The BV 141NJ Nachtjäger

[Spinners 15,968]

Blohm & Voss BV 141NJ - Stab II/NJG2, Luftwaffe, Eastern Front, 1944

The female pilots of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment of the Soviet Air Forces flew harassment bombing missions against the invading German forces from 1942 onwards and soon gained the nickname of 'die Nachthexen' (the Night Witches) due to the surprise night-time attacks they skilfully performed in their wood and canvas Polikarpov U-2 biplanes. These nuisance attacks deprived German forces of sleep, keeping them on constant guard and had a wearing down, cumulative psychological effect on the German troops.

Luftwaffe fighter pilots found it extremely hard to shoot down the slow U-2 biplanes which flew at treetop level at night and were thus very hard to see. Furthermore, the U-2s maximum speed was virtually identical to the stall speed of both the Messerschmitt Bf 109 and the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 the principal fighter aircraft used on the Eastern Front. In September 1942, Stab II./NJG 2 established an experimental flight led by Major Heinz Schöpfel consisting of eight Blohm & Voss Bv 141 B-1 single-engine reconnaissance aircraft. With generally good low-speed handling characteristics plus an exceptional field of vision and with three pairs of eyes scanning the night sky it was thought that the Bv 141's could potentially be an effective counter to the U-2 nuisance attacks but early missions were unsuccessful. 

However, on the early evening of October 31st, 1942 Leutnant Otto Zabel and his crew shot down three of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment's U-2's and severley damaged a fourth. This caused the grounding of the regiment for the remainder of the night and further successes followed with another two U-2's destroyed in the air on the night of November 2nd plus two destroyed on the ground when Leutnant Gerhard Eisenach followed a damaged U-2 back to a makeshift airfield being used by the Night Witches and strafed the airfield setting two aircraft ablaze. Major Heinz Schöpfel shot down a further two U-2's on the night of November 5th and another on the following night. But, as the winter set in, the serviceability and spares situation of the Bv 141's became desperate and Major Heinz Schöpfel was soon forced to declare his diminished flight as non-operational. By early December, the Night Witches of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment had reclaimed the night and in the months that followed they would assist in the breakthrough of enemy defensive lines on the Terek River and support the Red Army's offensive operations in the Kuban River valley and Stavropol.

Edited May 4, 2019 by Spinners
Backstory added.