16th of December 1943, the moment an experienced German night fighter crew switched off their Lichenstein radar after completing patrol and entered the landing circuit at their home base near Cologne.
Oburst Martin Shriber was 31 years old.
Veteran of 217 night missions.
pilot of a messid BF-110 G4 night fighter equipped with FUG202 Likenstein BC radar.
His radar operator unraits Klaus Hoffman, aged 27, had survived 193 operations.
They had killed 11 RAF heavy bombers.
That night they had spent 3 hours patrolling the bomber stream route near the RU.
No contacts.
Fuel low.
Mission complete.
They requested landing clearance at 0217 hours.
Tower confirmed.
Flaps down.
Undercarriage extended.
Speed reduced to 140 me.
Altitude 800 ft.
Hoffman switched the Likensstein radar to standby.
Standard procedure.
Radar emissions attracted attention.
They were home.
They were safe.
At 28 hours and 43 seconds, 4 20 m Hispano cannon shells and 37 303 caliber rounds entered the BF-110 from a stern.
Range 300 yd, burst duration 3 seconds.
The aircraft exploded short of the runway threshold.
Both crew killed instantly.
No distress call, no evasive action, no warning whatsoever.
Tower control reported seeing a shadow pass overhead immediately after the explosion.
Fast, twin engineed, wooden, gone before identification possible.
This was the day the British proved that destroying the hunter was more effective than defending the hunted.
Who killed Shriber and Hoffman? And why did two experienced night fighter veterans returning to their own airfield never see death approaching at 370 me? Subscribe to this channel if you believe it is our duty to preserve the stories of men who fought wars we can barely comprehend.
This was not an isolated incident.
Across the following weeks, something unprecedented began happening to the Luftwaffer’s elite night fighter force.
Crews vanished, not over the bomber streams, not during interceptions, but near their own airfields during patrol routes in landing circuits.
On final approach, when flaps were down, speed low, fuel critical, attention absolute, the locations formed a pattern, a deliberate, methodical pattern centered on German night fighter bases across the Reich, Venllo, Twente, Gilzeran, Centron, Leyon, Atheis, Floren.
The mathematics were chilling.
Between December 1943 and May 1945, 278 German night fighters were confirmed destroyed by a specific British aircraft type operating in a specific role.
That figure excluded aircraft that crashed attempting emergency landings to escape real or imagined pursuers.
It excluded crews who delayed takeoff.
It excluded radar operators who refused to switch on their equipment.
It excluded pilots who requested transfers.
German command realized something that defied every principle of aerial warfare they understood.
The British were not attacking their missions.
They were erasing their capability.
Squadron leader Herman Fer, group commander of the second NJG1 wrote in his patrol log on 3rd February on 1944, “We no longer control the night, we survive in it.” Obus Ysef Kamhuber, architect of the Himlbette night fighter system, stated in a January 1944 conference, “They are not fighting our aircraft.
They are hunting our knowledge.
This should have been impossible.
Germany owned the night sky.
The himmlbet system, literally four postered, divided defended airspace into sectors, each controlled by a ground station, directing fighters onto targets via radio.
German night fighters operated with Fugi Tun2 Likenstein.
BC airborne interception radar.
Operational range 4,000 m.
detection capability against heavy bombers proven and reliable.
They employed Shreger music, literally slanted music, upward-firing 20 mm cannon mounted at a 70° angle, allowing kills from below where British bombers had no defensive guns.
Crews were highly trained.
Pilot and radar operator partnerships required over 14 months of training.
Operational life expectancy for RAF bomber command crews 14 missions for Luftvafa night fighter crews substantially higher.
They had interior lines, home field advantage, ground control, superior situational awareness, dedicated repair facilities, fuel priority.
The mathematics favored Germany.
Air Vice Marshal Donald Bennett, commander of the Pathfinder Force, stated at an operational conference in November 1943, “We are losing bombers at a rate that arithmetic cannot sustain.
Training takes 18 months.
Replacement capacity is finite.
The enemy kills our crews faster than we train them.
We cannot win by defense alone.” Tell me in one word what the German night fighter force possessed in early 1944.
Was it confidence or was it something more? Was German confidence justified or had it become certainty that blinded them to a fundamental vulnerability? RAF leadership faced an insoluble problem.
