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Life on the Russian Front was not to his liking and in October 1941, Zorner requested a transfer to fly in the Luftwaffe night fighter force, which was being built up at this time. His wide experience of flying various types of twin engined aircraft and the fact that he had a blind flying certificate made him ideal night fighter pilot material. He was accepted and posted to a day fighter school in October 1941, followed by a night fighter pilots course at Manching near Ingolstadt from January 1942 to May 1942. His first operational unit was II./NJG 2 at Gilzen-Rijen flying the Ju 88, followed by a transfer to 1./NJG 3 at Wittmunden in East Friesland in December 1942 where he flew both Bf 110 and Do 217 aircraft. He was promoted to Staffelkapitan of the 2nd Staffel and shot down his first bomber in January 1943. Later in the year, was made Staffelkapitan of 3./NJG3 at Vechta. By the end of November 1943 he had shot down 13 bombers and, at this time, received a brand new Bf110 equipped with the new SN-2 radar which was immune to the "Window" dropped by the bombers to disrupt the radars of the nightfighters. He shot down three more bombers in the first three weeks of December 1943, and on the night of the 23/24th December, he flew to intercept another heavy RAF raid on Berlin. In his diary he states "With my radar operator, Heinz Wilke, I took off from Luneberg at 01:39 on the 24th December against a raid coming in from the south west. At first we thought that the raid was to be directed against Frankfurt as had happened four days previously but the bombers flew east. At 02:46 we sighted a Lancaster flying at a height of 5,500 metres and attacked from behind at 02:50 firing into the right wing of the bomber from 100 metres distance. I stood off and then flew alongside the Lancaster on the right hand side. The right wing of the Lancaster was on fire but this did not appear too serious. The Lancaster pilot held his course and then dived and manoeuvred his aircraft in an attempt to put out the fire but he did not succeed. After a few minutes I saw parachutes opening below the Lancaster as some of the crew baled out. Soon after, the bomber went into a steep dive and plunged burning through the clouds. It crashed at 03.03 East of Giessen. We had now lost contact with the bomber stream and it appeared to me that they were heading to an Easterly target in the area of Berlin. If this was correct, we would be short of fuel so I decided to land at an airfield located far enough West of Berlin so we could refuel and take off to make contact with the bombers again as they returned across Germany. I landed at Gutersloh at 04:30 to refuel and took off again at 05:10. Twenty five minutes later we had an SN-2 contact at 6,300 metres altitude which turned out to be another Lancaster. We attacked at 05:39 firing into the right wing of bomber which caught fire, went into a tight spiral dive and disappeared into the clouds at 2000 metres altitude. At 05:43 there was an explosion on the ground followed by a fire. This happened about 50km north west of Minden. We continued to search in a south westerly direction and at 05:34 made a new contact flying at an altitude of 6100 metres which turned out to be another Lancaster. We attacked at 05:56 and made another attack minutes later. The bomber caught fire and, after a few seconds, exploded in mid air and crashed to the ground between Cleppenburg and Meppe at 06:02. These were my 17th, 18th and 19th victories." | ||
