Northrop P-61C Black Widow project

MAAM is building their P-61 back to flight status.. But at a million dollars for an engine, they could use our help..

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dharris said:
Here is an interesting video of a P-61 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDUHjD0MLqY
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Great video! Nice to see some rare colour shots of the P-61 in service.

I'm beefing up the detail levels throughout the VC at the moment. The exterior model is pretty much complete, so it's all about extra realism in all three stations now in the cockpit so that folks have the best possible experience I can produce in the time I have left on the project. The RO station is now also fully operational after a bit more effort on my part.
 
You have no idea how incredible it is to see the Black Widow come to life with this kind of detail! Thank you...
Ted
 
txnetcop said:
You have no idea how incredible it is to see the Black Widow come to life with this kind of detail! Thank you...
Ted
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Thanks Ted! :)

A few quick shots of extra details now being added; piping and wiring etc will follow once the main details are in place.

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A good and proper landing..

There are many ways to land this plane, but the proper way, the way used by most pilots during WWII ( albeit in a P-61B ) was to glide down the runway, pull up into the vertical and execute either a hammerhead, or a chandelle. Thats because they didnt have thirty miles to slow down in like the manual suggested. This is rough, this is dirty and the sound is beyond horrible, for which i profusely apologize, but none the less, here is an example of a good and proper landing, for a P-61.
Pam

 
This is from flight testing the FDE. You might want to watch it on Youtube in a large screen setting. The objective was to check the drag and weight coefficient. Approach the field with 300 KIAS, put throttle to idle, execute a chandelle maneuver (directed by air speed) and land without ever touching the throttle again.

This aircraft is really a joy to fly, not easy though. Pam is doing an exceptional job on the FDE, I must say.

Cheers,
Mark



 
warchild said:
There are many ways to land this plane, but the proper way, the way used by most pilots during WWII ( albeit in a P-61B ) was to glide down the runway, pull up into the vertical and execute either a hammerhead, or a chandelle.....
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Is there an online reference that describes this necessity...?
 
Seahawk72s said:
Is there an online reference that describes this necessity...?
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I haven't been able to find one. I did find a single reference to a P-61 performing a chandelle as a braking aid prior to landing, however never with any vertical manoeuvres but the more standard climbing turn into the downwind familiar to most real-world pilots. I'd be happy to be proven wrong but I can see no tactical reason for doing so either as the risk of wing or tip-stall over an active airfield were the hammerhead manoeuvre to be performed incorrectly would produce obvious hazards, as does the initial pass presumably directly against the circuit pattern. Furthermore, rolling out off the top instead of a hammerhead would put the active field out of sight of the pilot, directly below the airplane, not something that would be done lightly without a good reason.

I suspect the P-61 ( and other aircraft ) chandelle was a precursor to the modern "run and break" pattern used by modern fighters to bring formations down swiftly while also performing a visual check of the runway condition. The chandelle manoeuvre was mostly used in air combat after an initial head-on merge, however the reverse of a chandelle, a 180-turn with constant descent, is also the military landing pattern and thus may well have been a reference for some airfield procedures.
 
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it's all going to depend on how much of any given publication on the p-61 you can read online. The chandelles and following landings are mostly found in pilot stories and pireps and accident reports. The three different types of approved landings, can be found in the Pilots training manual. The ideal as presented in the manual was to take the thirty miles needed to slow down, then to either glide in, or land with power off or power on and dirty. Chandelles were "practiced" it seems by most pilots every day. It is singularly the most reported maneuver throughout all the publications. The hammerhead is a quick and dirty chandelle. it accomplishes the same thing: rapid speed reduction which facilitates landing. The reasons for these more rapid landings were multi-fold. Part of it was bragging rights. Like making a landing on a carrier, setting one of these planes down on a short runway, was not easy and using chandelles, added to the pilots prestige. the second reason was that these planes opperated in contested zones where a mile outside of the airbase was enemy heald, and a slow flying aircraft was little more than target practice for the enemy, so the planes had to make a fast approach, then slow down rapidly to land. This was especially present in the CBI theatre where japanese surrounded the majority of air bases scattered throughout china and burma.

The main problem with publications is that they arent cheap, and usually are quite skimpy though they provide a massive amount of relevant material, though you kind of have to ignore the repetitiveness of some of the data. There are several publishers, but the best source i have found is Amazon, where a quicj search through books for P-61 will unveil a plethora of different books available. Youll find these maneuvers as well as an incredibly rich history of the men who flew them, in there..

As a comparison for the reality these units existed in: When I landed at Camh Ran Bay in 1969, The Viet Cong walked mortars up the runway, trying to hit our plane which was a DC-8. Units stationed on small islands had it a tiny bit better and only had to deal with japanese patrol boats sitting off shore looking for target practice..
 
Manual restrictions....

The flight manual has something to say about this...
 

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I have a copy of the first book in the Amazon list and use it for reference all the time. It's a complete history of the airplane and never mentions either chandelle or hammerhead approaches. That doesn't mean that they didn't happen if course but the hammerhead version breaks so many basic airmanship conventions both in peace time and war that I would be extremely surprised to find out that it was performed by pilots except in extreme circumstances. I'm certain that it would not have been routine practice. The chandelle seems far more likely.
 
I only did the chandelle for FDE testing á la Hoover, not for historic reasons.

I have read numerous accounts of non-conform variants of approach patterns on fighter bases, one of them being the 180 degree landing which P47 Thunderbolt pilots used. This is certainly not a safe landing technique due to the high power settings that are required (if the engine misbehaves or quits during that you're toast), but was designed to get the fighters quickly to the ground and have them not roaming around the airfield in a vulnerable manner at low speed. There's a nice thread on the A2A forum about that and how to conduct it.



Cheers,
Mark
 
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