Saturday, November 9, 2019

Schräge Musik

Maintaining the Eagle Owl
He-219 Diorama
(Source)
Juvat's post the other day (a very rare "Thursday-Juvat") documented his and Mrs. J's trip to Udvar-Hazy, a favorite stop for Your Humble Scribe when he's in the DC area and not attending weddings or Lexican get togethers. I was rather thrilled to see one of my favorite aircraft is now up on her wheels and has her wings attached.

Which wasn't the case the last time I saw the old girl...



Now the title of this post refers to the installation of upward firing guns behind the German night fighter's cockpit. The Germans called these Schräge Musik, literally "slanted music," which I am given to understand was a German slang term for jazz, an art form prohibited in the Third Reich but enjoyed by some anyway. (Bloody Nazis spoil all the fun.)

Juvat Photo
I can see the nose of the aircraft has been removed, probably for restoration activities (perhaps they're installing the "antlers," i.e. the radar antenna. Which can be seen in the next photo.

The link is to an article on the Smithsonian's restoration of this aircraft.
(Source)



I've posted about night fighters before (here) and I found a pretty detailed blog post over at Daydream Notes (here) concerning the He-219. A rather amazing aircraft, good thing the war ended when it did. Here's some silent footage of the Uhu in flight. (And no, it's not a bomber.)



As for Schräge Musik, here's a blurb from Wikipedia -
Schräge Musik (or Schrägwaffen, as it was also called) was first used operationally during Operation Hydra (the first instance of the Allied bombing of Peenemünde) on the night of 17/18 August 1943.  Three waves of aircraft bombed the area and a diversion on Berlin by RAF Mosquitoes, attracted the main Luftwaffe fighter effort and meant that only the last of the three waves was met by many night fighters. Number 5 Group and RCAF 6 Group in the third wave, lost 29 of their 166 bombers, well over the 10 percent losses considered sustainable. In this raid 40 aircraft were lost: 23 Lancasters, 15 Halifaxes and two Short Stirlings.
Adoption of Schräge Musik began in late 1943 and by 1944, a third of all German night fighters carried upward-firing guns. Schräge Musik proved most successful in the Jumo 213 powered Ju 88 G-6. An increasing number of these installations used the more powerful 30-millimeter, short-barrelled MK 108 cannon, such as those fitted to the Heinkel He 219, fully contained within the fuselage. By mid-1944, He 219 aircrew were critical of the MK 108 installation, because its low muzzle velocity and limited range, meant that the night fighter had to be close to the bomber to attack and be vulnerable to damage from debris. They demanded that either the MK 108s be removed and replaced by MG FF/Ms or the angle of the mounting be changed. Although He 219s continued to be delivered with the twin 30 mm mounted, these were removed by front line units.
Using the Schräge Musik required precise timing and swift evasion; a fatally damaged bomber could fall on the night fighter if the fighter could not quickly turn away. The He 219 was particularly prone to this; its high wing loading left it at the edge of stalling speed when matching the Lancaster's cruising speed, and therefore quite unmaneuverable. The same was true to a lesser extent of other Luftwaffe types such as the Ju 88, which was considered quite a "hot ship" by its crews. This was also a problem during normal stern attacks at low closure rate, but it was even more exaggerated during schräge musik attacks, since the pilot could not even make use of the limited climb performance available at the edge of the flight envelope to avoid debris from the stricken target.
Schräge Musik allowed German night fighters to attack undetected, using special ammunition with a faint glowing trail replacing the standard tracer, combined with a "lethal mixture of armour-piercing, explosive and incendiary ammunition." Approaching from below provided the night fighter crew with the advantage that the bomber crew could not see them against the dark ground or sky, yet allowed the German crew to see the silhouette of the aircraft before they attacked. The optimum target for the night fighter was the wing fuel tanks, not the fuselage or bomb bay, because of the risk that exploding bombs would damage the attacker. "To overcome some of the problems, many NJG* pilots closed the range at a lower level, below the Monica zone of coverage, until they could see the bomber above; then they pulled up into a climb with all front guns blazing. This demanded fine judgement, gave only a second or two of firing time and almost immediately brought the fighter up behind the bomber's tail turret.
Schräge Musik produced devastating results, with its most successful deployment in the winter of 1943–1944. This was a time when Bomber Command losses became unsupportable: the RAF lost 78 of 823 bombers that attacked Leipzig on 19 February, and 96 of the 795 bombers that attacked Nuremberg on 30/31 March 1944. RAF Bomber Command was slow to react to the threat from Schräge Musik, with no reports from shot-down crews reporting the new tactic; the sudden increase in bomber losses had often been attributed to flak. Reports from air gunners of German night fighters stalking their prey from below had appeared as early as 1943 but had been discounted. A myth developed among RAF Bomber Command crews that "scarecrow shells" were encountered over Germany. The phenomenon was thought to be "AA shells simulating an exploding four-engined bomber and designed to damage morale. In many cases these were actual 'kills' by Luftwaffe night fighters... It was not for many months that evidence of these deadly attacks was accepted."
A detailed analysis of the damage done to returning bombers clearly showed that the night fighters were firing from below. Defence against the attacks included mixing de Havilland Mosquito night fighters into the bomber stream, to pick up radar emissions from the German night fighters. Wing Commander J. D. Pattinson of 429 "Bison" Squadron, recognized an unseen danger but to him, it "was all presumption, not fact." He ordered that the mid-upper turrets be removed and the "displaced gunner would lie on a mattress on the floor as an observer, looking through a perspex blister for night fighters coming up from below." Many Lancaster B. IIs had retained the FN64 ventral turret, and a small number of Halifax and Lancaster bombers were unofficially fitted with a machine-gun, normally of .303 caliber but Canadian units tended to use the 0.50-inch heavy machine gun. (If not installed in a ventral turret these weapons were mounted in a makeshift port directly under the mid-upper gunner station.)
Even in the last year of the war, 18 months after the Peenemünde Raid, Schräge Musik night fighters were still taking a heavy toll, for example on the Mitteland–Ems Canal Raid, 21 February 1945:
On this particular night the night fighters were to score heavily. The ground radar stations responsible for initial guidance to the vicinity of the bombers did their job well, as did the airborne radar operators to whom fell the task of final location of individual targets. The path of the returning bomber stream was clearly marked by the pyres of numerous downed victims. NJG 4 was operating from Gutersloh (later an RAF base) and in the space of 20 minutes, between 20.43 and 21.03, Schnaufer and his crew, using their upward firing cannons (from a Bf 110G night fighter), shot down seven Lancasters. As it was, on that black night, four night fighter crews accounted for 28 of the 62 bombers lost out of the 800 dispatched. (Source)

