Aerial Recon on the Western Front

[GrauGeist]

All from Prien and Rodeike, Schiffer 1995 pages 50, 53, 94. According to this book the Bf 109F-6 didn't exist

I know that the Bf109F-6/U was a "Galland" creation, but I have seen several sources list the F-6 as being attached to units such as 1.(F)122 stationed in Italy and North Africa during 1941-43.

Aufkl. Gr. 122 mainly operated Ju88D series (D-1 and D-5) for photo recon, but they did have Bf109s and even operated a couple of Fw190A-3 recon variants in 1942, part of 3.(F) 122.

Here's a photo (shown below, right hand) of a Bf109F-6 recon attached to 1.(F) 122, it's been said that it's F6+TH, but that was assigned to a Ju88A-4 (of the same gruppen) that was lost on 11 April 1943 due to interception by Spitfires of 87 Sqdn. near Algiers-Bone. Note the camera structure aft of the wing along the bottom of the fuselage

The photo is said to have been from 1941, though not sure if it was spring, fall, etc...

 

[vinnye]

Found this on Wiki;
In August 1942, a modified Spitfire V shot one down over Egypt at some 14,500 m (49,000 ft); when two more were lost, Ju 86Ps were withdrawn from service in 1943.

 

[Hop]

German use of its strategic recon assets appear to be determined and persistent at best, but inconsistent and lacking over time to be of real strategic value at worst; furthermore, the modified single-seat assets were not used to the same extent that the British PRU aircraft were, nor did they carry out as extensive operations deep into enemy territory as frequently with the same consistency as the British PRUs

Hooton in Eagle in Flames says the Luftwaffe flew 187 recce sorties over Britain in the whole of 1943, losing 33 aircraft in the process. That's not only a very low total, it's a shockingly high loss rate of 18%.

 

[nuuumannn]

Hi Dave, that great picture of the Bf 109s is present in Aufklarer; Luftwaffe Reconnaissance Aircraft and Units 1942 - 1945. Here's the caption on page 30;

"Two Messerschmitt Bf 109F-4/R3s of the 1.(F)/122 at Catania, Sicily, during the summer of 1942 where ground crews have placed sun umbrellas over their open cockpits to make them cooler and more comfortable for their pilots. Both aircraft carry the Staffel emblem of a stylised white stork flying across a red and white symbol representing the field of view of the camera."

 

[Glider]

Just a couple of observations/questions. Thse drop tanks on the PR 109 look pretty big, does anyone have any idea what they did to the performance of the aircraft. The second is the camera installation. A Spitfire is pretty narrow and the 109 even thinner, were they able to get the twin installation needed for stero photography?

 

[Milosh]

They are the usual Luftwaffe 300 l tanks.

On the Fw190G, 2 300 l drop tanks and a SC500 caused a speed loss of ~50mph (depends on the racks).

 

[Juha]

Hello Glider
Carrying those double drop tanks caused real vibration problems for the a/c according to a report of 15.5.43. So that the a/c could only be safely flown between 250 and 420 km/h. Above that speed the wing would start vibrating, getting worse with increased speed. In the end, the best solution they found was to use a 2-part fairing to streamline the entire area between the wing and the fuel tanks. This removed the vibrations from the wing, and increased the a/c speed by 29 km/h. With the unfaired drop-tank mounting the a/c lost 55 km/h, compared to the clean a/c (in this case a G-4/R3); and with the fairings it lost 26 km/h. But the fairing was never produced in quantity.

This info is from one of the 2 TOCH treads links to which I posted earlier

Juha

 

[Aozora]

Just a couple of observations/questions. Thse drop tanks on the PR 109 look pretty big, does anyone have any idea what they did to the performance of the aircraft. The second is the camera installation. A Spitfire is pretty narrow and the 109 even thinner, were they able to get the twin installation needed for stero photography?

AFAIK the 109 installation only ever used one vertical camera and there was no provision for lateral installations.

Luftwaffe Cameras

View attachment Reihenbildkamera.pdf

 

[HBPencil]

And/Or: What planes were used for recon and for counter-recon?

Late in the war the Lufftwaffe apparently used the Me262 and 163 to intercept high flying recon aircraft. This resulted in the 7th PG getting P-51Ds to use as escorts for their F-5 Lightnings and PR XI Spitfires but I haven't heard of the RAF's PRU having escorts assigned.

