THE BLACK WIDOW HUNTER

How Major Carol C. Smith fought the most lopsided night battle in the Pacific sky—and won.

The Contact in the Dark

2340 hours, December 29th, 1944.
North of Mindoro, the sky was a void—no stars, no moon, just a wall of tropical blackness heavy with humidity.

Inside cockpit 15, Major Carol C. Smith, age twenty-six, crouched beneath the domed canopy of his P-61 Black Widow, listening to the hum of the twin R-2800 engines vibrating through the airframe.

Behind him, in the second cockpit, Lieutenant Philip Porter stared into the green glow of the SCR-720 radar—a glowing disc filled with drifting static like something alive.

A single blip moved at 180 knots, steady and unaware.

Smith had flown 43 combat missions.
He’d shot down four aircraft in darkness so total it might as well have been blindness.

But tonight was different.

The Japanese weren’t sending one bomber.
They were sending twelve.

Smith was the only night fighter airborne.

Twenty thousand American troops slept on the ground below—engineers, Seabees, infantry, mechanics—building two airfields the invasion of Luzon depended on.

If those airfields were cratered tonight, the invasion clock slipped.
If the invasion slipped, casualties multiplied.
If casualties multiplied, Luzon became another Saipan.

The math was not metaphor.

It was physics.
It was fuel.
It was minutes.

And it was about to kill someone—unless Smith stopped it.

The Radar That Made Darkness a Weapon

The Black Widow wasn’t built like anything the Japanese had ever seen.

66-foot wingspan.
Twin booms.
2,000 horses on each side.
Four 20-mm cannons.
A top speed of 366 mph.

But the real killer lived in the nose:

SCR-720.
A rotating parabolic radar dish that could see aircraft five miles away through pure black.

To Japanese pilots flying G4M Betty bombers—guided by moonlight, drift gauges, and faith—the night sky was sanctuary.

They believed no one could find them.

They were wrong.

Porter leaned into his headset.

“Contact steady… bearing zero-three-five. Altitude eight thousand. Range four miles.”

Smith pushed the throttles forward.
The Black Widow surged.

He couldn’t see anything—not a wingtip, not a horizon, not even cloud texture.

Just black.

Only the radar told him a man was up there.

A man in a bomber filled with explosives.
Heading straight for American tents.

First Kill: The Betty at 350 Yards

The blip grew larger.

Smith switched on his own cockpit radar repeater.
A single bright spot moved toward the center.

4000 yards.
3000.
2000…

At 1,000 yards, a dim smear of orange glowed in the void—the exhaust of two Mitsubishi engines.

Smith slid low and behind, letting gravity carry him under the bomber’s blind spot.

He armed the cannons.

At 350 yards, he fired.

The four Hispano cannons hammered the night.
Red-white tracers streaked upward in a tight arc.
Fuel tanks ignited instantly—Bettys carried death in their wings.

The bomber rolled, burning, then fell like a flaming coin into the black ocean.

Smith checked his fuel.

One bomber down.
Eleven still inbound.

Second Kill: Racing the Clock

Porter had three more contacts on the scope—each miles apart, each headed toward Mindoro.

Smith turned south, climbing, burning fuel at a terrifying rate.

At full chase power, the R-2800s devoured minutes of endurance.
For every minute he ran hard, he lost three minutes of loiter time.

But he didn’t have time.

He found the second Betty at 350 yards, too.
Same silhouette.
Same weakness.

Two-second burst.
Fuel tanks ruptured.
The wings blossomed into orange fire.

Impact at 0019 hours.

Two bombers down.

Ten remained.

Fuel dropped to 42 percent.

This was becoming impossible.

Third Kill: The Helen That Fought Back

Porter now had a slippery contact—faster, climbing, weaving.

Not a Betty.

A Nakajima Ki-49 Helen bomber—better armed, better armored, and flown tonight by someone who knew American night fighters were hunting.

Smith climbed to intercept.

For the first time, tracers flashed past his canopy—
The Helen’s tail gunner had spotted him.

Smith didn’t break off.

He rolled beneath the bomber’s belly.
The P-61’s stability held true; the radar stayed locked.

