Air battle over the German Bight
| date | December 18, 1939 |
|---|---|
| place | German Bight |
| output | Defense against British bombers |
| consequences | no daytime attack until April 1940 |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Troop strength | |
| 50 Messerschmitt Bf 109 and 110 | 22 Vickers Wellington Mk I. |
| losses | |
|
4 Bf109 |
12 Vickers Wellington and 3 others with break in England |
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The air battle over the German Bight was at the beginning of World War II on December 18, 1939 between British bombers of the type Vickers Wellington and German fighter forces instead. During its course, fifteen of the 22 machines that reached German airspace were lost. As a result, the presented Bomber Command of the Royal Air Force (RAF) his days sorties against targets in Germany and continued his largely a bomber from then on almost exclusively at night one.
prehistory
In contrast to the later course of the war, an air strike on cities was considered inappropriate and provocative against the opposing side, and the only acceptable type of air strike was therefore the bombing of military targets that could be attacked without great risk to civilian casualties. One of the few occasions was the attack on warships. While the German Air Force attacked British ships at Scapa Flow and the Firth of Forth , Winston Churchill urged the British Bomber Command of the Royal Air Force to do the same and attack German warships in the North Sea. Four days before the air battle over the German Bight , twelve Vickers Wellington bombers attacked the light cruisers Leipzig and Nuremberg , which had previously been torpedoed by the British submarine HMS Salmon . Five bombers were shot down by German fighter pilots; another was lost on the return flight to Great Britain.
Subsequently, the German hunters on the East Frisian coast were reinforced again. The commodore of Jagdgeschwader 1, Carl Schumacher , had a total strength of about 80-100 fighters and destroyers of the Bf 109 and Bf 110 types on December 18 .
Course of the fight
Around noon, 24 Vickers Wellington bombers took off from bases in southern England in a south-easterly direction. These were machines of the 9th, 37th and 149th Squadron of the RAF Bomber Command. They flew by fighter planes without escort because it was believed in Great Britain that this was not necessary. At 1:50 p.m., German Freya radio transmitters had radar contact with the British bombers for the first time, but no one on the German side knew that they were British planes flying in. At that time, the bombers were about 110 km or 20 minutes by flight from the German coast. A lack of coordination between reconnaissance and air bases delayed the start of the German fighter planes. In addition, one could not believe the reconnaissance, because the weather seemed too good for an attack to the Germans. In fact, the sky was almost completely cloudless, and only a light haze reached up to about 1,000 m. The approaching British were now sighted by air observers on Heligoland ; these reported a number of 44 bombers, twice as many as were still in the formation according to official British information (two aircraft had already had to turn back halfway due to engine defects and fly back to England).
Now the German hunters started from their nests. In total, only 32 single-engine Bf-109 fighters and 18 twin-engine Bf-110 destroyers were used against the British unit, as parts of the fighter units could no longer take off in time due to the late contact report. The first to reach the 10./JG 26, which had been set up as a night fighter squadron, was the British association, which was looking for German warships without any bombs falling.
At 2:30 p.m. NCO Heilmayr scored the first kill with his Bf 109, before the squadron captain of 10./JG 26, Oberleutnant Steinhoff , later inspector of the air force of the Bundeswehr , was also successful. Ten more Wellington bombers were shot down and three more were so badly damaged that they had to be written off as a total write-off in England. There were also losses on the German side. The Wellington's tail stand in particular made an approach from behind dangerous, especially when the British were flying close together. Four machine guns , grouped together in one stand, defended the rear area of a bomber. In the Bf 110 of Lieutenant Üllenbeck 23 bullets were later counted. On the other hand, the bomber was unprotected from the side and from above.
In total, the Royal Air Force lost twelve machines, three more were badly damaged. The German fighter defense lost four Bf 109s, two of the pilots died.
controversy
To date, there is no clarity about the exact number of British aircraft used and their losses. The Germans sighted 44 Wellingtons on Heligoland, and the later German report even mentioned 56. These numbers could probably be explained by a lack of experience in operating the radio measuring devices. There were similar errors in the Battle of Britain and here, too, significantly more machines were reported than were actually used. The kill numbers were similarly far apart. The Royal Air Force stated that it had lost seven aircraft. However, the Luftwaffe wanted 32 kills, seven of which were not recognized by the Reich Aviation Ministry . Attempts to find explanations for this lead to the thesis that many kills were reported twice in the hectic pace of the battle. The official number of twelve Wellingtons shot down and two German Bf 109s was later announced.
Used aircraft types
consequences
Royal Air Force
After losing more than 50% of all aircraft used, the Bomber Command switched to operating over Germany only at night. Operations during the day, for example against the battleship Tirpitz , remained the exception. Above all, the lack of hunting protection had proven catastrophic. Since the RAF did not have any long-range fighters until the P-51 Mustang and P-38 Lightning , which were later delivered under the Loan and Lease Act , bombers did not attack targets on German territory again until the end of World War II. A change with regard to the dropping of bombs from individual targets to area bombing cannot be observed immediately after the air battle. It was only after a resolution of the Area Bombing Directive of February 14, 1942 that Arthur Harris carried out large-scale bombing raids.
air force
The Luftwaffe recognized how vulnerable bombers were to strong anti-fighter defenses. However, findings from this were not put into practice and the Air Force had to admit similar problems in the Battle of Britain as the RAF had over the German Bight. Stanley Baldwin's prediction “ The bomber will always get through ” turned out to be untrue. However, no direct lessons were drawn from this. In the later course of the war, German fighters and British bombers met each other mainly at night.
literature
- Cajus Bekker : Attack Altitude 4000: A war diary of the German Air Force. Oldenburg 1964, pp. 80-89
- Max Hastings : Bomber Command . Michael Jones, London 1979, ISBN 0-7181-1603-8 , pp. 15-35
- Robin Holmes: The Battle of the Heligoland Bight, 1939: The Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe's Baptism of Fire. Grub Street, London 2010, ISBN 978-1-906502-56-0 .
- Heinz J. Nowarra: The 109th development of a legendary airplane. Stuttgart 2008, p. 71
- Alfred Price: Air battle over Germany. Attack and Defense 1939–1945. Stuttgart 1996, pp. 11/12
Notes and individual references
- ↑ The term `` Luftschlacht über der Deutschen Bucht '', which is also common and adopted from English , probably comes from Robin Holmes and his book The Battle of the Heligoland Bight, 1939: The Royal Air Force and the Luftwaffe's Baptism of Fire. Grub Street, London 2010, ISBN 978-1-906502-56-0 .