Defending bomber streams harder would not work.
Heavy bombers lacked the speed and agility to evade dedicated interceptors.
Additional defensive armament added weight, reduced speed, increased fuel consumption, decreased bomb load.
Escort fighters, single engine types, lacked the range and endurance for deep penetration missions over Germany.
Multi-engine fighters like the Bristol bow fighter were too slow.
The routes were predictable.
Bomber streams had to fly specific corridors to concentrate defensive firepower and overwhelm radar coverage.
But predictability created geometry that favored interceptors.
German ground control could calculate intercept points with precision.
Night fighters launched from forward bases, climbed to altitude, positioned themselves ahead of the bomber stream and executed stern attacks from below using shreger music.
Rear gunners never saw them.
The geometry was fixed, the outcome inevitable.
Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Harris, commanderin-chief of bomber command, posed the fundamental question at a chiefs of staff meeting on 18th October 1943.
We cannot escort every bomber.
We cannot outrun their fighters.
We cannot change the geography.
How do you kill the hunters before they reach the bombers? The answer already existed within RAF inventory, not as originally designed, but as a concept waiting for operational doctrine to catch up with engineering reality.
The De Havland DH98 Mosquito entered service in November 1941.
It was not designed as an intruder aircraft.
It was designed as an unarmed high-speed reconnaissance platform exploiting speed and altitude for survival.
But by late the 1943, the Night Fighter variant, Mosquito NFTt, had evolved into something unprecedented.
Wooden construction, birch plywood skin over spruce and balsaore, laminated, bonded, stressed to 9G positive.
Two Rolls-Royce Merlin 21 engines producing 1,460 horsepower each.
Maximum speed 370 mechi at 13,000 ft.
Operational range 175 mi with internal fuel.
Crew of two pilot and navigator radar operator.
No defensive armament.
Forward armament only.
Four 20 mmi Hispano MK2 cannon in the belly.
Four Hongut 3 caliber Browning machine guns in the nose.
Combined weight of fire per second 10.4 kg.
Lethal effective range 300 yd.
Time to kill 3 seconds.
The wooden construction was not a stealth feature by design.
It was the result of wartime aluminum shortages forcing Dehavlin to exploit furniture industry manufacturing capacity.
But wood had unexpected properties.
Radar transparency, low radar cross-section.
German Freya and Vertzburg groundbased radars struggled to detect wooden airframes at operationally useful ranges.
Likenstein airborne radar optimized for large metal bombers frequently failed to acquire mosquitoes until engagement range where it was already too late.
But speed was not the decisive advantage, nor was radar invisibility.
The decisive advantage was operational concept.
The mosquito could penetrate German airspace, loiter near known night fighter bases, detect German radar emissions, intercept fighters using their own transmissions as beacons, engage from a stern with overwhelming firepower, and egress before ground defenses reacted.
It reversed the entire geometry of night air warfare.
Wing Commander James Brham, commander of 141 Squadron, explained in a post-war interview, “The German pilot believed his radar made him invisible to us.
He never understood that every transmission was a signal flare telling us exactly where he was.
We didn’t hunt bombers, we hunted hunters.” The kill chain was precise, sequential, clinical.
12 steps from penetration to egress.
First penetration mosquito departs RAF base in Norfolk or West Reum.
Climbs to 20,000 ft.
Crosses North Sea at high altitude above effective flack range.
Enters German airspace over Belgium or Holland.
Second, navigation.
Uses visual landmarks, dead reckoning, and radio direction finding to locate known German night fighter bases.
Intelligence provided target lists daily.
Venllo 20ente Gilzarion bases identified through signals intelligence prisoner interrogation and photographic reconnaissance.
Third loiter mosquito reduces speed to 200 MPH.
Circles at distance outside visual and acoustic detection range.
Altitude 15,000 to 18,000 ft.
Crew waits.
Patience is tactical.
Fourth detection.
German night fighter takes off.
climbs to patrol altitude.
Radar operator switches on FUG 202 Likenstein BC radar.
Transmits on 490 megahertz.
Effective range 4,000 m against large targets, but the transmission itself radiates in all directions.
