Which was the best night fighter?

I dont know about the carrots argument, but i do know that maintaining your night vision is absolutley essential when at sea at night. it is a chargeable ofense to bring white light onto a bridge rigged for night vision. only IR lighting and hooded at that. It takes your eyes many minutes to adjust back to the inky night sky. IMakes me wonder what the interior lighting in the bombers and the NFs were like. Was the instrument pamnel brightly illuminated? if so it would have been a mistake, and downgraded the viusal accuity of the aircrew

parsifal said:

I dont know about the carrots argument, but i do know that maintaining your night vision is absolutley essential when at sea at night. it is a chargeable ofense to bring white light onto a bridge rigged for night vision. only IR lighting and hooded at that. It takes your eyes many minutes to adjust back to the inky night sky. IMakes me wonder what the interior lighting in the bombers and the NFs were like. Was the instrument pamnel brightly illuminated? if so it would have been a mistake, and downgraded the viusal accuity of the aircrew

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Tell me about it. We allways used night vision goggles when flying night missions. Only red lights were allowed to be used onboard during that time (even when we flew unaided night missions without goggles).

Anyhow, I through a reporters camera out the side of my aircraft one night. I told him no flash when he took pictures. He nodded and smiled. A few minutes into the flight he took a picture with flash. Me and the rest of the crew are yelling at him and he is just nodding and apologizing. A few minutes later he took another. Whilie he as grinning I took his camera and through it out the window.

Hello Parsifal,

the Navy rules about night-time illumination systems have always been as tight as the Air Force's, for obvious reasons. Those hooded red/IR lamps didn't disturb low light mesopic/scototpic adaptation.

Bombers and fighters designed for night duty during WWII and later were fitted with classic analogue dials with black background and white numbers and 'hands'. Maximum contrast, maximum readability. The light to illuminate those dials was always red red or, rarely, amber. Never green or blue, the hues that most disturb night adapatation. Exactly the same that functionalists like Porsche, Mercedes or Audi do today.

A short paper I presented a few years ago at a world ophthalmology congress in Detroit can be usefulm, if you would take the trouble to read it:

The Imperfect Speedometer

To the Crewchef: well made! That photographer was clearly an idiot....

Ciao

Collector

would'nt the flash of the guns make the pilots lose night vision. some german night fighters used 30mm cannons. 30mm= big flash.

I think that would have been a particular problem on the Me 262, though perhaps the armament was arranged differenty on the intended nightfighter version. (that would also make mounting the radar simpler I immagine)

Does anyone have info on how the nightfighter Me 262's (the B-2a iirc) armament was to be arranged?

DerAdlerIstGelandet said:

A few minutes into the flight he took a picture with flash. Me and the rest of the crew are yelling at him and he is just nodding and apologizing. A few minutes later he took another. Whilie he as grinning I took his camera and through it out the window.

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I love it! Good job dude! He should've held on to that thing better. Stuff gets mighty slippery inside a helicopter at night. Especially cameras with a white flash.

On another note about the thread, does anyone have the numbers for night fighters on the following:

1. Intercepter missions flown by type (general type)?
2. Intruder missions flown by type (again, general type such as all Me-110)?
3. Number of aircraft shot down by each type?

The question is actually pretty simple to do the ground work on. If the data for the aircraft that shot down the most opposing aircraft is available, that would be a good step. Add in the number of sortes and you have a good line on what the best night fighter would be, at least for arguement's sake.

BIG BIRD said:

would'nt the flash of the guns make the pilots lose night vision. some german night fighters used 30mm cannons. 30mm= big flash.

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A lot of night fighters had "flash hiders" on the muzzles of their cannons/machine guns, particularly when the guns were in front of the pilot (nose of the a/c, etc.); I don't know how effective they were, but if you look at pictures of night fighters (particularly the P-38M), you can see the flash hiders on the muzzles of the cannon/machine guns.

I would think that the bf 110 would have the most sorties and kills becouse I think I read some were that the bf 110 made up 60% of the german night fighter force. I would think the mosquito would have the most intruder missions because they were sort of used as night escorts.

Probably close to the truth on that one Big Bird. Figure it has to be a German Aircraft with the largest number of kills simply because it was working in a target rich environment.

Same to be said for the Mosquito.

Wornder if those stats are available.

Can enbody find the kill ratio of the hienkal he 219 uhu. They werent around in large enough unbers to shoot down 10,000 aircraft but I do think they had a big kill ratio.

syscom3 said:

I used to think the P61 was the best purpose built night fighter, but it was kind of slow (by 1945 standards).

I would say the Mosquito's were better, simply cause they were faster.

Ive seen some figures for a two man P38 night fighter that was quite fast and had a radar intercept system that was quite effective.

