Night fighter
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A night fighter is a fighter aircraft adapted for use at night, or in other times of bad visibility. They are sometimes referred to as night/all weather fighters for this reason. Night fighters came into their own during World War II, and have subsequently declined in importance as a separate class due to a general increase in night-fighting capability amongst all fighter classes.
This role typically required the use of radar, aerodrome beacons as well as direction finders to find the airbase at night, and various communications equipment and lighting inside the cockpit. This much gear normally required a twin-engine aircraft to lift it, notably because this left the nose area of the plane clear for the radar installation, where the engine would be in a single-engine design. The U.S. Navy, however, fitted radar sets to the wings of its single-engined F6F Hellcat fighters by the close of the war, operating them successfully in the Pacific.
Many night fighters were converted from earlier heavy fighter designs, and some from bombers; examples include the Bristol Beaufighter and the de Havilland Mosquito. Some, however, are designed from the base up as a nightfighter, with superior speed and agility, as in the P-61 Black Widow.
During World War II the Luftwaffe also experimented with single-engine planes in this role, which they referred to as Wilde Sau (wild boar). In this case the fighters, typically Focke-Wulf Fw 190s, were equipped only with a direction finder and landing lights. In order to find their targets other aircraft, guided from the ground, would drop strings of flares in front of the bombers, or simply wait for them to fly over the burning cities below.
Night fighters existed as a separate class into the 1960s. As aircraft grew in capability, radar-equipped interceptors could take on the role of dedicated night fighters, and the class went into decline. Examples of these latter-day interceptor/night-fighters include the Avro Arrow, Convair F-106 Delta Dart, and the English Electric Lightning.
Continued aircraft development has blurred this line even further, to a point where night fighters have been supplanted by conventional designs. The only designs remaining in service within this niche are the US Navy's F-14 Tomcat and the Russian MiG-31. In both cases they need to support operations at very long ranges – out of missile range for the Americans, and across Siberia for the Russians – which cannot be filled by smaller aircraft.
World War II
Germany
- Dornier Do 217J, 217N
- Focke-Wulf Ta 154
- Heinkel He 219
- Junkers Ju 88C
- Messerschmitt Bf 110F-4, 110G-4
- Messerschmitt Me 262
United Kingdom
Pre-radar: AI radar:- Bristol Blenheim
- Bristol Beaufighter (1940)
- de Havilland Mosquito (1942)
United States
See also
- To Fly and Wage War—In The Dark
- day fighter
- heavy fighter
- interceptor aircraft
Further reading
- C.F. Rawnsley and Robert Wright, Night Fighter. Ballantine Books, 1957.
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