Cut short the night; use some of it for the day’s business.
Seneca
In Roy Grinnell’s painting, 1st Lt. Herman E. Ernst, assigned to the 422nd Night Fighter Squadron, is depicted getting his second kill in a “triple play” that made him an ace in the pre-dawn hours of 2 March 1945. Teamed with his radar observer, 1st Lt. Edward H. Kopsel, Ernst lifted his big P-61 Black Widow “Tennessee Ridge Runner” off the runway of Advance Landing Ground A-78 in Belgium at 0348 hours and contacted “Nuthouse” ground control. “Nuthouse,” manned by Skylighters operating an SCR-268 radar, directed Ernst to within 400 feet of an Me-110. Opening fire, he scored several hits on the German night fighter’s fuselage and the ‘110 snapped violently to the right.’ Almost immediately Ernst and Kopsel were vectored to a second target by the Skylighters, which proved to be a Ju-87 Stuka dive-bomber. Closing to 500 feet, Ernst opened up with the Widow’s four belly-mouthed 20-mm cannon and the Stuka went straight down into the ground. Three minutes later, “Nuthouse” called out a third target. Kopsel picked it up on his own airborne radar at 2 1/2 miles out and guided Ernst in until he made a visual sighting of another Ju-87, 1,000 feet dead ahead. Ernst opened up for a third time, riddling the Stuka with 20-mm rounds, setting it on fire (depicted by Grinnell).
Fighter-Searchlight Cooperation in the ETO, 1944-45
Coming soon! (But in the meantime enjoy some of the images illustrating the story.)
The pre-eminent Allied night fighter of World War II, the Northrop P–61 Black Widow, shown here in its “stealth” camouflage of shiny black paint, appears decidedly out of its element in the daylight skies over California. Its lethality increased when the Skylighters began using the brand new SCR-270 radar in the Fall of 1944 to vector Widows to airborne targets in darkness. A smaller radar unit mounted in the Widow’s nose – the SCR-720 – facilitated the acquisition of ground targets in missions to interdict enemy attempts to move at night, in addition to serving as the primary airborne interception radar during the war. Official U.S. Army Air Force/Northrop Corporation photograph.
