Beaufighter Vs Mosquito - The Bristol Beaufighter may have been the first night fighter design from scratch. It entered service in 1941, initially to combat Luftwaffe night blitzkriegs on English cities.
The Beaufighter comes from a family of related designs. Going back to the Bristol Blenheim fast bomber in the mid 1930s. Another design is the Bristol Beaufort Special Torpedo Bomber. When a Beaufort night fighter was ordered (the name Beaufighter comes literally from "Beaufort fighter"), Bristol literally took the Beaufort off the line and began the modification. The wings and rear fuselage are mostly preserved. However, the forward fuselage was replaced with a smaller nose and radar equipment that changed the bomber's position. The torpedo bay was replaced by gun mounts; four 20mm cannons fire directly under the pilot's feet. The position of the rear turret has been changed by the radar operator/nav station. The Bristol Taurus engines were upgraded to the Bristol Hercules to make the aircraft more fighter-like. Finally, six .303 Brownings were mounted asymmetrically in the wings; four right, two right. All this made the Beaufighter the most heavily armed aircraft in the world until 1942, after all, some B-25s received up to 14 heavy machine guns.
Beaufighter Vs Mosquito
The great advantage of modifying a proven design was that the British allowed it to be rapidly deployed. It replaced the Blenheim night fighters and was almost 50 knots faster. Airborne radar had a short range, but the British had a well-developed radar network that allowed them to direct aircraft close to invading bombers. Close enough for the airborne radar to get a good signal and allow the pilot to land and destroy the enemy aircraft. Accordingly, Luftwaffe losses mounted rapidly during these night missions.
Aa28602 Bristol Beaufighter Tf10 No45 Squadron Operation Firedog Raf Kuala Lumpur Malaya 1949
The Beaufighter was a powerful enough aircraft to be acquired by Coastal Command to also serve as a naval strike aircraft. Ironically, some versions were even modified to carry torpedoes. Some numbers were also acquired by the US Army Air Forces and were the first equipment for US night fighter squadrons in Europe. And eventually the type went into production in Australia for use in tactical support and naval strike aircraft.
This particular Beaufighter is a night fighter from the Tamiya kit with Cutting Edge decals. The camo here is known as Special Night, it's generally a very smooth black. Everyone involved was shocked to learn that it was actually shoddy camouflage. The flat black seems to absorb all the light so much that it actually creates a rather noticeably darker than night spot in the sky. Later, the British (and eventually the Americans) switched to gloss black, which proved to be much more effective. Although the Germans opted for a much lighter gray scheme (similar to the modern Haze Grey) which was perhaps the best scheme of the evening.
About atcDave I am 5 years old and live in Ypsilanti, Michigan. I am happily married to Jodi. I was an air traffic controller for 33 years and recently retired; I grew up in the Chicago area and am still a pizza and Chicago Bears fanatic. My main interest is military history and my hobbies are building scale models and strategy games.
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