Also, there's a wonderful PDF document from the Department of Defense that has been released to the public domain detailing a lot of the clever features this aircraft had. It featured a radar, a remote operated turret that either the turret gunner or the radar operator in the back could use, an early computer and analog autopilot system of some kind and a number of other crew conveniences and functions.
Also one thing you missed when enemy plane is attacking you from below. Because P-61 is a very stable plane, you can fly it upside-down easily for long period of time. Your top turret turns into a bottom turret and you can shoot at planes below you.
I remember an air RB battle, night and cloudy. You had to be 200m away from enemy to see him, and you would sooner locate him by sound. Its dream come true for bombers, until 20mms start shredding them from nowhere
This plane is my favorite in the game. It does surprisingly well in Air RB. This is when the turret really comes in handy. When you climb up to intercept bombers, you can either engage them from a distance or get underneath them and saw their wings off. The turret is also handy when you have multiple planes following you trying to kill you.
The turret also allows you to kill enemies in a turn fight as it automatically engages them . Especially when you just can’t turn fast enough to hit them with your main cannons your turret will rip them apart
@@Phantom-bh5ru All that on top of being set up against 1941-1942 fighters and not late 1944-1945 aircraft like IRL, where it was very underperforming due to it's late introduction. The turret is really unrealistically good in hard maneuvering dogfight. Add to that low light dusk and night on enduring confrontations in Sim Battles and it having the F-6F-5N on those and at their BR nothing on the enemy side can match them in maneuverability.
I despise this plane, I just can't get it to work. people are well aware of its head on abilities so they just dodge out of the way then track me from below the turret line. Also it's immpossible to miss.
Imo this works best in air RB, not ground RB. It's very unmanouvreble, so it's hard to pull out of dives, and drops it's bombs in 2's instead of 1's. It's also a massive target for AA and roof mounted MG's. In air RB it usually engages at 4-5km+ (it has a decent climb rate for a double engined heavy) so pancaking is rare, it had air brakes so you will always be behind the enemy if you play your cards right. As you said, 4 20mm can shred litteraly anything so you can either do its job as an interceptor and rip a 4 engine in half or boom and zoom fighters. It's 4, 50 cals can make any fighter clear off real quick or risk an engine fire. Also it's radar is WAY better for air RB than ground RB since it's 19km range can allow you to identify bombers well out of visual range (atleast on my 1080p monitor). It can sometimes help with fighters but it's better to just get visuals most of the time. Also, 4000lbs of bombs can destroy a point just as well as a bomber if you want to play a dive bomber and still have game relevance past dropping.
I think it would be cool to see multiplayer vehicles in game. Even with lots of simplification, it sometimes feels like too much to handle. For example, it would make this aircraft more survivable if a player could focus on flying, bombs, and primary armament, and another could focus on defensive armament. This would make it a lot harder to catch a P-61 off guard and the aircraft can still maneuver while shooting at you.
@Michael Roos could you imagine squading up and having one person or so per turret in a bomber. It would also be cool if they would allow maybe in air rb after a fighter dies if there's an option to control a gunner in a friendly bomber. Sounds op as when I think about it but cool nonetheless
@@thesmerelajiah2805 that, in addition to being able to sit underneath a bomber and pepper its engines with the turret to bring it back down p 61 is a really versatile plane, capable of everything but dogfighting
@@handzze7341 I would argue that going to a fist fight and pulling out a gun would disqualify you from the "fist" fight. The same idea applied to this plane pulling out a turret in a dogfight
The radar on P61 used to be really helpful a few years back when the cloud update hadn't come yet and in general there were battles in maps where the there were cloud carpets from 2km to 6kms mapwide. Those days were great in terms of prediction, strategy and active listening. The cloud carpet also helped heavy attackers like P61 to evade detection. Nowadays all strike fighters will be spotted 5 mins into the game and be wiped out. A few years ago, bf110s, p61s and p38s ruled the air. And now those days are gone. There are hardly any clouds to seek shelter so most of attackers ground pound for 10 mins and die to greedy fighters which forego all their altitude to get a single kill. As a result of the ground pounding I've witnessed way more games that end prematurely due to the amazingly constructed ticket bleed system. Playing heavy attackers was fun once. I haven't seen a BF110 for months. People also stopped playing bombers because they are way more spottable. P61 was an amazing bomber hunter, you would parallel park under a bomber and machine gunned them down. I am just glad now that I have played that amazing aircraft when it was fun. New bros will never know the utter chaos that was carpet clouds.
The while fighter dominance that exists in the game is just............... out of control put it simply. Everywhere is just a fighter and its so bad that you can't even just quietly fly off somewhere without getting pounced by so many. Honestly it's ridiculous. Such a waste of vehicles.
