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Posted on 01/16/2004 4:07:06 AM PST by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
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 Nightfighters at War "Cut short the night; use some of it for the day’s business." -Seneca The United States never wanted for recruits in what was, from start to finish, an all-volunteer night fighting force. For combatants, a constant in warfare through the ages has been the sanctuary of night, a refuge from the terror of the day’s armed struggle. On the other hand, darkness has offered protection for operations made too dangerous by daylight. Combat has also extended into the twilight as day has seemed to provide too little time for the destruction demanded in modern mass warfare. In World War II the United States Army Air Forces (AAF) flew nighttime missions to counter enemy activities under cover of darkness. Allied air forces had established air superiority over the battlefield and behind their own lines, and so Axis air forces had to exploit the night’s protection for their attacks on Allied installations. AAF night fighters sought to deny the enemy use of the night for these attacks. Also, by 1944 Allied daylight air superiority made Axis forces maneuver and resupply at night, by air, land, and sea. U.S. night fighters sought to disrupt these activities as an extension of daylight interdiction and harassment efforts. The AAF would seek to deny the enemy the night, while capitalizing on the night in support of daylight operations. The first true night fighter aircraft were British, struggling to hunt down German Zeppelins lurking in the night skies over England in 1915. These slow behemoths were sitting ducks in daylight, so they were used primarily after dark. For six months British airmen struggled to find the Zeppelins and shoot them down. This effort exposed several problems: once notified, how to ascend and reach the enemy’s altitude before he flew out of range; how to find the enemy in a darkened sky; and, finally, how to knock him down. Technology soon provided answers, allowing R. A. J. Warneford to use aerial bombs to claim the first Zeppelin in June 1915. British night defenses exacted an increasing toll, claiming 79 of the 123 airships Germany built for the war.  The enemy then switched from Zeppelins to a bomber airplane offensive against England. At first striking by day, German Gothas and Giants soon sought the night’s protection from British defenses. What airmen lost in bombing accuracy by flying at night they more than made up in safety against enemy defenses. The night assault caught the public’s imagination, but caused no serious damage. British planes performed well against German bombers protected by machine guns and the dark; in fact, the night itself proved the greater danger. In nineteen night raids, the defense, guided by radio intercepts, ground observers, searchlights, and blind luck, claimed twenty-four invading bombers, while thirty-six others were destroyed in unrelated crashes.  Together, German bombers and airships claimed about 1,400 dead on the ground and nearly 3,400 injured, enough to threaten the British sense of pride and breach the insular protection previously afforded by the English Channel. Though the German aerial offensive hardly threatened the British war effort, it did force a diversion of eight hundred British fighters from the Western Front, where they were sorely needed. Though primitive, this first “Battle of Britain” set the stage for the aerial night fighting in the next war.  Because of inadequate funding and official disinterest, night fighting became the responsibility of regular U.S. tactical squadrons during the interwar years. These units had enough problems preparing for day war, much less confronting the obstacles of darkness. Yet, despite minimal budgets, pioneering airmen still strove to conquer the night by developing blind-flying techniques, primarily at the Army Air Service’s Engineering Division at McCook Field, and later at the Army Air Corps’ Materiel Division at Wright Field, both near Dayton, Ohio. The research of 1st Lts. Muir S. Fairchild and Clayton Bissell in the 1920s showed that night operations required a specifically designed aircraft with great speed and maneuverability and an unobstructed view for the pilot. Test flights revealed that pilots became disoriented when they lost sight of the ground and the horizon. Human senses contradicted aircraft instruments, while vertigo magnified a pilot’s confusion. The biggest problems were how to land and navigate at night. U.S. airmen tested electric landing lights and flares without success, though the tests did reveal the need for illuminated instruments and flame dampers for engine exhausts. In 1928 Edwin Link’s ground trainer made practicing for night missions safer and less expensive, but did not solve the basic problem of flying into inky blackness. Intrepid airmen such as 1st Lts. James Doolittle and Albert Hegenberger attacked the problem of blind takeoffs and landings in what the New York Times called the “greatest single step forward in [aerial] safety.” Newly invented illuminated instruments-a specially designed artificial horizon, directional gyroscope, turn indicator, radio beacon, and barometric altimeter allowed Doolittle and Hegenberger to make blind flights from 1929 to 1932 that opened the night skies to military operations.  