Talk:Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer/Archive 1

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:03, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

To Misterbee1966
Re: this edit. It needs a comma to note a possessive (the record), and it doesn't read fluidly with a comma in it, which is why it was manipulated. As it stands it still needs a comma, regardless of how you want it.
 * Thanks fixed MisterBee1966 (talk) 07:14, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

I think the comment on Jabs is weak. It is still not clear to me why Jabs disliked him. Is a man like Jabs really going to dislike Schnaufer over this? As his superior he could have easily had him disciplined. Besides, if it had no impact on the unit, or it's conduct of operations, why mention it in the first place? Dapi89 (talk) 11:40, 25 January 2014 (UTC)
 * ?? Well, probably a cultural thing, but taking someones right of way in Germany is a very emotional thing on German roads, coming very close to steeling. It is always considered a deliberate act of severe disrespect. You can ask for right of way, but it must be granted to you by a gesture or words, it is never ever taken. I can imagine that the two had more than a few words over this issue. MisterBee1966 (talk) 07:14, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Sources not used for citations
I took out a number of sources not used for citations with this edit. For discussions on some of these works, please see:
 * Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Coordinators/Archive_44
 * Unreliable sources

Please let me know of any concerns. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:41, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Translations of foreign awards
Please see the discussion here:


 * Good_article_reassessment/Hyacinth_Graf_Strachwitz/1.
 * Good_article_reassessment/Hyacinth_Graf_Strachwitz/1.

There is no need to include the foreign translation when the English lang term is predominantly used in English lang literature. Moreover, the articles on the awards are provided, so that the interested readers can click on them to get more info, including the translation. K.e.coffman (talk) 17:16, 16 July 2016 (UTC)


 * per WP:BRD, please advise. K.e.coffman (talk) 19:21, 17 July 2016 (UTC)


 * I will restore my edit per BRD since there was no response from the reverting editor. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:01, 20 July 2016 (UTC)
 * There is no consensus on this, that is quite blatant. It is a dead-heat with three editors (including me) clearly advocating their inclusion (of German words/terms). Dapi89 (talk) 09:22, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

What is the encyclopedic purpose of including these translations? K.e.coffman (talk) 02:32, 26 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Per BRD, please advise. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:25, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

Return fire
It appears not to be true, as the article claims, that Schnaufer's fighter was only once damaged by a bomber's return fire. Dr Alfred Price, in Battle Over the Reich (Ian Allan, 1973, Appendix F: Recollections of some German Night-Fighter Pilots, p.204), relating Schnaufer's interview with RAF interrogators, notes: 'Schaufer recalled two occasions when a bomber's fire had surprised him; on both occasions the fire had been accurate (perhaps aimed using Village Inn), and he did not attempt to press an attack. On two other occasions his fighter suffered serious damage from return fire, and on many others he landed to find that his aircraft had been holed.'

It's curious that the article, which apparently sets out to glorify Schnaufer, fails to mention the prominent fact that, on the RAF's 'big chop night', the Nuremberg raid of 30-31 March 1944, when 79 bombers were shot down by night fighters (about 10% of 786 dispatched), he failed to gain a single victory. As Martin Middlebrook records in The Nuremberg Raid (Allen Lane 1973, rev edn 1980, pbk Cassell 2000, p.257), 'More than forty excited crews came down at Hanau, woke up the cooks and ordered a huge meal to celebrate the obvious success of their efforts... Also present at Hanau was the leading ace at that time, Hauptmann Schnauffer [sic]. The crews in his Gruppe, from St Trond, had got in among the bombers and scored many victories. Schnauffer had attempted an even earlier interception by flying out to the coast but he had missed the stream and, although he doubled back, he never caught up with the battle. At Hanau, he had to face pilots who had been more successful. "How many aircraft can we congratulate the Hauptmann on shooting down?" Schnaufer ruefully had to admit that he had failed to score.'