What's a shame, and i wish they'd tweak this, is that historically the widow was a *very* capable maneuver fighter for a number of reasons despite it's size. It was incredibly stable, and had a decent stall speed, which means that was very hard to spin it. It also has a lot of roll authority, and a great turn radius. I also recently read an account of an AAF acceptance test pilot and according to his account he took on four man flights of f6fs, fm2s, p51s, p47s, p38s and routinely got guncams on all of them without himself ever being hit. These weren't nugget pilots either, they veteran OTU instructors, and he attributed his success to the sudden and extreme maneuvers the Widow could pull off at a moments notice, and leave him in a perfect gun position almost. Now granted, this guy was getting the absolute most out of the bird but it goes to show that both figuratively and literally the p-61 was no lightweight.
You didn't even talk about air RB where this thing climbs well, performs well at alt, can even turn at alt, can absolutely smack plebs trying scissors with its turret and guns. AND has a fockin radar at 4.0.
I'm an old guy. Back in the day, say around 1944, my mother came to Los Angeles from Indiana and got a job at an aircraft factory here in Southern California. They put P-61s together in her facility. She worked the graveyard shift (factories worked 24/7 to make as many planes as possible) and told me many years later that the most awesome sight was them opening the hanger doors, and rolling the mostly completeld plane out the door into the sunrise. Oh, and it was intended as a night fighter, hence the "Black Widow" nickname. The size (it had a longer wingspan than a B-25 bomber) was for the radar set, so you could find enemy aircraft at night, the turret, so you could defend yourself against any enemy aircraft that snuck up on you, and the forward-firing armament, which was intended to destroy anything that the pilot wanted to shoot down, quickly. Reportedly theey actually were pretty maneuverable, if you used the airbrakes (as another commenter mentioned). The fighter-bomber aspect was only discovered when they started using them more widely...also, originally they were all painted blac, but eventually they decided it was more for effect than actually did anything.
Radar comes pretty handy on simulator battles and it has built-in iff as well as the f6f-5n radars you can fly around looking for enemies and avoiding to lit up friendlies by accident
Once had a game where I killed 3 out of 4 BV238s in a squad just by flying underneath them and using the turret to pepper the wings. This plane is criminally underrated in both air rb and tank rb.
This plane is one of the best 4.0s I could’ve asked for and I never even anticipated it. Thanks for making a video explicating the features which caused my initial surprise. You rock. 10/10.
There is one important thing to note though when you put the P-61C in your lineup. Being classified as a fighter, if you want to spawn any other fighter aircraft after the Black Widow, it will double your spawn cost. Unless you're pairing it up with either an attacker or a bomber (or you simply don't mind), it might be better to replace it with something more effective in the fighter role. Something like the PBJ, though second-class, brings similar capabilities while keeping your fighter slot open.
You should play the P51 with 20mms in the American tech tree. The Ground belts are so good when you’re attacking ground vehicles that I would go so far as to say it’s the A-10 of 3.0
@@Puppy_kicker74 nah it doesn't penetrate shit or maybe i just have problem with german wehraboos anyways with ground targets belt shooting wilberwind is useless
I don't know why War Thunder designates this as a fighter or air defense fighter " the P-61 was redesignated as the F-61 and served in the United States Air Force as a long-range, all-weather, day/night "interceptor" for Air Defense Command until 1948, and for the Fifth Air Force until 1950." is what is told about the aircraft. But originally this aircraft had four 20mm cannons on the wings and they were asked to change it to the belly of the plane which eliminated the inherent drawbacks of the convergence of wing-mounted guns.
When they get behind just loop slowly to kill their energy or shallow dive and 50cal em. You can also shoot bombers underneath at weird angles and kill them around 1km lol.
The funny thing is, in the real world, it could carry up to 4,600 lb bombs under the wings, and some could carry a 1,000 lb bomb under the fuselage. So the real Loadout was even heavier than what is shown in the game.
Believe me it doesn't. It's big, it's fat but when used correctly you can carry games in Air RB with it. It's all about speed and altitude. You climb on the start and then either clean up enemies on your alt or dive on the others. On altitude your top speed allows you to extend even if damaged. If you have enemies under you, if you play it smart you are god of boom and zoom, you dive go fast click onece or twice on enemy they die, you go back up, if there are enemies nearby you're faster than them because of dive and you can keep that speed for quite long witch allows you to dictate the fight as they will most likely be slower at that point. It's one of hidden gems in US TT and one of best 4.0 fighters
funny enough in reality it was a good night fighter overall but with many delays in design and production leading to a late introduction & subsequently average showing in combat
@@szymonkotynia2347 Air RB is a hellhole I'm never going to visit again, but it's the size that is it's downfall it's just too big to even try to dogfight fw-190s or zero's, even some migs or yaks but the amount of ammunition certainly DOES make a big difference also the boom and zoom is extremely risky at that BR, since if you miss, the chonky structure of the widow will get damaged 8/10, and eventually they will catch up but it is extremely infuriating and powerful if used right
@@val8389 you kinda play it like a jet against props, you need to stay fast and think what to do next because one turn or plane you didn't see and you are dead
Its original role is not just a fighter, but a night fighter. That’s a big difference there, and the night fighter role really doesn’t exist in War Thunder, since all aircraft have radar and perfect visibility anyway.
