As they closed on the radar image, Lieutenant Mooney told Haberman to throttle back slightly because the single target had suddenly become two—one of which was a Japanese fighter tucked in close to the bomber. The enemy planes climbed to 17,000 feet, still unaware of the night fighter closing from their 6 o’clock position. As the gap narrowed to about 700 feet, Mooney told Haberman to start firing, and before he could finish his sentence the four 20mms opened up with a deafening roar as the P-61 continued to close. The cannon rounds walked all over the hapless Betty’s fuselage, and it immediately burst into flames, dropped its nose sharply and plummeted straight down to the water.

Haberman and Mooney had scored the first P-61 victory in the Pacific theater. The fight was far from over, however, as the lone Japanese fighter had moved far out to the side and eased in behind Moonhappy. Although the night fighters did not use tracer rounds for good reason, the enemy fighter pilot had probably been in a position to see the fire coming from the 20mm barrels as Haberman flamed the Betty. From there, he moved in on the P-61’s rear.

It didn’t take long for Mooney to realize where the second enemy plane had gone. He yelled: “Look out Hap! There’s a Jap fighter on our tail!” Listeners back at squadron ops were held spellbound by the silence that followed. In the interval the enemy fighter fired a burst that missed wide. Once he had been alerted to the danger, Haberman dropped his port wing with the nose of the P-61 pointed down at a steep angle, heading for the deck at full throttle. As he plummeted he kicked the rudders, taking evasive action to make sure the bogey was not still on his tail.

At about 1,200 feet above the water, Haberman leveled off, still maintaining maximum airspeed. Then he made a quick turn, hoping to go back and get a radar lock on the enemy plane, but nothing showed up. The fighter had disappeared into the night. It was an unusual incident: The Betty had probably been serving as the fighter’s eyes and ears, and that’s why he had been tucked in so close, making only one blip on the radar screen.

On Christmas night 1944, the Japanese intensified their nocturnal attacks against Saipan. The squadron intercepted many of the raiders and shot down several. Lieutenant Robert L. Ferguson, a pilot in the 6th, was flying in his assigned P-61A-5 named The Virgin Widow. He vividly recalled that mission, during which his Black Widow made a spectacular kill: “We scrambled at 2200 hours and it didn’t take long to get airborne because our equipment—oxygen masks, helmets and parachutes—was already in the cockpit, and when we were dropped off on the flight line, the crew chief was ready to strap us in and by 2204 hours we were airborne. Control directed us close enough to get a radar contact at seven miles. We were drawn lower and lower and finally, at 1,500 feet, I figured we were tracking a surface craft and didn’t want to fly into the water. This type of intercept happened many times and we had to check every one out because sometimes the Japanese bombers came in right above the water.”

With enemy activity unusually high, it didn’t take long for control to radio another contact to the P-61 crewmen. They were told to steer 180 degrees, with the bogey 45 miles out flying at 10,000 feet. Within minutes, the intruder’s altitude increased and control told them to move up to 15,000 feet. By this time the R/O had a contact at five miles, with the target slightly above them. The overtake speed was 40 mph. When the range decreased to 2,500 feet, Lieutenant Ferguson put down flaps and reduced speed by at least 50 mph in order to ease in from behind on the bogey’s blind spot. With­out warning, however, the target began to accelerate.

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