Luftwaffe fighter defence organisation

Bernard/Bernadine were late war projects, and were essentially unjammable by
the Allies at that time.

v/r
Gordon

In article , Jakob
Whitfield writes
Greetings all,

As the term paper for my Systems Engineering option, I want to do a
systems comparison between Fighter Command, the Jagdwaffe, and the
Nachtjagd C^3 systems. I've been able to find a loads on Fighter
Command, but precious little on the German side that gives command
structure and organisational data. Most of the references I've got
concentrate on the aircraft used, rather than C^3. Could anyone make
any useful suggestions for books, papers, journal articles etc. that I
could use to research this?

Cheers,

Jakob

"The Other Battle, Luftwaffe Night Aces versus Bomber Command", Peter
Hinchcliffe, Airlife Publishing, UK, 1996. ISBN 1840373032.
This tracesthe development of the Nachtjagd and RAF Bomber Command, with
personal accounts of experiences by the people involved at several
levels.

HTH.
--
Peter

Ying tong iddle-i po!

snippage of earlier stuff

....And yet another question: Was the RAF's night fighter GCI force
controlled in a similar manner to the Luftwaffe's 'Himmelbett'
fighters?

Was the success of the RAF's night fighter force compared to
Himmelbett simply due to the fact that the Luftwaffe wasn't sending
n-hundred-aircraft bomber streams over England, or was there a more
efficient structure in place?

Cheers,

Jakob

Emmanuel Gustin wrote:

"Jakob Whitfield" wrote in message
om...

...And yet another question: Was the RAF's night fighter GCI force
controlled in a similar manner to the Luftwaffe's 'Himmelbett'
fighters?

Was the success of the RAF's night fighter force compared to
Himmelbett simply due to the fact that the Luftwaffe wasn't sending
n-hundred-aircraft bomber streams over England, or was there a more
efficient structure in place?

The RAF had airborne radar before the Lufwaffe, but the first experience
was that, because of the limited range of the early long-wave AI radar, it
was useless without a ground radar to get the fighter close enough to the
target. In January 1941 six GCI radar sets became available; the radar
operator then talked directly to the pilot instead of by way of the
operations
room. At this stage it was indeed similar to the Himmelbett system, in that
a station could guide only one nightfighter at a time.

Palliatives were a 'cab rank' system in which the GCI served nightfighters
in turn, and searchlights controlled by gunlaying AA radars (which were
also used to provide better height estimates than the GCI provided) to
assist
some fighters to intercept without the assistance of GCI. Later these became
dense enough to allow a nightfighter to follow the track of a German bomber,
and quite useful.

But the RAF radar had one vital advantage over the German system, and
this was exploited in 1942. The German ground operator required two
Wurzburg radars, one to track the bomber and one to track the fighter, and
their positions were then projected onto a glass screen. The British GCI
radar with its plan position indicator however (the now most familiar form
of radar display, with a rotating 'scan line', could observe many more than
two aircraft at the same time; so in 1942, the RAF seated two interception
operators on a single radar, with a third controller to coordinate the effor
ts,
and trained each operator to control two interceptions at the same time.

Later, another technologicial advantage was exploited. The centimetric
AI Mk.VIII had a much better range and accuracy than the long-wavelength
AI Mk.IV and the Luftwaffe's radars; so the ground operator only brought
the nightfighter close enough and handed over the target when the fighter's
radar detected it; he no longer bothered to manoeuvre the fighter into a
firing position astern of the bomber. He could then switch his efforts to
guiding another fighter.

And the best first-person account of British night fighter ops and
equipment/tactical developments through the war is C.F. Rawnsley/Robert Wright's
"Night Fighter". Rawnsley was John Cunningham's RIO. Wright, his co-author
(really ghost writer) was Dowding's PA (and later Sholto-Douglas's IIRR),
although the book is about Rawnsley's experiences.

Guy

In message , Jakob
Whitfield writes
snippage of earlier stuff

...And yet another question: Was the RAF's night fighter GCI force
controlled in a similar manner to the Luftwaffe's 'Himmelbett'
fighters?

You answered your own question. GCI = Ground Controlled Interception.

Presumably the controller used the CHL radars to guide the fighters to
within a couple of miles of the target and on a chase course.

Was the success of the RAF's night fighter force compared to
Himmelbett simply due to the fact that the Luftwaffe wasn't sending
n-hundred-aircraft bomber streams over England, or was there a more
efficient structure in place?

Most accounts seem to refer to a lack of targets compared to a bomber
stream.

Mike
--
M.J.Powell

"M. J. Powell" wrote in message
...
In message , Jakob
Whitfield writes
snippage of earlier stuff

...And yet another question: Was the RAF's night fighter GCI force
controlled in a similar manner to the Luftwaffe's 'Himmelbett'
fighters?

You answered your own question. GCI = Ground Controlled Interception.

Presumably the controller used the CHL radars to guide the fighters to
within a couple of miles of the target and on a chase course.

No sir. CHL had no inland coverage, the GCI stations used
a variety of radars ranging from the fixed Happidromes to
mobile higher frequency radars like the type 15

http://www.radarpages.co.uk/mob/gci/gci.htm

Keith