Omg. Howtoplay your stupid dad jokes had me rolling with laughter. I love dumb jokes like that. I'll add one or two: When you at the top of the team: *Widows Excel* Frontal engagement *Widows PowerPoint* When you unlock black windows *Widows Access*
I still use my P61C in my jets aircade lineup. Best God Mode getter Ive found yet. A big reason is that turret, gets hits on planes moving too fast to get your nose on.
So one thing is that turret is actually meant for offensive fighting and attacking the enemy from below. I utilize it quite effectively by going under the opponents an if I fail an attack, and let the turret finish them.
Also turret gunners have a hidden stat bonus that makes them deal far more damage than main armament 50 cals. This means they do damage like 20mm rounds or better.
I like your humor no matter what plane or vehicle you make a video about. You can also make videos about tricycles or bobby cars... I would watch them.
but this thing has radar that will help you hunt bombers in the cloud. after tracking 1 enemy, try to switch to 4KM range rather than 9KM. this way you will get more kills in the cloud, or at night.
Hey buddy I just wanted to let you know that I love your videos and I watch them all the time. And it is a damn shame you don't have a much bigger channel. Early on when I first started playing war thunder I had a lot of issues to the point that I almost quit. Then I found your channel and you taught me a lot. You showed me vehicles that I thought were terrible but I was just playing them wrong. So for that I say thank you and keep them coming.
Believe it or not, the P-61 is actually a pretty good dogfighter, as is the P-38. Generally WT flight models are shit but they sometimes are accurate enough to get the idea of what it would fly like irl. If you deploy the flaps the black widow starts to shine. The Zap wing was designed to maximize the lift coefficient which becomes and increasing advantage at slower speeds. Prop hanging, and very low speed dogfights the P-61 is king. Just be sure to use flaps and get the fight over quick as possible.
Another great tactic is to try and get into situations that you can quickly switch to the turret. Attempt the rate fight but use lag pursuit to keep energy, and try and scare/kill him with the turret. It tends to freak people out 😂😂
i am now focusing in this fighter and i get very good results with him in air rb, and honestly the gun turret is awesome because if you really know how to dogfight and understand energy mechanics, you can easily kill an enemy that is on you. the hard part isn't the shooting, its the dogfighting from the rear view. also it is usefull if you are hunting a bomber and you dont have enough altitude, or you did a shooting run and wasn't successfull, you just change to the gunner and continue spraying. I get usually 2 kills and some assists per game, that's enought to get you in top 3
In rb the black widow is pretty good. But where this plane is an absolute monster is air simulator. I have less than an ounce of skill and will out frag the entire enemy team in that thing.
haven't had the plane for long but me and my buddy did AB got cap the airfiled and it was shot down but after killing 5 planes and getting 3A and one maneuver kill and went out in a blaze of glory with 4 fighter having attack me at once and two of those fighters were my Assist and the other two got damages all around. i was surprised how well it did
I have the premium version. Gor some reason it didnt have bombs for a long time but they fixed it. I upgraded the gunner so much that he has aim bot now. Its amazing
@@HowToPlay1337 Sim maps are waaay bigger and more fighting takes place at higher altitudes. In Sim, I would patrol at about 10000ft over the front line and watch the radar. Because of the ground cluttering up the radar, it would be quite useless at finding aircraft in ground battles.
The French B26C can have the same bomb load with a way stronger armature but 5 12.7 machin guns on the front, 3 12.7 double machin gun turret at the back and top and a 12.7 turret at the front for a BR of 4.7
Personally got the Calliope just so I could have a full 4.0 fun lineout 1.5 second fuse works well 3 seconds if you like killing planes with the bombs.
Pro tip that No one i know, knows about......if you set a keybind for change SAS mode in flight you can switch from mouse pointer mode to mouse joy stick, This allows you to fly the aircraft using WASD without the mouse pointer forcing you to fly straight and level whilst controlling the gunner........this makes turret gunning alot more effective and i have had alot of kills in P-61 manoeuvring and gunning at the same time it really makes a differnece
Well, for starters, it is supposed to be crewed by 3 . War Thunder has a gamer doing all 3 jobs. What they need to do is allow multiplayer mode to allow for multiple friends to crew certain planes, like the B-25, B-17...etc.
this thing is a POWERHOUSE in air RB. It's stupid fast and at 4km+ will outun 99% of enemy aircraft including 109s. It's frontal armament is very powerful and when combined with the radar can be used to stalk bombers from the clouds. Very useful for hunting the damned 264s that shred you with cannon fire if they see you coming. It's also very good in sim as the turret can get a lot of kills from pursuing aircraft that can't aim as easy in AB or RB. It's also a very stable flyer and again the radar can be used to identify and monitor your apporach on enemy bombers that are too far or visually obscured.
