Strange music
Weird music - even oblique Nachtmusik - is the name of a German weapons technology at the time of World War II, in which machine guns or machine guns obliquely forward directed up into a night fighter were installed. With the help of the "weird music", English night bombers that did not have a downward-looking armament should be shot down without having to endanger themselves.
The name is a play on words and was derived, on the one hand, from the inclined arrangement of the weapons and, on the other hand, from the fact that jazz was described as oblique by Nazi propaganda . "Weird night music" is the allusion to its use in night hunters.
functionality
The night fighters approached the bombers as soon as they had radio or visual contact. During the attack, the attacking night fighter approached the enemy bomber from behind and flew below and slightly behind it on a parallel course. By flying below enemy bombers, the machine guns pointing upwards could fire unmolested, as the fighter was in the blind spot of both the defensive armament and the usual observation positions of the enemy. In this position the attackers hardly stood out from the ground due to the usual camouflage painting.
Since the on- board weapons, which act upwards at an angle of about 70 degrees, were rigidly installed, the pilot had to align the entire aircraft in order to aim at the bomber. An optical reflex sight mounted in the cabin roof was aimed at a wing of the bomber; the goal was to set fire to the engines and fuel. The fuselage was not allowed to be aimed as the bomb load could be hit and explode; the night fighter would have been lost. A short burst of explosive and incendiary ammunition was usually enough to set the bomber on fire and cause it to crash. On tracer ammunition was deliberately in order not to attract attention. After firing, the target was released in the opposite direction to the attacked wing so as not to be hit by the falling bomber.
Many bomber crews thought they had been hit by the flak and not by a night fighter.
development
The British are said to have carried out their first experiments as early as the First World War ; among other things, this principle was used to attack the higher-flying zeppelins. Beyond that, there is little knowledge. It is known, however, that the MG mounts were used on the upper wings in a similar way to the "oblique music". The MG of some types, e.g. B. SE 5 , were attached to their mounts in such a way that they could be tipped down for loading from the direction parallel to the longitudinal axis of the aircraft. They could also be locked at any angle. With the help of this device, Albert Ball and others successfully tested airships at an angle from below while flying straight ahead. Later models such as the Sopwith Dolphin were occasionally equipped as standard with a permanently mounted preform of the “oblique music” and used for defense against German airships and large aircraft.
During the Second World War , the concept could have been derived from the so-called Becker attack method, in which a hunter attacked his target from below, then pulled up to fire and then dived away again after completion. The only disadvantage of this method was the danger of getting back into the fire area of the English rear gunner when pulling up.
German fighters were sometimes able to fly undetected beneath a bomber for minutes, which led to considerations as to how the bomber could be shot without leaving this safe position.
Nowadays Lieutenant Rudolf Schoenert , at that time squadron captain of the II./Nachtjagdgeschwader 5 (short II./NJG 5 ), is considered the first to drive this development forward. He first experimented with a Do 17 Z-10 Kauz-III night fighter and installed two MG 15s with a caliber of 7.92 mm; However, neither side paid much attention to it. As early as 1941 and 1942 he tried to convince his superiors and hunter breeds of this technique, but was largely unsuccessful. It was not until July 1942, when Schoenert was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross , that he tried again and was successful - the then General of the Night Hunting, Major General Kammhuber , agreed to official attempts. The trials dragged on until mid-1943; the concept of weird music proved its worth . In May 1943 Schoenert recorded his first recognized oblique music shot with a Bf 110 in which two 20 mm MG FF / M had been installed.
In June 1943, the modifications to the Do 217N and the Ju 88C were completed; four or two 20 mm MG 151/20 cannons were installed in an inclined arrangement in the fuselage behind the cockpit. Work was also carried out on the development of an automatically triggering weapon system with the designation SG 116 , which, however, was not used.
There were several pilots who experimented with this idea independently and simultaneously with Schoenert, including Captain Prince Heinrich zu Sayn-Wittgenstein from IV./Nachtjagdgeschwader 5 ( IV./NJG 5 for short ), who was on duty on the Eastern Front . In March 1943 he built two MG FF / Ms into his machine and made test shots in order to then use them successfully against the Soviet bombers .
The weird music was conceived as a pure night fighter weapon; an application against bombers flying during the day was unthinkable in many respects, since the concept was based on the undetection of one's own aircraft. As a rule, the daytime bombers were American machines and equipped with an underside armament, which made it impossible to approach and take the ideal firing position unnoticed, whereas most British bombers used for night use did not have sufficient lower defense. In addition, a lower-flying machine was difficult to see at night against the dark background, a fact that was not applicable in daylight. The installation of such an armament in the smaller single-engine day fighters was also not possible because there was insufficient space or complex construction work would have been necessary.
commitment
It took several months before the conversion kits were available for the bulk of the night fighters. In mid-1944, around a third of all night fighters were retrofitted accordingly. From mid / autumn 1944, the weird music was built into the Nachtjäger in series. The number of night fighters armed with it would have been even greater if the RLM had recognized the potential of this armament early on. Machines like the He 219 were not built in large numbers either, and the Ta 154 was never ready for use due to design problems. The majority of both models should have been equipped with weird music .
Weird music was used on a large scale for the first time on the night of August 17-18, 1943, when British bombers attacked Peenemünde in three waves ( Operation Hydra ). Only the last wave was discovered and fought by a large number of night fighters, as the main part (213 night hunting machines) was deflected over Berlin by a deception of eight mosquitos and so belatedly recognized the attack on Peenemünde. Nevertheless, 40 of the 166 British bombers used (24.1 percent) were lost.
The Weird Music went unnoticed by the Allies until the end of 1943, although the aircraft losses rose noticeably. Since the ammunition mixture used contained not only explosive ammunition but also armor-piercing ammunition, the attacked bombers inevitably had to penetrate the wing. On the basis of these penetrations, the attacker's angle of fire could easily be determined in the case of bombers returning damaged. If only explosive ammunition had been used, there would have been no exit holes on the upper side of the wing, and the weird music attack method would have remained secret for longer.
Countermeasures
The first attempts at countermeasures were the installation of small viewing windows and defensive armaments in the endangered area. However, this was not very successful because the view was very limited and the turrets reduced the speed of the aircraft. Tests were then carried out with radar-based solutions. The Monica rear warning radar, which was already in use, was of little use because it could not be pointed down far enough; The German technicians had also developed a passive radar called Flensburg for the exact location of its emissions (which the Allies only became aware of in July 1944, when a Ju 88 G-1 NJG 2 night fighter accidentally landed in Great Britain).
The installation of a modified H2S ground radar in the endangered rear area was more successful , with which one could see maneuvering night fighters on an additional screen close behind or under the aircraft. This modification, known as Fishpond modification , was introduced extensively in Bomber Command by the middle of autumn 1944 and caused a decrease in aircraft losses.
Airplane types with weird music
- Do 217N : 4 × 20 mm MG 151/20
- Fw 189 : 1 × 20 mm MG 151/20, mainly used on the Eastern Front
- He 219 : 2 × 30 mm MK 108
- Ju 88 C / G : 1 ×, later 2 × 20 mm MG 151/20 with 200 rounds each
- Ju 388J : 2 × 30 mm MK 108
- Bf 110 G-4 : 2 × 20 mm MG FF / M
- Me 262 B-2 : 2 × 30 mm MK 108
- Ta 154 : 2 × 30 mm MK 108
Web links
literature
- Peter Hinchliffe: Air War by Night 1939–1945. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-613-01861-6 .
- Manfred Griehl: German aircraft armament until 1945. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-613-02849-4 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ one stuck steel rods through the entry and exit holes of the wings.