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The P-61 radar operator occupied a separate compartment in the rear of the fuselage accessed from a hatch below. In August 1940, sixteen months before the United States entered the war, the U.S. Air Officer in London, Lieutenant General Delos C. Emmons, was briefed on British research in radar ("Radio Detection And Ranging" as it was then known), which had been underway since 1935, and had ...
The squadron received the P-61 Black Widow to replace the P-38s/P-70s in June 1944. [5] The squadron and its detachments moved several times throughout New Guinea providing cover for U.S. Army assault landings , shipping reconnaissance while protecting the various new air bases.
425th Squadron P-61 [note 3] The squadron was established on 23 November 1943, as the 425th Night Fighter Squadron at Orlando AAB, Florida and activated on 1 December. It initially trained with the Douglas P-70 Havoc night fighter at Orlando, although it also trained with the Northrop YP-61 Black Widow.
The Northrop P-61 Black Widow's radar and particular flight characteristics enabled it to find and penetrate the most turbulent regions of a storm, and return crew and instruments intact for detailed study.
The 6th received its first Northrop P-61 Black Widows in early June 1944. The aircraft were quickly assembled and underwent flight testing as the pilots transitioned from the squadron's aging P-70s. The first operational P-61 mission occurred on 25 June.
550th Night Fighter Squadron P-61 Black Widow carrying 310 gallon external wing tanks. Assigned to Thirteenth Air Force, arriving at Hollandia Airfield in the Netherlands East Indies part of New Guinea in December 1944.
The 422d was the first of the third group of dedicated night fighter squadrons trained by the Army Air Forces It initially trained with the Douglas P-70 Havoc night fighter at Orlando, although later that fall the squadron began to train with service test models of the Northrop P-61 Black Widow.
The only purpose-built night fighter design deployed during the war, the American Northrop P-61 Black Widow was introduced first in Europe and then saw action in the Pacific, but it was given such a low priority that the British had ample supplies of their own designs by the time it was ready for production. The first USAAF unit using the P-61 ...