Conquering The Night — Army Air Forces Night Fighters At War [Illustrated Edition] by Stephen L. McFarland

Author:Stephen L. McFarland [McFarland, Stephen L.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2015-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

Above: Northrop P-61 Black Widows marked with invasion stripes soar over France.

Below: Maj. Leon Lewis in his P-61 Wabash Cannon- Ball IV, somewhere in France, September 1944.

D-Day and Beyond

The first US night fighter squadron sent to England to prepare for the cross-channel invasion was the 422d, which arrived in February 1944. The 422d was also the first to be equipped with the Northrop P-61 Black Widow. Led by Oris B. Johnson, the squadron grew out of the cadre of the 348th Training Squadron at Orlando. At twenty-three, Johnson was “the old man”—the oldest officer in the squadron at the time—and its first commanding officer. Given the priority of the European theater throughout the war, the 422d operated with the best available radars: the SCR–720 airborne radar, microwave ground control radar, and the first ground control approach radar in Europe. Eventually, the 423d NFS joined the 422d in England, only to be converted to night reconnaissance (and redesignated the 155th Night Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron). Training first with the 425th NFS, and later the 415th NFS, which came up through southern France, the 422d night fighters flew against subsonic German V–1 cruise missiles in flight, the 422d claiming five and the 425th four of the German “buzz bombs.”

Over the Normandy beaches and hedgerows, these US squadrons, joined by six RAF night fighter squadrons, provided night protection for over the Normandy beaches and hedgerows, these US squadrons, joined by six RAF night fighter squadrons, provided night protection for Allied armies in their drive into France. Moving to the continent in July, the 422d NFS was assigned to the IX Tactical Air Command (First Army), the 425th NFS to the XIX Tactical Air Command (Third Army), and the 415th NFS to the Seventh Army. Because the 425th helped protect the flank of Patton’s Third Army on its end run blitz across France, it flew primarily intruder missions. In September and October, for example, it claimed no aerial victories. The 422d, meanwhile, racked up an enviable record, starting its record of night kills on August 7, 1944, when Pilot 1st Lt. Raymond A. Anderson and R/O 2d Lt. John U. Morris, Jr., collected the first night credit of the European Theater of Operations. Proving how deadly the Black Widow could be, from October to December 1944 the 422d claimed to have shot down twenty-four of the fifty-one bogeys it identified as enemy aircraft. In December alone, primarily during the Battle of the Bulge, Johnson’s crews claimed sixteen kills on thirty-eight visual contacts. The 425th joined in with eight aerial victories.

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