P-61 Black Widow, Night Fighter

[GScholz]

Yes, they flew wilde sau. Only a few two-seaters equipped with radar. Perhaps one staffel worth.

[Karnak]

Just for the sake of argument, what if night fighters WERE added with the intent of having night in the Main Arenas, with the environment corrected to prevent the Gamma cheat?

Hmmm.  I supposed I'd suggest modeling it by having dot dar show up for any aircraft caught in the front cone of the night fighter out to a range of, perhaps, 5 or 10 miles. I don't recall the range of airborne radar off hand.

"That wasn't even the best German night fighter.  It was an overhyped, under performing hunk of junk.  A very neat looking hunk of junk though."


Oh, and what was a better one? You're quoting Mr Brown there, huh?

If I was quoting Capt. Brown it was entirely coincidental.

Bf110G-4, Ju88G and the nightfighter version of the Me262 were all superior to the He219.

There was no overhyping when certain persons in LW administration tried to end its production claiming that the front line units preferred Ju388 instead. The debate ended what facts were presented that all frontline night fighter units absolutely wanted the 219 once they had tried it and the Ju388 was not even in production yet.

I would consider the claims of it doing 420mph when it actually did about 360mph to be overhyping it.

I'm a bit surprised how many Mossies the underpowered piece of junk shot down after all, maybe the Mossie was not very fast. Or is that the issue here? 

-C+

Ah yes, the Mossie claims.  Funny how those claims don't match losses recorded by the British.

[bangsbox]

I say add it. Give it the 110eny or even a small perk price under 10. It would have plenty of use in our MA and is a sweet plane.

[Saxman]

Hmmm.  I supposed I'd suggest modeling it by having dot dar show up for any aircraft caught in the front cone of the night fighter out to a range of, perhaps, 5 or 10 miles. I don't recall the range of airborne radar off hand.

What would you think of actually modeling the aircraft's radar displays, (including having to either jump to the radar operator's position on crewed aircraft like the P-61, or allowing another player to join the aircraft as a radar operator) rather than using Dot Dar? I always saw Dot Dar as representing information being relayed by traffic controllers on the ground, so this would more specifically differentiate airborne radar from ground posts.

And according to Wiki, the range on the SCR-720 radar on the P-61 was 5 miles.

[Karnak]

What would you think of actually modeling the aircraft's radar displays, (including having to either jump to the radar operator's position on crewed aircraft like the P-61, or allowing another player to join the aircraft as a radar operator) rather than using Dot Dar? I always saw Dot Dar as representing information being relayed by traffic controllers on the ground, so this would more specifically differentiate airborne radar from ground posts.

And according to Wiki, the range on the SCR-720 radar on the P-61 was 5 miles.

I wouldn't want to be the programmer.....  

WWII radar displays did not look like a modern display.  It has been years since I read up on them, but I recall that they were difficult to read.  That being the case it seems likely that untrained players would probably find it pretty frustrating.  I do know that it wasn't used for the final attack, just to get you close enough to hopefully pick up the enemy aircraft with your eyes.  You were supposed to ID the aircraft before attacking it.  In Terror in the Starboard Seat Dave McIntosh describes an encounter where he and Sid were on a night intruder operation over occupied Europe when an English accented voice came over the RT and said something like "Waggle your wings or you'll burn.", whereupon Sid vigorously waggled the wings.  A nightfighter Mossie with AI radar had found them in the dark but had not been able to identify them to enough confidence to shoot at them and so tried the radio.  I am guessing that some intruders that failed to return may well have been the victims of another Allied nightfighter.

[No9Squadron]

The obvious answer would be to allow the P-61 act like a mobile radar ring on the map, basically treating them like AWACS. However would this be a good representation of how the radar aboard the Black Widow and other Night Fighters would work? Or would you give the Black Widow and other night fighters an in-cockpit radar scope independent of the clipboard map?

One thought I had was to have icon ranges decreased (say, by half) after a certain time of day, while night fighters like the P-61 would get full icon ranges.

Nightfighter radar wasn't perfect, a handful of p-61s could scan with perfect radar, a huge area and pass this on to single-engined fighters who can eyeball the enemy anyway. The range effectively was in thousands of yards, and that is only when the set wasn't overheating. The radar was used to find individual bombers within a stream, not to locate the actual stream, that was done by ground radar. The range on any radar needs to be fairly tiny.

P-61s did operate in NW Europe at the very end of the war, but it's not the obvious choice of next nightfighter or anti-bomber aircraft.

[Charge]

"Bf110G-4, Ju88G and the nightfighter version of the Me262 were all superior to the He219."

Is that you opinion or researched fact? He219 was developed to replace those earlier planes and it was an improvement over 110 in every way, better than Ju88 in most aspects and better suited for heavy bomber interception than 262. First operational ejection seat was alone a huge improvement as the experienced pilots were scarce in those days. Mossie did not have that but why would it? If the pilots bailed out over Germany they were lost anyway so there was no need for advanced escape systems.

