Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Kammhuber
Assuming you have control over the German night defenses like Kammhuber starting in 1941, how do you structure German night defenses to defeat RAF Bomber Command?
Given the technology of the day it is entirely understandable why large resources were directed towards flak rather than fighters for night defence. The German flak was part of the Luftwaffe (though the Army repeatedly attempted to organise its own, independant, flak arm) and Luftwaffe doctrine held that it should operate in close cooperation with fighter forces in a defensive role.
The data the Germans had for 1941 showed that flak was a more effective means of destroying enemy aircraft than fighters. In the last six months of the year flak in the Reich and West shot down 647 aircraft (242 at night) compared with 421 during the entire year for the night fighter force. Decisions have to be made with the data to hand and in 1941 the night fighter force didn't look a particularly good bet. We have the luxury of hindsight, something prominent in many forum discussions, the Germans did not
The problem facing the Luftwaffe was to get enough night fighters into the bomber stream where they could then detect the RAF's bombers and shoot them down in sufficient numbers. I believe that it actually did quite well at this bearing in mind the problems it had doing the same thing in daylight against US formations.
The box system made perfect sense at the time, it was overwhelmed by the RAF's reaction to it.
Given the technology of the day it is entirely understandable why large resources were directed towards flak rather than fighters for night defence. The German flak was part of the Luftwaffe (though the Army repeatedly attempted to organise its own, independant, flak arm) and Luftwaffe doctrine held that it should operate in close cooperation with fighter forces in a defensive role.
The data the Germans had for 1941 showed that flak was a more effective means of destroying enemy aircraft than fighters.
In the last six months of the year flak in the Reich and West shot down 647 aircraft (242 at night) compared with 421 during the entire year for the night fighter force. Decisions have to be made with the data to hand and in 1941 the night fighter force didn't look a particularly good bet. We have the luxury of hindsight, something prominent in many forum discussions, the Germans did not.
Depends on the metric you're using; in terms of shells per bomber sure, same with overall Allied loss rate, but overall there were greater losses to FLAK and German defenses in 1944-45 than in 1942, but it was a function of the Allies having more aircraft to continue on regardless that mattered.Like anything they had good and bad days.But the trend was a steady improvement 39-42, with major steps forward in 41 and 42 as radar control began to be used extensively and crew training reached peak efficiencies, and thereafter a steadily increasing nosedive as various things took effect
Those figures are just for flak deployed in the Reich/West. I don't know how many of the various batteries fall under that definition in 1941, the numbers will be out there somewhere. I don't know how many were in the east either, but they were credited with more than 1,000 Soviet aircraft shot down in the last 3 months of 1941 alone.
People look at the bottom line, then as now, and flak was shooting down more RAF bombers than the Nachtjagd.
Increasing the number of night fighters is NOT an easy or economical option. It not only puts pressure on the already shambolic aircraft production sector but increases demand for highly trained crews and the resources (notably fuel, radically reduced to training command in 1942) to train them. It also requires heavy investment in the infrastructure and command and control systems to operate these extra fighters IF you can build and crew them.
The heavy Flak did not make the RAF change current doctrine or operations (or other AFs)
It forced both the RAF and USAAF to bomb from higher altitudes. Higher equals less accurate. It also caused USAAF crews, bombing by day, to take evasive action despite orders to the contrary which also further reduced their bombing accuracy. Le May complained that his bombers were 'throwing bombs every which way' as a result of such evasion. In March 1945 Spaatz said that flak was the biggest factor affecting bombing accuracy. A post war report ascribed 61.4% of the USAAF's radial bombing error directly to flak defences.
The economics of a flak shoot down are positive for Germany. It cost the German heavy flak less than half the cost of a fully equipped B-17 to shoot it down ($107,000/$292,000) about a third the cost of a B-24 ($327,000). That is not a bad return on the investment.
The damage inflicted was significant too. It is not always necessary to shoot down an aircraft to cost your enemy. Between December 1942 and April 1945 flak damaged 54,349 8th AF aircraft, that's more than 1 in 5 of total sorties. About one quarter of these (about 15,000) were seriously damaged, some beyond repair. These are big numbers.
Cheers
Steve