A truly murderous plane, that had serious issues with the dorsal gun barbette. Northrop took it off, put it back on, changed the gun system, changed the manufacturer. No matter what was done, It still caused buffeting that made the plane's crews tear their hair out.
in real life the turret could be locked in front position so the pilot could fire the 4x20mm and the 4x12.7mm turret to make really quick work of an unlucky enemy
If you are good with controlling plane with keyboard you can actually dogfight pretty well by just turning with enemy while hitting them with the turret
this must be an old recorded video cause my radar doesn't look anything like this one but it did a while back. But anyways those rear top-mounted guns can shoot at such great angles it's a saving grace a lot of the time being able to shoot vertically 90 degrees up. But the best way for an enemy to attack this plane is from the bottom rear or anywhere from the back end bottom sides and not anywhere head-on or front and or above down
They used to be better. I’ve seen a guy land one of these things without wings, one broken rudder, and only one engine. He got back up in the air and killed two more planes before he finally lost his pilot. Frankly, it is an anomaly. Nothing else I’ve ever played in the American air tree feels like it is legitimately superior to other aircraft in the same br.
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
The P61 also has a very effective air brake which can help cause your enemies to overshoot or allow you to tighten a turn.
Also, there's a wonderful PDF document from the Department of Defense that has been released to the public domain detailing a lot of the clever features this aircraft had. It featured a radar, a remote operated turret that either the turret gunner or the radar operator in the back could use, an early computer and analog autopilot system of some kind and a number of other crew conveniences and functions.
@@MattZaharias link?
@@maxreece2402 b-29 also had a computerized turret system
I once out-maneuvered a Zero with full landing flaps and careful use of the airbrake to hold my IAS at Max-Q.
@@jamesharding3459 True fact: the P61 could out turn a zero.
Also one thing you missed when enemy plane is attacking you from below. Because P-61 is a very stable plane, you can fly it upside-down easily for long period of time. Your top turret turns into a bottom turret and you can shoot at planes below you.
I really wish the instructer wouldnt try to turn the plane back over.
@@robertharris6092 you can disable it in options. If I remember correctly, the option you turn off is called "auto control of aircraft in gunner view"
I remember an air RB battle, night and cloudy. You had to be 200m away from enemy to see him, and you would sooner locate him by sound. Its dream come true for bombers, until 20mms start shredding them from nowhere
This plane is my favorite in the game. It does surprisingly well in Air RB. This is when the turret really comes in handy. When you climb up to intercept bombers, you can either engage them from a distance or get underneath them and saw their wings off. The turret is also handy when you have multiple planes following you trying to kill you.
The turret also allows you to kill enemies in a turn fight as it automatically engages them . Especially when you just can’t turn fast enough to hit them with your main cannons your turret will rip them apart
@@Phantom-bh5ru All that on top of being set up against 1941-1942 fighters and not late 1944-1945 aircraft like IRL, where it was very underperforming due to it's late introduction.
The turret is really unrealistically good in hard maneuvering dogfight.
Add to that low light dusk and night on enduring confrontations in Sim Battles and it having the F-6F-5N on those and at their BR nothing on the enemy side can match them in maneuverability.
In actual practice, the turret was found to cause sever buffeting when rotated off centerline. It was deleted from later variants of the P-61.
@@chardtomp it was restated in the c model.
I despise this plane, I just can't get it to work. people are well aware of its head on abilities so they just dodge out of the way then track me from below the turret line. Also it's immpossible to miss.
"With great bombs comes great responsibility" - Thats what PE-8 said after finshing second bottle with his friends (KV-2 and Zis-12).
Imo this works best in air RB, not ground RB.
It's very unmanouvreble, so it's hard to pull out of dives, and drops it's bombs in 2's instead of 1's. It's also a massive target for AA and roof mounted MG's.
In air RB it usually engages at 4-5km+ (it has a decent climb rate for a double engined heavy) so pancaking is rare, it had air brakes so you will always be behind the enemy if you play your cards right.
As you said, 4 20mm can shred litteraly anything so you can either do its job as an interceptor and rip a 4 engine in half or boom and zoom fighters. It's 4, 50 cals can make any fighter clear off real quick or risk an engine fire.
Also it's radar is WAY better for air RB than ground RB since it's 19km range can allow you to identify bombers well out of visual range (atleast on my 1080p monitor). It can sometimes help with fighters but it's better to just get visuals most of the time.
