Despite their successes in the Battle of Britian, the Jagdbombers or fighter bombers of the Luftwaffe seemed to have been nearly forgotten in the war against the UK until early 1942 when a pair of Staffeln of  FW-190s were tasked with doing hit and run bombing raids on southern England. While these raids did not provide a huge amount of damage, they were relatively successful in destroying specific targets and causing the British to hold back units from other tasks to meet this new threat.

Operating at high speed and at low altitude, these raids were able to sneak in under radar coverage and attack their targets before the RAF was able to get defending fighters into the area. Despite their success, the Luftwaffe decided that these raids would be more successful if carried out at night. The undersides and sides of the planes were painted with a black distemper and operations then became nocturnal.

This was a huge mistake. Fighter pilots were day pilots. Few had any training on night flying or flying using only instruments and there were few navigation aids available. Pilots became lost and disoriented. Several landed their intact FW-190s at British bases thinking they had landed back in France while many more were lost having been disoriented and running out of fuel. The bombing was also not very effective as locating targets in the dark was quite difficult.

The Luftwaffe had succeeded in taking a successful attack program and changing it into one that basically threw away aircraft and crews. It is without any surprise that the program was pretty much allowed to wither away. It didn't mean the end of these operation, just that those units involved were doing those kinds of missions less and less and doing more day fighting.

In his book on the subject, author Chris Goss covers the initial development and the operations of these units during the war. As is usual with this series, the book is jammed full of photographs and there are the very nicely done color profiles taken from these images for which Classic is so well known.

It is an excellent volume on this little studied aspect of the Luftwaffe during WWII. A book that you really should have in your library, especially if you have the others in the series. A great read and one you can buy with confidence.

September 2009

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