"I would consider the claims of it doing 420mph when it actually did about 360mph to be overhyping it."

Reality was that the engines that it was supposed to have were not available so the actual performance of the production machines fell short of those predicted or those required by the RLM. Also the escalating weight of radar equipment and bigger antennas were not taken into account in the beginning.  That means that even with better engines it would not have been able to reach those figures. In fact, there was a version with a jet engine below the fuselage but while it provided a vast improvement in acceleration it did not provide much better top speed and that is why it was omitted eventually. However, it seems that figures around 360mph were in many many cases enough.

"Ah yes, the Mossie claims.  Funny how those claims don't match losses recorded by the British."

Interesting. The German claims needed to be verified by finding the wreck and it was usually possible if the plane was shot down over Germany or occupied countries. British NF claims in turn could not be verified as the gun cameras did not work too well at night... I guess the "wooden wonder" myth was too precious to be wrecked as it had propaganda value.

***

The implementation of radar could be done so that a plane with a radar is able to "transmit" the location of enemies in its vicinity or in forward cone even if it did not have "a tube" in the cockpit. The search cone was different in all British, US and German airborne radars due to differences in antenna implementations, and some planes also had tail warning radars (or receivers).

Too bad there is no night in the game anymore but if there were night fighters and AI radar it would produce a great scenario or AvA setup!

We actually had a setup in SE arena years ago with Bostons and 110s and with no icons the task of finding the enemy bombers was very very difficult. 5 minute radar lag also gives the bombers room to make very effective defensive maneuvering.

-C+

[Scherf]

Interesting. The German claims needed to be verified by finding the wreck and it was usually possible if the plane was shot down over Germany or occupied countries.

If I may be so bold, I think Karnak is making specific reference to the myth of 219s having shot down 6 Mossies in the 10 days following Streib's first sortie, the one on which he claimed 5 heavies before crash-landing.

[GScholz]

It wasn't just radar. Ze Germans also passively homed in on RAF EM-emissions from their own equipment, such as bombing radars/radar altimeters and, ironically, anti-fighter warning radar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3gkyPIwtuE

[MiloMorai]

The ejection seat in the He219 was just as likely to kill the crew as to save them. The crew never  knew if they would work correctly.

A He219 did do 410-420mph but had its antenna, exhaust shrouds and some guns removed.

[Saxman]

WWII radar displays did not look like a modern display.  It has been years since I read up on them, but I recall that they were difficult to read.  That being the case it seems likely that untrained players would probably find it pretty frustrating.  I do know that it wasn't used for the final attack, just to get you close enough to hopefully pick up the enemy aircraft with your eyes.

Seems like a good way to balance the system, though. And the latter is why the P-61 had that primitive night-vision sight (which should totally be represented).

Nightfighter radar wasn't perfect, a handful of p-61s could scan with perfect radar, a huge area and pass this on to single-engined fighters who can eyeball the enemy anyway. The range effectively was in thousands of yards, and that is only when the set wasn't overheating. The radar was used to find individual bombers within a stream, not to locate the actual stream, that was done by ground radar. The range on any radar needs to be fairly tiny.

Aces Against Japan had a great account of an USMC night fighter pilot (F6F-5(N)) that gives a pretty good sense of USMC night intercept procedures. It seems at least in the PTO during the latter stages of the war night operations were primarily intercepts of solo bombers, rather than large-scale raids.

[Charge]

"The ejection seat in the He219 was just as likely to kill the crew as to save them."

That is not what I have read. They initially had a problem with the compressed air piston sticking to its firing groove but after a test pilot (or jumper) was nearly killed he noticed the cause and after a small change it worked really well. One of the NF aces was killed later on because he did not remember to pull off his throat microphone wire and his larynx was crushed upon ejection.

"And the latter is why the P-61 had that primitive night-vision sight"

Did the P-61 have an infrared search light? If it did the system represents an earlier similar application German night fighters had called "Spanner". After awhile the pilots noticed that they could actually see as well without "Spanner" as with it so they were dumped. Dunno if the American version worked any better.

-C+

[Karnak]

Charge,

It had the engines it was supposed to.  Heinkel cooked their performance claims to better sell it to the RLM either through outright fabrication of data or by testing it without aerials, guns or armor, but the fact is that the RLM couldn't get it close to 400mph despite Heinkel's insistence that it did nearly 420mph.

As to German kill claims being perfectly accurate.

 

[bangsbox]

Frig the radar, just add plane no need for it

[Slash27]

P-61s did operate in NW Europe at the very end of the war, but it's not the obvious choice of next nightfighter or anti-bomber aircraft.

I would not call the summer of '44 the very end of the war.