Night Attack & Combat Training Unit

Night Attack and Combat Training Unit (NACTU) — "The Bats" · USN · 1944-1945

Born of Project Affirm — the Navy's crash program to put radar in carrier aircraft — the Night Attack and Combat Training Unit turned newly minted aviators into night fliers, running a four-month syllabus of tactics, gunnery, instrument navigation and, hardest of all, carrier landings in the dark. On the Atlantic side the unit moved from Quonset Point to Charlestown, Rhode Island in early 1944, where a runway was fitted with a catapult, arresting gear and a wooden carrier deck so crews could rehearse night recoveries ashore before trying them at sea; a Pacific counterpart at NAS Barbers Point gave night air groups their final polish before the fleet. The two bats on this patch — one seasoned, one following close behind, radar bolts crackling ahead of them — say plainly what the school taught: fighting by echo and instinct when the horizon is gone. Graduates flew the F6F Hellcat and TBM Avenger into the Navy's first true night carrier squadrons, VF(N) and VT(N), in the closing year of the war.