Nachtjagd - Defenders of the Reich 1940-1943
A dramatic account from a Luftwaffe night-fighter pilot of just one night in August 1943
Author and researcher Martin W. Bowman has probably done more than anyone to record and preserve the accounts of aircrew from World War II. His five-volume series Bomber Command - Reflections of War has a comprehensive collection of first-hand accounts from those serving in RAF Bomber Command throughout the war. Last year I featured an excerpt from volume 1.
We have been chasing the Tommy for some minutes and are closing in. He is dead ahead, only 500 metres away and I am straining my eyes to see him.
He also produced Nachtjagd - Defenders of the Reich 1940-1943, which looks at the same events, mainly from the German perspective. Once again the emphasis is on personal accounts - from Luftwaffe night-fighter pilots. Bowman provides the context for each raid - but these men largely tell their own story. They provide many details about how the battle in the skies over Germany was fought, the exact tactics used and their attitudes to their opponents.
The following excerpt is an account by Leutnant Norbert Pietrek of his attacks on RAF bombers on the night of 9/10th August 1943:
Will they be coming tonight and if so, through our sector? The chances are not bad. The Tommies have good weather for taking off and landing, the night is dark with no moon. These are good conditions for us night fighters as well.
While we are still quietly dozing away we suddenly get the order: 'First wave cockpit readiness!' and we rush out to the bus which brings us to our machines So they are coming, the Tommies. In no time at all we, Paulchen, Moritz (flight engineer) and I, are on board and are waiting for the order to take off. After only a few minutes it comes.
'The engines fire at once, thanks to the efforts of Moritz, and my ground mechanic Alwin Athen and I take off. I climb, orbiting, with full power, while Paulchen is seeking radio contact with Ernschtle, which isn't easy, for the Tommy's jamming is considerably worse tonight than usual, which almost certainly means that they will be coming through our sector. Then it sounded to me as though the starboard engine wasn't running quite right; in any case its rpm had dropped somewhat and I had to adjust it. I ask Moritz what might be wrong and whether he thought that we should turn back. He asked me for the oil pressure and the oil and cooler temperatures and then thought that we should continue. Without Moritz, I would probably have turned back.
Now, as I am almost at a height of 6,000 metres, Paulchen got contact with the JLO through the dreadful cacophony of the jammers and he 'serves me up' with a Tommy. He is on a course of around east-south-east and still quite some distance away. I must therefore give chase with full power. We get some minor course corrections and I gradually close with my opponent. He is pretty fast; it must be a new model, perhaps one of the new Lancasters? We should soon find out.
We have been chasing the Tommy for some minutes and are closing in. He is dead ahead, only 500 metres away and I am straining my eyes to see him. There, or am I mistaken? No, he really is there! The black outline with the four faintly glimming exhausts. I ease a little lower and a little to the right in order to identify him and to get out of the rear gunner's arc of fire with his four machine guns. It is, in fact, a Halifax. Then I slide under the Tommy, adjust to his speed and ease up until I am about twenty metres below him. Now my friend, now you're for it!
At first nothing happens, the Lancaster continues on course to his target. Either those in front have not noticed the fire in the rear turret, or they think that it will burn itself out. I almost thought so myself, for the flame disappeared for a few seconds, only to reappear even larger. It looks as if the Lancaster is alight at the back like a cigar.
I had decided on his starboard wing as my aiming point, pulled up, rising barely five metres behind the Halifax whilst firing a full burst between the starboard engines where his fuel tanks are and the kite bursts into flames in the starboard wing and plunges burning over his port wing. We follow him down until we see the flash of his crash and report our success to base.
After the crash we can hardly believe our eyes: it looks like regular fireworks with variously coloured rockets. We had apparently caught one of the illuminators. He will not be able to set his markers over the city to be attacked. Perhaps we had saved a lot of peoples' lives there. But now back to radio beacon 7B!
Only now do I realize that my two 2cm cannon had not been fired, only my four machine guns and of these one had failed and cannot be cocked. What's up? Has the armourer, Oberfeldwebel Habermann, made some mistake? Well, I'll give him what for when I get back. Now I'll have to carry on with only three guns!
