On April 20, 1945, the Northrop P-61B-1 Black Widow (serial number 42-39405) named “The Spook” was returning to Central Field located on Iwo Jima following a night patrol. Aboard was pilot Lieutenant Melvin Bode, radar operator Lieutenant Avery J. Miller, and gunner Staff Sergeant John Hope. “The Spook” was part of the 548th. Night Fighter Squadron (NFS), 7th. Air Force and tasked with performing combat air patrols and nocturnal escort operations for the Boeing B-29 Superfortresses of the 20th. Air Force flying out of both Saipan and Iwo Jima. Heavy fog obscured the landing field and so Lt. Bode decided to make a blind landing with the assistance of the airfield's AN/MPN-1 unit. The AN/MPN-1 (Mobile, Pulsed, Navigation aid) consisted of a 2 ½-ton 6x6 truck that mounted two PE-127 power units, an air conditioning unit, and spare parts for the radar trailer it towed. The trailer contained a radar set that provided range and azimuth data out to 30 miles and up to 4,000 feet in ceiling. In addition to the radar, the trailer housed HF (High Frequency) and VHF (Very High Frequency) communication to aircraft via a SCR-274 transmitter and BC-342 receiver. The operator, who had a booth inside the trailer, provided guidance to the pilot based on the radar readings. Unfortunately, “The Spook” was caught by a strong cross wind during the landing, causing the plane to drift. It clipped a parked P-61B (“Anonymous III”) before belly landing off the main runway. No injuries were sustained but it was the last flight for “The Spook” as the damage was too extensive to repair and so the aircraft was written off. The last entry known for “The Spook” was on June 6, 1949 where the aircraft was checked into Clark Field in the Philippines for reclamation (ergo, scrapping).
The 548th. NFS was a fairly short lived unit. Activated on April 10, 1944, the unit deployed to Central Field, Iwo Jima in late January 1945 following months of training, patrol missions around Hawaii, and having to wait for their P-61 aircraft to be modified for operations in the Pacific Theater. Arriving at Central Field by the close of February 1945, the unit commenced long range patrols over the ocean. On several occasions, aircraft of the 548th. NFS encountered Imperial Japanese Air Force (IJA) Mitsubishi G4M bombers that more often than not, upon seeing the P-61s, jettisoned their payload and retreated. While this did not make for many kill scores for the unit, they were a deterrent which protected the airfields from attack. On June 13, 1945, the unit relocated to Ie Shima island near Okinawa and conducted nocturnal patrols over the Okinawa area and towards the end of the war, shifted to nocturnal intruder raids and conducting weather observations for B-29 bombers raiding the Japanese home islands. When the war ended, the ground personnel were reassigned to the Army of Occupation in September 1945 while the unit's aircraft were put into storage in Okinawa and Clark Field in the Philippines. All told, the 548th. NFS downed five enemy aircraft: three Mitsubishi G4M bombers, one Nakajima Ki-44 fighter, and one Nakajima A6M2-N floatplane. On December 19, 1945, the unit was inactivated. The unit was revived again as the 548th. Special Operations Training Squadron from October 15, 1969 to July 31, 1973 where the unit training pilots and crews of the Republic of Vietnam Air Force in how to fly and operate the Douglas C-47 Skytrooper, AC-47 Spooky gunship, and to a lesser extent, the EC-47 Phyllis Ann electronic warfare aircraft. For a third time, the unit was revived, this time as the 548th. Combat Training Squadron on July 1, 1994 and it remains active to this day out of Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana with a detachment based at Fort Polk, Louisiana.
As for the P-61, it was the only “built from the ground up” night fighter deployed by the Allies during World War Two. It was powered by two Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp 18-cylinder, air-cooled, radial piston engines that drove 4-bladed Curtiss Electric constant-speed propellers. These engines gave the P-61 a top speed of 366mph at 20,000 feet. Armament consisted of four 20mm AN/M2 Hispano cannons in a ventral tray with 200 rounds per gun and four .50 caliber M2 Browning machine-guns in a remotely operated, 360 degree traverse upper turret with each gun provided with 560 rounds of ammunition. For ground attack, the P-61 could carry up to four bombs up to 1,600 pounds each or six 5” HVAR (High Velocity Aircraft Rocket) unguided rockets. Avionics included the SCR-720 search radar and the SCR-695 tail warning radar. A total of 706 examples of the P-61 were built and the type was retired from service in 1954. Only four aircraft are known to exist today and includes a P-61C-1 (serial number 43-8353) on display at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. It is painted in the livery of “Moonlight Serenade”, a P-61B-1 that was operated by the 550th. NFS.
Finally, as a side, the coloration of “The Spook” was all black with red propeller spinners and cowl flaps with the propeller tips in yellow. The underside of the nose had a smiling pair of lips in red with white teeth, a white eye with a black dot and green iris with a gray bottom eyelid on either side of the nose and on the front, a white outline of a stylized human nose. The name of the aircraft consisted of “The” in white cursive with “Spook” in white with both of the “o” in the name being angry eyes with gray irises inside each “o”.
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