What sort of problems faced a defender in attempting to intercept and
shoot down night bombers in 1944?

Not having enough aviation fuel was a big problem late in 1944. Earlier, the
Germans had a pretty good handle on it, as the 3/30/44 raid to Nuremburg
showed.

They nightfighters whacked at least 80 Brit bombers, total lost that night
94-96.

The British had to suspend their night ops over Germany. That's not well known
because they were put onto invasion targets in the same time frame. The Germans
also forced the USAAF to suspend its deep raids for a time also.

In July, 1944 a JU-88 lost its way and accidentally landed in England. It had
the full suite of radars. Oops. That helped the Brits quite a bit.

The British never tumbled onto the fact that their bombers were often shredded
by the German schregemusik (sp), the upward firing guns of the night fighters.
They only found out about this after the war.

Hitler largely refused to allow German night fighters to operate over England.
This was one of his misguided "brain waves"; he also didn't see the point of
shooting down bombers where the people couldn't see them. The few times this
happened any way, the Germans had good succcess.

As an aside, a high scoring Luftwaffe NJG ace, whose plane had received no
damage in many months, was killed in his first combat with B-24's. The Germans
are clear that the USAAF hurt them much worse than the RAF did, although many
Brits are still hyper-defensive about that.

Walt