Heston Crashes and Incidents/Heston Ju88 Kiel Gerat
Hi Ayoyo30. Yes, confess I got it wrong - and tried to post earlier to say so, and to give an update, but due to an internet connection failure, I had been logged out, and the post was lost. Grrrrrr!
So - nowt to do with anti-shipping missiles, although I'll not delete that hypothesis in case there's stuff there still of some interest. In particular, my update now might just give a more rational explanation for the previously mentioned Northrop Black Widow at Heston. I may be wrong but the view expressed elsewhere that it was in order for Fairey's to consider a similar remote gun control system, as a Spearfish development, somehow never quite rang true for me.
With full access now to LEMB, and having also trawled relevant stuff at w2f, here's a distillation of what I eventually found: "Kiel-Gerät" just seems to have been an Air Ministry shorthand for the Kiel-Z night fighter infrared target tracking system. Kiel-Z used FuG.280 (FunkGerät.280) opto-electronic hardware developed by Karl Zeiss, Jena. All other online references found are to either Kiel-Z or FuG.280.
Kiel-Z was originally Me110-trialled in 1941 but was found lacking. After further development, it was undergoing late pre-service trials in March 1945, using three or four Ju88G-6's. The Heston Ju88 was one of those aircraft and had been captured shortly after cessation of hostilities in NW Europe on 4 May 1945, at Grove, Jutland, Denmark. Winkle Brown tells us that German pilots with key technology to protect had defected to there, rather than see their aircraft fall into Soviet hands.
Ultra intercept decrypts report the full details of two aircraft interception trials conducted near Vechta, north of Osnabruch, on 12 and 14 March 1945, respectively, and ADI (Science) in the UK had appended its coment, as follows:
"(1) This information indicates that the FuG280 is the Kiel Apparatus mentioned in ADI Report 251. It is an infra-red detector, picking up the radiation from the engines and exhausts of our bombers. The sensitive element is a lead sulphite cell with a 25 centimetre diameter scanning mirror covering a forward view of 20 degrees total side-to-side and up and down, the indications are presented on a cathode ray tube in unison with the mirror. The maximum range against a bomber is about 5 kilometres.
(2) The latest experiments show that the field of view is rather narrow for covering an evading aircraft, but that the apparatus otherwise is good up to 2 kilometres range. Method of use under trial is to put the Kiel on by SN2 at 1,000 metres range, and to approach from below, so that the target is viewed against the sky, giving a smooth infrared background.
(3) Information indicates that Kiel must be very near service trial stage."
As the Kiel-Z system was a precursor of many of the infrared detection and scanning systems we are now so familiar with, then, apart from its military significance, Air Ministry 32 was one important Ju88 it was a great pity we lost. As the scanning mirror/detector unit would have been nose mounted, it now seems even more possible that the nose section had been very smartly removed post-crash by a salvage team, or even by local ground crew.
Bearing in mind that the post-crash photo shows a nose removed far enough back for the pilot, if not other crew, to have been sure to have perished if that had been due to impact, the following incredible development today makes post-crash nose removal seem even more likely:
A posting has been received today from a newbie to the Yahoo Heston Airport Group, to say that he/she was a (family visiting) baby, asleep in the house when the Ju88 struck, that he/she is fine, other occupants were unhurt, and the (Canadian) pilot, who survived, was also fine, asking if everybody was OK first - before perhaps heading for the call box, as per the local legend. Seriously, that has happened today - now I will never again express surprise at the web's powers to find information!! (I also feel much better now, BTW, about pinching a bit of the Canadian's Perspex.)
Finally, the thought now occurs that, whether or not it was Fairey Aviation, somebody at Heston was probably very interested in the Kiel-Z system and its Ju88 mount. Was that same somebody also responsible for the presence, at about that same time, of the most advanced allied radar night fighter, a Northrop Black Widow?
David