Josef Kammhuber

Josef Kammhuber
Josef Kammhuber asInspector of the West German Air Force
Born	(1896-08-19)19 August 1896 Tüßling,Kingdom of Bavaria,German Empire
Died	25 January 1986(1986-01-25)(aged 89) Munich,West Germany
Buried	Westfriedhof (Munich)
Allegiance	German Empire Weimar Republic Nazi Germany West Germany
Service/branch	Luftwaffe German Air Force(Luftwaffe)
Years of service	1914–1945 1955–1962
Rank	General
Battles/wars	World War I World War II
Awards	Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross

Josef Kammhuber(August 19, 1896 – January 25, 1986) was a career officer who served in theImperial German Army,theLuftwaffeofNazi Germanyand the post-World War IIGerman Air Force.DuringWorld War II,he was the firstgeneralofnight fightersin the Luftwaffe.

Kammhuber created the night fighter defense system, the so-calledKammhuber Line,but the detailed knowledge of the system provided to theRoyal Air Forceby British military intelligence allowed them to render it ineffective. Personal battles between him andErhard Milch,director of theReich Air Ministry,led to his dismissal in 1943. After the war, he joined theBundeswehr,the armed forces ofWest Germanyserving as the firstInspector of the Air Force.

Career

Josef Kammhuber was born inTüßling,Bavaria,the son of a farmer. At the outbreak ofWorld War IKammhuber was 18 and joined a Bavarian engineer battalion. He participated in theBattle of Verdunin 1916 and was promoted to Second Lieutenant in 1917. He remained in Germany's post-war army, and in 1925 was promoted to First Lieutenant. Between October 1926 and September 1928, he received division-level leadership training. From 1 May to 30 September 1930, he was sent to theUSSRfor pilot training at theLipetsk fighter-pilot school.On his return, Kammhuber joined the staff of GeneralWalter Wever,chief of staff of theLuftwaffeprior to World War II.

Kammhuber returned to active duty in February 1939 and was assigned as chief-of-staff ofLuftflotte 2.On January 11, 1940, he was reprimanded byAdolf Hitlerpersonally because of theMechelen Incident.He was then transferred to theWestern Frontwhere he became commander ofKG 51.On 3 June 1940, he flew with the wing (possibly onOperation Paula). He was shot down and briefly became aprisoner of war.Kammhuber was released upon theArmistice of 22 June 1940.In July 1940 he was placed in command of coordinating flak, searchlight and radar units at Luftwaffe's General Staff. The result was theXII. Fliegerkorps(12th Air Corps), a new dedicated night-fighting command, created on 1 August 1940.He reached the rank ofGeneralleutnantby October 1941 andGeneral der Fliegeron 1 January 1943.

Defence of the Reich

He organised the night fighting units into a chain known to the British as the Kammhuber Line, in which a series ofradarstations with overlapping coverage. The stations were layered three deep from Denmark to the middle of France, each covering a zone about 32 km (20 mi) long (north-south) and 20 km (12 mi) wide (east-west). Each control centre was known as aHimmelbett(four-poster bed)zone, consisting of aFreya radarwith a range of about 100 km (62 mi), a number of searchlights spread through the cell, and one primary and one backupnight fighterassigned to the cell.Royal Air Force(RAF) bombers flying into Germany or France would have to cross the line at some point and the radar would direct a searchlight to illuminate the aircraft. Once this had happened, other manually controlled searchlights would also pick up the aeroplane and the night fighter would be directed to intercept the illuminated bomber. Demands byBürgermeisters in Germany led to the recall of the searchlights to the major cities.

Slot Zeist, Kammhubers headquarters.

Later versions of theHimmelbettadded twoWürzburg radars,with a range of about 30 km (19 mi). Unlike the early-warning Freya radar, Würzburgs were accurate (and complex) tracking radars. One would be locked onto the night fighter as soon as it entered the cell. After the Freya picked up a target the second Würzburg would lock onto it, thereby allowing controllers in theHimmelbettcenter to get continual readings on the positions of both aircraft, controlling them to a visual interception. To aid in this, a number of the night fighters were fitted with a short-rangeinfrareddevice known as 'Spanner anlage' but these proved almost useless in practice.

Kammhuber (left) andHelmut Lentin aNazi propagandaphotograph, France, 1942

Another tactic that proved effective was to send their own planes to England while the raids were taking off or landing. Radio operators listening to the RAF bomber frequencies were able to recognize the start of a raid and the raiding force of about 30 night fighters would be sent over the RAF airbases to shoot down the bombers as they took off or landed. By the beginning of October the night intruder force had claimed a hundred kills but on October 13, Hitler ordered the force sent to the Mediterranean, despite their success.

British intelligence soon discovered the nature of the Kammhuber Line and started studying ways to defeat it.RAF Bomber Commandsent aircraft one at a time to force the defenses to be spread as far apart as possible, meaning that any one aircraft would have to deal with little concentrated flak. TheHimmelbettcenters were only dealing with perhaps one or two planes at a time, making their job much easier. At the urging ofR. V. Jones,Bomber Command planned attacks against a target at a time, sending all of the bombers in a "bomber stream",carefully positioned to fly down the middle of a cell. The Himmelbett centers were faced with hundreds of bombers, countering with only a few aircraft of their own. So successful was this tactic that the success rate of the night fighters dropped almost to zero.

