Wilde Sau night hunting procedure
The term Wilde Sau of was the time World War II, one of the German Luftwaffe applied Nachtjagd referred method, with the British bombers - by German - directly over the attacked German cities day fighter should be shot down.
Hajo Herrmann is considered to be the creator of this process .
prehistory
After the heavy bombing raids of the RAF Bomber Command in 1942, during which the German night fighter units were still operating quite successfully, British experts looked for ways to put radio-controlled night hunting out of action.
A riddle was the code " Emil-Emil ", which appeared again and again in the radio traffic of the German night hunting associations. This is how the on-board radar systems Lichtenstein B / C and S / N 2 were named. With daring missions (individual bombers curved directly in front of the enemy night fighters and exposed themselves to the full weaponry of the fighters) the British found out that it had to be a radio measuring device . Details became clear when a Junkers Ju 88 of Nachtjagdgeschwader 3 flew over the English Channel and landed on the RAF Woodbridge base in England by mistake due to a navigation error . The machine was equipped with the most modern Lichtenstein device. On this basis, the British experts were able to develop several types of defense. Probably the most important ones were tin foil strips called Window , called Düppel on the German side . These could deceive any radio measuring device manufactured by the Air Force up to that point . The guided night hunt had suddenly become ineffective.
Major (later Colonel) Hans-Joachim Herrmann recognized early on that the German night hunt was losing its fighting power, and on June 27, 1943 proposed to the commanding general of the night hunters, Josef Kammhuber , a day hunter in a specially developed process - Wilde Sau - directly above the To operate the attack area, which he initially refused. When the British Royal Air Force started Operation Gomorrah on July 25, 1943 , it was decided to test the new procedure.
Procedure
Messerschmitt Bf 109 and Focke-Wulf Fw 190 hunters were used in the “Wilde Sau” procedure . These day fighters had no night hunting equipment, such as radio measuring devices for enemy location, and were therefore not very suitable for night flight. In order to be able to use them anyway, a tactic was used that Hajo Herrmann referred to as the "screen". Here, the anti-aircraft artillery fired flare grenades hanging from parachutes , and the hunters dropped the same flare bombs . At the same time, fires on the ground and light cascades ("Christmas trees") illuminated the airspace. Batteries of headlights, which were located in the defensive bars in front of the cities as well as in the cities themselves, illuminated existing clouds. The silhouettes of the attacking bombers then emerged on this “screen”. The hunters could attack. During the same period, the anti-aircraft artillery stopped firing so as not to endanger the hunters. The day fighters could therefore only be deployed over the target object of the bombers and only during an ongoing attack.
Effects and disadvantages
The procedure proved to be effective at the beginning and in the tests, which only took place over Berlin: the single-seat aircraft designed for daytime hunting achieved higher successes than the two-engine radar-equipped night-time fighters guided from the ground and the anti-aircraft cartillery combined. This only applied to the first two missions.
From the third mission, the German fighters came across a system that the USAAF had been using since the beginning of the air war, the so-called Combat Box . The individual squadrons flew in such a way that they covered themselves with on-board weapons and the planes of the individual squadrons also did this within the squadron. In addition, the bombers flew in day-like conditions during these attacks. The flak could not provide any assistance. In addition, the coordination between hunters and anti-aircraft cartillery was so complicated that “Wilde Sau” could practically only be practiced via Berlin. An empire-wide coordination between flak and hunters was simply not possible. This method quickly lost its effectiveness after its surprising initial success. Therefore, by the end of the war, only three squadrons were set up to carry out this procedure. The system reached further limits during periods of bad weather. The approach to the target area alone was problematic. The screen system described above no longer worked due to the thickness of the cloud layer - especially since the British started to drop their bombs using on-board radar and thus became less dependent on the weather conditions (view of the target, etc.).
consequences
In a way, the procedure remained unpopular. As early as May 1944, the first squadron was disbanded and the groups handed over to fighter squadrons on the Eastern Front . Colonel Lossberg, who had closely followed the action of the day hunters, finally developed the "Tame Sau" method . It let the twin-engine night fighters operate largely independently of the ground control center.
Participating squadrons
- JG 300 "Wilde Sau"
- Squadron staff: Bonn Hangelar
- Established: June 26, 1943
- (set up as the first pure Wilde Sau squadron)
- JG 301 "Wilde Sau"
- Squadron staff: Neubiberg
- Erected: October 1, 1943
- JG 302 "Wilde Sau"
- Squadron staff: Stade
- Listed: Towards the end of November 1943 from submissions from some groups of JG 300 and 301
- (Dissolved again at the end of May 1944)
See also
literature
- Franz Kurowski : The aerial war over Germany . Econ, Düsseldorf 1977, ISBN 3-430-15831-1 .
- Heinz Nowarra: "Himmelbett" and "Wilde Sau" - From the history of German night hunting . In: Wolfgang Flume (Hrsg.): Yearbook of the Air Force . No. 10 , 1973, p. 134-140 .
- Willi Reschke: Jagdgeschwader 301/302 "Wilde Sau" . Motor book, Stuttgart 1999.
- Werner Held, Holger Nauroth: The German night hunt . Flechsig, Würzburg 2005.
Individual evidence
- ↑ P. Paus: Die Hölle von Hamburg , Erich Pabel Verlag, Rastatt 1986, ISBN 3-488-6017-8 , p. 21.
- ^ P. Paus: Die Hölle von Hamburg , Erich Pabel Verlag, Rastatt 1986, ISBN 3-488-6017-8 , p. 63.
- ^ Franz Kurowski: Der Luftkrieg über Deutschland , Heyne Verlag, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-453-00957-6 , p. 321.