An example of Schräge Musik installation on a Bf-110G.
Nice article on night fighters at this link...
(Source)
Mankind, ever inventive at finding ways to kill each other.



* NJG = Nachtjagdgeschwader, night fighter wing.

48 comments:

  1. The 25 mm "Chain Gun" developed by the Army for the Bradley and Adopted by the USN & USCG fired a HEIT (High Explosive Incendiary Tracer) round which eliminated the need for a mixed belt. The ground forces also had an AP round fed from a separate magazine. I do not know if they were ever mounted in aircraft but as I recall stories about 105 mm howitzers mounted in cargo planes during the Vietnam incident it seems possible. I was an FTG/ATG instructor on the 25 mm at GTMO/MAYPORT in the 1990's.
    Old (approaching ancient) Chief Gunner's Mate.

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    1. We still mount howitzers in cargo aircraft, for instance the AC-130 Specter. That aircraft packs a serious punch! I did a brief look, didn't see if the Bushmaster has ever been mounted in an aircraft.

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    2. A derivative of the 25mm M242 Bushmaster, the 30mm GAU-23/A is mounted on the AC-130J Ghostrider.

      - Victor

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    3. Ah excellent! Thanks for that tidbit Victor!

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    4. The 30mm version of the Bushmaster was mounted on USMC HARVEST HAWK C-130s.

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    5. That provides a serious punch I'll wager!

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  2. More WW2 strangeness I never knew about.... Amazing.

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  3. Another great post, well written, and well researched.
    I'd begun looking into the Uhu's engines after reading juvat's post, and that led me to this article about building a super detailed model of the He-219.
    The builder took "attention to detail" to a whole different level. http://www.hyperscale.com/features/2000/he219mp_1.htm

    Again, a great post and thank you.





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  4. Boy, that's some nose wheel strut on the 219, the undercarriage lifted those props high enough to clear the ground. Certainly had a unique profile to it and those photos do justice to it, thumbs up Sarge! Good thing so few of these along with the Me-262 and Ta-152 came so late, might have stopped both the daylight and night raids for quite a bit.

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    1. The Germans were very clever engineers, good thing the Nazis were there to make sure many of those projects never really got going. For instance, Hitler demanded the Me-262 be used as a bomber. Many Nazi officials lived in Wolkenkuckucksheim. Especially Hitler.

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  5. Interesting post, Sarge. After reading more and more about the inventiveness of the German armed forces in WWII, the margin of victory over them often seems narrower. Their designs and engineering were pretty good, weren't they? How did such a smart people get so entangled with such a warped political philosophy? Arrogance, a sense of entitlement and victimhood, coupled with a lack of moral compass had something to do with it I guess. Anyway, thanks for your always excellent and informative history lessons!

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    1. Just finished reading W.E.B. Griffin's Clandestine Operations series. In the last two volumes (of 6, but they're easy reads), his characters talk about that very issue. He uses a "biography" of Himmler as the means to explain it. Don't know if such a thing actually exists, but even if it doesn't it presents a plausible explanation of the mindset. Not an excuse by any means, just an explanation or insight.

      Besides, it's my kind of novel, Good guys win, bad guys get what's comin' to them.

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    2. Funny the intersectionality of the internet, Just found this posting over on a link at Maggies Farm. Talks about the realities of the strategic and logistic problems the Nazis had that doomed them from the start. I thought #16 was interesting. Essentially, Hitler replaced all his excellent generals with toadies. Hmmm, not that that's happened to us....recently....say starting in 2008.

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    3. Hey Tom, I've read in the past that the Germans were primed for Nazism by 1890... They just needed the right man. The higher criticisms were developed by German professors, their philosophers proposed the uselessness of life, and the "go out in a blaze of glory" mentality. The ground was ready..... (I see the utter debauchery of the 20's in Berlin as coming un-moored from morality and decency, and utter lack of purpose[similar to today])

      All they needed was A Hitler....

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    4. Pretty good observation STxAR, never looked at it that way and it makes sense.

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  6. Well, it’s always nice to be right, even moreso when it’s rare. I can see why firing into the bomb bay might be ill advised.

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  7. When this technology came to light within the last few decades, my Dad, who was born and raised in England, told me about it and was very quiet. I think he was thinking about his friends in Bomber Command who never came home.

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  8. The website "Luft '46" (luft46.com) has a tremendous amount of information on what-could-have-been projects along with what-was projects. Any advanced aircraft design. Or aerial weapon. They even link to model makers. Really cool. Really glad the Nazis were never able to achieve many of their designs until too late (like the Horton 229, or the Heinkel Volksfighter.) Some of the concepts I knew about, like the Silbervogal (a rocket powered space shuttle designed to skip along the boundary layers of atmosphere and space in order to bomb New York and other US targets) but some I have never heard of before.

    Thanks for the great writeup on the Uhu. Dedicated night fighters always, to me at least, to really embrace the insect look, with all the antennae and such.

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    1. Well...They "bug" me. Air to Air at night was always "fun", and that's with lights on. So, I've got quite a bit of respect for those that did it for "realsies".

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    2. Beans - Takes me back to playing Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946.

      The bug-like analogy is a good one. Probably because of the radar antennae, though I think of them as antlers.

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    3. Juvat - Night fighter pilots have brass ones, big brass ones.

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  9. Thanks for an interesting post, the air battle over Germany certainly pushed the envelope of the technology of the time. For example the Kammhuber Line was refined so that German commanders could have near enough real time information of Allied bomber offences. Ultimately the Allies out-produced the Nazis and always had more than enough of the 'good enough' equipment. The Nazis, in my opinion, seemed to obsess about producing the best equipment to the exclusion of having enough of the good enough kit. I think people tend to obsess too much about Nazi 'Wonder Weapons'. At the end of the day who won? It was the Allies with a preponderance of weapons that were 'good enough'.
    Retired




























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    1. Retired - Have you ever read Len Deighton's Bomber? It looks at both sides of the battle, British and German. It's a fictional account of an RAF bomber on a single raid and the events leading up to that raid. The book is, dare I say it, brilliant.

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    2. Oh I definitely remember that!
      While many remember the disastrous Schweinfurt daylight raids of 1943 by the Mighty 8th Air Force, few are aware sometimes later Germans came to deliver some very similar beatdowns to night RAF raids, courtesy of combo of radar, both ground-cased and airborne, and heavy night fighters, many of them equipped with "Schraege Musik".
      Not many of German WW2 soldiers could make the claim, but night fighter pilots truly fought valiantly to protect civilians. Including, ironically, many thousands of forced laborers from throughout occupied Europe.
      BTW British made good use of night fighters themselves in defence of UK after Germans switched to night raids.
      Later, some of them were turned to offensive/escort duties.
      Nighttime air combat over Europe was first great test of electronic warfare, with radar, radio navigation, jamming, chaff playing major parts, with both sides alternately gaining advantage.
      By 1945 Germans were almost ready to deploy first SAMs which presumably would be very dangerous to cumbersome heavy bombers... had the war dragged out a bit due to whatever reasons there would be even more lives to pay...
      One more thing, might I add, the same industrious, ingenious and disciplined German and Japanese society qualities thta made them so formidable foes in WW2 made them extremely succesful after Ww2 when democracy took root and they turned the same qualities to rebuiliding and enriching their nmations via free trade. By comparison Iraq and AFG fell like houses of cards but were almost impossible to nation-reconstruct...

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    3. Oh and one more thing, USAAF had a very interesting and advanced fighter design of their own, though it never came to much intended use due to lack of opposition...
      P-61 Black Widow. Made by Northrop, even back then before flying wing bombers, a maker of unorthodox designs.

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    4. Yes, I have read Bomber, I must re-read it some time. I would also recommend 'Most Secret War' by R.V.Jones who was one of the 'Backroom Boys' as they were described over here. There was also a very good BBC series 'The Secret War' that came out in 1977 when a lot of what went on was made public for the first time. A few myths were fostered, for example there was an early WW2 RAF night fighter ace 'Cats Eye Cunningham. The story that was put out was that he owed his success to excessive consumption of carrots, which helped his night vision. The reality was effective airborne radar. I think there was also a surplus of carrots that needed to be disposed of as well which was why the carrot eating story was put forward.
      Retired

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    5. Paweł #1 - Very astute observations! You are so right regarding Iraq and Afghanistan.

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    6. Paweł #2 - I'm very familiar with the P-61, I built a model of it as a kid. Also, Udvar-Hazy has one, which is pretty awesome.

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    7. Retired - I'm familiar with Group Captain John "Cats Eye" Cunningham. There's a picture of him in the link to my older post above. Twenty victories at night, pretty impressive. I do like the carrot story.

      I may have seen an episode or two of The Secret War some time ago. I'll have to look for that and the book you mention.

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  10. I'd heard of these, but never really looked into them.

    Thanks for the informative post, Sarge!

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  11. (Don McCollor)…[a nature interlude]...later on then when British aircraft detected a night fighter, they would initiate a violent "corkscrew" turning dive to escape [the reference said it was called "make the navigator puke"]...Now bats are essentially night fighters using pulsed ultrasonic "radar" (either single frequency, doppler, and sometimes combinations of both depending on species [no continuous wave - bats have to breathe])...one prey, the Tiger moth (Bertholdia trigona) can detect the emissions, emits jamming signals, and goes into a similar tight spiraling dive to escape...

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  12. When the Lancaster was initially designed a belly turret was to be installed to protect the lower quadrants. But the flacks at the Air Ministry deemed it unnecessary and a waste of space that would diminish the bomb load. A very high price was paid for that incredible blunder. Wonder if the crews were thinking of this as the night fighters sawed them in two from below. The amazing thing was that the problem was never remedied by the RAF. Their night time losses made the daylight AAF raid MIAs of '42-'43 seem trivial. And, yet, they kept climbing aboard every night........

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    1. Stupidity from the desk jockeys plagues us to this day.

      The men of Bomber Command were brave indeed!

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  13. About the P61: I first read about it as a boy and thought it was wonderful. Later I found out that it was described as "a good night fighter, not a great one." The dorsal turret seems to have been useless at combat speeds, and the weight and drag (along with the decision not to supercharge the engines) limited the top speed. It seems to have been slightly slower than the F6F. Speed like that of the Mosquito or the He219, combined with its exceptional (outturn a Hellcat, so they say) maneuverability, would have made it another legendary craft, I think. By the way, I read once that pilots of the He219 didn't like the "jazz" because their planes, unlike the Ju88s and Me110s, were almost at stalling speed when keeping pace under a bomber. It was hard for them to make a quick breakaway. (I, too, had a model P61)

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    1. Being able to break away quickly would seem to be a plus, I wonder how many actually used the "jazz."

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  14. I see now that your Wikipedia quote included that information about the Uhu and the "jazz". I should have RTWT, as they say on the internet. I got distracted by the topic of the P61. I throw myself on the mercy of the court.

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  15. Quite an interesting aircraft and mission. It's cool stuff, but the counterfactual claims always give me the red@$$.

    Counterfactual stuff is always interesting to think about, but the answer to why it didn't happen is pretty simple in concept. From the west side the Allies (read mostly The United Arsenal of Democracy or "Murica") were fighting a balanced quality/quantity war with a primary aim to defeat the enemy by using our strengths against his weaknesses. From the east the Allies (YKW) were fighting an unbalanced quality/quantity with a primary aim of destroying the enemy by using their quantity face up against the German's lesser quantity in a fight to the death. The Germans had not enough manufacturing or fighting capacity (granted they often punched above their weight) to win in the West (proof: even with the fall of yurp they couldn't beat Britain before June, 1941). Also the Germans were owned and operated by Hitler and His Hunnies. An on one could win a face to face slugfest with Joltin' Joe and his Jamokes.

    My take (just me of course) is that if the wonder weapons could have won the war, they would have won the war. The yabbuts and almosts and three more months arguments are, well, counterfactual.

    All that said, brilliant and very enjoyable post and I learned a couple of sumfins I did not previously know. Great stuff.

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    1. (Sorry I missed this when you posted it...)

      It was what it was, the shoulda-coulda-woulda never goes further than "Well, that didn't happen, now did it?"

      Thanks Shaun.

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