OT: How did night fighters "see"?

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heliodorus04
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OT: How did night fighters "see"?

Post by heliodorus04 »

I realize radar was involved, but I was looking at all the antennae on a BF-110 night fighter, and I don't understand how you engage something using WW2 era technology.

Were night fighters used to any extent on the eastern front?
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RE: OT: How did night fighters "see"?

Post by zakblood »

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/14/1381380/-Shadow-War-Night-fighters-and-electronic-warfare-in-WWII

has some great info

an if want to see women pilots in action, you won't find any better for night fighting than these,

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http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/night-witches-the-female-fighter-pilots-of-world-war-ii/277779/
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RE: OT: How did night fighters "see"?

Post by loki100 »

ORIGINAL: heliodorus04

I realize radar was involved, but I was looking at all the antennae on a BF-110 night fighter, and I don't understand how you engage something using WW2 era technology.

Were night fighters used to any extent on the eastern front?

It was crude, the basic idea was that a massive stream of allied bombers were hard to miss. Allied NFs didn't escort as such but hung around where the bombers were and then went hunting the German NFs. My feeling is that for both sides it was more about disruption than actual kills. The bombers would break formation if they knew they were being hunted and the German NFs would break off hunting bombers if they knew that an allied NF had detected them.

The Soviets opted for their usuall brutal efficiency. Before they equipped their Pe-3s with allied radar for fighters it was a case of being ordered to patrol a given area and hope they could find their way back ... there are reports from 1941 of Soviet fighters losing any sense of direction and just flying till they crashed - they didn't dare put down at an unidentified airfield as if it was German their entire family was at risk as they would have been deemed to have deserted.

The U2s were different. The Soviets flew them exceptionally low (and slow) so in both their bomber and transport styles they could find their way by ground identification. A common attack tactic was to cut the engine, glide over the target drop a few bombs/grenades and fly off (hopefully, as the engines did not always restart). Against German fighters their best defense was that they could fly below the stall speed of the Germans ... so unless they were seen at a distance they could usually shake off any attacking plane simply by forcing it to overfly,
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RE: OT: How did night fighters "see"?

Post by Helpless »


Before they equipped their Pe-3s with allied radar for fighters it was a case of being ordered to patrol a given area and hope they could find their way back ...

Soviet AF had their own air radars Gneis-2/2M/5, which were widely used even on lend leased aircraft.
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RE: OT: How did night fighters "see"?

Post by decourcy2 »

And the night fighters mostly did not rely upon radar, they used radar detectors to follow the bombers radar.
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RE: OT: How did night fighters "see"?

Post by heliodorus04 »

I know this is the War in the West forum, but it begs the question:
Is the night fighting system of War in the East re-creating something that actually happened?
(Did transports fly supplies to partisans at night; did Axis try to interdict night fliers? Why is there an option for night ground attack, etc.?)
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RE: OT: How did night fighters "see"?

Post by Joel Billings »

yes,
I think so,
because there were night bombing missions (especially lots of harassment stuff, like Washing Machine Charlie kinds of things, at least that's what I've been told).
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RE: OT: How did night fighters "see"?

Post by barkhorn45 »

The germans homed in on the"monica"tail-warning radar used by BC,until the crew's started turning it off.
German nf were vectored by ground control then relied on there lichtenstien radar for final run in.
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RE: OT: How did night fighters "see"?

Post by LiquidSky »



There is an interesting parallel with the sub war. Each side would take turns gaining an advantage over the other as technology would trump the other sides latest development.

In some ways the platform itself seems almost irrelevant compared to the technology needed to get that platform on target. It doesn't matter how good a Mosquito NFB is it can't find a target.
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