P-61 Black Widow

Taken from 'Ghost Soldiers - The Forgotten Epic Story of WWII's Most Dramatic Mission'

"As the Rangers of C Company crept ever closer to the gates of Cabanatuan, Captain Prince's fear of being detected immeasurably deepened. Then, from the northwest, a godsend. They heard a low and indistinct rumble that seemed to emanate from deep within the ground, but in a few seconds it clarified into a more familiar sound - the clean, metallic hum of prop engines. A fighter was hurtling across the sky toward them at low altitude, coming from the direction of Lingayen Gulf.

Soon the aircraft was on top of them - a strange-looking plane, black as anthracite. It had a capped snout, a swollen abdomen set with cannons, and sweeping black tails - TWO of them. There was a hooked needle stuck in its nose that looked vaguely like a stinger. Stair-stepping back from the cockpit was a confusing array of nacelles and bulbous Lucite housings. On the side of the nose was painted a zaftig nude, in the style of Vargas, with the hand-sketched moniker 'hard to get'.



This menacing, insectile-looking thing was the answer to their prayers. The Sixth Army had provided a distraction. They had come through with the most impressive new fighter in the U.S. Air Force: the P-61 Black Widow.

Aside from its wicked appearance, what was most remarkable about the Black Widow was what it harbored inside its domed fiberglass probiscis: The P-61, newly sprung from the factories of Northrop, was the first American plane to be equipped with radar - in this case, a large, cumbersome internal dish contraption known as the Radiation Laboratory SCR-720. The Air Force chose to paint the aluminum-alloy skin a matte black because the plane was expressly designed to be a night fighter, employing radar to chase down targets from dusk to dawn."