or something outlandish like that. It is not possible to think too much of air unless you completely disregard the need for a ground army altogether and surely you would be too sharp to think that of me. <o:p></o:p>
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Sorry for the confusion, I just assumed you understood certain aspects of the subject and failed to mention them. My bad!<o:p></o:p>

 

Right young man! What have i told you about long posts? Come on, speak up. Yes, that's right, don't do it! Jeez, my usage limit is looking chuffin small tonight. Once more my boy and I'll tell my mum on you. You have been warned.

 

Right young man! What have i told you about long posts? Come on, speak up. Yes, that's right, don't do it! Jeez, my usage limit is looking chuffin small tonight. Once more my boy and I'll tell my mum on you. You have been warned.

Once you get those Mods tapes on your arms, then you talk like that!

 

Sorry sir. it shall not happen again. i promise to behave for the next ten minutes. it's the pepsi talking. sorry jimbo. sorry morse. sorry mum. sorry lee. have i missed anybody?
:icon_sadangel:

 

Is it just me or has Jimbo finally lost it?

For someone who says that they know better than the rest of us what went on in the skies ofer France, Belgium and Holland he doesn't seem to know what a night fighter is. He should know the difference between a fighter and a bomber shouldn't he? A night fighter is a fighter that is specialized in attacking other aircraft at night. Hence 'night', after dark and 'fighter' a figher not a bomber.

I wonder if he has ever flown over unlit areas at night, and I don't mean in an airliner, I mean flown 'low and slow' over areas that aren't lit up evey few miles by houses and street lights? All you can see is black. And even with night vision you can't determin too much unless whatever you are looking for has its own ambient light source. Remember then you wouldn't have the option of taking it slow, wouldn't have the advantage of night vision and would have to figure out where you were with the aid of a paper map.

As I said before, bombing planned targets yes, flying around looking for them? Don't think so.

Jimbo, we know you love your 'Jug', and think that the US could have won the war without the dirty business of having to actually put any troops on the ground at all, but could you try and keep your posts somwhere near reality?

 

Sorry sir. it shall not happen again. i promise to behave for the next ten minutes. it's the pepsi talking. sorry jimbo. sorry morse. sorry mum. sorry lee. have i missed anybody?
:icon_sadangel:

But you said it was only for the next ten minutes! What can we expect next?

 

It's a surprise. But it does involve explosives...

 

Is it just me or has Jimbo finally lost it?

For someone who says that they know better than the rest of us what went on in the skies ofer France, Belgium and Holland he doesn't seem to know what a night fighter is. He should know the difference between a fighter and a bomber shouldn't he? A night fighter is a fighter that is specialized in attacking other aircraft at night. Hence 'night', after dark and 'fighter' a figher not a bomber.

I wonder if he has ever flown over unlit areas at night, and I don't mean in an airliner, I mean flown 'low and slow' over areas that aren't lit up evey few miles by houses and street lights? All you can see is black. And even with night vision you can't determin too much unless whatever you are looking for has its own ambient light source. Remember then you wouldn't have the option of taking it slow, wouldn't have the advantage of night vision and would have to figure out where you were with the aid of a paper map.

As I said before, bombing planned targets yes, flying around looking for them? Don't think so.

Jimbo, we know you love your 'Jug', and think that the US could have won the war without the dirty business of having to actually put any troops on the ground at all, but could you try and keep your posts somwhere near reality?

I think, what has happened, is that the difference between Nightfighters and night intruders has become somewhat blurred.

The RAF had specialist nightfighter units because they had expereiced night attacks. RAF nightfighters also flew with the bommber forces on occassions and later in the war, they turned their attention to interdiction of enemy air assests.

The American had no need for Nightfighters in their forces in Britian because they were provided by the RAF. Therefore they could concentrate on the Night intruder role.

 

It's a surprise. But it does involve explosives...

Ah, explosives..... one of my specialities

 

The American had no need for Nightfighters in their forces in Britian because they were provided by the RAF. Therefore they could concentrate on the Night intruder role.

Well I thought that as well, but you would have thought that our 'Expert' would, being an 'expert', would be using the correct terminology. I mean if you can't even get the name of the role of the aircraft right, who's going to beleive another word you say when you insist on saying everyone else is wrong and you are right?:mellow: