NIGHT FIGHTERS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 23 February 1945, Page 3

NIGHT FIGHTERS

THE MEN WHO FLY THEM WHY OUR BOMBER LOSSES HAVE FALLEN (by James Lansdale Hodson) London, Feb. 14. Those of us who for reasons personal or technical take a deeper inteiest 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 touch rarer. What is behind this movement? 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 counter-attack German night lighters 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 ninety-three for the 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 twenty - sixteen 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 to 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 six-feet 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 finding us. The enemy began to use night figthers about the middle of 1942, and by the Spring of 1943 his defences were strong - the JU. 88, Messerschmidt 110 and Dornier 217.. w.E took out counter-measures, 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 four hundred of those aircraft.

To-day he could put up rather less over one target, perhaps fifty to one hundred are as many as we are likely i to meet. It sometimes happens if we : raid a town twice in one night that on [ one raid we meet seventy or eighty • night fighters and on the next, a few ' hours later, we encounter none. Airborne flying-time of enemy night " fighters js comparatively short (three i hours would be a long stretch). Our 1 methods of “foxing” them are skilful. That course is a part of the task to which our forces are co-ordinated-bomber streams, real feint night fighter patrol, intruders attack and 1 various devices of deception that are still secret. The results speak with their own eloquence. Our losses in bombers, which were at tim«6 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 operationthe various bomber streams, times and targets. They try to read the enemy mind-they . visualise a.t what time he will discover what is happening, how far he will be misled, what he will do, which airfield he will use, what times will he rise, whither he will fly and what his tactics will be. They next 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.” How far having “cat’s eyes” is accountable for success is hard to say. Keenness, good shooting and eager-ness-read “gen”. But certainly good eyes are essential. Some pilots can see an aircraft three or four miles off; on a bad night not a tenth that distance. A Wing Commander (I think he was] Serious) said; “You can see an object better sometimes when you don’t look j straight at it but look ten degrees to i the right or left. Another trick is to j got below it and see it against a j lighter different piece of cloud or sky” I A Group Captain said: “I now use that I dodge when finding my car on a dark i night. HUMOROUS APPROACH I The men struck me as lively-not i quite so lively perhaps as the men i who fly single-engine fighters by day; not so given to coloured scarves, fly- j ing boots with maps stuck down the • side, but livelier than the heavy bomber pilots (though there are a few of the latter among them, men who have done fifty trips in Halifaxes or Lancasters and now prefer this job , of training men. It may sound (and be) absurd to suggest that these night fighters men ■ are betwixt and between the two other sorts, but that is how it struck me. They have got humour. They speak of freindly flak from our own gLins. There is a Squadron Leader, for instance, whose combat reports ] have not gaiety. On Christmas Eve he found an enemy “whose crew must ( haye been in a 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 hinr”. Later-“ some brown job ” (meaning British soldiers) “opened up with a solitary gun, missing a| buzzbomb (V.l) and frightened us ' away”. Of another patrol on which they shot down the enemy, he writes * that things were happening ‘‘before k and after the happy event”. On the s

way home they looked in on the Bonn aerodrome “but no bon, as they say”. Bailing out of a Mosquito is not easy. The escape hatch is a small door on the right which you jettison. To get through head first with your harness on requires determination and agility. A navigator who tried last November at first failed but was spurred on by a more incisive command from the pilot plus a lot of smoke and fumes in the cockpit. He said that this creditable impression of Dante’s inferno behind him made that hatch now look positively cavernous. “The chance of being guillotined by the starboard propellor, was dimmed by flames giving adequate if ominous illumination Having left the aircraft I saw it flash past trailing clouds of flame and looking like an enemy Vergeltungwaffen”. On the ground it was “raining with typical Dutch abandon”. 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 pilot and the navigator intend to be parsons.

Take-off and return are less spectacular than at either the heavy bomber station or with day. fighters. Departures may be spaced out a good deal, for targets, destinations and tasks are allotted. These may be widely different, ranging from the disruption of enemy communications and warning systems to, as I have said, guarding bomber streams and engaging German night fighters.

Excitement occurs when they return and £iave tales to unfold. (They have not always - successes seem to run in cycles.) It took over a thousand sorties to kill those ninety-three enemy aircraft. However, work can be effective in keeping down our own losses even when enemy aircraft are not shot down. Enemy morale does not improve under our onslaught. The statement was quoted to me of a German night fighter, recently captured. An R.A.F. officer put it in R.A.F. language which, he said, gave the content accurately enough. “He said his job used to be a peice of cake but that there is no future in it now”. Perhaps he was more doleful than most.

I am left wondering what the position of the Japanese air force is going to be when the full force of our Allied air fleets, in weight and latest technical devices, bears down on them. There is not much doubt, I imagine, as to that.