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The FReeper Foxhole Reviews USAAF Night Fighters at War ~ Part 1 of 3 - Jan. 16, 2004
http://www.usaaf.net/ww2/night/index.htm ^
| Stephen L. McFarland
Posted on 01/16/2004 4:07:06 AM PST by snippy_about_it
![](http://images4.fotki.com/v48/photos/1/133612/492565/prayerfortroops-vi.jpg)
Lord,
Keep our Troops forever in Your care
Give them victory over the enemy...
Grant them a safe and swift return...
Bless those who mourn the lost. .
FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time.
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U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues
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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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Conquering the Night - Part One
![](http://images2.fotki.com/v19/photos/1/133612/600351/banner3-vi.gif) Nightfighters at War
"Cut short the night; use some of it for the days 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 days 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 nights 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.
Airmen Claim the Night Skies
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 enemys 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 nights 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 publics 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.
Conquering the Night through Research
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 Services 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 pilots 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 Links 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.
![](http://images2.fotki.com/v20/photos/1/133612/600351/jimmydoolittle-vi.jpg) 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 pilots 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 enemys 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.
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TOPICS: VetsCoR
KEYWORDS: armyairforces; freeperfoxhole; nightfighters; samsdayoff; usaaf; veterans
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To: Professional Engineer
It is an interesting read. He was the ultimate insider. Because of his connections in government and science, and his money, he was perfectly situated to facilitate the massive science effort the government funded in WWII. He was a complicated person with some not-so-endearing traits, which may also explain why his prominent role in the war effort is not well known today.
81
posted on
01/16/2004 12:15:22 PM PST
by
colorado tanker
("There are but two parties now, Traitors and Patriots")
To: SAMWolf
Why are they making us wait so long for it?
82
posted on
01/16/2004 12:24:29 PM PST
by
Hillarys Gate Cult
(Proud member of the right wing extremist Neanderthals.)
To: Johnny Gage
Amen
83
posted on
01/16/2004 12:31:21 PM PST
by
Professional Engineer
(17Dec03~A privately financed, built and owned Spacecraft broke the sound barrier for the first time.)
To: colorado tanker
Hi ct. There was a whole lot on radar in this guys write up but I would have had to make it a six part series to get it all in. The link has it all though.
84
posted on
01/16/2004 12:34:33 PM PST
by
snippy_about_it
(Fall in --> The FReeper Foxhole. America's History. America's Soul.)
To: Johnny Gage
Thanks Johnny.
85
posted on
01/16/2004 12:35:23 PM PST
by
snippy_about_it
(Fall in --> The FReeper Foxhole. America's History. America's Soul.)
To: snippy_about_it
Hi Snippy! Yeah, until I read this book I didn't realize there were so many different kinds of radar and so many different technological issues. Sure gave us an edge over the Axis.
86
posted on
01/16/2004 12:50:33 PM PST
by
colorado tanker
("There are but two parties now, Traitors and Patriots")
To: colorado tanker
Thanks CT. Interesting story. It seems that private enterprise has always come through when it's needed. Now it seems someone always has their hand out for a government grant.
87
posted on
01/16/2004 12:52:17 PM PST
by
SAMWolf
(I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
To: Johnny Gage
Thanks Johnny. What made you pic the P-61? ;-)
![](http://www.maxpages.com/files/jetwash/P-61%20Black%20Widow.jpg)
88
posted on
01/16/2004 12:56:12 PM PST
by
SAMWolf
(I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
To: Professional Engineer
I had the Mongram P-61.
89
posted on
01/16/2004 12:56:55 PM PST
by
SAMWolf
(I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
Comment #90 Removed by Moderator
To: U S Army EOD
It looks mean that's for sure.
91
posted on
01/16/2004 12:57:39 PM PST
by
SAMWolf
(I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
To: Johnny Gage
Thanks Johnny, another one reurns home.
92
posted on
01/16/2004 12:58:28 PM PST
by
SAMWolf
(I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
To: SAMWolf
That's prolly the one. I don't recall if it was 1/32 or 1/48.
93
posted on
01/16/2004 12:58:40 PM PST
by
Professional Engineer
(17Dec03~A privately financed, built and owned Spacecraft broke the sound barrier for the first time.)
To: Hillarys Gate Cult
It's supposed to be the summer blockbuster.
94
posted on
01/16/2004 1:00:09 PM PST
by
SAMWolf
(I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
To: Matthew Paul
Afternoon Matt. I grew up in Chicago, the best thing I can say about it is that's it's a good place to be from.
America is beautiful
NO arguements from me there. :-)
95
posted on
01/16/2004 1:03:04 PM PST
by
SAMWolf
(I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
To: Professional Engineer
I only built the Monogram had a 1/32nd scale planes. They had the best kits back then IMHO.
96
posted on
01/16/2004 1:04:32 PM PST
by
SAMWolf
(I am Homer of Borg. Prepare to be... ooooohh, doughnuts!)
To: Matthew Paul
Thanks Matt. I like car race games. I wish I could really race!
97
posted on
01/16/2004 1:06:05 PM PST
by
snippy_about_it
(Fall in --> The FReeper Foxhole. America's History. America's Soul.)
Comment #98 Removed by Moderator
To: Matthew Paul
Make sure and lock your virtual doors and roll up your virtual windows so you want get robbed or hijacked.
99
posted on
01/16/2004 1:43:28 PM PST
by
U S Army EOD
(Volunteer for EOD and you will never have to worry about getting wounded.)
To: snippy_about_it
Good one, snippy. The USAF has owned the night ever since.
100
posted on
01/16/2004 2:03:57 PM PST
by
CholeraJoe
(I'm a Veteran. I live in Montana. I own assault weapons. I vote. Any questions?)
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