Tame sow night hunting method

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Tame sow was a night hunting tactic used by the German Air Force during World War II . The process replaced and supplemented the "Wilde Sau" from 1944 onwards . Developer was Colonel Victor von Lossberg .

prehistory

After the "Wilde Sau" had only partially proven itself and was in any case not feasible throughout the Reich, new methods had to be found to stop the constantly attacking streams of bombers from the British Bomber Command . The guided night hunt was largely canceled. The radar equipment required for this , such as the Würzburg device, was disrupted by the massive dropping of tinfoil strips from the bombers, with devastating consequences during the attacks on Hamburg at the end of July 1943. This British interference measure ran under the cover name “Window” (German name “Düppel "). The Freya devices also responded to Window. With them, bringing in your own hunting groups for an attack was difficult, if only because of their inaccuracy in determining the height of the target, and completely impossible when using Window. The devices could only serve as an early warning. One solution was the “Tame Sau” method developed by Colonel Lossberg.

Procedure

As soon as it was determined that a bomb attack was imminent, the German Air Force gathered larger fighter units, mostly in relay strength, over various radio beacons in occupied Western Europe along the Atlantic and North Sea coasts . The ground stations finally led the hunting units to the entry routes marked by window clouds. From here on, the fighters should independently search for the bomber formation with their on- board radar . A line through the ground stations did not take place, since from this point on they could neither distinguish between fighters, bombers nor windows. The basis for the usability of the on-board radars of the German night fighters was that some of their radio operators had determined that the thrown tinfoil strips moved quickly towards the fighter when it crossed the cloud or flew towards them, while a bomber in front of the fighter, depending on its speed came closer only slowly.

It was possible to hide windows and localize the bombers, because the reflected radar pulses between window and fighter or bomber and fighter were also doppler modulated differently (frequency shift) due to the different approach speeds between the individual objects . This had been known since the attacks on Hamburg , but there was still no valid operational procedure. The improvement of the on-board radar devices was also decisive for the success of the procedure. While the first versions of the Lichtenstein device covered about a 35 ° angle in front of the hunter and had a maximum range of 3500 m, newer devices could already make 120 ° angles visible and cover ranges of up to 10,000 m.

Effects and disadvantages

The effect of this procedure was enormous, as the disturbance of the German radar through the clouds of tin foil strips (window) only offered relative protection. The hunting associations attacked as one (pack tactic), unlike in the guided night hunt, in which the hunters were individually brought up to bombers. The Combatbox , which was successfully used by the Allies against the "Wild Pig" , was largely ineffective, as the black and gray camouflaged hunters were mostly only recognizable when their tracer bullets became visible. Another innovation was the slope Music : In this two to four machine guns or machine guns installed at an angle firing upwards. Night fighters equipped with it approached the bombers from below and shot upwards, mostly into the target's wings. This avoided the fire area of ​​the rear gunner (who, with up to four heavy machine guns, was usually the most heavily armed gunner on board the bomber) and the side gunner. The weird music dispensed with tracer bullets, so that the night fighters remained largely invisible even during the attack.

Although it occasionally happened that the hunters flying according to radar shot each other down (" friendly fire ") because they thought their own machines were enemy machines, the "tame pig" was all in all the most successful night hunting method of the entire war. The late introduction of this procedure, the lack of well-trained pilots and the lack of new machines prevented this procedure from turning the aerial warfare in favor of Germany. To make matters worse, the Royal Air Force gradually began to distribute its own night fighters widely around the streams of bombers, so that some fighters themselves were hunted.

literature

  • Franz Kurowski : "The aerial warfare over Germany", Econ Verlag, 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 . Volume 10. 1973, pp. 134-140
  • Willi Reschke : Jagdgeschwader 301/302 'Wilde Sau' . Motorbuch Verlag, 1999
  • Werner Held & Holger Nauroth: The German night hunt . Flechsig Publishing House, 2005

Web links