Jimmy Doolittle At the end of this critical period, 1st Lt. Carl Crane published the first U.S. treatise on night flying, Blind Flying in Theory and Practice (1932). Soon the homing beacon indicator and radio compass made possible night navigation, and flying the air mail across the country during the 1930s gave Army airmen practical experience in flying at night. Late in the decade, U.S. bomber squadrons were practicing occasional night missions, including mock interceptions in which fighter (pursuit) aircraft were guided by searchlights on the ground. Obvious to aviators was the seemingly insurmountable obstacle of finding another airplane in the vast emptiness of the night sky. If the opposing crew took basic precautions to “black-out” their aircraft, the optimal range of an intercepting pilot’s vision declined to 750 feet or less, though on especially clear nights with strong moonlight three-mile visibility was possible.  Night fighters needed assistance from the ground to bring them within visual range of their targets. Until 1938 this help came from searchlight crews lucky enough to illuminate an intruding aircraft and from acoustical locators using conical horns to focus incoming sound. There were also vain attempts to detect radio waves emitted by the spark plugs of aircraft engines or infrared radiation from engine exhaust gases. Tests at Fort MacArthur, California, in 1937 and in Hawaii in 1940 proved the futility of such efforts. All this development seemed to make no difference. A new generation of bombers such as the Martin B-10 could fly higher, faster, and farther than any fighter in the world, convincing a whole generation of Americans to agree with erstwhile British prime minister Stanley Baldwin that “the bomber will always get through,” whether day or night. On its test flight the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress set a world record, flying 2,270 nonstop miles at 252 miles per hour. Many airmen believed fighter aircraft could never intercept and shoot down such bombers in broad daylight, let alone at night. Since bombers could strike by day without peril, there would be no need for night missions and no need for a night-fighting capability. Only when the Second World War revealed these new bombers to be vulnerable to attack during the day and unable to “always get through” did the need for night fighters again become clear.  In the United States, air doctrine reinforced a disregard for night operations. At the Air Corps Tactical School, first at Langley Field, Virginia, and then at Maxwell Field, Alabama, the faculty developed daylight high altitude precision strategic bombing and advocated this concept as the offensive doctrine of the U.S. Army Air Corps. Large fleets of fast, well armed bombers would attack key chokepoints in an enemy’s industrial fabric by day-the most rapid, efficient, and least bloody means for defeating the enemies of the United States. The revolution in bomber technology represented by the four-engine B-17 made axiomatic the belief that no defenses could stop such an attack. Brig. Gen. Oscar Westover expressed the conviction of most U.S. airmen when he declared that “no known agency can frustrate the accomplishment of a bombardment mission.” Norden and Sperry optical bombsights could locate precise industrial targets from four or five miles up under the proper conditions, but only during the day and in the absence of high winds and excessive cloud cover. This strategic bombing doctrine and its advocates overwhelmed any airmen still concerned with defense and fighter operations, and encouraged the building of an air force committed to daylight bombing operations. Thus, the Materiel Division redirected its research in blind and night flying to the problems of aiming bombs through overcast. Defensive strategies reflected this emphasis on daylight precision bombing, and more defensive- minded airmen began to focus on the problems of daylight interception. Even the conflicts of the interwar period, including the Spanish Civil War, gave U.S. airmen no persuasive reasons to alter their thinking.      |
Alfred Loomis was trained as a lawyer but made a fortune on Wall Street. He cashed out before the 1929 crash and was a very wealthy man during the Depression. Loomis was a Republican who opposed Roosevelt's domestic policies.
Loomis' first love was science. In his semi-retirement he set up a lab in his mansion in Tuxedo Park and taught himself some of the most advanced science of his day.
(Tuxedo Park was a gated community where some of New York's wealthiest lived in the 30's and 40's. Yes, that's where "Tuxedo" comes from, due to the posh set's affinity for black dinner jackets with satin lapels.)
Loomis bankrolled promising scientists and projects and invited many to stay in his mansion and conduct their experiments in his lab. He became close friends with many, including the head of MIT and the Berkeley physicist Lawrence, of Manhattan Project fame.
Loomis was also connected to the government - Henry Stimson, Secretary of War, was his uncle.
As the Battle of Britain raged, he helped mobilize the scientific community for war. The scientists were alarmed by the Nazi onslaught, which had produced many emigre's who told not only of the horrors of the Nazi regime, but also how advanced German science was. A series of committees run by a deputy to Roosevelt were organized to tackle the tough technological questions. So, American science was on a war footing more than a year before Pearl Harbor.
