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P-61A/B gun turret and noses


hopkp

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Can anyone point me to any reference source - book, magazine, website - that has photos showing the 'fixed gun turret' that some sources state was fitted to the P-61B? I can't find a single picture anywhere showing anything but the 'standard turret', but maybe I'm looking in all the wrong places?

I've also seen references to the P-61A and P-61B noses being slightly different shapes - again, apart from one being longer than the other, I can find no photographic evidence confirming a shape difference.

Any help greatly appreciated by a baffled (potential) P-61 builder.....

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if the P-61B has guns on top then it's got 4 fixed guns on top (no turret)

to me a turret needs to rotate (and elevate) to be classified as a turret.

what probably confused you is that the same aerodynamic cover was fitted.

so it looks like it has turret ,but it does not rotate.(or elevate)

as for the nose the front fuselage is 8 inches longer between the windscreen and the radome.

most kits simply provide you with a longer radome ,but this is wrong.

I'm also not aware of any change in the shape from the A model to the B model.

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the same aerodynamic cover was fitted.

Not entirely true. This is a subject that's been covered pretty well on HS and there are many photos supporting it. The fixed cover looked similar from the sides, but when looking down on it, it's more angular and the back end is flat instead of being rounded like the standard fairing. This is a subject that is near and dear to Terry Dean/Nightiemission and I believe he does a conversion in 1/48, but I'm not aware of any in 72nd. One could probably modify the existing kit fairing to be pretty close though... if so inclined.

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I still believe that, regardless of the shape of the cover, that it was intended to be a turret which failed to make it through development in time, so was fixed in place. It was not, as I understand it, a specific design for fixed guns, intended as such from the start.

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Unfortunately no context and nothing to evidence that the three photos even show the same installation.

In my honest opinion.

Nick

Nick,

I agree that the three picture may not be related to each others, but at least the third picture (that shows the famous "The Spook" at Iwo Jima after her accident, april 20th 1945) clearly shows a fixed guns installation with a fairing that is not related to the regular Northrop turret. And, for me, this not an opinion, honest or not, it is a fact :) . There are other pictures of "The Spook" that show this fairing, and it looks a lot like the first picture provided by Sergey Kosachev on Hyperscale.

So, we can assume that at least "The Spook" had a fixed gun installation with a fairing that looks a lot to the pictures provided by Sergey, and it's also my opinion (but I don't force anyone to share it) that this kind of fairng was used on several P-61 in the Pacific theatre of war.

Kind Regards

Philippe

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Thanks to all who replied to my questions, I am as a result at least a little bit less confused.....and as a consequence have just ordered yet another book (the 'Specialty Press' one, which I didn't know about) to add to the ever-growing pile!

I think that the only safe conclusion that can be drawn is that when dealing with a lot of WWII types from both sides, no-one REALLY knows at this remove - clear photos of the plane being modelled seem to be the only way to go, but unfortunately aren't always available. Ah well, I suppose that's what keeps it all interesting!

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a "standardised" fairing - seems to be a conclusion too far and a typical HS "smoking gun" of 2 + 2 = 5. There might have been such a fabrication, designed and communicated across the NFS's but the general approach in the SWPA, as with strafers, was often of localised improvisations.

No offense, but I think your "general" statement in regards to the SWPA is still too "complicated" in relation to what was probably really going on. Even the "strafer" type conversions with origins from the field became fairly quickly standardized with units across the SWPA earlier in the war (once it was figured out what was working well)... with the result being that their configurations all being pretty well the same in appearance (why keep re-inventing that wheel?)... and this was done with airframes that already had much more time to combat-mature than what the Widows had. And by this later stage of the war, even the more established manufacturers were already building dedicated strafer airframes and making standardized conversion kits available that had a much better supply line situation to benefit from and were quickly relegating the earlier field-improvised and combat-weary airframes to retirement... this much is obvious with how things progressed with the 345th bomb group later in the war.

The Widow was a much more specialized, complicated and limited production airframe than the other types and it already was having known issues with the turret in general before even having much combat experience... and given the issues the factory was dealing with here, I'm not sure it would've been very advisable in the field to mess with something like this too much. I think it fully plausible that there could've been much better factory support, since this was Northrop's primary focus at this time, versus other manufacturers that in many cases were producing multiple airframes for multiple jobs and not quite so focused on any one type as Northrop... who would've had the ability to more quickly address issues and come up with quick fixes.

Plus from a numbers standpoint, I would expect to see a lot more visual variation in "field" type jury-rigging with more numbers of airframes and more units involved... which just isn't there for the Widow community.

Bottom line... from a simplicity standpoint... either a kit or easy standardized directions sent to the field on how to fabricate everything with resulting similarity in appearance. If it was earlier in the war, I could see your argument for various appearances... but we are talking late war here. I just don't see multiple configurations from one airframe to the next and especially not within the same unit as well. The military likes its standardization and field applications only last so long before that standardization quickly takes over.

Edited by J.C. Bahr
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It is unfortunate that if these standard design fairings for fixed installations existed and Northrop had anything to do with them they are not mentioned in either reference, both pretty comprehensive.

I'm picturing the Northrop people discussing this: "We gotta make sure and fully document the exact fine visual acuities of the fairings, as this little detail will be VERY IMPORTANT to modelers in 70 years when we're long dead and gone..." Or else after the end of the war, their historian with such documents at their disposal and tasked with purging the record: "Nobody's ever going to need this trivial garbage..." :doh:

Somebody somewhere is laughing their @**es off at our expense! :lol:

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Look at it this way: someone at Northrop says "We have to document this, or we don't get paid."

This isn't a problem (or at least less of a one) with in-field mods, though I do have some problems with the thought of a number of different in-field bodges floating around, as opposed to one semi-standardised one.

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As Graham has said (quoted?) before, "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." I'm working on a book about Allison Mustangs right now, and I can tell you that there are some details that don't agree with "what everybody knows to be true". If everyone "knows" the familiar tale of the P-61's dorsal guns, then it would take the right person running into the right documentation to realize that there's more to the story. Otherwise it could just as easily be, "Huh, that's odd, but it doesn't agree with the well established explanation that's been covered in books for years, so it must be some aberration- I'm not going to worry about it."

bob

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