Flying westward to the radio beacon we hear from the JLO [Jager Leit Offizier] - Fighter Controller] that he has lost us and cannot find us again because 'the sky is full of Tommies, but none of them are continuing on their way', as good old Ernschtle puts it. He is unable to find me and guide me to another enemy.
I make that out through the chatter and noise in my earphones as I notice to our starboard, at about the same height, a small shadow, no larger than a wasp, flit past in the opposite direction at about 500 metres distance. Could that have been a Tommy? Without thinking long about it I swung off to the right and was not a little surprised to find myself exactly fifty metres beneath a Lancaster. Paulchen and Otto behind me were startled by my sudden manoeuvre but I had had no time to warn them.
Now I have my second opponent of the night before me. So I am to shoot him down with only three machine guns, but how does one do that? Will I manage it and set him on fire like the Halifax before? Let's try it. Now, as before with the Halifax and at least a hundred times before at practice, I position myself twenty metres beneath him, then I pull up and fire a full burst into the two starboard engines. No success! I must have hit him, but the Lancaster continues steadily on his east-south-east course to bring its bombs to their destination.
Now I notice that another gun had failed to fire and that I have only two left. That makes it practically impossible to shoot down a Viermot, but it's worth a try and I want my second victory.
After my first attack I had placed myself to the right and below, to observe my opponent and consider how I might 'with only two thin squirters' as the Little Kadi expressed it afterwards, sweep him from the sky. To set the engines or tanks on fire is, as the first attack had proved, pointless. That leaves only the fuselage as aiming point and if possible the 4 x 1,000 rounds of ammunition in the rear turret.
Normally we don't aim at the fuselage, but only at the tanks and the engines in the wings. The enemy crew should have the chance of escaping with their parachutes. They were only doing their duty, just as we were doing ours and they could not be blamed that 'Bomber Harris' had ordered them to destroy German cities instead of the German industry. But now I have no choice than to try to set fire to the ammunition in the rear turret in order to stop the enemy from reaching his target. That would make it unavoidable that some of the crew would be killed, at least the rear gunner. I feel sorry for him, but how many Germans might be killed by his bombs?
Now the enemy knows that he is being stalked by a night fighter and he will be very much on the alert. I sneak under him, into the blind spot of his defences, for the second attack. The rear gunner had evidently spotted me, had realized that he no longer had a chance and abandoned his turret to save himself by parachute. But as I am already very close beneath him, which the poor fellow could not have seen, his head hits my port wing, where afterwards we found a scrap of skin with a bunch of red hair. Pity, I would rather have had him land unhurt.
Now I must try to eliminate the mid-upper gunner; I would have to pursue the Lancaster for some while yet until I should manage, if at all, to set the rear turret ammunition afire and the propeller wash of the four Lancaster engines would fling me several times upwards into the field of fire of the two machine guns of the top turret.
I therefore fired, already pulling up, into the area of the mid-upper turret and I must have got him, for he doesn't fire a single shot, although I am thrown about a lot and several times into his field of fire. I am now literally poking around with my two guns at no more than ten metres' range in the bottom right of the rear turret where two of tire four ammunition boxes are located and, indeed, after about ten seconds there is a flame. Now the same again in the bottom left with the same result. Then I move off to starboard to observe what happens next.
At first nothing happens, the Lancaster continues on course to his target. Either those in front have not noticed the fire in the rear turret, or they think that it will burn itself out. I almost thought so myself, for the flame disappeared for a few seconds, only to reappear even larger. It looks as if the Lancaster is alight at the back like a cigar.
After five minutes, however, the Lancaster turns back and tries to get away homewards. But after a few minutes the crew must have realized that it was useless, for suddenly the Lancaster dives steeply down and in the bright glare of the crash we see four open parachutes descending. The rest of the crew must have bought it, pity.
I have done it, shot down a Viermot 'with only two thin squirters', something not to be emulated easily. But, now that the ammunition for my two guns must be almost exhausted and my fuel too, I report my return and fly home.
This excerpt from Nachtjagd - Defenders of the Reich 1940-1943 appears by kind permission of Pen & Sword Books Ltd. Copyright remains with the author.
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