In Pacific Theater nightfighter action, the P-61, as near as I can determine from official USAAF sources shot down 58 enemy aircraft in night missions/intercepts. In the China-Burma-India Theater we can find an additional 5 shoot downs. You have to be careful when you examine the record as a more often seen than not practice was to give credit to all crew members. Thus, in the majority of cases, if there were two crewmen, that's two credits and if there were three crewmen, then that's three credits. If you aren't aware of this common USAAF nightfighter crediting convention you might easily be led to believe that there were 10 enemy planes shot down in night intercepts in the CBI Theater and 122 enemy planes shot down in night intercepts in the Pacific, but no, not so. You have to go back through and make an examination as to who was crewing which airplane during what encounter and that produces the numbers cited above. And how can you be sure? Well, ask yourself, "how many privates, corporals and sergeants do you think were P-61 pilots?" and it suddenly becomes very clear.
On the naval side the big scorer was the F6F, with nightfighter squadrons, detachments thereof, or nightfighter divisions assigned to regular day squadrons, posting a total of 163 victories, according to official USN sources. The next highest naval scorer was the F4U with 16 followed by the PV(N) with 11, the PB4Y with 8, the TBF with 2, and the FM and PBY with one each. When I look back over the record, it appears to me that some of theses shoot downs actually occurred in morning and evening daylight conditions and so cannot be true nightfighter victories. My count, crosschecking with the trusty sunrise/sunset calculator, comes out to 136 for the F6F.
Regards,
Rich