Emmanuel Gustin wrote:

"Jakob Whitfield" wrote in message
om...

...And yet another question: Was the RAF's night fighter GCI force
controlled in a similar manner to the Luftwaffe's 'Himmelbett'
fighters?

Was the success of the RAF's night fighter force compared to
Himmelbett simply due to the fact that the Luftwaffe wasn't sending
n-hundred-aircraft bomber streams over England, or was there a more
efficient structure in place?

The RAF had airborne radar before the Lufwaffe, but the first experience
was that, because of the limited range of the early long-wave AI radar, it
was useless without a ground radar to get the fighter close enough to the
target. In January 1941 six GCI radar sets became available; the radar
operator then talked directly to the pilot instead of by way of the
operations
room. At this stage it was indeed similar to the Himmelbett system, in that
a station could guide only one nightfighter at a time.

Palliatives were a 'cab rank' system in which the GCI served nightfighters
in turn, and searchlights controlled by gunlaying AA radars (which were
also used to provide better height estimates than the GCI provided) to
assist
some fighters to intercept without the assistance of GCI. Later these became
dense enough to allow a nightfighter to follow the track of a German bomber,
and quite useful.

But the RAF radar had one vital advantage over the German system, and
this was exploited in 1942. The German ground operator required two
Wurzburg radars, one to track the bomber and one to track the fighter, and
their positions were then projected onto a glass screen. The British GCI
radar with its plan position indicator however (the now most familiar form
of radar display, with a rotating 'scan line', could observe many more than
two aircraft at the same time; so in 1942, the RAF seated two interception
operators on a single radar, with a third controller to coordinate the effor
ts,
and trained each operator to control two interceptions at the same time.

Later, another technologicial advantage was exploited. The centimetric
AI Mk.VIII had a much better range and accuracy than the long-wavelength
AI Mk.IV and the Luftwaffe's radars; so the ground operator only brought
the nightfighter close enough and handed over the target when the fighter's
radar detected it; he no longer bothered to manoeuvre the fighter into a
firing position astern of the bomber. He could then switch his efforts to
guiding another fighter.

And the best first-person account of British night fighter ops and
equipment/tactical developments through the war is C.F. Rawnsley/Robert Wright's
"Night Fighter". Rawnsley was John Cunningham's RIO. Wright, his co-author
(really ghost writer) was Dowding's PA (and later Sholto-Douglas's IIRR),
although the book is about Rawnsley's experiences.

Guy