"Bernardz" wrote in message
news:MPG.1b5fa98a6738c8b2989adb@news...
What sort of problems faced a defender in attempting to intercept and
shoot down night bombers in 1944?

I am interested both over Germany and Britain.

--
Logically we attempt to devise reasons for our irrational behaviour.

Observations of Bernard - No 62


The Lufwaffe Nachtjakgt at faced a number of problems in intercepting
bombers depending on the period in question. At the beginning of the water
on radar was actually quite good possibly the most advanced in the world
they had radars such as Freya for long range detection and more accurate
radars such as Wurzburg for tracking individual targets accurately.
Somewhat later a very effective airborne interception radar known as
Lichtenstein came into use. The flaw with these radars was that they
actually utilised similar frequencies. Although the Germans were aware of
the use of chaff or window (they had developed their own version called
Duppel) such secrecy was placed upon Duppel that countermeasures were not
ready in time. In one stroke the RAF was able to jam all three radars. The
Luftwaffe for a time had to resort to wild boar tactics which involved
single engined fighters equipped with special navigation equipment but with
no radar.

The Germans were eventually able to develop counter countermeasures, for
instance wurzlaus was a device that relied on doppler effect to separate
moving targets from window, Nurenberg relied on propeler modulations.
They also had multiple alternate frequencies and frequency chirping against
against jamming. However in general they found it hard to keep up. Other
radars in use include Jagdschloss and Wasserman and Wurzburg Riese. One
problem of all of these radar systems was that they were big and expensive
although quite effective at long range detection of aircraft: (longwave
radar is in effect better than microwave radar for some purposes for
instance stealth technology is relatively ineffective against it.) These
long wave radars are extravagantly expensive. The whole system had to be
based on these expensive radars not just the early warning system.

Quite often when the German radar was working the link between the ground
and night fighter was not. This was in fact ion many occasions the most
serious problem. The introduction of the Bernhard-Bernhardine system
improve matters. This system was very jam proof it told a night fighter
exactly where was in that provided a secure telemetry to link the night
fighter with ground control by a ticker tape.

Because the German Lichtenstein radar had large aerials aircraft were slowed
down considerably this limited number of interceptions they were able to
achieve. Bomber command played on this by practising spoof and diversionary
rates: by the time the Germans worked out they had to burn up engines.

Ironically the Germans were ahead even in microwave radar. In 1934 they
tested 200mW microwave devices that could detect a Destroyer at over 1 km
but they could not produce enough power for more than this. Their microwave
and magnetron development team was disbanded in 1940 and workers sent into
the army! This team did have some good magnetrons but I believe they
probably only produced around 80 watts of power not the kilowatts required.
The team was hurriedly reassembled when a magnetron was discovered in a
crashed RAF bomber in Rotterdam.

The Nachtjagt remained of force to the end although it did not prevent the
destruction of Germany in every for instance an archivist could fly only 772
sorties during which they are shot down no fewer than 181 aircraft (equal
to 1.2 percent of the rating force) German losses were constant at 47 night
fighters.

The night fighter pilots maintained high morale and motivation to the end.
In five years this arm of the Luftwaffe underwent greater technical and
tactical change than any other branch of the Armed Forces.