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[Gatrasz]

Gatrasz probably wrote everything, so to the list of aircraft he mentioned, I would add only a Vickers Warwick Mark V airplane.

Thanks  Anyway, I just found out that, in the immediate post-war era (1951), A-26s used searchlights to illuminate their ground targets. But as the Neptune or the Skyraider, they use a different device.

[SAS~Bombsaway]

Hello. Sorry for my bad English. Very interesting and important topic! I'm trying to create a working floodlight for ships. Based on the class of weapons of air defense, it was possible to create a working searchlight. Instead of the shot flash effect, I added the msh of the searchlight beam and added the lines of the new gun to the ships.ini. The resulting searchlight is very imperfect. It only works during the day, shoots and damages the target, it works in flashing mode. Unfortunately, I do not know java well, and nothing better, I have not succeeded so far.

Very nice idea. Let me know if you make any progress.  I am testing a light on the PBY4-2 for now and will post pics as the work goes on.

[ecf111]

I couldn't find any more info than what's been mentioned. The Grumman Guardian has plenty of pics of it's searchlight, I imagine any for the Neptune or Tracker of the era were similar. It actually looks like the pod currently on the neptune.

While there may not be many aircraft with it, I would certainly still appreciate such an addition. I know someone is working on a fictional ASW F7F, perhaps it would be useful. The A-26 would be fun as well.
Thanks!

pic of the Guardian light under the left wing:



screenies of a mission I'm working on, where this mod would be helpful. If I could just have turned the light from the turret I would have found the ship 10x sooner rather then fly the light into a spot. I know they might be a bit dark.

[Dimlee]

I searched through Russian language sources to find out which Soviet aircraft were equipped with searchlights.
The list below includes a/c which we have in BAT (Angels High).
An-12
SB-2
Li-2
Pe-3 (probably Pe-3bis as well)
Tu-22
TB-1 (just for trials on several planes)
An-2 (at least one modification in VVS, allegedly also some field mods in Indochina in 1960s).

Tu-16
also
Tu-163(tanker modification of Tu-16 bomber) - with so-called "hand searchlights" (kind of Aldis Lamp) operated by at least three crew: pilot, navigator, tail gunner.

Tu-95 (stationary forward searchlights and Aldis lamp in tail cockpit)
Tu-2 (VVS, post WWII)

[SAS~Bombsaway]

Due to the holidays, I put this on hold but I will be working on it as soon as I get caught up on the Honey do list that she has for me.

[Gatrasz]

I hope this project will be continued in the near future, as it was a very promising idea. Having (once again ) created a #WAW3 clone folder for exclusive nightfighting mods (mostly for air.ini management convenience), I noticed a few days ago that some aircraft had some very powerful landing lights, making this idea back and much alive...

By the way, does anybody know (quite out of subject but related in some way) if the Turbinlite device mounted on some A-20 and at least a Mosquito (not sure) was fixed or could be oriented to 'follow' the target bomber ?

[Gatrasz]

Hi ! Not sure if it will be of some use but I recently found out, someone could say by accident, about the Yak-9 MPVO, an experimental night fighter variant of the Yak-9 without radar but featuring some searchlight device... I did not find further documentation though, so I bet it was a fixed one and can't really figure how it was done 

[Piotrek1]

Hi Gatrasz,
I'm not sure about Yak-9, but we have in the game, eg. the Bf-110D-3, which was equipped with this kind of searchlight,
ah ... if only we could transplant this idea into our game.

Regards,
Piotrek

[Gatrasz]

I'm not sure about Yak-9, but we have in the game, eg. the Bf-110D-3, which was equipped with this kind of searchlight,

Hi, and thanks for your answer ! You mean Spanner-Anlage infrared homing device ? I don't know about this kind of device for the Yak-9, maybe more conventional light device, but that could make sense, according to the very few data available...

[Piotrek1]

Actually I haven't explored the subject and I don't know exactly the properties of this device, but I suppose it's a powerful conventional  reflector for searching objects at night.

Maybe someone who is more familiar with the subject could say a little more.
Regards,
Piotrek

[Dimlee]

Hi ! Not sure if it will be of some use but I recently found out, someone could say by accident, about the Yak-9 MPVO, an experimental night fighter variant of the Yak-9 without radar but featuring some searchlight device... I did not find further documentation though, so I bet it was a fixed one and can't really figure how it was done 

There were over 20 modifications of Yak-9 (not including field ones) so there could be one or two aircraft equipped with searchlights for the experiment. Unlikely they were used on regular basis.
MPVO = PVO (Anti-air defence) of Moscow.

[Piotrek1]

Hi Gatrasz,
forgive my previous laconic post, I found some info about Bf-110D-3.

Several Bf-110D-3s were equiped with Spanner-Anlage outfit for localisation of enemy by infrared rays.There was emitor under the fuselage which emited the rays ahaed of the plane. The rays reflected from the barrier and the blurred silhouette was projected on the tubus display (Q-Rohr) in the cockpit.The most visible were the hot parts of enemy planes as engines or exhausts.This outfit was used only seldom and did not reached more remerkable successes. It was used also on Do-17Z-10s "Kauz II" and Do-215B-5s "Kauz II".In thesecond half of 1942 the "Spanners" were replaced with more efficient radar FuG 202 "Liechtenstein BC"