As the bomber stream approached the coast, it was being watched closely by the head of the German 2nd Fighter Division, Generalleutnant Schwabedissen, in his headquarters at Stade airfield. Housed in a giant bomb-proof bunker, Schwabedissen’s central combat station was the nerve-centre of all the defences in north-west Europe and was a true triumph of German technology. One of only five control centres in the country, it was nicknamed the ‘Battle Opera House’, or the ‘Kammhuber Kino’, because of its resemblance to a cinema. Inside, dominating the huge control room, there was a gigantic frosted-glass screen, about fifty feet wide, inscribed with a map of Germany. On to it were projected spots of light, which represented all of the different aeroplanes in the sky at any one time – white spots to show the enemy planes approaching, green spots for the German night fighters, and illuminated details of their height, position and direction of flight.
Even the Luftwaffe’s commander of fighters, Adolf Galland, found this feat of technology impressive:
The whole was reminiscent of a huge aquarium lit up, with a multitude of water-fleas scuttling madly behind the glass walls. Each single dot and each change to be seen here was the result of reports and observations from radar sets, aircraft-spotters, listening posts, reconnaissance and contact planes, or from units in action. They all merged together by telephone or wireless in this centre, to be received, sorted, and within a few minutes transposed into transmittable messages. What was represented here on a giant map was a picture of the air situation … with about one minute’s delay. 15
In front of this huge map, on rising steps like those in an amphitheatre, fighter-control officers ( Jägerleitoffiziere) were seated in several rows, ready to direct their night fighters by radio into the hunt. Above them, on a raised balcony, Generalleutnant Schwabedissen and his staff conducted the battle against the Allied bombers in an unhealthy fog of cigarette smoke, his voiced orders rising above a symphony of ticking teleprinters, humming ventilators and the urgent murmur of telephone operators across the room.
Tonight everyone was watching the screen as avidly as any cinema audience. Schwabedissen had already ordered his night fighters to scramble, and scores of green T-shapes were making their way across the frosted-glass map. Ahead a mass of white dots was making its way towards the German coastline. But something was wrong: while the front of the bomber stream still appeared to be moving forwards, the tail end remained static on the map – it was as if the RAF bomber force was expanding before their eyes.
Up on the balcony, Schwabedissen demanded to know what was going on, but nobody could give him a straight answer. Nervous telephone operators were engaged in urgent conversations with radar stations throughout north-west Germany. The messages they were getting back were always the same. It was impossible: there appeared to be not merely hundreds of bombers approaching but thousands– too many for the radar screens to cope with. Some radar sets appeared to have stopped working altogether: instead of registering single, distinct ‘blips’ on their screens they showed nothing but a general fuzz, as if the bombers were approaching in a solid wall several miles wide.
In the air, the situation was just as confused. Night-fighter pilots who had been following instructions from their fighter-control officers now found themselves being sent round in circles. When it became clear that something was wrong with the ground radar, they began to rely on their Lichtenstein sets – but they, too, were beginning to show false readings, as one German fighter pilot, Wilhelm Johnen, recalled:
It was obvious that no one knew exactly where the enemy was or what his objective would be. An early recognition of the direction was essential so that the night fighters could be introduced as early as possible into the bomber stream. But the radio reports kept contradicting themselves. Now the enemy was over Amsterdam and then suddenly west of Brussels, and a moment later they were reported far out to sea in map square 25. What was to be done? The uncertainty of the ground stations was communicated to the crews … No one knew where the British were, but all the pilots were reporting pictures on their screens. I was no exception. At 15,000 feet my sparker announced the first enemy machine on his Li [airborne Lichtenstein radar set] … Facius proceeded to report three or four pictures on his screen. I hoped that I would have enough ammunition to deal with them! Then Facius suddenly shouted: ‘Tommy flying towards us at a great speed. Distance decreasing … 2000 yards, 1,500 … 1,000 … 500 … He’s gone.’ ‘You’re crackers, Facius,’ I said jestingly. But I soon lost my sense of humour, for this crazy performance was repeated a score of times. 16
No matter where the pilot flew he made no contact with any bombers: they disappeared, like phantoms, as soon as he approached. Window, it seemed, was having exactly the effect that the British desired.
* * *
As the leading British Pathfinder aircraft crossed the German coast near Heide, they began to drop the first of their yellow route-maker flares. The idea was to give the bomber stream, which was still spread out all over the sky, a single point to fly through – that way they would be a far more concentrated force as they arrived in Hamburg. However, it was not only the RAF bombers who saw the flares: a handful of German night fighters in the area spotted them too. In the absence of anything else to help them find the bomber stream, they headed towards the light. One managed to shoot down a Halifax, which fell in flames and exploded over the sea. A few minutes later a second Halifax was attacked, but this time the rear gunner returned fire at once, and the German plane fell, eventually crashing into the ground near Flensburg. 17
It is easy to summarize such events in a few words, but combat like this was a desperate affair, especially for British bomber crews. After more than two hours of silence, a burst of fire could appear from the darkness and kill seven men in an instant. Crews that were shot down rarely saw it coming. If they did, a short burst from one of the gunners was sometimes enough to scare off the enemy – an alert bomber crew could be just as deadly as the night fighters, as the combat over the German coast that night demonstrated. Usually it was the rear gunner, with his clear-vision panel at the back, who saw the danger first. He would broadcast a warning to the pilot on the intercom: ‘Fighter on the port quarter – corkscrew port!’ The temptation to turn away from an attacker was strong, but the trick for survival was to turn intohim so that he could not follow. Then, for the next thirty seconds or so, the bomber pilot would have to throw his aircraft about the sky, hoping that he had dropped out of his attacker’s line of sight. As long as he kept flying in a spiral motion then his enemy would not be able to keep his guns trained on him for more than an instant. A minute later the bomber would be back on course, with nothing to show for the experience but the mess of charts and instruments that had been thrown off the navigator’s desk, and the faint smell of fear in the aircraft.
That night there would be very few such incidents. Most of the German night fighters remained tied to their ‘boxes’, unable to locate the bomber stream amid the confusion. The aeroplanes continued unmolested across the coast, and down to their next turning point above Kellinghausen, a few minutes north-northwest of Hamburg.
Some of the crews dropped propaganda leaflets on German towns along the way. More would drop leaflets later, either over the target or on the way home. Leafleting was an unpopular pastime in the higher levels of Bomber Command, and staff officers joked that its only effect was to supplement German civilians’ rations of toilet paper. (They were only half joking: when middle-class Hamburg housewives were reduced to cutting squares of toilet paper from biscuit wrappers, this important commodity was in short supply.) 18Tonight’s leaflets showed a picture of RAF bombers flying over the burning streets of Dortmund, with the caption ‘ Die Festung Europa hat kein Dach’ (‘Fortress Europe has no roof’). To press the message home, one or two airmen emptied the contents of their urine bottles on to the leaflets before dropping them out – a petty act of contempt to add to the injuries they were about to inflict. 19