Light and medium Flak could be avoided by flying at higher altitudes but this had an impact on bombing accuracy. In the dark of the night, some guns were radar-controlled and guided the manually controlled guns. An 88-mm shell exploding within 10 metres of a bomber could be fatal. Its 20-, 37- and 88-mm anti-aircraft guns were aimed at the sky and, as soon as the bomber came within reach, hundreds of shells were fired, filling the sky with smoke balls, that hung motionless. Warned by Freya and Würzburg, the Flak (Flugabwehrkanon, i.e., anti-aircraft artillery) was waiting, prepared and resolute. Flight Lieutenant Charles Goldhamer, Patient with Pedicle, charcoal. Rebuilding a badly burned nose required a pedicle, or temporary bridge of tissue between chest and nose. Brereton Greenhous et al., The crucible of war, 1939-1945: History of the Royal Canadian Air Force Volume III, 1994.A fighter aircraft thus provided with that “Schräge Musik” (literally “slanting music”, or “jazz”) could fire at a bomber before being spotted. That approach was so deadly that German engineers equipped night fighters with dorsal turrets with twin 30-mm guns pointing upwards. Under cover of darkness, the fighters then closed on their targets and, when the moment was right, attacked from behind and from below, the blind spot that bomber gunners cannot reach from their turrets. By night, however, the situation was quite different: a third radar network was used by ground controllers to guide the Nachtjagdgeschwader (“Night Fighter Squadron”) pilots – usually flying twin-engine Messerschmitts Me 110, Junkers JU-88G or Heinkels He 219 – towards Allied bombers until they picked them up on their airborne radar screens (“Lichtenstein”) or actually saw them. By day, fighters could locate bombers visually and attack them. A second network, called Würzburg, followed their course as they flew towards their targets. Germany used a similar combination, a radar network that warned fighter-interceptor squadrons of the impending arrival of enemy bombers.Īs soon as Allied bombers came close to the German shores of the North Sea, the Freya early-warning radar network detected them. Both sides conducted intensive research work to improve radars and counter-measures against enemy technologies all this made the bomber war a form of sophisticated electronic warfare.ĭuring the Battle of Britain, the British protected themselves against German bombing raids through an early warning system, the Chain Home, and by using fighters-interceptors. Germany fought bitterly to defend its territory, using fighters, anti-aircraft artillery and a whole range of detection and scrambling devices. National Defence, Image Library, PL 22172. Dodge assess the damage to the dorsal turret of the aircraft. Andrew and F/O Rod James Dunphy and Jimmy H.

A blind bombing system called Gee-H (or GH) used the Gee transmitters along with modified aircraft equipment to create a transponder system that could guide bombers at night or in cloud to within several hundred yards of a target.This No 426 Squadron Lancaster was hit by over one hundred machine-gun bullets or shell fragments during a raid on Leipzig, October 25th, 1943. Both the Royal Air Force Bomber Command and American VIII Bomber Command depended extensively on the technology. Dippy, the system guided ships and larger aircraft (bombers, transports, reconnaissance aircraft, and night fighters) to accuracies of a statute mile or better at ranges up to four hundred statute miles. Developed by the British Telecommunications Research Establishment (TRE) under the technical guidance of Robert G. An operator using this chart could determine a fix using two or three lines of position within three or four minutes.Gee was a hyperbolic system that provided short range navigation and bombing guidance over Britain, western Europe and the northern Mediterranean during World War II. The Royal Air Force (RAF) established new chains as the Allies advanced eastward after D-Day. Aircrews carried these charts to determine lines of position using a Gee receiver and oscilloscope. The target appears to be Zossen, which housed the German Army Staff Headquarters in the spring of 1945.

One of these has an 'IP' marked for an initial point to the south of Berlin. The chart was used operationally on a bombing raid as indicated by numerous pencil lines documenting missions to targets in Germany. This lattice chart depicts the Gee Reims station chain in eastern France during the final months in the war in Europe.

German ww2 air navigation tools