 

[OldSkeptic]

Late in the war the Lufftwaffe apparently used the Me262 and 163 to intercept high flying recon aircraft. This resulted in the 7th PG getting P-51Ds to use as escorts for their F-5 Lightnings and PR XI Spitfires but I haven't heard of the RAF's PRU having escorts assigned.

Yes they did sometimes, escorting Mosquitos, not (as far as I know) the later (particularly Griffon) PRU Spits though, probably because they ran at such a high altitude that the Mustangs basically couldn't operate at. And the 262s (and all the 1st and quite a few of the 2nd generation jets) had to zoom climb to get at. Hence why they kept using the late model PR Spits for so long.

Hard work for the Mustangs though, Mossies set a cracking cruise speed.

 

[HBPencil]

Cheers OldSkeptic, for the heads-up on Mossies sometimes being escorted.

 

[Glider]

Juha and Aozora
Thank you both for your comments. It explains why the 109 wasn't as effective as I thought in the PR role. The secret of the SPits success was that it was both difficult to intercept and had a decent selection of camera outfits. Clearly the 109 wasn't in the same league

 

[nuuumannn]

It explains why the 109 wasn't as effective as I thought in the PR role.

Part of this was organisational and had little to do with the aircraft's capabilities. Ultimately, the effectiveness of a weapon is determined by its use and the Bf 109 recon variants were effective platforms in terms of the pre-and post battlefield reconnaissance they carried out and the information gleaned from their flights. As strategic recon platofrms outwith the Wehrmacht and LW's battlefields, again, their effectiveness was limited by their usage - too few flights made to be effective enough, maintenance issues, the method by which the data they gathered was analysed and also by the internal organization of the LW all hampered the effective use of the Bf 109 for intelligence gathering. One thing that is often pointed out is that lack of stereoscopes in use by the German PIs; this is largely false and they did have them, but the Germans often worked directly from negatives placed on light boxes rather than for prints; this was owing to the speed of German advances; the information was required immediately and in the field the Aufklarungs gruppen didn't have the luxury of a building full of PIs and necessary equipment, such as was available in the Abwehr HQ and RAF Medmenham.

One problem that it not often highlighted is that the Germans viewed photographic interpretation as a necessary process and allocated the PI role to NCOs with little real knowledge of intelligence work, this was in contrast to the RAF, whose PIs were trained in intel and were specifically requested to look for anomalies. This is where the German system fell down a bit; again, it boils down to organisational expectations. The Brits had far more leeway in intel interpretation than the Germans.

 

[mhuxt]

Agree with every word of ^ that, however it still boggles my mind that the Brits, of all people, out-organised the Germans.

To quote the fellow in Fawlty Towers, "How effer did zey vin?"

 

[buffnut453]

...but the Germans often worked directly from negatives placed on light boxes rather than for prints

Actually, working from negatives is usually better than working from prints - the quality of negatives is better because prints are inevitably one generation removed from the originally-captured image. Also "light boxes" (or the more capable light tables) provide a much better illuminant for analysing imagery than shining a spot lamp onto a print. As late as 1994 the RAF was still using wet-film photo recce and we were still analysing negatives on light tables using stereoscopes - not the best in the world but it worked and delivered results sufficient for the operation at that time.

 

[Aozora]

Agree with every word of ^ that, however it still boggles my mind that the Brits, of all people, out-organised the Germans.

To quote the fellow in Fawlty Towers, "How effer did zey vin?"

Read Ian Kershaw's Hitler 1889-1936 'Hubris' and Hitler 1936-1945 'Nemesis' and Bungay's 'The Most Dangerous Enemy' and you'll find out how administratively chaotic, bureaucratic and disorganised the Germans had become under the Nazis - they did lots of things well but organising their economy and administration for the long war was not one of them. It is also a myth that the Brits were bumblers in comparison with the supposedly super-efficient Germans because, believe it or not, their administration of most aspects of the war was efficient, although there were inevitably some problems.

Wartime Economies Compared (pages 10, 11, 12 most relevant)

 

[yulzari]

the 262s (and all the 1st and quite a few of the 2nd generation jets) had to zoom climb to get at. Hence why they kept using the late model PR Spits for so long.

That is right. They were still using them over China in the 1950's for that very reason.

 

[Glider]

Part of this was organisational and had little to do with the aircraft's capabilities. Ultimately, the effectiveness of a weapon is determined by its use and the Bf 109 recon variants were effective platforms in terms of the pre-and post battlefield reconnaissance they carried out and the information gleaned from their flights. As strategic recon platofrms outwith the Wehrmacht and LW's battlefields, again, their effectiveness was limited by their usage - too few flights made to be effective enough, maintenance issues, the method by which the data they gathered was analysed and also by the internal organization of the LW all hampered the effective use of the Bf 109 for intelligence.

