"CAT'S EYE" FIGHTERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 47, 24 February 1945, Page 11

"CAT'S EYE" FIGHTERS

MEN WHO PROTECT THE BOMBERS

(By James Lansdale Hod'som)

LONDON, February 14. Those of us who for reasons personal or technical- take a deeper interest than most in the doings of Britain's heavy bombers over the Third Reich have been happily aware for some time that their losses have been declining. A bad night may occur now and then, but they grow much rarer.

What is behind this improvement? To a large degree the work of our own night fighters. You can add to it the terrible precision and actual speed of concentrated bombing controlled by the master bomber (Wing Commander Gibson, V.C, was killed doing this work), also that our "heavies" can now approach their targets over friendly territory to a degree unknown before France was liberated. But the credit due to our night fighters which coun-ter-attack German night fighters is very high. They disrupt the enemy's warning system and they guard our stream of bombers; they search out enemy night fighters; they lie in wait for them; they follow them to their airfields.

A night fighter station I have just visited has shot down 93 for a loss of six of ours. One crew, under Squadron Leader B. A. Burbridge, D.5.0., and Flight Lieutenant F. S. Skelton, D.5.0., have shot down 20 —16 of them over Germany. They fly Mosquitoes armed with cannon and machine-guns. One successful but satirical pilot calls it his "plywood pantechnicon," since it is largely built of wood. The pilot, who does the shooting, and the navigator, who works the "special instrument" and is the brains of the craft, sit side by side. There is not half an inch tb spare in the cockpit. "Cheek by jowl" could be used with accuracy. They talk of being contortionists. The navigator (into whose seat I climbed) could do with two sets of eyes and an arm that works on a swivel to deal with the instruments behind his back. "I have a permanent scar on my head from getting into my place," the sixfeet navigator told me. He added: "Your body learns to accommodate itself to all the projections."

THEY ENJOY IT. They say such things with wry humour. The atmosphere was cheerful. I think you could say they enjoy the job. They are on top of it and on top of the enemy. I believe it is true that our instruments for detecting Jerry are in advance of his for finding us.

The enemy began to use night fighters about the middle of 1942, and by the spring of 1943 his defences were strong—the JuBB, Messerschmitt 110, and Dornier 217. We took out countermeasures, culminating in November, 1943. in the special force I have just visited. The task was formidable for the enemy had trebled his own night fighters in the preceding twelve months. At that time he could probably put up 400 of those aircraft. Today he could put up rather less over one target, perhaps 50 to 100 are as many as we are likely to meet. It sometimes happens if we raid a town twice in one night that on one raid we meet 70 or 80 night fighters and on the next, a few hours later, we encounter none. Airborne flying-time of enemy night fighters is comparatively short (three hours would be a long stretch). Our methods of "foxing" them are skilful. That course is part of the task to which our forces are co-ordin-ated —bomoer streams, real feint night fighter patrol, intruder attacks, and various devices of deception that are still secret. The results speak with their own eloquence. Our losses in bombers, which were at times from 5 to 10 per cent., have often now fallen to as little as 1 per cent., or even below that. Caution is always looking ahead in war but there is good reason for cheerfulness.

THE REASON WHY. What is the human side? I asked, for instance, the reasons for Burbridge's and Skelton's great success. (.It is .advisable-to speak of them as one.) The answer was: intelligence. They know before they set out precisely where they will be at a certain

time. They carry a picture in their head' of the whole night's operation— the various bomber streams; times, abrid targets. They try to:rreardr the enemy mind—they visualise at what time he will discover what is happening, how far he will be misled, what he will do, which airfields he will use, what times he will rise, whither he will fly, and what his tactics will be. They act accordingly. If one expectation fails they know which next to try. After they had shot down three on the night they shot down four, Burbridge said: "Time we were starting for home, Bill," to which Skelton replied: "Well, if you like, but I've got another Hun for you." They went after him and destroyed him too. They then had a further look round. "But," says Burbridge's combat report, "we found no joy and presumed we had outstayed our welcome."

bHow far bhaving "cat's eyes" is accountable for success is hard to say. Keenness, good shooting, and eagerness—read "gen" in squadron intelligence library—all these are of high importance. But certainly good eyes; are essential. Some pilots can see much further than others. On a good clear night you might see an aircraft three or four miles off; on a bad night not a tenth of that distance. A wing commander (I think he was serious) said: "You can see an object better sometimes when you don't look straight at it but look ten degrees to the right or to the left. Another trick is to get below it and see it against a lighter different piece of sky or cloud." A group captain said: "I now use that dodge when finding my car on a dark night." HUMOROUS APPROACH. The men struck me as lively—not quite so lively perhaps as the men* who fly single-engine fighters by .day; not so given to coloured scarves, flying boots with maps stuck down thei side, but livelier than the heavy-! bomber pilots (though there are a few of the latter among them, men whoi have fione fifty trips in Halifaxes or Lancasters and now prefer this job of I training men. j It may sound (and be) absurd toi suggest that these night-fighter men are1 betwixt and between the two other sorts, but that is how it struck me. They have got humour. They speak of friendly flak from our own guns. There is a squadron leader, for instance, whose combat reports have not] gaiety. On Christmas Eve he found an enemy "whose crew must have been in festive spirit, as we were directly up-moon at 600 feet when we opened fire with a very long burst, and the pride of the Luftwaffe caught fire immediately." Of another destroyed that night, he says: "We wished him a merry Christmas on the way down, literally cooking his goose for him." Later—"some brown job" (meaning British soldiers) "opened up with a solitary gun, missing a buzzbomb (VI) and frightened us away." Of another patrol on which they shot down the enemy, he writes that things were happening "before and after the happy event." On the way home they looked in on the Bonn aerodrome, '"but no bon, as ,they say." FLYERS WHO WANT TO BE • PARSONS. ! But they are not all as lighthearted as this. Most combat' reports are straightforward accounts of a workmanlike job and convey the steady determination of the men who write them. Other pilots in these two squadrons have shot down 'nine, eight. seven, six, and five respectively. There is,a remarkable fact about one of-the most successful crews—that both the pilot and the navigator intend to be parsons.