Success of Defiant as night fighter?

[VinceReeves]

I quite like Dowding, mainly because he was a Spiritualist who believed in ghosts. I often wonder if he was in contact with Dion Fortune.

 

[yulzari]

I think we can agree that the lesson is that nightfighting without radar or full moonlight is pure chance, with the odds in favour of the bomber. Whatever machines the protaganists use. I dare say the Defiant did no better and no worse than anything else might without radar.

I recall a conversation some years ago with an ex wartime RAF pilot. He commented that he preferred a single engine on a dark night. If it failed you had a good excuse for bailing out. With a twin you were morally obliged to try a single engine landing in pitch blackness with the rudder already hard over and little chance of correcting any final approach error.

Open up the remaining engine quickly to overshoot and you can expect to spin in to the opposite side. Don't open up and you are committed to a high speed crash in whatever direction you happen to find yourself going and meeting trees, houses, lamp posts et al going in the opposite direction. He would only do it in a Hornet with opposite handed propellors and 2,000bhp to spare in the one remaining engine and even then he would insist on full runway lighting and b*gger enemy intruders and bombers. I think this is why God invented the ejector seat.

Pre radar fighters were vectored via ground radar but still had to use luck, 2 pairs of Mk1 eyeballs and a white stick to find the target once placed somewhere in it's vicinity.

 

[Njaco]

Lets remember that about all it took in 1940 for a plane to be a "night fighter" was a coat of black paint and some shrouding/sheilding of the exhaust pipes, in some cases just enough to avoid blinding the pilot.

Even the LW used one staffel from most Geschwaders to create a NF force using blacked out Bf 109Ds until July 1940.

 

[stona]

I quite like Dowding, mainly because he was a Spiritualist who believed in ghosts. I often wonder if he was in contact with Dion Fortune.

Many of his generation did. Spiritualism was popular in Victorian times and experienced a growth in popularity after WWI. I'm not sure that it has anything to do with his abilities as C in C Fighter Command.

It's all mumbo-jumbo but there were occult elements to nazism and Dion Fortune claimed to have helped win the war. Whether Dowding knew her I know not.She seems to have been more than a bit paranoid to me.

Did spiritualism have anything to do with Conan Doyles ability to write a good detective story,Houdini's ability to pull off a neat trick or Eduard Munch's ability to knock up a scarey picture? Others dabbled,Alfred Russel Wallace (would Darwin's religious beliefs have allowed him to publish without Wallace's own impending publication?) Abraham Lincoln,Victoria Regina.......

Cheers

Steve

 

[Shortround6]

The performance of any aircraft in a given role can surely not be a red herring. Slow during the day equals slow at night

The Bristol Blenheim fighter was obviously too slow to be effective during the day, it slow speed did affect it's performance at night but it was 30-40mph slower than a Defiant. But it was faster than a cruising bomber. In daylight a solitary bomber ( or small formation) can be expected to spot attacking fighters at longer range and take evasive action (turning/speeding up) sooner making for longer, more difficult stern chases. At night the fighter/s should be able to get closer ( yes sometimes they were spotted and evaded) before the bomber crew is aware of them. The Blenheims had radar starting in the late summer/fall of 1940 which helped make up for their low speed. But it took a while for a number of factors to come together, one of which was that it took time for the night fighter crews to realize that while they might not know where they were over England the ground controllers did and they should rely upon their direction both for intercepts and directions back to home base. Blenheims did get involved in many long pursuits which came to nothing due to low speed. Beaufighters began to show up in small numbers in the Fall of 1940 with radar. The early radar was very temperamental and was found it could "lie" rather convincingly.
Defiant night fighters relied on MK I eyeballs and ground direction for the duration of the night blitz not getting radar until it was over.

If we make a few simple assumptions, like a cruising speed of 200-220mph for the German bombers and a max continuous speed (once they get a vector from ground control) of 240mph for the Blenheim ( 20mph below max speed?) and a max continuous speed of 270-275 for the Defiant (30mph below max) we can see that the Defiant has a much larger intercept "envelope" than the Blenheim. This "envelope" may be much smaller than what was desired and was improved upon by the Beaufighter but top speed was much less important for the night fighters, they just had to be faster than the bombers. They did NOT have to be as fast as the German day fighters (Bf 109 110) in order to survive and get to the bombers.

 

[VinceReeves]

Did spiritualism have anything to do with Conan Doyles ability to write a good detective story,Houdini's ability to pull off a neat trick or Eduard Munch's ability to knock up a scarey picture? Others dabbled,Alfred Russel Wallace (would Darwin's religious beliefs have allowed him to publish without Wallace's own impending publication?) Abraham Lincoln,Victoria Regina.......

Well, my view on this is that whether a belief is true or not does not necessarily have a direct bearing on whether it is useful.

 

[VinceReeves]

If we assume the Defiant was operating in the night fighting role from September 1940 to April 1942, I calculate it's kill rate for 65 kills was approx. 0.75/week.

Which seems perfectly plausible imo.