Fifth emission trap RAF serate equipment modified AI MK4 receiver tuned to Likenstein frequencies detects transmission immediately.
Effective detection range 50 miles under ideal conditions.
Mosquito radar operator reports contact bearing provided.
Range estimated by signal strength.
Sixth intercept geometry.
Mosquito pilot turns toward contact.
Increases speed to 320.
Closes from a stern quarter.
German pilot focuses forward searching for bombers.
Radar operator focuses on his scope, tracking potential targets ahead.
Neither looks behind.
Doctrine assumes threat comes from ahead.
Home airspace is sanctuary.
7th radar lock at 6,000 ft separation.
Mosquito radar operator switches from Serite to AI Mik 4 radar.
Acquires target.
Provides ranging and directional information.
Eighth visual confirmation at some 200 ft.
Pilot sees exhaust flames from German fighter engines.
Blue white glow.
Unmistakable.
Target confirmed.
Ninth engagement.
Mosquito closes to 300 yd.
Pilot aims using gun sight.
Fires 2 to 3 second burst.
Four cannon and four machine guns.
Combined fire.
10th effect.
Cannon shells penetrate airframe.
High explosive and incendiary.
Machine gun rounds shred control surfaces.
Fuel tanks puncture.
Fire immediate.
German crew has no time to react.
Most die unaware they were engaged.
11th egress.
Mosquito breaks away immediately.
Reduces power.
Dives to low altitude.
Uses terrain masking.
Exits German airspace below radar coverage.
12th.
Return.
Crosses North Sea.
lands at base.
Debriefing.
Intelligence analysis.
Next mission prepared.
The entire sequence from penetration to egress took between 2 and 4 hours.
Fuel consumption was within limits.
Operational tempo sustainable.
Crews flew multiple missions per week.
Write in the comments the exact moment you believe this battle was already lost for Germany.
I want to know when you saw it.
Flight Lieutenant Kenneth Deer, radar operator with 141 Squadron, described the first operational success on 16th of December, 1943.
We detected his radar 40 mi out, closed from starboard quarter.
Lambert had visual at 3/4 of a mile.
Fired at 300 yd, 2C burst, wings separated, fire immediate, wreckage impacted 7 seconds later.
We were gone before the explosion finished.
He never transmitted distress.
He never knew.
The hunter never knew he was being hunted.
The secret advantage was not technological.
It was intelligence.
British signals intelligence government code and cipher school at Bletchley Park and RAF intelligence at RAF Kingdown intercepted German radio communications continuously.
Traffic analysis revealed patrol times, frequencies, call signs, operational areas.
Partial codereing provided mission assignments.
German ground controllers transmitted orders in enigma encoded format.
British cryp analysts decoded enough traffic to establish patterns.
Night fighter bases were identified through direction finding and traffic volume.
Patrol routes reconstructed from repeated bearings.
Takeoff and landing times predicted within minutes.
Serret equipment developed by telecommunications research establishment at Malvin exploited German radar emissions directly.
Likenstein BC and C1 radars transmitted continuously during patrol.
Each transmission provided bearing to RAF receivers.
Later perfecto equipment went further.
It triggered German IFFF identification.
friend or foe transponders by transmitting interrogation pulses on known frequencies.
German transponders automatically replied, revealing both bearing and range.
German air crews were unaware their own safety systems betrayed them.
Squadron leader Edward Krew, intelligence officer for 100 group, stated in operational notes dated March 1944, “German radar was designed to find British bombers.
Instead, every transmission summoned British killers.
They built the trap themselves.
We simply closed it.
Psychological collapse followed operational losses.
German night fighter crews began fearing things they had never feared before.
Switching on radar meant vulnerability.
Likenstein emissions could be detected at ranges far exceeding its own operational capability.
Serate equipped mosquitoes detected transmissions at 50 mi.
Likenstein acquired bombers at 4,000 m, barely 2 miles.
Every radar activation was a gamble.
Crews delayed, flew with radar off, relied on visual acquisition, but visual acquisition at night without radar against camouflaged bombers was nearly impossible.
Effectiveness collapsed.
Bomber losses decreased.
German crews requested transfers.
Experienced radar operators trained over 14 months asked for reassignment to ground duties.