Also, 4000lbs of bombs can destroy a point just as well as a bomber if you want to play a dive bomber and still have game relevance past dropping.
I think it would be cool to see multiplayer vehicles in game. Even with lots of simplification, it sometimes feels like too much to handle. For example, it would make this aircraft more survivable if a player could focus on flying, bombs, and primary armament, and another could focus on defensive armament. This would make it a lot harder to catch a P-61 off guard and the aircraft can still maneuver while shooting at you.
Soo many planes would be better with this, and voice chat.
You could say the same for bombers
@Michael Roos could you imagine squading up and having one person or so per turret in a bomber. It would also be cool if they would allow maybe in air rb after a fighter dies if there's an option to control a gunner in a friendly bomber. Sounds op as when I think about it but cool nonetheless
@@cjuice9039 yeah imagine chilling with a whole group of people in a bomber
i miss my time with the p-61c-1 when real night battles happened in wt 4 years ago i think the radar helped there big time
On cloudy maps it is still nice.
What do you call this plane when one of it's engines is broken?
OneDrive
What do you call this plane when it enters a flat spin?
Office 365
The radioman is called Widdow's Word
I'm going to get an aneurysm
Judging by the review, this plane really Excels at a lot of things.
@@Emsarrev this plane is everything lmao
I'm currently halfway to finishing researching the P 61 and this has for sure made me even more excited than I already was about the plane !
In air rb it is fun to bring no load and go after bombers with it.
It sheds them.
@@thesmerelajiah2805 that, in addition to being able to sit underneath a bomber and pepper its engines with the turret to bring it back down
p 61 is a really versatile plane, capable of everything but dogfighting
@@gamespender8605 even then you can still use the turret to dogfight ppl
@@handzze7341 I would argue that going to a fist fight and pulling out a gun would disqualify you from the "fist" fight. The same idea applied to this plane pulling out a turret in a dogfight
The radar on P61 used to be really helpful a few years back when the cloud update hadn't come yet and in general there were battles in maps where the there were cloud carpets from 2km to 6kms mapwide. Those days were great in terms of prediction, strategy and active listening. The cloud carpet also helped heavy attackers like P61 to evade detection. Nowadays all strike fighters will be spotted 5 mins into the game and be wiped out. A few years ago, bf110s, p61s and p38s ruled the air. And now those days are gone. There are hardly any clouds to seek shelter so most of attackers ground pound for 10 mins and die to greedy fighters which forego all their altitude to get a single kill. As a result of the ground pounding I've witnessed way more games that end prematurely due to the amazingly constructed ticket bleed system.
Playing heavy attackers was fun once. I haven't seen a BF110 for months. People also stopped playing bombers because they are way more spottable. P61 was an amazing bomber hunter, you would parallel park under a bomber and machine gunned them down.
I am just glad now that I have played that amazing aircraft when it was fun. New bros will never know the utter chaos that was carpet clouds.
The while fighter dominance that exists in the game is just............... out of control put it simply.
Everywhere is just a fighter and its so bad that you can't even just quietly fly off somewhere without getting pounced by so many.
Honestly it's ridiculous. Such a waste of vehicles.
Honestly quite incredible
My baby is getting some love!
Popcat spotted
Quite incredible honestly
Psst it's a very solid and fun choice for air sim to.
Poppo targeted
What's a shame, and i wish they'd tweak this, is that historically the widow was a *very* capable maneuver fighter for a number of reasons despite it's size.
It was incredibly stable, and had a decent stall speed, which means that was very hard to spin it. It also has a lot of roll authority, and a great turn radius.
I also recently read an account of an AAF acceptance test pilot and according to his account he took on four man flights of f6fs, fm2s, p51s, p47s, p38s and routinely got guncams on all of them without himself ever being hit. These weren't nugget pilots either, they veteran OTU instructors, and he attributed his success to the sudden and extreme maneuvers the Widow could pull off at a moments notice, and leave him in a perfect gun position almost. Now granted, this guy was getting the absolute most out of the bird but it goes to show that both figuratively and literally the p-61 was no lightweight.
The dad jokes are top tier.
If gaijin implemented the ability to lock the turret forward and be used by the pilot as extra guns like irl it would be even more of a beast
You didn't even talk about air RB where this thing climbs well, performs well at alt, can even turn at alt, can absolutely smack plebs trying scissors with its turret and guns. AND has a fockin radar at 4.0.
Also you can destroy 2 bases then become a fighter
I'm an old guy. Back in the day, say around 1944, my mother came to Los Angeles from Indiana and got a job at an aircraft factory here in Southern California. They put P-61s together in her facility. She worked the graveyard shift (factories worked 24/7 to make as many planes as possible) and told me many years later that the most awesome sight was them opening the hanger doors, and rolling the mostly completeld plane out the door into the sunrise.