There is a lot of truth is what you say but at the end of the day the 109 couldn't carry the same range of cameras as the PR spits, they didn't have the range and didn't have the performance to avoid interception. Most importantly the Luftwaffe didn't have any alternatives.

If the ground organisation had been the slickest in the world, the priority the highest and number of flights increased, they still wouldn't have been nearly as effective.

 

[nuuumannn]

Actually, working from negatives is usually better than working from prints - the quality of negatives is better because prints are inevitably one generation removed from the originally-captured image. Also "light boxes" (or the more capable light tables) provide a much better illuminant for analysing imagery than shining a spot lamp onto a print.

That's right; the Germans just didn't have as flexible an approach to analysing what they were looking at as the Brits. That was the principal difference between British and German Photo Recon.

Most importantly the Luftwaffe didn't have any alternatives.

Actually they did. The Fw 190 could carry a wider range of cameras that the Bf 109 and it had performance to boot, the problem was, the number the LW had weren't utilised as extensively as the Bf 109, which seems peculiar since the Fw 190 was a better fighter with more growth potential than the Bf 109. There was a F 190D that was converted with oblique cameras mounted to photograph out the fuselage side, similar to PR Spits, but little was done with it. The Germans experimented with a wide variety of different aircraft types for the specialised out-of-theatre recon role, including the Henschel Hs 130, Arado Ar 240, Do 335 etc.

If the ground organisation had been the slickest in the world, the priority the highest and number of flights increased, they still wouldn't have been nearly as effective.

Having read your comment prior to doing the reading I've done, Glider, I would agree, but I'm not so sure about that now. Prior to the outbreak of WW2 the German intelligence system and aerial recon was quite sophisticated - far more so than anyone else in Europe, including the UK. In fact, Britain lagged behind Germany in terms of the number of aircraft and the systems in place to use the information gleaned from the recon flights. Prior to the outbreak of WW2, one fifth of the Luftwaffe's total number of aircraft were dedicated recon types, stategic, tactical, weather etc. As early as the late 1920s the Germans were carrying out clandestine recon flights over potential enemy countries' borders and had a better idea of the disposition of its enemies' forces than others had of its. Long before anyone else had thought of the idea, the Germans had the Wekusta, which were specialised weather recon units that carried out long ranging flights into enemy territory. The Wekusta continued its largely unrecognised role throughout the entire war.

The big enthusiast for the subject of PR in Germany was a chap by the name of Theodor Rowehl, who has been called the 'Sidney Cotton' of German PR, but in fact his work pre-dates Cotton's and it should be the other way round. Rowehl used Lufthansa aircraft fitted with hidden cameras in sliding hatches years before Cotton converted his Lockheed 12, including a Junkers W 34, which had broken an altitude record, a couple of the early pre-production He 111 prototypes and an He 111C airliner. His primary type of choice was the Do 17, however, owing to its high speed and altitude for the time - it was virtually unstoppable.

As his efforts became better recognised he was recruited by the Abwehr who established a special out-of-theatre strategic recon unit, which eventually was named Kommando Rowehl in his honour. The Ju 86P bomber recon aircraft were utilised on raids on the UK at his insistence. With a motley collection of types pre-war, his unit was largely responsible for photographing large swathes of Czechoslovakia, Poland, France and Britain, all of which was very useful to the German military. He was the driving force behind modifying many German aircraft prototypes as reconnaissance aircraft - he became well known for his enthusiasm for the task and was not discouraged - unlike Cotton to begin with. It was from Rowehl's unit that the roots of KG 200 grew from - KG 200 also had Wekusta aircraft in support of its activities.

Like I stated earlier, the Nazi organisation (petty jealousies, empire building, currying favour with the Fuhrer etc) let its formidable recon assets down. Goering himself had little interest in what Rowehl was up to despite the enormous potential of the organisation he had helped to create, with the assistance of the Abwehr and Canaris personally. Like many things during WW2, the Germans initially had the upper hand in terms of aerial recon over and above anyone else in the world, but lost that lead rather quickly (except in terms of battlefield in-theatre recon, which they performed expertly) once the shooting started.

 

[Balljoint]

Another recon technique was the use of bombers hauling somewhat heavy but powerful flash illumination equipment at night.


http://web.mit.edu/6.933/www/Fall2000/edgerton/EdgertonWW2.pdf

Scroll down a bit on the link.