Intruding Nightfighters

Thanks for that summary Allan. Last year I had a long talk with Heinz Rokker, who took part in Operation Gisela. He told me that they all approached the English coast at extremely low level to avoid radar detection, using a device rather more accurate than a conventional altimeter. Regrettably, his technical English and my German are equally bad, so I did not get to the botom of exactly how that worked.

Operation Gisela

Includes Night-fighter to Night-fighter and a major intruder operation by the Luftwaffe against our Bombers.

In early March 1945, the German Luftwaffe, in an isolated display of resistance, developed a tactic which, had it been deployed earlier, could have neutralised the WWII operations of Royal Air Force Bomber Command.

In the early hours of 4th March 1945, in Unternehmen (Operation) Gisela, some 200 Junkers JU88 nightfighters of the Luftwaffe Nachtjagdeschwader Gruppen (Night Fighter destroyer Group) had been deployed to intercept the allied bombers returning to base at their most vulnerable point, just before landing. The marauding aircraft crossed the North Sea at points stretching between the Thames Estuary and up the east coast to the North Yorkshire moors. The fact that these intruders were able to cross the North Sea coast without being picked up by English radar operators would seem to have been a result of a degree of complacency that had set in amongst Bomber Command, as the Luftwaffe appeared to be subdued.

The Bomber Command mission scheduled for that evening was a dual attack on the synthetic oil producing plant at Kamen and a raid on the Dortmund Elms canal. 234 aircraft from the northern 4 & 6 Groups took on the first mission, with 222 bombers from 5 Group, Lincolnshire, tackling the canal, departing bases at around 10.00pm on the 3rd March 1945. The mission ran smoothly, until the return, when they ran into trouble in the form of Operation Gisela. On this clear night, some of the early returning aircraft had inexplicably switched on their navigation lights much earlier than usual, despite warnings of the dangers of possible predators, which was copied by those following. This gave the circling intruders a clear, enticing target.

Having already claimed two Halifax Bombers of 158 Squadron returning to RAF Lissett, near Bridlington, Hauptmann Johann Dreher (Iron Cross) flying his Junkers JU88 of 12 NJG, set his sights on a French 347 Squadron Halifax, returning to RAF Elvington. At approximately 1.50am as Capitaine Notelle approached Elvington, he received the warning of the attack, just as the airfield lights went out. He pulled his aircraft up and headed north for Croft, narrowly escaping the menacing intruder.

The nightfighter continued its attack on Elvington, strafing the road at a passing taxi. Circling for another pass at 1.51am, the JU88 was too low, clipped a tree and crashed into Dunnington Lodge, a farmhouse on the outskirts of the airfield. Machine gun fire from the fighter had strafed the farmhouse, before the aircraft crashed through one section of the building. Here, farmer Richard Moll and his wife, Helen (60), were awakening, having been startled by the gunfire. Their daughter in law, Violet (29) was making her way to their bedroom when the aircraft struck. Meanwhile, her husband, Fred, was saving the life of their 3 year old son, Edgar, by scooping the child up in one arm and, with fire extinguisher in the other, fighting his way through flames and debris to the outside. Tragically, both his wife and mother died as a result of their injuries, shortly after admission to hospital. Richard Moll survived initially, but suffered severe burns and died later. The JU88 ended up in a field at the junction of the Elvington and Dunnington roads.

This was the last German aircraft to crash on British soil during the war, preceded by a 7 NJG JU88 crashing at Welton, near Lincoln at 1.48am and 5 NJG JU88 crashing near Halesworth, Suffolk, at 01.37am. Three French Halifaxes were brought down that morning, though with miraculously few casualties. On route to Croft in escaping the trap at Elvington, Notelle’s Halifax was hit three times by fire from the JU88 of Feldwebel Gunther Schmidt, before he successfully belly-landed the burning aircraft at Rockcliffe Farm, Hurworth, near Darlington. All crew escaped, but some reports suggest that two civilians were killed by the skidding aircraft. Notelle was treated at hospital at Northallerton for a head injury. Sous-Lieutenant Terrien, remaining at the controls of his burning Halifax whilst the other six baled out, crashed at Glebe Farm, Sutton on Derwent, close to the Elvington base. In a tragic irony, Capitaine Laucou, on his first mission, was brought down near Orford Ness, Norfolk, reflecting the extent to which the returning aircraft had been scattered by the attackers. Both he and the flight engineer were killed, but the others baled out.

Intervention by Mosquito fighters brought this disastrous Night of the Intruders to an end, but, in just a couple of hours, Bomber Command had lost a further 19 aircraft in addition to the 9 reported missing on the raids themselves. The Luftwaffe also lost 25 fighters out of the 200 involved in the operation.

cheers

Allan

Intruding Nightfighters

The reason why the Luftwaffe was forbidden to mount intruder operations was that one crashed Lancaster in Germany was worth more in propaganda value to Hitler than one hundred crashed Lancasters in England. The one would be visible to the German people whereas the one hundred would be unknown to them. So the nightfighters had to operate where their victims would fall on German occupied territory as far as possible.

yes there where intruder mission by mosqiutos and beaufighters that went over the other side to help protect the british bombers by atacking the german night fighters

you can read a really cool book called night intruder by geremy howard williams and it describes it all about it

BB

Indeed German nightfighters operated over Britain, attacking returning bombers, but for unknown reasons those intruder-missions were quite soon forbidden by Hitler himself (Cajus Bekker, “Angriffshöhe 4000”).

RAF certainly did send Mosquitos over Germany to hunt German nightfighters. I believe the Germans did the same.