"P-61 cutaway" Topic

Nice cutaway of the P-61 Black Widow

I had a model kit of this plane. It was really cool.

Never did get how it was a "fighter" though, it seemed pretty un-maneuverable, and from what i can tell it was just an airborne radar and gun turret?

P-61's performed well in both theaters of World War II and one was credited with the last kill of the conflict. well it could see in the dark. It also had over sized powered control surfaces and a 350 MPH speed. 4 20mm guns and 4 50's.

I'd hate to be flying a Japanese bomber against those Black Widows… When a B25 can get kills with the dorsal twin .50 turret, quad 20s and quad .50s would not leave much at all!

I wish they would have been put into service earlier. Would have been interesting to see how many kills they could rack up. Japanese and German. Robert

One of the more interesting things I've read about the P-61 was that it didn't use ailerons for maneuvers – there were spoilers above and below the wings.

This gave the aircraft an extremely quick rolling rate, and Eric Brown rated it as the most capable aircraft, for ACM, of it's size. Commader Brown felt that it would have been very capable in combat against aircraft much smaller than itself.

Very rare color P-61 night fighter footage shot at the end of World War II. This is an original documentary I put together from unedited, silent archival film. See the 422nd NFS operating out of Florennes, Belgium, where you'll get an up close look at P-61 "No Nothin II." Then you'll move on to the Pacific and the island of Saipan, where you'll see legendary 548th NFS P-61 "Bat Outta Hells." One the highlights of this program is P-61 gun camera film showing a night attack with bombs, rockets and 20mm cannon"

youtu.be/vDUHjD0MLqY