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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Must buy..., December 16, 2008
This review is from: Northrop's Night Hunter: P-61 Black Widow (Hardcover)
This is a superb book that is both interesting to read and an excellent reference. This book covers the complete history of the Northrop's P-61 Black Widow . All the different variants and experimental types. This includes all of the various systems in the aircraft, including its radar system. For the operational history of the plane, all of the units in both Europe and the Pacific are given coverage, offering some highlights of their operational tour. Not only Army, but Navy and Marine Black Widows are part of the book, as well post war use in some special units. The F-15 Reporter is also provided with extensive coverage. Also a brief history of each and every Black Widow flown is part of an extensive appendix section. Included as well are several pages of color profiles of some of the more interesting aircraft. And there are a lot of nose art pictures. This is a superb book that is both interesting to read and an excellent reference.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Nuts-and-Bolts Guide to the Black Widow!, September 1, 2009
This review is from: Northrop's Night Hunter: P-61 Black Widow (Hardcover)
One of the most distinctive warplanes ever produced, the P-61 saw combat worldwide during World War II. Though development problems held back its introduction, the Black Widow had claimed 127 e/a by war's end, producing several aces. Jeff Kolln provides a technical history of the P-61 in this wonderfully-illustrated, fact-filled volume from Specialty Press.
NORTHROP'S NIGHT HUNTER crams a lot of information into its 198 pages. After discussing nightfighting in the early war years, he traces the creation and development of the P-61 and its service stateside and in all theaters along with postwar service and a look at the very few surviving Black Widows. There is a wealth of technical information along with summaries of all the USAAF's WWII nightfighter squadrons, a 53-page(!) appendix giving - very detailed - individual aircraft histories of all P-61s built and so on. The informative if dry text is complimented by hundreds of sharply-reproduced b&w and color photographs, diagrams and profiles by Chris Banyai-Riepl. All in all, it's quite a package.
So, if you're into nuts-and-bolts, you will love Kolln's book. Personally I was hoping for more first-person combat accounts, test-piloting reminiscences, etc. but that's just me.
If possible, I would have given NORTHROP'S NIGHT HUNTER 4 1/2 stars. While not definitive, it is an excellent, well-illustrated guide to the Black Widow and one of the very best books I have seen on that classic warbird. Recommended.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Necessary Reference for the Enthusiast, April 30, 2009
This review is from: Northrop's Night Hunter: P-61 Black Widow (Hardcover)
The P-61 was an aircraft of immense historical significance, but it only found its way into combat after the battles for which it had been envisaged - titanic defenses against massive Blitz-like onslaughts - had been already won. With the Allies on the offensive and holding air superiority, the Black Widow spent its war on solitary patrols against individual intruders and scored its victories in the dozens, not in the hundreds or thousands, as did the other great fighters of the Allied air forces. It was successful, but not a hero recognized by anyone but enthusiasts of air combat history. Yet the Widow is intrinsically interesting -- for its weird configuration, for its novel engineering details and technical advances, and for the pioneering work of its courageous and inventive crews. The Widow has not the provenance of the Mosquito or Beaufighter, so there will never be a huge library of books about it; therefore any good book about the Widow is welcome, and this is one of the few such.
It is good and useful but book, if not really a great book. The many rare photographs and drawings are a boon to modelers, and the technical history of the design is presented in considerable detail, some of it very interesting to an engineer or technical enthusiast...and some just rote reprints of Army documents presented with little surrounding context. One high point is a detailed history of the Widow's on-again/off-again upper turret, initially hamstrung by the vagaries of separated-flow aerodynamics and the higher priorities of the B-29 program. Of the airplane generally, its service history - in particular its combat history - is, frankly, thinly spread: Along with too many dry paragraphs naming the troop transport ships that particular units inhabited while being deployed, there is just enough "combat footage" to make you want to hear from more crewman instead of the few who contribute, enough to make you wish for more blow-by-blow transcripts of successful ground-controlled intercepts. Still, there are some of both, and that makes this book rare, because for the enthusiast, the Widow is one of the least-documented but combat-successful airplanes in the Allied inventory.
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