re: WWII Thread: Lesser known aircraft that you like

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Here you go....

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P-61 Black Widow, the first purpose built night fighter

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P-61 Black Widow, the first purpose built night fighter

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That's probably why the B-36 had such a short service life and was soon replaced by the B-47

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But not before 384 of the useless monstrosities were built, at a price tag of $4.1 million each.

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said his dad had escaped German gunfire by dropping "aluminum strips" or something along those lines to confuse the German radar.

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The British code name for this was "window".

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Chaff, originally called Window[1] by the British, and Düppel by the Second World War era German Luftwaffe (from the Berlin suburb where it was first developed), is a radar countermeasure in which aircraft or other targets spread a cloud of small, thin pieces of aluminium, metallized glass fibre or plastic, which either appears as a cluster of primary targets on radar screens or swamps the screen with multiple returns.

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Wiki

Three pages and no Horten? I am disappoint

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On 27 February 1947, P-82B 44-65168, named Betty Jo and flown by Colonel Robert E. Thacker, made history when it flew nonstop from Hawaii to New York without refueling, a distance of 5,051 mi

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Damn. That's impressive. I had no idea the "Twin Mustang" had that sort of range. Wonder how many hours the flight took? Now imagine spending that many hours in this....

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Now imagine spending that many hours in this..

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Imagine having to pee in that cockpit at some point.

Which brings to mind a funny story regarding B-17's in British service...

Before the US entered WWII, the RAF was flying B-17's in combat as a result of Lend Lease.

The B-17's did not have a good reputation in British hands. It's bomb bay doors routinely refused to open above the targets, which caused the British to reassign it to reconnaissance missions.

Boeing Aircraft was unable to replicate the problems in the US. So the company finally sent a civilian engineer to go along on a British B-17 bombing mission.

Just after takeoff, the American engineer witnessed an RAF crewman peeing into the bomb bay. When questioned, the crewman explained that this was a ritual among RAF flight crews. It was though to bring good luck.

The result was, as the American engineer submitted in his report noted, that the urine froze at high altitude and the mechanism that opened the bomb bay doors wasn't strong enough to open the doors sealed shut by frozen urine.

The result was that the British banned peeing into the bomb bay after take off, which immediately fixed the problem. Boeing also installed a more robust door opener in newer B-17's to ensure the problem never happened again.

The incidence of stuck bomb bay doors in B-17's was very low in USAAF service comparison.