Technological battle

Kammhuber started looking for solutions, and the result was the two-prong concept ofWilde Sau( "wild boar" ) andZahme Sau( "tame boar" ). In the former, day fighters would be sent up and look for the enemy aircraft from the light of flares dropped from light bombers, searchlights set to a wide beam or illuminating lower clouds, or the fires on the ground below. TheWilde Sauforce scored their most notable success duringOperation Hydra(the British operation against the V-weapon centre), atPeenemündeon 17 August 1943.De Havilland Mosquitobombers had dropped target marker flares over Berlin and most of the night fighter force was sent there. When it was realized what was really happening, most of these aircraft were too far away and too slow to intercept the raid. However, theFocke-Wulf Fw 190sbeing flown by theWilde Sauforces were able to reach them, and about 30 planes entered the third and last wave of the stream and shot down 29 of the 40Avro Lancasterbombers lost on that raid.

Zahme Sauenvisioned freeing the night fighters (now equipped with radar for the final stages of the interception) from theHimmelbettcells and allowing them to attack on their own. This was not all that easy, given the capabilities of the current generation of radars, but newer systems being developed would greatly increase the detection range and angles. In this role the existing cells created as part of the original Kammhuber Line would be used primarily for early warning and vectoring the planes to the stream.

At the same time Kammhuber continued to press for a new dedicated nightfighter design, eventually selecting theHeinkel He 219Uhuafter seeing it demonstrated in 1942. However Milch had decided to cancel theUhu,and conflict arose between the two. As a result, in 1943 Kammhuber was transferred toLuftflotte 5in Norway, in command of a handful of outdated planes. After the reorganization of theLuftwaffein Scandinavia and the dissolution ofLuftflotte 5,he became commanding general of theLuftwaffein Norway (September–October 1944). In 1945 Kammhuber was re-appointed to command of the night fighters, at this point a largely ceremonial position considering the state of theThird Reichat that time.

Postwar

Meeting between Kammhuber andAir MarshalSirThomas Pikein 1956. Pike had previously served as an RAF night fighter pilot.

After Germany'scapitulation in May 1945,Kammhuber was held by the United States, but he was released in April 1948 without charges being brought against him. He wrote a series of monographs for theUS Department of Defenseon the conduct of the German defenses against the RAF andUSAAF.These were later collected into book form (listed under References). In 1953 he published a definitive work on what he learned during the war asProblems in the Conduct of a Day and Night Defensive Air War.He later spent time in Argentina, helping to train the air force underJuan Perón..

Josef Kammhuber returned to Germany and joined theGerman Air Forcewhile it was being formed. He was promoted toInspekteur der Luftwaffe,serving in that role between 1956 and 1962. Following the1961 F-84 Thunderstreak incident,when two West GermanRepublic F-84F Thunderstreaksstrayed intoEast Germanairspace and flew toWest Berlin,Kammhuber and his superior, theWest German Minister of Defence,Franz-Josef Strauß,relievedOberstleutnantSiegfried Barth,commander of the pilots' unit, of his command. After protests, three official investigations and a formal complaint by Barth against Strauß, the former was reinstated in his position.Kammhuber was the only inspector of a branch of the German Armed Forces to achieve the rank of (full) General in this office, although actually designated as a Lieutenant General, because of his services to the development of the post-war Air Force. He retired shortly after the crash of aStarfighterformation on 19 June 1962 nearNörvenich.

Kammhuber died on January 25, 1986, aged 89 inMunichand is buried there.

Awards

• Iron Cross1914, 1st and 2nd class
• Military Merit,4th class with Swords (Bavaria)
• Clasp to the Iron Cross,1st and 2nd class
• Pilot/Observer BadgeIn Gold with Diamonds
• Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Crosson 9 July 1941 asGeneralmajorand commander of the 1. Nachtjagd-Division
• Grand Officer of theOrder of Merit of the Italian Republic10 March 1958
• Legion of Merit,Commander (2 August 1961)
• Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germanywith Star and Sash, (21 August 1962)

References

Bibliography

• Fellgiebel, Walther-Peer[in German](2000) [1986].Die Träger des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939–1945 — Die Inhaber der höchsten Auszeichnung des Zweiten Weltkrieges aller Wehrmachtteile[The Bearers of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939–1945 — The Owners of the Highest Award of the Second World War of all Wehrmacht Branches] (in German). Friedberg, Germany: Podzun-Pallas.ISBN978-3-7909-0284-6.
• Hinchliffe, Peter (2003)."The Lent Papers" Helmut Lent.Bristol, UK: Cerberus Publishing.ISBN978-1-84145-105-3.
• Rall, Günther(2007).Braatz, Kurt[in German](ed.).Günther Rall: Mein Flugbuch—Erinnerungen 1938–2004[Günther Rall: My Flight Book—Recollections 1938–2004] (in German). Moosburg, Germany: NeunundzwanzigSechs Verlag.ISBN978-3-9807935-3-7.
• Scherzer, Veit (2007).Die Ritterkreuzträger 1939–1945 Die Inhaber des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939 von Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm sowie mit Deutschland verbündeter Streitkräfte nach den Unterlagen des Bundesarchives[The Knight's Cross Bearers 1939–1945 The Holders of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939 by Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and Allied Forces with Germany According to the Documents of the Federal Archives] (in German). Jena, Germany: Scherzers Militaer-Verlag.ISBN978-3-938845-17-2.
• Scutts, Jerry (1998).German Night Fighter Aces of World War 2.Aircraft of the Aces. Vol. 20. Oxford:Osprey Publishing.ISBN978-1-85532-696-5.
• Wolfgang Schmidt,"Seines Wertes bewusst"! General Josef Kammhuber,in: Helmut R. Hammerich / Rudolf J. Schlaffer (eds.),Militärische Aufbaugenerationen der Bundeswehr 1955 bis 1970. Ausgewählte Biografien,München, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag 2011, pp. 351–381.
• Kammhuber, Joseph, and David C. Isby (eds.);Fighting the Bombers: The Luftwaffe's Struggle Against the Allied Bomber Offensive,Greenhill Books, 2003.ISBN1-85367-532-6.