In fact it is unlikely that more than fifty German night fighters, out of the 200 scrambled, ever did engage the bomber stream that night. Only a quarter to a third of the scrambled force ever made interceptions, and the average German night-fighter pilot scored one kill a year if he was lucky. The few 'Experten' or aces did nearly all the work. About half the RAF losses to night fighters that night were claimed by just fifteen German 'Experten'. Of those fifty interceptors actually engaged in battle, the RAF bombers shot down at least nine (the war diary for one German fighter corps is missing, so it may well have been more). That would be a proportional loss to the fighters of about 18%. It was normal, and not exceptional, for the RAF bombers to out-kill the German fighters as a proportion of the force engaged. On the Peenemunde raid of 17-18 August 1943, only some 30-35 German fighters ever made interceptions, in bright moonlight favouring the defence as at Nuremberg, and they shot down 40 of the 596 bombers, a loss to the RAF of 6.7%. But the bombers in return shot down six of the intercepting fighters, a loss to the Luftwaffe of 17-20%. There's a reason why the RAF never had to stop bombing Germany, there's a reason why Goebbels at least twice referred in his diary to the 'air superiority' enjoyed by RAF night bombers, and there's a reason why it's wrong for Wikipedia to glorify someone like Schnaufer, who was merely a capable and lucky pilot, as if he were an Aryan superman.

The British night-fighter pilot John Cunningham's 20 victories represent a far higher efficiency against the available targets than Schnaufer's 121, bearing in mind the vastly lower sortie rate of German bombers over Britain and the far shorter time that those bombers had to spend in hostile airspace. But you won't find Cunningham's Wiki bio to be quite so... gloating. Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:50, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

Schrage Musik
The photo that purports to show Schrage Musik... does not show Schrage Musik. Those are just a couple of defensive machine guns. Schrage Musik was a substantial installation of twin 20mm drum-fed cannon, positioned mid-cockpit, poking up through the roof and firing just ahead of the vertical. The pilot had to sight it with a special sight on the canopy frame above his head. He obviously could not control the guns pictured in the article's photo. Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:42, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

'The Spook of St Trond'
There is no record of British bomber crews calling Schnaufer by this nickname. They'd simply never heard of him. If Sefton Delmer's black-propaganda radio team called him that on the air, they were making it up, and it was done to make Schnaufer feel exposed and 'looked at' (as in, 'We'll be having a word or two with you when we've won the war, sunshine'). The cited source appears unreliable, since he also claims Schnaufer was brought to Britain for interrogation, a thing that did not happen. The RAF intelligence interviews with high-scoring German night-fighter pilots of NJG 4, who were interviewed as a group, took place in Germany, as far as I'm aware. Nor did they focus on the use of benzedrine, as the article suggests. The interviewers were more interested in the effectiveness of German airborne radar and British jamming measures, the use of Schrage Musik and other attack methods, and the effectiveness of British bombers' evasion tactics. (Price, Battle Over the Reich, Appendix F, pp.203-4.) The Germans weren't terribly good witnesses, claiming that 'During the last seven months of the war NJG 4 had lost about fifty fighters in action. Of these, five had fallen to the return fire from the bombers, thirty to Mosquito attack, and fifteen had fallen to unknown causes.' The 'Mosquitos' were mostly Lancasters, and the 'unknown causes' were mostly Lancasters as well, though of course the Nachtjagd had a high accident rate due to poor night-flying training (since the Luftwaffe's elite multi-engine night-flying instructors were mostly killed by the Dutch flak while flying Ju52 transports in the disastrous airborne invasion of Holland in 1940). In only one month, January of 1944, at the height of the Battle of Berlin, did British Lancaster losses exceed production, and then only by five units. Normally, Lancaster losses were only half the production rate. Whereas for Schnaufer's mount, the Bf110 night fighter, monthly losses exceeded production as often as not. That is why Bomber Command kept getting stronger and the Nachtjagd kept getting weaker. Khamba Tendal (talk) 19:15, 21 November 2022 (UTC)