Göring had neglected his command since the outbreak of war but sought to meet his responsibilities in 1943 as his prestige with Adolf Hitler waned in the aftermath of the Battle of Britain and Stalingrad on the Eastern Front.

The British Operation Corona helped confuse the defences and Göring's mishandling of the night fighter force allowed Bomber Command to devastate Kassel.

[12] At the top of the German High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht—or OKW) there was little understanding or appreciation for air defence, even in the aftermath of the bombing of Hamburg which inflicted 76,600 casualties and destroyed large parts of the city and its industry.

At one conference Göring attempted to placate Hitler by suggesting that the destruction of German cities worked in the Nazi favour, as he perceived it created a body of people with nothing to lose and who "will therefore fight on with utter fanaticism.

Göring announced that the only way to stop such destruction was to initiate heavy retaliatory strikes at the enemy so that they would not dare risk another raid like Hamburg without the fear of similar retribution.

[18][citation needed] On 28 November 1943, Generalmajor Peltz was summoned to a conference where Göring officially informed him that he was to be placed in command of a renewed large-scale bombing operation against Britain, and London in particular.

To further aid German navigation, I./KG 66—a special pathfinder unit—used a number of captured British GEE sets and by 2 January 1944 five of these devices were fitted to the unit's aircraft.

[64] It was due to be replaced by the SC2000 which weighed in at circa 2,000 kg (4,400 lb) but it was produced in small numbers and no reliable information is available on explosive weight or filling.

The twelve codes communicated several different orders which included: informing the crew they were being plotted; change of bearing; degree of bearings (made in multiples of five); port or starboard turns; height; straight and level course; open bombs doors; pre-release signal; bomb or flare release; acknowledgement of signal; return home.

The FuG 16 would handle incoming transmissions from the R/T frequencies and the W/T messages were received by the Peilgerät (PeilG) 6 (codenamed "Alex Sniatkowski") direction finding equipment and superimposed on the plotting table.

Further improvements were made to combat British counter-measures with the introduction of a CRT linked to the FuG 25 set, similar in size to the Lichtenstein radar equipment used by night fighters.

The Germans had been hoping to use V-1 flying bombs but the attack on Kassel in October 1943 had forced the abandonment of the Fieseler factory where the pilot series was constructed.

The missile prototypes proved disappointing in tests and RAF intelligence discovered that the Luftwaffe was assembling a large conventional bomber fleet in western Europe for an attack.

11 Group RAF (Air Vice Marshals Charles Steele and Hugh Saunders) who were responsible for the defence of southern England and the Ground-controlled interception (GCI) operations in these areas.

[70] AI Mk VIII was in regular use by ten squadrons and allowed crews to detect targets at low altitude, without fear of ground interference blotting out contacts.

It became standard practice for the pilot to close on the bomber and match its speed, then lift the nose and fire ahead of the enemy aircraft so that it flew into the gunfire.

[103] Peltz ordered the units, based on 14 airfields from Soesterberg in the Netherlands, St. Trond east of Brussels, Belgium and Montdidier near Paris to operational readiness.

Peltz responded that the failures owed as much to the Luftwaffe's lack of interference-free radio and navigational aids as to untrained crews, and that the British with their H2S and Gee systems were technologically ahead of the Germans.

[120] The lack of dedicated pathfinder units also caused navigational problems, as the few aircraft employed in this role were more at risk from electronic counter-measures and fighter interception.

British sources showed the attacks to be scattered, with areas as far as Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Bedfordshire and Suffolk being bombed, indicating the wayward standards of German navigation.

One of the missing aircraft, Ju 88, 2./KG 54, code B3+EK piloted by Unteroffizier Helmut Friedrich Weihs was discovered with its crew in the Zuiderzee in the 1970s by the Dutch Air Force excavating the wreck when the area was drained for land reclamation.

Crews reported rocket salvos in an area of 1.5 to two miles in diameter over central London which were repeated at four-minute intervals but only the Hyde Park battery was in a position to disrupt the bomb run.

The perceived effectiveness of London's defences may have caused inexperienced crews to drop their bombs too early and miss the target, rather than failing to do so because of navigational errors.

[131] On 22/23 February 1944, just a few days following the beginning of the American efforts of the "Big Week" strategic bombing campaign, the Luftwaffe organised 185 German bombers to strike at London.

All the formations except III./KG 6, which was flying from Belgium, were routed via Evreux and Le Havre, north to High Wycombe where four red flares would mark a turn to the south east across London.

All aboard were killed including his two boxer dogs; Oberfeldwebel Alfred Schubert, Alfons Eichschmidt, Walter Rehfeldt, Wilhelm Schachtshabel and Arnold Büttner.

To assist the bomber stream, two Knickebein beams were used and 29 lux buoys were dropped into the sea; the lead formations used red sky markers for marking waypoints.

The port had become a bastion for storing equipment in the build-up to Operation Overlord and a large portion of the United States Army forces in England were based there.

The Germans resorted to using 1./Aufklärungsgruppe 121 (Long Range Reconnaissance Group 121), equipped with Me 410s, to fly from bases near Paris and observe the results of raids by night.

The raids were ironically to prove more costly for German capabilities than for the British, draining the Luftwaffe of irreplaceable aircrew and modern aircraft and thus reducing the potential air response to Operation Overlord.