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Until he died 4 or 5 years ago I was privileged to be an assistant to Group Captain John "Catseyes" Cunningham, who was, arguably, the finest night fighter pilot of WW2 and who pioneered the use of airborne radar to intercept Luftwaffe aircraft throughout the whole of WW2. Although he was too polite to actually laugh at the P-61, he held a very poor opinion of it as a nightfighter and told of many dummy interceptions he made on them without their crews ever being aware of his presence. This does, I think, reflect somewhat on the quality of US night fighter crews as much as the aircraft itself, but, I ask you, how could an aircraft as unwieldy and as huge as a P-61 ever compare favourably with a Mosquito or an UHU ? It just couldn't and it didn't !

SoD Stitch said:

A lot of night fighters had "flash hiders" on the muzzles of their cannons/machine guns, particularly when the guns were in front of the pilot (nose of the a/c, etc.); I don't know how effective they were, but if you look at pictures of night fighters (particularly the P-38M), you can see the flash hiders on the muzzles of the cannon/machine guns.

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The Mosquito, being a tail dragger, had it's guns well tucked away under the nose and out of pilots eyeline.

a couple of things the P-38M never flew in action during Ww 2. The P-61 was better at the pffensive night ground attack role. the Uhu was even too big, the Mossie could outdo them both. Considering the fact that the 61 was really all the US nf crews had and that their detection of LW a/c was not good at night I would say they did a fair job

Hi Marlin,

>how could an aircraft as unwieldy and as huge as a P-61 ever compare favourably with a Mosquito or an UHU ?

Hm, it might not have been the best performance-wise, but it probably was the most manoeuvrable of the trio, and had the best single-engine handling characteristics. The Heinkel He 219 was medium ground in both respects, and the Mosquito had the best performance, but the poorest single-engine characteristics.

I'm relying on the P-61 manual (posted by Micdrow in the Technical Section), Eric Brown's description of the He 219 (in Wings of the Luftwaffe), and the data in the Mosquito Pilot's Notes (probably also found in the Technical Section here) for this comparison. I think I have posted more detail on this somehwere on this forum ... hm, not exactly what I thought I'd find, but here it is anyway:

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Single-engine handling.

The Pilot's Notes for the Mosquito indicate that loaded to 17000 lbs, the single-engine safety speed was 178 mph (though it will climb on one engine at 155 - 161 mph if clean). Going around in a Mosquito on one engine is not possible with flaps set to more than 15°.

The F7F-3N for comparison had a stall speed "without fuel" of 86 mph - just to give a point of reference for the desired landing speed, which would be somewhat above the stall speed. (In carrier operations, probably by less than the 30% commonly used for land-based aircraft.)

The Me 110 according to a brief British manual for the type had a normal approach speed of 160 km/h (99 mph), so if the convention of approach speed being 30% higher than stall speed is followed, its stall speed probably was roughly 76 mph. Single-engined, it couldn't use full flaps and full power at the same time, but said brief manual points out that 25 degrees flaps were recommended, and though it's not explicitely stated, this invites the conclusion that it could use a good amount of power on the remaining engine in that configuration ... perhaps enough for a go-around.

The question of single-engined handling was important because as a rule of thumb, a twin-engined aircraft suffers an engine failure twice as frequently as a single-engined one. If you can't land a type on a carrier reliably on a single engine, it means you're going to lose aircraft that are twice as expensive as single-engined ones at twice the rate ... just a rough approximation, but it shows the motivation to choose a single-engined design over a twin.
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Regards,

Henning (HoHun)

marlin said:

Until he died 4 or 5 years ago I was privileged to be an assistant to Group Captain John "Catseyes" Cunningham

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Hi Marlin:

Is there any book you'd recommend on G/C Cunningham? IIRC, he never published an autobiography.

Erich said:

the Uhu was even too big

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if Uhu it's too big also the P-61 it's too big

marlin said:

The Mosquito, being a tail dragger, had it's guns well tucked away under the nose and out of pilots eyeline.

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I believe the flash-hider refrence was in response to my question the Me 262's muzzel blast at night.

Erich said:

a couple of things the P-38M never flew in action during Ww 2. The P-61 was better at the pffensive night ground attack role. the Uhu was even too big, the Mossie could outdo them both. Considering the fact that the 61 was really all the US nf crews had and that their detection of LW a/c was not good at night I would say they did a fair job

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Wasn't the Ju 88 bigger than the He 219?

thickness wise yes as it could house 4 crewmen. the Uhu was skinny in the fuselage, with cramped out quarters the wingspan was quite long/wide depending how you look at it

I still go back that the P-61 was used for a good deal of the time as a ground attack unit which it was quite capable

I say it's the Ju-88G and He-219 V-1.