At night?

According to ‘The Bomber Command War Diaries’ the planning for the raid on Frankfurt on the night of 22/23 March 1944 managed to confuse the Luftwaffe and only a ‘few’ night-fighters managed to find the bomber-stream; these few night-fighters did however manage to shoot-down thirty-three bombers (twenty-six Lancasters and seven Halifaxes)!

Those figures are unimaginable today but those thirty-three bombers represent ‘only’ 4% of the eight-hundred-and-sixteen bombers despatched on the operation (and Frankfurt had been bombed by eight-hundred-and-forty-six bombers only four days previously on the night of 18/19 March 1944 when ‘only’ twenty-two bombers were lost)!

It is possible, because the Luftwaffe defences were confused by the indirect route, that ‘extra’ fighters, that were in range and fast enough to intercept the bomber-stream, were scrambled and that these may have been ‘wrongly’ configured with WG21 for attacks against daylight raids?