Loomis headed the Radiation Committee and founded the "Rad Lab" at MIT. Lawrence helped recruit some of best scientists in America to work on radar. In 1940, the British were desperate for more accurate radar that could be airplane mounted. Churchill sent a secret delegation that did a dump of all Britain's secret radar technology. With that jump start, the Rad Lab produced the submarine hunter technology that reversed the course of the Battle of the Atlantic and spelled the end for the U-Boat wolfpacks. They also produced the night fighter radar technology referenced in this thread. By the end of the war dozens of applications had been delivered.
The scientists were able to overcome the services' notorious resistence to new technology due to the access Loomis and his colleagues had to Stimson and Roosevelt.
Alarmed by the tales of a German nuclear program told by scientists fleeing Europe, Lawrence and a group of Loomis' friends approached Albert Einstein to write his famous letter to Roosevelt that lead to the Manhattan Project.
Recognizing the threat, Loomis gave unfettered access to Lawrence, who recruited Oppenheimer and the core group, to steal as many of the Rad Lab scientists as he needed.
Loomis refused interviews and burned his papers; thus his role in winning the war has never before been told. A descendant of one of his science friends found some correspondence with Loomis, which sparked her curiosity that lead to her research.
So, an anti-Roosevelt Republican tycoon and amateur scientist was the key to producing the radars that defeated the U-Boat and helped win WWII.
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Air Power |
The heavily-armed Black Widow was this country's first aircraft specifically designed as a night-fighter. In the nose, it carried radar equipment which enabled its crew of two or three to locate enemy aircraft in total darkness and fly into proper position to attack.
The XP-61 was flight-tested in 1942 and delivery of production aircraft began in late 1943. The P-61 flew its first operational intercept mission as a night fighter in Europe on July 3, 1944, and later was also used as a night intruder over enemy territory. In the Pacific, a Black Widow claimed its first "kill" on the night of July 6, 1944. As P-61s became available, they replaced interim Douglas P-70s in all USAAF night fighter squadrons. During WW II, Northrop built approximately 700 P-61s; 41 of these were -Cs manufactured in the summer of 1945 offering greater speed and capable of operating at higher altitude. Northrop fabricated 36 more Black Widows in 1946 as F-15A unarmed photo-reconnaissance aircraft.
Specifications:
Manufacturer: Northrop
Primary Role: Night Fighter
Crew: Two or Three
Engines: Two Pratt & Whitney R-2800s with 2,100 hp. each
Cost: $170,000
Dimensions:
Wing Span: 66 ft.
Length: 49 ft. 7 in.
Height: 14 ft. 8 in.
Weight: 35,855 lbs. loaded
Performance :
Maximum speed: 425 mph
Cruising speed: 275 mph
Range: 1,200 miles
Service Ceiling: 46,200 ft.
Armaments:
Electric Dorsal turret with four .50 machine guns, remotely controlled from front or rear sight station and fired by pilot.
Four .50-cal. machine guns in dorsalturret
Four 20mm cannons in belly fixed, forward firing
6,400 lbs. of bombs
Serviceman Missing from Vietnam War Identified A serviceman missing in action from the Vietnam War has been identified and returned to his family for burial.
He is Army Capt. Clinton A. Musil Sr. of Minneapolis, Minn.
On May 31, 1971, Musil was aboard an OV-1A Mohawk fixed wing aircraft flying a daylight reconnaissance mission over Savannakhet Province in Laos. Though enemy antiaircraft artillery was known to be in the area, none of the crewmembers in other aircraft noted any attack on Musil’s aircraft. Several people did see a large fireball when the aircraft crashed. Attempts to contact him by radio were unsuccessful, and search and rescue efforts were precluded by enemy forces in the area. During two investigations in 1993 and 1995, U.S. and Lao specialists learned of a potential crash site from local residents. The purported site was located on a steep slope, and appeared to correlate within 200 meters with the loss location in U.S. wartime records. The site had been scavenged, but the team found small pieces of aircraft wreckage and possible human remains. Following the recommendations of the investigators, other U.S. and Lao teams excavated the site twice in 2001 and once in 2002. During these three excavations, they recovered aircraft wreckage, personal effects, aircrew-related items and human remains.
The recovered remains were identified in 2003 by the Central Identification Laboatory through skeletal analysis and mitochondrial DNA. The remains of a second crew member have yet to be identified. The Defense Department’s POW/Missing Personnel Office establishes policy and directs the effort to account for the more than 88,000 missing in action from all conflicts. Of these, 1,871 are from the Vietnam War.
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