Hman Vilhelm, veteran of 43 kills, wrote in his diary on 12th of March, 1944.
I no longer switch on radar until absolutely necessary.
Hoffman insists, but I have seen what happens to crews who transmit too early.
Better blind than dead.
If you understand what fear does to men who were never supposed to be afraid, share this with someone who needs to hear it.
Landing procedures became terror.
Returning from patrol, fuel critical, airfield in sight, flaps down, undercarriage extended, speed reduced, attention focused absolutely on approach.
This was when mosquitoes struck.
crews knew.
Statistics confirmed it.
Between January and April 1944, 43% of all German night fighter losses to enemy action occurred within 15 mi of their own bases, not over the bomber stream, not during combat, during landing.
Crews rushed approaches, landed too fast, accidents increased.
On 23rd February 1944, three BF-110s crashed at Gilza region during emergency landing attempts after unconfirmed reports of mosquito activity.
No mosquito was present.
Fear alone caused the losses.
Oburst Victor von Losberg, commander of NJG3, issued standing orders in March 1944.
Crews will not discuss mosquito encounters in mess or quarters.
Morale damage exceeds operational losses.
Discipline will be maintained.
The order confirmed the problem.
It could not solve it.
Mosquitoes escalated beyond patrol interception.
They attacked airfields directly, lurked outside landing circuits, waited for aircraft on final approach, flaps down, speed low, fuel critical, crew exhausted.
This was precision murder.
On 7 January 1944, two mosquitoes from 85 squadron orbited 20 air base for 90 minutes.
Seven German night fighters attempted to land.
Four were shot down on approach.
Two crashed attempting evasive maneuvers.
One diverted to an alternate field 70 mi distant and crashed on landing due to fuel exhaustion.
Total German losses, seven aircraft, 14 crew.
British losses zero.
Wing commander John Cunningham, 85 squadron commander reported.
We position at 8,000 ft, 5 mi from the circuit.
Visual acquisition by exhaust glow.
Approach from a stern below their glide path.
Engage at 400 yd.
One burst.
Immediate egress.
Tower cannot react.
Ground defenses cannot acquire us.
Search lights illuminate our position after we have already departed.
They are defending an empty sky.
Returning home became more dangerous than combat crews calculated odds.
Statistical analysis conducted secretly by some units showed that survival probability was higher over the bomber stream than in home airspace.
At least over the bombers, threats were known, flack patterns predictable.
Bomber defensive fire could be avoided.
But near home, death was invisible, silent and sudden.
No warning, no escape, no sanctuary remained.
If this moment stayed with you, mark it with a like not for approval, but in quiet acknowledgement of what those men faced numbers that matter, not aircraft destroyed, not tonnage of bombs, but knowledge erased.
Between December 1943 and May 1945, RAF mosquito intruder operations destroyed 278 confirmed German night fighters, but the number tells an incomplete story.
German night fighter effectiveness depended on experienced crews.
Training pipeline required 14 months minimum.
basic flight training, instrument rating, night qualification, multi-engine conversion, radar operator training, tactical integration.
A trained crew represented over 10,000 man-h hours of instruction, Luftvafer training capacity in late 1943, approximately 60 new crews per month.
Operational losses in same period 70 to 90 crews per month losses exceeded replacements.
Veteran radar operators were irreplaceable.
Likenstein operation required intuitive understanding of radar scope interpretation, target discrimination, range estimation and approach geometry.
Training manuals provided theory.
Experience provided skill.
Operators with over 50 missions had developed instincts that could not be taught.
They recognized false echoes, distinguished bombers from escort fighters, predicted target maneuvers, guided pilots through poor weather.
Mosquito operations systematically killed these men.
By April 1944, average night fighter crew experience had fallen from 120 missions to 37.
New crews arrived underprepared.
Veterans were dead.
Training could not recover lost knowledge.
General Litnant Yosef Schmid, commanding general of Iay Yagcore, wrote in April 1944, operational assessment.
We replace aircraft within weeks.
We replace crews within months.
We cannot replace experience.
That requires years we do not have.
Britain is not destroying aircraft.
Britain is destroying knowledge.
This cannot be sustained.
Why was this worse than American daylight bombing? The question demands comparison.