Oh, and it was intended as a night fighter, hence the "Black Widow" nickname. The size (it had a longer wingspan than a B-25 bomber) was for the radar set, so you could find enemy aircraft at night, the turret, so you could defend yourself against any enemy aircraft that snuck up on you, and the forward-firing armament, which was intended to destroy anything that the pilot wanted to shoot down, quickly. Reportedly theey actually were pretty maneuverable, if you used the airbrakes (as another commenter mentioned). The fighter-bomber aspect was only discovered when they started using them more widely...also, originally they were all painted blac, but eventually they decided it was more for effect than actually did anything.
Radar comes pretty handy on simulator battles and it has built-in iff as well as the f6f-5n radars you can fly around looking for enemies and avoiding to lit up friendlies by accident
Playing this thing in a sim battle at night would ne insane.
I wonder why
yeah it's pretty fun but the P-47 is more reliable for me since it can maneuver better.
imagine if p-47 had 4x20mm AN/M2
Once had a game where I killed 3 out of 4 BV238s in a squad just by flying underneath them and using the turret to pepper the wings. This plane is criminally underrated in both air rb and tank rb.
Ah yes the instant "tail cut lose" plane
With the P-61 is like a B-25 on steroids. The only thing the B-25 has over it is a bomb sight, and has better angles when shooting rearward.
Try using the radar on maps with heavy fog, thick clouds, nighttime, and or sim battles. Amazingly useful
This plane is one of the best 4.0s I could’ve asked for and I never even anticipated it. Thanks for making a video explicating the features which caused my initial surprise. You rock. 10/10.
There is one important thing to note though when you put the P-61C in your lineup. Being classified as a fighter, if you want to spawn any other fighter aircraft after the Black Widow, it will double your spawn cost. Unless you're pairing it up with either an attacker or a bomber (or you simply don't mind), it might be better to replace it with something more effective in the fighter role. Something like the PBJ, though second-class, brings similar capabilities while keeping your fighter slot open.
You should play the P51 with 20mms in the American tech tree. The Ground belts are so good when you’re attacking ground vehicles that I would go so far as to say it’s the A-10 of 3.0
I used it and its useless
@@gigachad8425 obvious skill issue
@@Puppy_kicker74 nah it doesn't penetrate shit or maybe i just have problem with german wehraboos anyways with ground targets belt shooting wilberwind is useless
the gun is good, flight characteristic is also good, but the engine is.... meh
I don't know why War Thunder designates this as a fighter or air defense fighter " the P-61 was redesignated as the F-61 and served in the United States Air Force as a long-range, all-weather, day/night "interceptor" for Air Defense Command until 1948, and for the Fifth Air Force until 1950." is what is told about the aircraft. But originally this aircraft had four 20mm cannons on the wings and they were asked to change it to the belly of the plane which eliminated the inherent drawbacks of the convergence of wing-mounted guns.
My all time favorite WW2 plane. And, it was huge for a fighter, which is why the digital version can carry so much
This thing stayed in my line up until around 7.0 when I got the F3D
Man... it was the NIGHT fighter and radar was meant to find bombers at night
This plane is one of my favorites.
that dry humor is just what i needed haha, welcome back on youtube!
When they get behind just loop slowly to kill their energy or shallow dive and 50cal em. You can also shoot bombers underneath at weird angles and kill them around 1km lol.
I loved the widows, playing it mostly when the me 264 first introduced, what I like to do is fly parallel with them and have broadside battle.
i hate my self for laughing at those puns.
All of your Widow's puns had no reason to make me laugh, yet I did...
The funny thing is, in the real world, it could carry up to 4,600 lb bombs under the wings, and some could carry a 1,000 lb bomb under the fuselage. So the real Loadout was even heavier than what is shown in the game.
it is the ultimate jack-of-all-trades
*but it fails as a fighter, which is it's original role*
Believe me it doesn't. It's big, it's fat but when used correctly you can carry games in Air RB with it. It's all about speed and altitude. You climb on the start and then either clean up enemies on your alt or dive on the others. On altitude your top speed allows you to extend even if damaged. If you have enemies under you, if you play it smart you are god of boom and zoom, you dive go fast click onece or twice on enemy they die, you go back up, if there are enemies nearby you're faster than them because of dive and you can keep that speed for quite long witch allows you to dictate the fight as they will most likely be slower at that point. It's one of hidden gems in US TT and one of best 4.0 fighters
funny enough in reality it was a good night fighter overall but with many delays in design and production leading to a late introduction & subsequently average showing in combat
@@szymonkotynia2347 Air RB is a hellhole I'm never going to visit again, but it's the size that is it's downfall
it's just too big to even try to dogfight fw-190s or zero's, even some migs or yaks
but the amount of ammunition certainly DOES make a big difference
also the boom and zoom is extremely risky at that BR, since if you miss, the chonky structure of the widow will get damaged 8/10, and eventually they will catch up
but it is extremely infuriating and powerful if used right
@@val8389 you kinda play it like a jet against props, you need to stay fast and think what to do next because one turn or plane you didn't see and you are dead
Its original role is not just a fighter, but a night fighter. That’s a big difference there, and the night fighter role really doesn’t exist in War Thunder, since all aircraft have radar and perfect visibility anyway.
