The Black Widow
Such a cool looking airplane
One of my faves
Built the model when I was a kid

The narrator is indulging in a bit of poetic license, near the beginning of that video, in how he tells the story of airborne radar. (The Allies' engineering achievement of airborne radar lay in successfully miniaturizing it into something that could fit inside an airplane and be effective.)

The DH Mosquito was also quite successful as a night fighter, enough that British counterintelligence felt the need to fabricate a cover story about RAF pilots eating a lot of carrots and that the superdose of vitamin-A in their diet gave them extraordinary night vision. This was probably intended just as much for friendly morale as it was to distract the Nazis, who were presumably analyzing their own worsening night mission losses.

That carrots cover story, and how it persists in "common knowledge," is a source of great amusement to me. That's not the first nor only time British propaganda crossed over into popular misconception: Napoleon's height is another one



It's also one of my favorites. The F7F Tigercat too, many similarities!


@Doug- I enjoyed the video. Thanks for sharing!

Interim Night Fighter was the Douglas P-70, an A-20 Havoc with the Night Radar system installed.
I don't believe it worked so good but was rushed into service.
https://www.worldwarphotos.info/gallery ... -2-3/p-70/

My father's younger brother was a gunner in the P-61 in the Pacific. He was young enough that by the time he enlisted, trained and got into combat, they were pretty much just doing mop up. I heard him speak of anything related to combat only one time, and it brought a twinkle to his eye. What a great example he was of "our boys" giving their all. He just passed away two summers ago, 2023 at 101 years old.

Thank you for sharing a little about your Uncle!
Sorry for your loss…

I have been watching the restoration of this P61 for years. Remains my favorite plane

https://maam.org/the-widows-web/

My Father was the project manager in the radiation lab at MIT working on the radar controlled machine gun for the p61 From what he told me it never saw action because the war ended just as they were putting it into service. I do have an owners manual for the P61 and some 16 mm film of the radar images when they were flying over New York City I believe

Also he said he was a civilian always being !A defferred because he was working on this project he said some of the crew were so gung ho the enlisted and came back in uniform ,working for him at half the salary they made before.

He had stories of how they would practice shooting at a metal target pulled behind a dc3. They had to have a lock on the gun to make sure it would not shoot at the dc3 by mistake.

He also talked about how they would let him and the Bell labs engineer sit in the right seat of the dc3 and fly.

Fun and exciting times for a kid just out of college working on his masters in electrical engineering engineering at MIT during the war.

This one has almost been restored to flying condition and they are continuing to make great progress. It looked great at this year's D Day weekend event.

https://vintageaviationnews.com/restora ... pdate.html

I grew up living with my grandparents. My grandfather was in the first squadron to receive P-70s. He was a Lighting Lancer in the S. Pacific. Still have the flight jacket with hand painted insignia. The radar was not great and they never could track down a bogey. His checkout after moving from the P-39 was 6 - 8 hours in the cockpit for switchology and then go fly. That's it. They moved a bunch of multi-engine guys into the P-39 at the same time who really struggled. The single engine fighter guys had a much easier time going to the P-70.

He also flew the P-61, which was just OK. Night fighting was boring to him. Not enough action. My grandfather was much happier flying fighters (P-39, 40, 38) in combat. He also contributed a little to the book Pineapple Airforce. The pic of the P-70 early in that book was him flying.