The Seeburg plotting table (German: Seeburg-Tisch) was a mechanical plotting table used by Nazi Germany in their operation rooms to track aircraft and coordinate operations during World War II.
Attached to the plotting table was a Freya radar and two Würzburg-Riese radars. Freya radars would pick up and track the bombing raids and an attached Würzburg radar would then select an individual bomber and track it. The other Würzburg would track the night fighter that was sent out to find and attack the bombers.
This plotting was done on a large, translucent glass plate. The radar position of both enemy bombers and the friendly night fighters were displayed on the table as moving spots of light. The enemy was displayed with a red spot and a blue spot represented the night fighter.
The table had a grid that corresponded to the Kammhuber Line system (or Himmelbett as it was known in Germany) over the sector that was covered by its radar. The grid was a series of control sectors, that had associated radars, searchlights and a night fighter. Each grid square was further subdivided into smaller squares, numbered 1 to 9. This smaller grid represented an airspace of roughly 9 x 11 km, a size that allowed the night fighter to find the bombers with its own Lichtenstein airborne intercept radar.
As the dots moved over time, the track was marked manually on the table by six female auxiliaries that were seated by it. A Luftwaffe officer would oversee the development and acted as a fighter controller, directing the night fighter to the closest grid via radio. Operations were previously manually coordinated using an Auswertetisch, which was a precursor to the Seeburg.
Josef Kammhuber was a career officer in the Luftwaffe and post-World War II German Air Force. During World War II, he was the first general of night fighters in the Luftwaffe.
Operation Biting, also known as the Bruneval Raid, was a British Combined Operations raid on a German coastal radar installation at Bruneval in northern France during the Second World War, on the night of 27–28 February 1942.
Hornet Flight is a Second World War-based spy thriller written by British author Ken Follett. It was published in 2002 by Macmillan in the UK and Dutton in the US.
Freya was an early warning radar deployed by Germany during World War II; it was named after the Norse goddess Freyja. During the war, over a thousand stations were built. A naval version operating on a slightly different wavelength was also developed as the Seetakt.
The low-UHF band Würzburg radar was the primary ground-based gun laying radar for the Wehrmacht's Luftwaffe and Heer during World War II. Initial development took place before the war and the apparatus entered service in 1940. Eventually, over 4,000 Würzburgs of various models were produced. It took its name from the city of Würzburg.
Ground-controlled interception (GCI) is an air defence tactic whereby one or more radar stations or other observational stations are linked to a command communications centre which guides interceptor aircraft to an airborne target. This tactic was pioneered during World War I by the London Air Defence Area organization, which became the Royal Air Force's Dowding system in World War II, the first national-scale system. The Luftwaffe introduced similar systems during the war, but most other combatants did not suffer the same threat of air attack and did not develop complex systems like these until the Cold War era.
The Kammhuber Line was the Allied name given to the German night air defense system established in July 1940 by Colonel Josef Kammhuber. It consisted of a series of control sectors equipped with radars and searchlights and an associated night fighter. Each sector would direct the night fighter into visual range with target bombers.
Chaff, originally called Window by the British and Düppel by the Second World War era German Luftwaffe, is a radar countermeasure in which aircraft or other targets spread a cloud of small, thin pieces of aluminium, metallized glass fibre or plastic, which either appears as a cluster of primary targets on radar screens or swamps the screen with multiple returns.
Operation Steinbock, sometimes called the Baby Blitz, was a strategic bombing campaign by the German Air Force during the Second World War. It targeted southern England and lasted from January to May 1944. Steinbock was the last strategic air offensive by the German bomber arm during the conflict.
The 64th Air Division is an inactive United States Air Force organization. Its last assignment was with Air Defense Command, being stationed at Stewart Air Force Base, New York. It was inactivated on 1 July 1963.
The Defence of the Reich is the name given to the strategic defensive aerial campaign fought by the Luftwaffe air arm of the combined Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany over German-occupied Europe and Nazi Germany during World War II. Its aim was to prevent the destruction of German civilians, military and civil industries by the Western Allies. The day and night air battles over Germany during the war involved thousands of aircraft, units and aerial engagements to counter the Allied strategic bombing campaign. The campaign was one of the longest in the history of aerial warfare and with the Battle of the Atlantic and the Allied Blockade of Germany was the longest of the war. The Luftwaffe fighter force defended the airspace of German-occupied territory against attack, first by RAF Bomber Command and then against the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) in the Combined Bomber Offensive.
Nachtjagdgeschwader 1 (NJG 1) was a German Luftwaffe night fighter-wing of World War II. NJG 1 was formed on 22 June 1940 and comprised four Gruppen (groups). NJG 1 was created as an air defence unit for the Defence of the Reich campaign; an aerial war waged by the Luftwaffe against the bombing of the German Reich by RAF Bomber Command and the United States Air Force. In 1941 airborne radar was introduced with radar operators, and standardised in 1942 and 1943. Consequently, a large number of German night fighter aces existed within NJG 1.
Nachtjagdgeschwader 2 was a German Luftwaffe night fighter and night intruder wing during World War II.
The Dowding system was the world's first wide-area ground-controlled interception network, controlling the airspace across the United Kingdom from northern Scotland to the southern coast of England. It used a widespread dedicated land-line telephone network to rapidly collect information from Chain Home (CH) radar stations and the Royal Observer Corps (ROC) in order to build a single image of the entire UK airspace and then direct defensive interceptor aircraft and anti-aircraft artillery against enemy targets. The system was built by the Royal Air Force just before the start of World War II, and proved decisive in the Battle of Britain.
FuG 25a Erstling was an identification friend or foe (IFF) transponder installed in Luftwaffe aircraft starting in 1941 in order to allow German Freya radar stations to identify them as friendly. The system was also used as a navigation transponder as part of the EGON night bombing system during 1943 and 1944. It was the second IFF system to be used, replacing the FuG 25 Zwilling.
Operation Gisela was the codename for a German military operation of the Second World War. Gisela was designed as an aerial intruder operation to support the German air defence system in its night battles with RAF Bomber Command during the Defence of the Reich campaign. It was the last major operation launched by the LuftwaffeNachtjagdgeschwader during the conflict.
Werner Husemann was a German Luftwaffe night fighter ace and recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, the highest award in the military and paramilitary forces of Nazi Germany during World War II. Husemann claimed 34 aerial victories—that is, 34 aerial combat encounters resulting in the destruction of the enemy aircraft—during World War II.
The Battle of Douvres Radar Station was a military engagement of World War II as part of the Invasion of Normandy, that took place on 17 June 1944. The attack was by British 41 Commando, Royal Marines, the station and area were defended mainly by Luftwaffe ground forces. Preceded by an artillery bombardment and supported by mine-clearing and anti-bunker tanks of 79th Armoured Division, the Royal Marines were able to secure the surrender of the garrison.
German Luftwaffe and Navy Kriegsmarine Radar Equipment during World War II, relied on an increasingly diverse array of communications, IFF and RDF equipment for its function. Most of this equipment received the generic prefix FuG, meaning "radio equipment". During the war, Germany renumbered their radars. From using the year of introduction as their number they moved to a different numbering scheme.
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