P-61 Black Widow: Best World War II fighter
Focus translated the article by American journalist Peter Suchu about a combat aircraft, which significantly influenced the result of World War II. Although only 706 Northrop P-61 Black Widow, which came into service only in the last year of World War II, the aircraft was notable for using it effectively as a night fighter of the US Air Force Squadron at the European, Pacific, Chinese-Birman Indian and Mediterranean theaters of hostilities.
After the war, he was renamed the F-51 and until 1948 he served in the US Air Force as a distant, all-herd, day/night interceptor in the Air Defense Command, and then in the Fifth Air Army of the US Air Force. In 1954, it was finally removed from weapons, but despite its short service, it remains a notable aircraft. From the very beginning, the Northrop P-61 Black Widow project has been intended for night conditions.
A large powerful two -engine aircraft became the first American combat aircraft, designated as a night fighter/all -season interceptor, adapted for use at night and in poor visibility. Although this concept appeared during the First World War, when some planes were modified for work at night, only after night bombing of European cities, military planners saw the need to create a special aircraft.
A solid metal dual-motor fighter with a dual arrow wing was similar to a profile on a German scout Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf FW 189 and, of course, the American Lockheed P-38, but unlike these P-61 aircraft in the evening. It was the first plane designed for flights with Radar. However, 172 thousand people-hours were spent on the promotion and development of search radar SCR-720, located in the front nasal of the fighter.
The first serial models were painted according to the rules of the US Army in olive/neutral gray, but after testing the paint "Jet Black", applied to bare metal rather than on top of the available paint, it turned out that the aircraft could be practically invisible to land floors enemy. Since February 1944, all the "black widows" began to turn black, and those in the order were mostly repainted.
Although the aircraft appeared at the end of the war, the P-61 Black Widow was the most powerful opponent in the dark: it could closely approach Japanese aircraft and knock them down in the sky. He made his first beating P-61 on July 6, 1944, destroying the Japanese Mitsubishi G4M Betty Mitsubishi Bomber in the central Pacific. Unlike other fighters of that era, the P-61 was a large, powerful plane, whose crew consisted of three people, including a pilot, shooter and radist.
The P-61 was well armed for the role of the night fighter, including the four HISPANO M2. 20 guns, installed at the bottom of the fuselage, and four machine guns M2 Browning . 50. During its short service, the aircraft shot down 127 opponents, including 18 winged V-1 missiles.
One of the P-61, Lady in the Dark, piloted by Captain Lee Kendall, became one of the most photographed "Black Widows" at the Pacific Theater, as well as a plane, which has the last two confusion of air purposes in World War II. One of them happened on the last night of the war, and the other - almost 24 hours after the official end of the fighting.
Kendall was able to knock down two Japanese aircraft, which probably planned the attacks of Kamikadze: the pilot persecuted his opponents without shooting them, and forced both to break! Today, only four P-61 Black Widow aircraft are preserved, three of which are in the United States, and the fourth is at the Beijing Aviation and Aviation Museum at Beijing University in Beijing, China.
According to the available data, this aircraft was captured by China's communist forces at the end of World War II. The rest are in the Middle Atlantic Aviation Museum in Reding, Pennsylvania; At the Center of Stephen F. Udwar-Khazi of the National Aviation and Space Museum in Shanilla, Virginia, and at the National Museum of the US Air Force at the Wright Patterson in Deiton, Ohio. Peter Suchyu is a journalist from Michigan.