Information AboutNight Fighter |
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This role typically required the use of Radar , Aerodrome Beacon s as well as Direction Finder s to find the Airbase at night, and various Communications equipment and lighting inside the Cockpit . This much gear normally required a twin-engine aircraft to lift it, notably because this left the nose area of the plane clear for the radar installation, where the engine would be in a single-engine design. The U.S. Navy , however, fitted radar sets to the wings of its single-engined F6F Hellcat fighters by the close of the war, operating them successfully in the Pacific . Many night fighters were converted from earlier Heavy Fighter designs, and some from Bomber s; examples include the Bristol Beaufighter and the De Havilland Mosquito . Some, however, are designed from the base up as a nightfighter, with superior speed and agility, as in the P-61 Black Widow . During World War II the Luftwaffe also experimented with single-engine planes in this role, which they referred to as ''Wilde Sau'' ( Wild Boar ). In this case the fighters, typically Focke-Wulf Fw 190 s, were equipped only with a direction finder and landing lights. In order to find their targets other aircraft, guided from the ground, would drop strings of Flare s in front of the bombers, or simply wait for them to fly over the burning cities below. Night fighters existed as a separate class into the 1960s . As aircraft grew in capability, radar-equipped Interceptors could take on the role of dedicated night fighters, and the class went into decline. Examples of these latter-day interceptor/night-fighters include the Avro Arrow , Convair F-106 ''Delta Dart'' , and the English Electric Lightning . Continued aircraft development has blurred this line even further, to a point where night fighters have been supplanted by conventional designs. The only designs remaining in service within this niche are the US Navy 's F-14 Tomcat and the Russian MiG-31 . In both cases they need to support operations at very long ranges – out of Missile range for the Americans, and across Siberia for the Russians – which cannot be filled by smaller aircraft. WORLD WAR II Germany
United Kingdom Pre-radar: AI radar:
United States SEE ALSO FURTHER READING
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