Northrop built nearly 700 P-61s. They appeared late, flying combat only in the last year of the war, and a slew of other types-from the P-38 to the British Mosquito-shared night fighter duties. Yet more than any other World War II fighter, the P-61 foreshadowed the highly instrumented cockpits and two-man crew arrangement that could make the most of radar in the air battle. The Luftwaffe's bombing of London in the fall of 1940 helped drive the need for an able night fighter aircraft. RAF fighters tenaciously defended the airspace by day, but at night, the city lay open to attack, and anti-aircraft fire had its limits. Brig. Gen. Carl A. "Tooey" Spaatz, in England as an observer, worried about nighttime long-range bomber attacks on defenseless coastal American cities.
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机译：诺斯罗普制造了近700架P-61。它们出现得较晚，仅在战争的最后一年才进行空战，还有许多其他类型的飞机-从P-38到英国蚊子共享的夜间战斗机职责。 P-61比任何其他第二次世界大战战斗机都要多，它预示了高度仪器化的驾驶舱和两人乘务组的安排，可以在空战中充分利用雷达。 1940年秋天，德国空军轰炸伦敦，这促使人们需要一架能干的夜间战斗机。皇家空军的战斗人员白天白天顽强地保卫着领空，但到了晚上，这座城市却容易受到攻击，防空火力也受到了限制。双桅船英格兰的观察员卡尔·A·“托伊”·斯帕茨（Carl A. Tooey）Spaatz将军担心夜间对远程防御轰炸机袭击无人防守的美国沿海城市。
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