I got a model of the P61 when i was a kid and ever since this has been my favorite plane
Saying the P61 is not maneuverable is simply not true. In skilled hands, it was one of the most maneuverable aircraft in WWIi
Omg. Howtoplay your stupid dad jokes had me rolling with laughter. I love dumb jokes like that.
I'll add one or two:
When you at the top of the team: *Widows Excel*
Frontal engagement
*Widows PowerPoint*
When you unlock black windows
*Widows Access*
HE SAID THE LINE “800 pieces of ammunition”
I still use my P61C in my jets aircade lineup. Best God Mode getter Ive found yet. A big reason is that turret, gets hits on planes moving too fast to get your nose on.
So one thing is that turret is actually meant for offensive fighting and attacking the enemy from below. I utilize it quite effectively by going under the opponents an if I fail an attack, and let the turret finish them.
Also turret gunners have a hidden stat bonus that makes them deal far more damage than main armament 50 cals. This means they do damage like 20mm rounds or better.
I like your humor no matter what plane or vehicle you make a video about. You can also make videos about tricycles or bobby cars... I would watch them.
The windows jokes were pretty funny
The P-61 is one of those planes that specs only into all the damage parts and stuff meant to kill whoever is behind or above them.
Wait a minute… powerful fast-firing frontal guns..:: close air support…. A-10 is that you?
Favorite thing is bombing bases in air br and then boom and zooming aircraft from high altitude they struggle to get to
but this thing has radar that will help you hunt bombers in the cloud. after tracking 1 enemy, try to switch to 4KM range rather than 9KM. this way you will get more kills in the cloud, or at night.
Hey buddy I just wanted to let you know that I love your videos and I watch them all the time. And it is a damn shame you don't have a much bigger channel. Early on when I first started playing war thunder I had a lot of issues to the point that I almost quit. Then I found your channel and you taught me a lot. You showed me vehicles that I thought were terrible but I was just playing them wrong. So for that I say thank you and keep them coming.
Believe it or not, the P-61 is actually a pretty good dogfighter, as is the P-38. Generally WT flight models are shit but they sometimes are accurate enough to get the idea of what it would fly like irl. If you deploy the flaps the black widow starts to shine. The Zap wing was designed to maximize the lift coefficient which becomes and increasing advantage at slower speeds. Prop hanging, and very low speed dogfights the P-61 is king. Just be sure to use flaps and get the fight over quick as possible.
Another great tactic is to try and get into situations that you can quickly switch to the turret. Attempt the rate fight but use lag pursuit to keep energy, and try and scare/kill him with the turret. It tends to freak people out 😂😂
i am now focusing in this fighter and i get very good results with him in air rb, and honestly the gun turret is awesome because if you really know how to dogfight and understand energy mechanics, you can easily kill an enemy that is on you. the hard part isn't the shooting, its the dogfighting from the rear view. also it is usefull if you are hunting a bomber and you dont have enough altitude, or you did a shooting run and wasn't successfull, you just change to the gunner and continue spraying.
I get usually 2 kills and some assists per game, that's enought to get you in top 3
its a nice plane all around i would say the two planes most like it ate the a-20 and the a-26 aircraft respectively
Those windows jokes almost pushed me over the EDGE
It was and awesome plane until they nerfed the hell out of bombs. Also would like to see a video on the PBJ-1H
One of my favorite ww2 planes, I think the radar is more for it’s historically intended purpose, as a nighttime ground attack/interceptor…
The radioman : Widdow's Word
In rb the black widow is pretty good. But where this plane is an absolute monster is air simulator. I have less than an ounce of skill and will out frag the entire enemy team in that thing.
don't let them know!
I really am so glad your back, thanks man.
I got wrecked by a p-61 in air rb. Came towards me like it was a head on but was actually going about 10 degrees low and demolished me with the turret
haven't had the plane for long but me and my buddy did AB got cap the airfiled and it was shot down but after killing 5 planes and getting 3A and one maneuver kill and went out in a blaze of glory with 4 fighter having attack me at once and two of those fighters were my Assist and the other two got damages all around. i was surprised how well it did
I have the premium version. Gor some reason it didnt have bombs for a long time but they fixed it. I upgraded the gunner so much that he has aim bot now. Its amazing
The radar on this thing is great, in my first sim game with it I got 3 player kills and 2 ai kills and I have no doubt that the radar helped.
