18. Some German aces only came out at night
The British bombing campaign against Nazi Germany favored night-time wide-area bombing rather than the daylight precision bombing practiced (at first) by the US Army Air Forces. British bombers were less heavily armed than their American counterparts, and Bomber Command believed night raids meant fewer casualties. To counter them, the Luftwaffe developed night fighters, vectored to British bombers detected by ground-based radar via radio. Eventually, airborne radar made the night fighters even more effective. Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer developed night fighting skills which led to him becoming the leading night fighting ace of the war.
Schnaufer claimed 121 victories during the war, nearly all of the British heavy bombers, and nearly all of them shot down in the dark. During 1943 the Germans developed several tactics for following the British bomber streams (the RAF eschewed formation flying). One included placing a fighter within the bomber stream, from which it radioed direction, heading, altitude, and other information to waiting fighters. Schnaufer was just 22 years of age when he achieved his 50th victory in 1944. On February 21, 1945, Schnaufer became an ace-in-one-day for the second time, destroying 9 Lancaster heavy bombers, two in the early morning, and seven that same evening. He survived the war, restoring and running a family winery in West Germany until his death in 1950.