AIR POWER DEVELOPMENT CENTRE BULLETIN

The BomBer offensive and elecTronic Warfare

The 2013 Defence White Paper includes an announcement that the RAAF would be developing a substantial electronic warfare (EW) capability. At the center of this new capability are 12 EA-18G Growler EW aircraft that will be significant force enablers. However, this new capability when operational will not represent the first Australian EW squadron. The honour of being the first Australian EW squadron rests with No 462 Squadron, an Empire Air Training Scheme Article XV squadron, which operated in World War II as part of the RAF Bomber Command offensive over Germany from late 1944 to the War’s end in May 1945.

First formed at Fayid, Egypt in 1942, No 462 Squadron later reformed in March 1944 as an Australian squadron in RAF Bomber Command, flying MkIII Halifax aircraft out of Britain. After initially being employed on conventional bombing operations, the squadron was transferred to the RAF’s 100 (Bomber Support) Group in December 1944 and began modifying their aircraft with a range of EW equipment.

The formation of 100 Group and the shift in role for No 462 Squadron was part of the capability being developed within Bomber Command to address the high casualty rates suffered by the command since the opening days of the war. At the heart of the problem lay the fact that the strategic bomber offensive of the RAF was being conducted without adequate control of the air. Furthermore, Germany had developed a highly capable nightfighter force, an airborne and ground-based radar surveillance system and searchlight and anti-aircraft gun batteries, all linked and managed by a sophisticated warning and control network. These measures combined to ensure that the bomber streams had to battle their way to and from every target.

In response to the threats posed by the German air defence network, Bomber Command progressively developed a range of countermeasures designed to increase the chances of survival for the bomber aircraft. These measures were not aimed at taking control of the air, but rather intended to reduce the risk posed by the

nightfighters and to degrade the cohesion of the warning and control network.

Illustrative of the countermeasures developed were the low level ‘Flower’ air field patrols and the high level ‘Mahmoud’ operations conducted by the Australian No 456 Squadron and other RAF Mosquito nightfighter units. The ‘Flower’ patrols entailed orbiting in the vicinity of known German nightfighter airfields and carrying out attacks on aircraft and infrastructure in order to disrupt the operations of the enemy aircraft. Should a nightfighter get airborne, the Mosquito would use their airborne intercept radar (AI radar) to locate and shoot down the enemy before it could in turn intercept the bomber stream.

The ‘Mahmoud’ patrols were a form of close escort to the bomber aircraft. Here the Mosquitoes would use a range of warning devices and AI radar to first distract German nightfighters away from the bombers, and to intercept those enemy aircraft which were positioning to shoot down Allied aircraft.

Issue 206, August 2013

Superior technical achievements—used correctly both strategically and tactically—can beat any quantity numerically many times stronger yet technically inferior.

Adolph Galland, Luftwaffe Inspector General of Fighters, The First and the Last, 1954.

An Australian radio operator of Bomber Command prepares for take-off.

It was into this dark and forbidding battlespace that the crews of No 462 Squadron were committed in the opening months of 1945. The unit mainly conducted two forms of EW operations. The first was to deceive and distract the German warning and control network by generating fake or ‘spoof’ raids. This was done through the generation of a range of radio and radar emissions sufficient to appear as if a much larger formation was approaching Germany than was the case. Included in the deception measures was the use of ‘window’ (now known as ‘chaff’). This consisted of strips of aluminum foil, sized to correspond to specific radar signatures, which would form false radar returns and create the image of a much larger formation than was actually the case. If released in sufficient density, ‘window’ could create a curtain through which some radars types were not able to penetrate. At times these curtains were used to hide a real bomber stream or a smaller spoof raid. It was also used to mask a sudden course change of the bomber fleet, which would disrupt the intercept solutions of any aircraft being vectored on to the Allied bomber force, or to prevent the German warning and control network from determining the true targets for the night’s raid.

If successful, these much smaller spoof formations would draw the Luftwaffe nightfighters away from the intended target areas of the main bomber force. With the enemy aircraft drawn away and ultimately forced to land and refuel, the spoof raids not only created gaps in the German air defence networks, but by keeping the Luftwaffe airborne in unproductive intercepts, also forced the consumption of valuable fuel and other resources which were already in short supply within Germany.

The second EW operation conducted by No 462 Squadron was known as ‘Airborne Cigar’ or ‘ABC’ missions. These missions involved the installation of additional VHF radio sets to the aircraft and the carriage of an additional radio operator. Known by the rest of the crew as the Special Operator (SO), these personnel were competent in understanding German. The role of the ABC missions was to fly in formation with the main or spoof bomber missions and to scan the VHF radio frequencies until the transmissions from the German ground controllers could be located. The SO would listen-in to gather what intelligence he could, then retransmit on the same frequency random sound, often an amplified transmission of the aircraft’s engine noise, in order to drown out the ground controller’s instructions to the German nightfighters.

This evolved into a cat and mouse game between the SOs and the German controllers. Once jammed, controllers would shift to alternative frequencies, they

would pass on instructions via prerecorded music creating the illusion that they were a radio station, and they even faked whole dialogues between imaginary controllers and aircraft to distract the SOs from the real transmissions on a different frequency. In a more deadly variation, the nightfighters would home in on the ABC transmissions and shoot down the ABC fitted aircraft. As a result, losses among ABC aircraft were higher than regular bomber aircraft.

Overall, the EW missions carried out by No 462 Squadron and 100 Group did not completely disrupt the German air defence network. However, assessments of raids in which the EW component was efficiently employed, found that losses of aircraft and crews were consistently lower than for those raids which were not shielded by EW operations. It is because of the ability of EW aircraft to disrupt, penetrate and deceive adversary electronic spectrums that EW has become a key enabler of air campaigns conducted in support of joint operations.

Key Points• Electronic Warfare is the military action involving

the use of electromagnetic spectrum and directed energy to determine, exploit, reduce or prevent hostile use of, and retain friendly use of, the electromagnetic spectrum.

• The conduct of air operations in the modern battlespace involves the close integration of a range of capabilities in order to defeat and disrupt adversary defensive and offensive measures.

• Australia has been involved in EW operations from the earliest employment of electronic countermeasures in World War II.

Air Power Development CentreF3-GF, PO Box 7932, Department of Defence

CANBERRA BC ACT 2610Ph: 02 6128 7041 Fax: 02 6128 7053

Email: airpower@defence.gov.auWeb: www.airforce.gov.au/airpower

Disclaimer: The views in this Pathfinder are not necessarily those of the RAAF

Luftwaffe Fighter Control Room.