Night fighter

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A German Bf 110G-4 night fighter at the RAF Museum in London.

A night fighter (also all-weather fighter) is a fighter aircraft adapted for use at night or in other times of bad visibility.

Night fighters came into their own during World War II, made possible with the advent of the radar. Prior to that, air defence at night were limited to the use of searchlights and anti-aircraft artillery, along with blackout precautions. After the War night fighters have declined in importance as a separate class due to a general increase in night-fighting capability amongst all fighters.

This role typically required the use of radar, aerodrome beacons as well as direction finders to find the airbase at night and various communications equipment and lighting inside the cockpit. This much gear normally required a twin-engine aircraft to lift it, notably because this left the nose area of the plane clear for the radar installation, where the engine would be in a single-engine design. The U.S. Navy fitted radar sets to the wings of its single-engined F6F Hellcat fighters by the close of the war, operating them successfully in the Pacific.

Many night fighters were converted from earlier heavy fighter designs and some from bombers; examples include the Bristol Beaufighter and the de Havilland Mosquito. Some are designed specifically as a nightfighter, with superior speed and agility, as in the P-61 Black Widow.

During World War II the Luftwaffe also experimented with single-engine planes in this role which they referred to as Wilde Sau (wild boar). In this case the fighters, typically Focke-Wulf Fw 190s, were equipped only with a direction finder and landing lights. In order to find their targets other aircraft, guides from the ground would drop strings of flares in front of the bombers or simply wait for them to fly over burning cities.

Night fighters existed as a separate class into the 1960s. As aircraft grew in capability, radar-equipped interceptors could take on the role of night fighters and the class went into decline. Examples of these latter-day interceptor/night-fighters include the Avro Arrow, Convair F-106 Delta Dart and the English Electric Lightning.

Aircraft development has blurred this line further, to a point where night fighters have been supplanted by conventional designs. The only design remaining in service within this niche is the Russian MiG-31. Until its retirement the US Navy's F-14 Tomcat filled a similar role. In both cases they need to support operations at very long ranges – out of missile range for the Americans and across Siberia for the Russians – which cannot be filled by smaller aircraft.