Operation “Corona”
was a British Royal Air Force (RAF) initiative to confuse German night fighters
during RAF bomber raids on German cities during World War II. Native German
speakers impersonated German Air Defence officers. They initiated
communications via radio with German night fighter pilots and countermanded
previously given orders, thus reducing the efficiency of German air defense.
Operation Corona was, according to accounts, both successful and highly amusing
for the British monitors.
The operation was first launched during the attack on the
German industrial center of Kassel on the night of 22 October to 23 October
1943 in which 90% of the city was burned, leaving 10,000 dead and 150,000
homeless.
Operation “Corona” was made possible by the Jewish
diaspora when many people, mostly Jews, fled Nazi-Germany to England. These
people were very valuable to RAF Bomber Command, since between them they
natively spoke any German accent and hence were capable of countermanding the
orders given from the senior officers in the Luftwaffe Air Defense
headquarters, and so could redirect the night fighters to other targets, give
them orders to land immediately at an airbase, head off for another patrol
area, or follow a course which led them completely astray.
For example, on one occasion, over Ludwigshaven on 17
November 1943, a broadcast in German ordering, “All butterflies go home”,
caused many of the German fighters to land. Only one British bomber was lost
that night.
The contest of real controller versus fake and the
resulting confusion got so bad that the Luftwaffe switched to using women for
controllers, hoping the change in voices would help. The British counter-moved
by then using German-speaking Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) personnel and
continued harassing the Luftwaffe.
From "WAR IN THE ETHER", a typescript issued by
Signals Branch, Bomber Command in October 1945.
"CORONA came
into use on the night of 22/23 Oct 43, and immediately drew blood. The target
on this occasion was Kassel, and before the end of the evening, there was chaos
in the enemy night defense organization. A furious German ground controller was
warning his aircraft to “beware of another voice” and “not to be led astray by
the enemy”, culminating in an instruction, which must at least have succeeded
in raising a laugh from his harassed pilots: “In the name of General Schnmidt,
I order all aircraft to Kassel”. The Gen. Schmidt on whose authority he spoke
was the Commander of the German Air Force on the Western Front.
The enemy was
seriously disturbed by the impact of CORONA, which went from strength to
strength, especially when the “Y” service produced a ghost voice who not only spoke
idiomatic German but could also mimic perfectly the voices of his opposite
numbers. It was this ghost who, on one occasion after a particularly violent
outburst by the German controller, remarked into his microphone – “The
Englishman is now swearing”. The German’s immediate and somewhat fatuous
rejoinder was “It is not the Englishman who is swearing, it is me”.
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