Why my radar cannot kill anyone? :/
@@HowToPlay1337 Sim maps are waaay bigger and more fighting takes place at higher altitudes. In Sim, I would patrol at about 10000ft over the front line and watch the radar. Because of the ground cluttering up the radar, it would be quite useless at finding aircraft in ground battles.
The French B26C can have the same bomb load with a way stronger armature but 5 12.7 machin guns on the front, 3 12.7 double machin gun turret at the back and top and a 12.7 turret at the front for a BR of 4.7
It turns like a bathtub tho
This thing is so fun when you just fly under Bombers with the turret
Radar is very useful in air rb
the stupid widows firewall joke made me laugh and earned a like
Personally got the Calliope just so I could have a full 4.0 fun lineout 1.5 second fuse works well 3 seconds if you like killing planes with the bombs.
3 seconds is too much. Maybe 2.5 atmost.
I love how brought back 800 pieces of ammunition
How many?
Pro tip that No one i know, knows about......if you set a keybind for change SAS mode in flight you can switch from mouse pointer mode to mouse joy stick, This allows you to fly the aircraft using WASD without the mouse pointer forcing you to fly straight and level whilst controlling the gunner........this makes turret gunning alot more effective and i have had alot of kills in P-61 manoeuvring and gunning at the same time it really makes a differnece
Peaceful bombing...🤣🤣
wait.... this whole time it was leet and not just 1337?
that radar show to you AAA with target locked on you... only the modern AAA can do it...
Whenever I play bombers I immediately lose confidence that I'll be able to bomb my base once I see a P-61.
Well, for starters, it is supposed to be crewed by 3 . War Thunder has a gamer doing all 3 jobs. What they need to do is allow multiplayer mode to allow for multiple friends to crew certain planes, like the B-25, B-17...etc.
this thing is a POWERHOUSE in air RB. It's stupid fast and at 4km+ will outun 99% of enemy aircraft including 109s. It's frontal armament is very powerful and when combined with the radar can be used to stalk bombers from the clouds. Very useful for hunting the damned 264s that shred you with cannon fire if they see you coming. It's also very good in sim as the turret can get a lot of kills from pursuing aircraft that can't aim as easy in AB or RB. It's also a very stable flyer and again the radar can be used to identify and monitor your apporach on enemy bombers that are too far or visually obscured.
Flip on the simulator controls and you'll win a rate fight against a 109 on the deck. Also super easy to land without tail controls
It also looks really cool.
NOT THE PETS
they did same thing in Enlisted on Normandy they gave alies all the ground attack ordances and screwing axis over
i use the 4 50bmg's as shrager musik and sneak up under bombers and light em up
A truly murderous plane, that had serious issues with the dorsal gun barbette. Northrop took it off, put it back on, changed the gun system, changed the manufacturer. No matter what was done, It still caused buffeting that made the plane's crews tear their hair out.
They have one of these at Hill Aerospace Museum, it's goddamn massive.
the plane is cool and all but how many pieces of ammunition does it have
Great bombing skills. can you do a tut on how to bomb?
in real life the turret could be locked in front position so the pilot could fire the 4x20mm and the 4x12.7mm turret to make really quick work of an unlucky enemy
Man I like this plane it does wonders but the big size make it’s a target for enemy planes
Thank you for making this video
There will now be so many easy targets
Yum!
If you are good with controlling plane with keyboard you can actually dogfight pretty well by just turning with enemy while hitting them with the turret
This is my favorite plane on the game the best there is I love it even though not very agile but it can packs a tremendous punch
Do some Night missions, the RADAR will make sense then, y'know, being a Night Fighter.
Cool I’ve been trying to get the p61-c1 and f82 :)
It looks like if you drop those bombs and don't get far enough away you will Spreadsheet metal all over the battlefield.
this must be an old recorded video cause my radar doesn't look anything like this one but it did a while back. But anyways those rear top-mounted guns can shoot at such great angles it's a saving grace a lot of the time being able to shoot vertically 90 degrees up. But the best way for an enemy to attack this plane is from the bottom rear or anywhere from the back end bottom sides and not anywhere head-on or front and or above down
The footage from 0:55 to 1:14 is from the 8th of November. There is an option in air battle settings to make the radar a rectangle.
Dude, u are back?! i miss ur videos. Hugs from Brazil!
In conclusion, probably one of the planes of all time
They used to be better. I’ve seen a guy land one of these things without wings, one broken rudder, and only one engine. He got back up in the air and killed two more planes before he finally lost his pilot.
Frankly, it is an anomaly. Nothing else I’ve ever played in the American air tree feels like it is legitimately superior to other aircraft in the same br.