Air attack on the fortress of Koepenick

The Air Attack on the Fortress of Koepenick was an incident in the air war over Germany during World War II. It took place in October 1943 and was a large scale example of mistaken identity.

Background
On 14 October 1943 the US 8th Air Force staged an attack on the ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt in central Germany, a key industry which was seen as a bottleneck in the German industrial manufacturing system. The raid had led to a vigorous response by German air defences and heavy losses amongst the bombers, but the city and the industry had been severely hit.

The attack on Fortress Koepenick
On 20 October, just a week later, the 8th Air Force sent 119 bombers to attack the town of Düren, near the border city of Aachen. The Americans reached their target and bombed it, after which they turned for home. At this point German observers reported a large formation of aircraft heading south. Price states this was based on the noise of aircraft, though they were not seen; Galland attributes this to chaff dropped by the bombers drifting on the wind and registering on German radar. Whichever the cause, the effect was that, when it was reported to Hermann Göring, the air force leader, the attack on Düren was seen as a ruse and another devastating attack on central Germany was assumed to be underway. The Reichmarschall took personal command of the air defence and ordered all available fighter aircraft to intercept. As these fighters became airborne, and were duly heard from the ground or reported by radar, the impression of a huge force of attackers heading south became more pronounced. As they were on the same course as the force that attacked Schweinfurt less than a week before, Göring divined this was the target, vectoring his fighters to intercept there. As the phantom bombers passed over Schweinfurt without any ill effect to the city Göring reconsidered, deciding they were heading for Leuna, the synthetic fuel refinery near Leipzig and another sensitive target. When again there was no bombing Göring suspected an attack on the Skoda armament works at Pilsen and diverted the fighters there. By this time the fighters were running out of fuel, and, as the defence system of the time dictated, started to land at the nearest available airfield. As they did so, the attacking force began to melt away Galland also states the sky was clear over Pilsen, and ground observers could see there were no bombers, only German fighters. With this the whole fantasm evaporated.

Aftermath
With the disappearance of the threat, Göring freely admitted the laugh was on him, that he had sent the Luftwaffe on a mammoth tour of their own air space, and sent an ironic telegram to all concerned congratulating them and himself on “the successful defence of the fortress of Koepenick”, a reference to a notorious hoax of the early 20th century. Both Price and Galland point out the difficulties of differentiating between friend and foe in a confused aerial situation; both observed that neither side managed to resolve the problem during the air war.