He pulled the trigger for a longer burst—three seconds.

A shell blew the right engine apart; the bomber inverted and spiraled into the sea.

Time: 0029.

Fuel: 28 percent.

Three kills.

Seven bombers unaccounted for.

Fourth Kill: One Burst Left

The fourth bomber flew low—dangerously close to American searchlights sweeping the dark.

This Betty never saw Smith coming.

Two-second burst.
Fuel tank rupture.
Fire.
Impact at 0035.

Four bombers down.

Fuel: 23 percent.

Smith turned toward Mindoro.
He’d done the impossible—
but the night wasn’t done with him.

The Fifth Contact: A Fighter in the Dark

Porter’s voice cut the intercom:

“New contact. Seven thousand feet. Closing.”

Smith checked the range.

Too close to ignore.
Too near the airfields to let pass.

It wasn’t a bomber.

As Smith approached, he could just make out a compact, agile shape:

Nakajima Ki-84 Frank.

One of Japan’s best fighters.
Faster than a P-61.
Deadlier in daylight.

But this wasn’t daylight.

The Frank flew blind.
Smith had radar.

He slid beneath the fighter.

Fuel: 17 percent.

If he missed this shot, he would run out of gas trying again.

He didn’t miss.

Three-second burst—his longest of the night.
The Frank’s engine detonated.
The pilot bailed out.
The fighter fell away.

Kill number five.

The Fuel Problem

Smith checked his gauge.

15 percent.
Not enough to divert.
Barely enough to land.

He turned toward Mindoro.
The P-61’s big wings hummed in the night.

Porter kept him on course.

Fuel: 13 percent.

Lights from the field appeared in the black—twelve kerosene lamps, dim and flickering.

Smith lined up for approach.

Fuel: 11 percent.

He dropped gear.
Flaps out.

Fuel: 9 percent.

Closer.

Then—

every runway lamp went out.

Mindoro vanished.

A pilot’s worst nightmare:

a blind landing in complete darkness.

The Blind Landing

Smith descended by instruments alone.
No stars.
No horizon.
No lights.

Just the radar altimeter whispering numbers:

250 feet
200
150
100…

He reduced power.
The Black Widow settled.

At 50 feet, he held the stick steady, trusting mathematics more than sight.

At 0059, the gears struck coral.

Hard.

But they held.

He rolled to a stop in the dark.

Fuel: 6 percent.
Three minutes of flight time left.

He had landed a twin-engine fighter in total darkness after five kills in fifty-five minutes.

Nothing else like it happened in the Pacific air war.

The Sixth and Seventh Kills

Smith slept for two hours.

At 1430, he was back in the air.

Another Frank appeared on radar.

He dove from above, using gravity to cheat the Frank’s speed advantage.

A two-second burst blew the engine apart.

Kill number six.

Later that day, another Japanese aircraft—another Frank—flew into his hunting ground.

Smith intercepted.

Kill seven.

All within 24 hours.

No other American night fighter pilot matched that record in the Pacific.

Aftermath

Because of Smith and Porter:

Zero Japanese bombs hit Mindoro that night.

The airfields were finished on schedule.

P-51s and P-47s launched from them to protect the Lingayen Gulf invasion on January 9th.

Strategic planners estimated that a successful Japanese raid would have delayed the invasion by two weeks, increasing casualties dramatically.

Smith went home quietly.

He never wrote a memoir.
Never claimed the spotlight.
Never asked for medals.

His P-61—Times A-Wastin’—was scrapped after the war.
His radar operator, Porter, received the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Smith disappeared into civilian life.

The documentation remains:
Unit reports.
Intercept logs.
Kill confirmations.
A night when one man and one machine bent the arc of a battle.

The Night the Black Widow Ruled the Sky

In the absolute dark over Mindoro—
no moon, no stars, no mercy—
Major Carol C. Smith performed the most precise, lethal night interception sequence of the Pacific air war.

Five kills in fifty-five minutes.
Seven in one day.
One blind landing that should have killed him.
One invasion saved.

No lights.
No glory.
Just radar.
Math.
Steel nerves.

And a Black Widow that lived up to its name.