American 8th Air Force conducted massive daylight raids over Germany throughout 1943 and 1944.
Hundreds of B17 and B-24 heavy bombers escorted by P-47 and P-51 fighters.
German defenses anticipated them.
Radar detected formations at 150 miles.
Flack batteries prepositioned.
Fighter wings scrambled in coordinated waves.
Battles were predictable.
Geometry was understood.
Germans knew when attacks came, where formations would fly, and what targets were threatened.
Losses were severe, both sides, but survivable.
Doctrine adapted, tactics evolved, training improved.
Americans learned to fight through flack.
Germans learned to attack bomber formations.
This was conventional warfare, industrial attrition, replaceable losses, mosquito intruder operations were different, unpredictable, silent, no warning, no pattern.
Any night, any location, any time.
German pilots never knew if switching on radar would summon death.
Landing circuits, previously safe, became kill zones.
Home bases, previously sanctuary, became hunting grounds.
Sleep deprivation increased.
Stress casualties rose.
Veteran crews requested transfers not because they feared combat, but because they feared the unknowable.
Fear of the invisible is more corrosive than fear of the visible.
American bombers broke German industry, oil production, ballbearing manufacturer, aircraft factories, marshalling yards.
These were replaceable given time and resources.
Mosquitoes broke German confidence.
Confidence is not replaceable.
Once lost, it erodess everything.
Mission effectiveness, tactical decision-making, crew cohesion, operational tempo.
A pilot who hesitates survives longer but kills less.
A radar operator who delays activation is safer but ineffective.
Fear forces caution.
Caution reduces effectiveness.
Reduced effectiveness requires more missions.
More missions increase exposure.
Exposure increases losses.
The spiral is self- reinforcing.
Group Captain Hamish Mahadi, Pathfinder force planning officer, stated in postwar debriefing.
The Americans broke what Germany could rebuild.
We broke what Germany could not replace.
The belief that their airspace was defensible.
Once that belief died, everything else followed.
Postwar reflections.
After Germany surrendered, RF intelligence conducted detailed assessments of Luftwuffer night fighter operations.
Documents captured at NJG unit headquarters revealed the depth of psychological impact.
Patrol logs showed increasing reluctance to engage bombers when mosquito presence suspected.
Missionabort rates increased 300% between December 1943 and March 1945.
Medical reports documented stress casualties among night fighter crews at rates exceeding bomber crew statistics.
General Oburst Hans Jurgen Stumpf commanding Luft Flot Reich wrote in his final operational report dated 2nd May 1945.
We lost air superiority over Germany not on a specific date but across a thousand nights when our crews learned to fear the dark.
No tactical innovation could restore what psychology destroyed.
Squadron leader Sticky Murphy, 85, Squadron pilot with 13 Night Fighter kills, recalled in 1947 interview, “We didn’t celebrate kills.
There was no joy in it.
We understood what we were doing.
We were erasing men who had families, who had trained for years, who were defending their country.
But war is arithmetic.
Every German night fighter crew we killed meant 15 British bomber crews who came home.
That was the mathematics.
Unpleasant, necessary, effective.
Final truth.
Defeats you can recover from.
Losses you can replace.
Equipment, factories, airfields.
These are material.
Time and resources restore them.
But defeats that change what you believe is possible leave permanent scars.
German night fighter crews entered the war believing they controlled the night sky.
Superior radar, superior tactics, superior training, superior results.
By 1944, they believed survival was random chance.
The transformation was psychological before it became operational.
Once crews feared their own radar, effectiveness collapsed.
Once landing became more dangerous than combat, doctrine failed.
Once home, bases became hunting grounds.
Sanctuary disappeared.
The mosquito did not win the night sky through technological superiority.
Likenstein radar was effective.
Shreger Musique was lethal.
BF110 and J88 night fighters were capable platforms.
German doctrine was sound.
But the mosquito introduced a variable no doctrine accounted for.
The hunters could be hunted in their own airspace near their own bases using their own radar against them.
The inversion was complete.
Wing commander Brance Burbridge, highest scoring RAF night fighter pilot with 21 kills, stated in final combat report May 1945.
We taught them to fear what they once controlled.
Fear changes everything.
The mosquito did not conquer the night.
It taught the hunters to fear the dark.
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