On January , , unescorted American B- bombers deliv-
ered their first daring daylight raid on German territory, at-
tacking Wilhelmshaven Naval Base. A more direct affront to
Göring’s pride followed on the thirtieth. It was the tenth anni-
versary of the Nazi “seizure of power.” Göring was due to
broadcast at : .. over every German radio station; but
with sublime indifference to his feelings, the RAF sent Mosquito
bombers scudding right across Germany to Berlin, to drive him
underground at that precise hour.
Hitler had directed him on the nineteenth to tend spe-
cifically to the air defenses of Leipzig, Dresden, Weimar, and
Kassel. On the twentieth Göring had told the night-fighter
commander, General Hans Kammhuber, to extend their night
defenses to the north of Berlin and into southern Germany; he
had ordered every fighter-squadron commander to come to
Carinhall at the end of the month. (The British code-breakers
intercepted this signal.) Colonel Adolf Galland was among the
commanders who lunched and conferred with the worried
Reichsmarschall now, discussing ways of defeating this two-
fisted Allied bomber menace. Galland described his plans to
strengthen the day-fighter forces; his deputy, Colonel Lützow,
spoke about the expanding radar-tracking network. For the first
time, Galland referred to the Reich’s coming jet planes like the
Me and the Me rocket-powered interceptor. Worse was
to come: Luftwaffe experts discovered revolutionary new elec-
tronic equipment in an RAF bomber shot down that very night,
January –, near Rotterdam an on-board radar screen de-
signed to give a picture of the terrain and cities beneath regard-
less of darkness and cloud cover.
The Stalingrad drama ended. Sixteen army generals, in-
cluding Paulus, chose Soviet captivity to death and glory on the
battlefield. The army’s General Erwin Jaenecke, flown injured