Josef Kammhuber | |
|---|---|
 Josef Kammhuber asInspector of the West German Air Force | |
| Born | (1896-08-19)19 August 1896 |
| Died | 25 January 1986(1986-01-25) (aged 89) |
| Buried | |
| Allegiance | |
| Branch |
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| Service years |
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| Rank | General |
| Conflicts | |
| 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, theLuftwaffe ofNazi Germany and the post-World War IIGerman Air Force. DuringWorld War II, he was the firstgeneral ofnight fighters in the Luftwaffe.
Kammhuber created the night fighter defense system, the so-calledKammhuber Line, but the detailed knowledge of the system provided to theRoyal Air Force by 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 Germany serving as the firstInspector of the Air Force.
Josef Kammhuber was born inTüßling,Bavaria, the son of a farmer. At the outbreak ofWorld War I Kammhuber was 18 and joined a Bavarian engineer battalion. He participated in theBattle of Verdun in 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 theUSSR for pilot training at theLipetsk fighter-pilot school. On his return, Kammhuber joined the staff of GeneralWalter Wever, chief of staff of theLuftwaffe prior 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 Hitler personally because of theMechelen Incident. He was then transferred to theWestern Front where 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.[1] He reached the rank ofGeneralleutnant by October 1941 andGeneral der Flieger on 1 January 1943.[citation needed]
Kammhuber organised the night fighting units into a chain known to the British as the Kammhuber Line, a series ofradar stations 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 radar with a range of about 100 km (62 mi), a number of searchlights spread through the cell, and one primary and one backupnight fighter assigned 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.[2]
Later versions of theHimmelbett added 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 theHimmelbett center 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-rangeinfrared device known as 'Spanner anlage' but these proved almost useless in practice.[4]
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British intelligence soon discovered the nature of the Kammhuber Line and started studying ways to defeat it.RAF Bomber Command sent 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. TheHimmelbett centers 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 one 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.
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 Sau force scored their most notable success duringOperation Hydra (the British operation against the V-weapon centre), atPeenemünde on 17 August 1943.De Havilland Mosquito bombers 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 190s being flown by theWilde Sau forces 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 Lancaster bombers lost on that raid.[5]
Zahme Sau envisioned freeing the night fighters (now equipped with radar for the final stages of the interception) from theHimmelbett cells 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.[6]
At the same time Kammhuber continued to press for a new dedicated nightfighter design, eventually selecting theHeinkel He 219Uhu after 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 5 in Norway, in command of a handful of outdated planes. After the reorganization of theLuftwaffe in Scandinavia and the dissolution ofLuftflotte 5, he became commanding general of theLuftwaffe in 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 Reich at that time.[citation needed]
After Germany'scapitulation in May 1945, Kammhuber was held by the United States, but was released in April 1948 without charges being brought against him. He wrote a series of monographs for theUS Department of Defense on 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.[citation needed].
Josef Kammhuber returned to Germany and joined theGerman Air Force while 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 Thunderstreaks strayed intoEast German airspace 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.[7] 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 aStarfighter formation on 19 June 1962 nearNörvenich.[8]
Kammhuber died on January 25, 1986, aged 89 inMunich and is buried there.
| Military offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by OberstJohann-Volkmar Fisser | Commander ofKampfgeschwader 51 "Edelweiss" 26 March 1940 – 3 June 1940 | Succeeded by OberstJohann-Volkmar Fisser |
| Preceded by none | Commander ofXII. Fliegerkorps 9 August 1941 – 15 September 1943 | Succeeded by none |
| Preceded by GeneraloberstHans-Jürgen Stumpff | Commander ofLuftflotte 5 27 November 1943 – 16 September 1944 | Succeeded by disbanded |
| Preceded by none | Commanding General of theLuftwaffe in Norway 16 September 1944 – 10 October 1944 | Succeeded by GeneralmajorEduard Ritter von Schleich |
| New title | Inspector of the Air Force 1 June 1957 – 30 September 1962 | Succeeded by GeneralleutnantWerner Panitzki |
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