The bomber stream was a

saturation attack A saturation attack or swarm attack is a military tactic in which the attacking side hopes to gain an advantage by swarming and overwhelming the defending side's technological, physical and mental ability to respond effectively. During the Cold W ...

tactic Tactic(s) or Tactical may refer to: * Tactic (method), a conceptual action implemented as one or more specific tasks ** Military tactics, the disposition and maneuver of units on a particular sea or battlefield ** Chess tactics ** Political tacti ...

developed by the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...

(RAF) Bomber Command to overwhelm the nighttime German aerial defences of the Kammhuber Line during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. The Kammhuber Line consisted of three layers of zones of about long (north–south) and wide (east–west). In each zone there were two German

night fighter A night fighter (later known as all-weather fighter or all-weather interceptor post-Second World War) is a largely historical term for a fighter aircraft, fighter or interceptor aircraft adapted or designed for effective use at night, during pe ...

aircraft receiving ground-directed guidance from the ''Himmelbett'' controller within their zone. While the Himmelbett control center could only handle two fighters, this was adequate for dealing with the RAF Bomber Command tactic of sending its night bombers individually, with each bomber plotting its own route to the target, to avoid flak concentrations. At the urging of British scientific military strategist R. V. Jones, Bomber Command reorganized their attacks into streams carefully positioned to fly right down the middle of a cell. The introduction of the GEE navigation system allowed the RAF bombers to fly a long, tight, formation in the dark—a 'stream of bombers' flying a common route at the same speed to and from the target, each aircraft being allotted a

height Height is measure of vertical distance, either vertical extent (how "tall" something or someone is) or vertical position (how "high" a point is). For an example of vertical extent, "This basketball player is 7 foot 1 inches in height." For an e ...

band and a time slot in a bomber stream to minimize the risk of formation

collision In physics, a collision is any event in which two or more bodies exert forces on each other in a relatively short time. Although the most common use of the word ''collision'' refers to incidents in which two or more objects collide with great for ...

. In one of the first applications of statistical operational research, the RAF estimated the number of bombers likely to be lost to enemy night fighters and flak, and how many would be lost through collisions. Minimizing the former demanded a densely packed stream, as the controllers of a night fighter flying a defensive 'box' could only direct a maximum of six potential interceptions per hour, and the flak gunners could not concentrate on all the available targets at once. A typical bomber stream of 600 to 700 aircraft was on average broad, and deep.''The World at War'' Episode 12 – "Whirlwind" – 1973 The bomber stream allowed a bombing raid to be completed in a shorter time, further overwhelming the defensive tactics of the German forces. The earlier RAF tactic of sending bombers on individual routes meant that it could take four hours before all its planes would pass over their target; the bomber stream reduced this window to 90 minutes. The first use of the bomber stream was the first 1,000 bomber raid against Cologne on the night of 30–31 May 1942. The tactic proved successful and was used until the last days of the war, when centrally-organised German air defences had ceased to exist.

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