And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Northrop P-61 Black Widow, our first dedicated night fighter fielded mid-WWII. My Dad led the team that designed the air-to-air search and track radar fielded by the P-61, the Westinghouse SCR-720A. He had already been overseas in England setting up the coastal defense land-based radar stations to detect Hitler's incoming V-1 pulsejet buzz bombs and VonBraun's V-2 rockets launched from Peenemünde. They brought him and his team back to the States down to Orlando AAF Developmental Field (it's now Orlando Executive Airport - ORL). The Black Widow was a hot rod for its day - he told me stories of radar ops test flights in and out of central FL clouds jumping stray fighters who had no idea what the black twin-engined twin-boomed aircraft with four forward-firing 20 mm autocannon in the lower fuselage and four .50 M2 Browning machine guns in a dorsal gun turret up top was. One of his great test pilot buds was Col. Norman Appold, who later went on to lead a section of B-24 Liberators on the ill-fated mass low-altitude strike on Hitler's oil refinery complex at Ploesti, Romania. That mission on 01 Aug. 1943 turned into an absolute cluster, with 53 aircraft and 500 airmen being lost. Five Congressional Medals of Honor and 56 Distinguished Service Crosses were paid for in blood, guts, and honor that day. My Dad was hero for his brilliant work on the P-61's radar and I didn't even know it until fairly late in life....
P-61 Black Widow night fighter
ReplyDeleteThat looks like Arizona.
ReplyDeleteOr Kansas.
DeleteOr Nebraska.
DeleteLooks like there are groves of something on trees down there.
ReplyDeleteNorthrop was based in Hawthorn, CA. So probably orange groves.
ReplyDeleteHandsome aircraft, must a been pretty fast for its time. Like those big arse radial engines.
ReplyDeleteAI is amazing
ReplyDeleteChris (CIII)
If you do an image search, the earliest example of this photo is from 2015, so not AI.
DeleteNorthrop P-61 Black Widow, our first dedicated night fighter fielded mid-WWII. My Dad led the team that designed the air-to-air search and track radar fielded by the P-61, the Westinghouse SCR-720A. He had already been overseas in England setting up the coastal defense land-based radar stations to detect Hitler's incoming V-1 pulsejet buzz bombs and VonBraun's V-2 rockets launched from Peenemünde. They brought him and his team back to the States down to Orlando AAF Developmental Field (it's now Orlando Executive Airport - ORL). The Black Widow was a hot rod for its day - he told me stories of radar ops test flights in and out of central FL clouds jumping stray fighters who had no idea what the black twin-engined twin-boomed aircraft with four forward-firing 20 mm autocannon in the lower fuselage and four .50 M2 Browning machine guns in a dorsal gun turret up top was. One of his great test pilot buds was Col. Norman Appold, who later went on to lead a section of B-24 Liberators on the ill-fated mass low-altitude strike on Hitler's oil refinery complex at Ploesti, Romania. That mission on 01 Aug. 1943 turned into an absolute cluster, with 53 aircraft and 500 airmen being lost. Five Congressional Medals of Honor and 56 Distinguished Service Crosses were paid for in blood, guts, and honor that day. My Dad was hero for his brilliant work on the P-61's radar and I didn't even know it until fairly late in life....
ReplyDelete