 

[Shortround6]

While that sounds about right it is actually a bit low for effectiveness as all 13 squadrons used for night fighting were not operating for that entire time. Some of them did not become active until the summer of 1941 while others converted to other aircraft during that period. The LAST squadron ending operations in April of 1942 but many of them had converted Beaufighters (or other aircraft?) during the previous summer, fall and winter.

 

[stona]

While that sounds about right it is actually a bit low for effectiveness as all 13 squadrons used for night fighting were not operating for that entire time. Some of them did not become active until the summer of 1941 while others converted to other aircraft during that period. The LAST squadron ending operations in April of 1942 but many of them had converted Beaufighters (or other aircraft?) during the previous summer, fall and winter.

Yep and I agree with your previous post but as has already been said a high speed (for the nightfighter) interception can only take place with the aid of some kind of guidance to give a vector for the interceptor to fly on. A Defiant could have flown at mach 2 in late 1940 and still had virtually no chance of making an interception. It's as the sharp end of a coordinated system that other factors,like loiter time,become important too.
Cheers
Steve

 

[stona]

Well, my view on this is that whether a belief is true or not does not necessarily have a direct bearing on whether it is useful.

That's unanswerable without causing a believer in something offense.

Is there any evidence that Dowding's belief in spiritualism had any impact on the way he developed and commanded Fighter Command during his tenure. I think I've read every biography of the man and have read many of his availble writings and can't say I see any evidence for it. Whether his belief was useful or not is a moot point.

I was brought up to respect other people's beliefs,however odd I might find them. Even as a dyed in the wool sceptic,I'll give Dowding that courtesy.

Cheers

Steve

 

[VinceReeves]

Is there any evidence that Dowding's belief in spiritualism had any impact on the way he developed and commanded Fighter Command during his tenure.

I never said it did.

 

[stona]

I never said it did.

No,but you did raise the subject

It's an interesting part of his character,but not unusual for a man of his era. I don't mind discussing it,I thought you might have some evidence that it influenced his thinking,particularly as you also mentioned a well known psychic who wrote about her own magical battle of Britain.

Fortune's writings are of some mild interest,particularly as one of my personal heroes,Dowding,may have been susceptible to such views,though I have found no evidence for that.

The Fuhrer,she wrote,was

"himself a natural occultist and highly developed medium"

Her evidence for such a statement is unclear and would be unlikely to have convinced a thrusting young lawyer of The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition,maybe that's why most women like her were burnt in Protestant countries.

"Let us meditate upon angelic Presences, red-robed and armed, patrolling the length and breadth of our land. Visualise a map of Great Britain, and picture these great Presences moving as a vast shadowy form along the coasts, and backwards and forwards from north to south and east to west, keeping watch and ward so that nothing alien can move unobserved."

Bizzarely in the very week she was urging her followers to meditate to protect their own "head quarters",it was

"straddled by a stick of four bombs, our headquarters just fitting neatly into the middle of them, and, though well shaken, escaping all damage......it was possible to see the Invisible Helpers at work as innumerable shadowy presences… Over all was the iridescent dome of protection guarded by great angelic presences. These are among the things we have been visualising and building on the astral, and at the moment of testing it was a wonderful experience to see how potent and tangible they were… there were no casualties. This is the second time this has happened in our vicinity. That there are powerful forces at work can hardly be denied."

The next week,despite their best psychic efforts,they were bombed out so there were obviously limits to the physical efficassity of her astral protectors!

I did mention my own scepticism didn't I. If Dowding believed in stuff like that, he seems to have kept it to himself. Spiritualism is,in any case a broad church.

Cheers

Steve

 

[VinceReeves]

I think when people think of "magic" or "the occult" they think of the supernatural, but that's not how it really works. Magic does work, but it works psychologically, not supernaturally. Nazism was an almost entirely magical regime - it worked by manipulating symbols to affect the consciousness of the German people.

One thing that the British did better than any of the other Allies was psychologically unnerve the Germans - things like Rudolf Hess, Goering's terror of the RAF, Goebbels' admiration of British propaganda etc. The occult may in reality be mumbo-jumbo, but human beings are very susceptible to mumbo-jumbo - we all have a nonrational side to us that can be affected by people who have the expertise to do so.

For example, and to get back on topic a bit, look at the general opinion of the Defiant. If it had been put on night ops from the start, it would probably have a very respectable reputation today - not outstanding, but respectable. Nothing about the plane itself would have changed. The only thing that would have changed is that the narrative would have been more favorable to it - and our consciousness is constructed of narratives that we are very reluctant to have challenged.

 

[stona]

I think when people think of "magic" or "the occult" they think of the supernatural, but that's not how it really works. Magic does work, but it works psychologically, not supernaturally. Nazism was an almost entirely magical regime - it worked by manipulating symbols to affect the consciousness of the German people.

Bit esoteric there! Psychology is an important factor. The kind of thing Dion Fortune was doing made no difference to the course of the war anywhere but in her mind.

The Defiant doesn't have a bad reputation as a night fighter. "From the start" all night fighters were ineffective for reasons already mentioned.

Cheers
Steve