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Description
Disclaimer: This is a what-if scenario. It is based off of historical context and real life scenarios, but is ultimately fiction. This work was mainly a test of night scenes, and I quickly ran out of layers trying to add details. Once I get Photoshop up and running, I plan to use it to add some more details.

==Blind War==
Towards the end of 1944, General Eisenhower held congress with the Lord Portal of the RAF and General Hap Arnold of the US Army Air Forces. The concern at the time was that the Soviets were pressing towards Germany faster than the Western Allies were, with the Battle of the Bulge and the Netherlands campaign significantly slowing the Western Allies. A plan was drafted to potentially slow the Soviet progress, with the eventual intent to reach Berlin first and hold it hostage against the threat of Soviet domination of Europe. Initially, the plan involved Allied airstrikes on German targets in Poland that would be monumentally supportive to the Soviets once captured, including railroads, bridges, and airfields. Their hope was to trap German forces against the oncoming Soviets, ensuring that the Germans would fight to the death rather than risk being captured by the bloodthirsty Soviet army or that the captured equipment would fail in the hands of the Soviets. While this initially showed promise and the Allies pressed ahead with crippling German infrastructure in the East, it was clear that this wasn’t going to slow down the Red Army from reaching Berlin first.

“Operation Matador” was the code name given to a series of plans involving a potential silent war with the Soviets. Drafted by Eisenhower, the plan was to engage the Soviets at night while pretending to be German military. At the time, the most advanced Soviet nightfighter was any aircraft with a pilot with good night vision, a large disparity between the Red Air Force and the German and USAAF with their radar-equipped fighters. “Matador’s Cape” was the name of a plan where US intelligence teams faked the creation of a superior German night fighter, the Bf 109 K-2. Using a captured Bf 109 G variant, the team added a Focke Wulf Fw 190 drop tank onto the right wing, bolted it in place to pretend that it housed a high powered air-to-air, night-time radar, and attached a Heinkel He 177 propeller to signify the aircraft was powered by a stronger powerplant than the existing variants. Photographs of the aircraft were taken at a captured German airfield using captured German camera equipment, and the photographs were circled around enough that the Soviets eventually got their hands on them. To further ensure that the Soviets believed such an aircraft existed in their opponent’s arsenal, the same aircraft was repainted with multiple Nachtjagdgeschwader (night fighter squadron) markings for separate photo sessions.

In December of 1944, Eisenhower gave the go ahead for Matador's primary mission. The Soviet forces had reached Eisenhower's crossing line (drawn at Budapest), and Berlin was to be soon within reach.

===Blind War===
The Blind War began with a handful of engagements between P-61 black widow aircraft and DB3 bombers of the Red Army. Engagements were relatively tame and rare at first, but eventually they escalated in February 1945. The main reason for the escalation was the introduction of the P-38M, the first small sized fighter aircraft for radar operation. To cover their tracks, USAAF aircraft were armed with German weaponry, with the MG 131 machine guns in place of the M2 machine guns, and MG 151 20 mm cannons to replace the existing Suiza 20mm cannons. Aircraft would perform "Hen-House Hunting" operations, where radar-equipped aircraft such as the Consolidated EB-24 ("Den Mother") would coordinate the nightfighter ("Fox") to a batch of enemy aircraft ("Hens") in enemy airspace ("Henhouse"). This tactic was extremely beneficial primarily in-part due to the enemy's lack of radar-equipped aircraft to counteract or even warn aircraft of the impending assault, and would pave the way for its continued use during the wars to come, ultimately seeing its success go until the modern era with the introduction of stealth aircraft such as the Boeing F-83 Stratohawk.

Between February and May 1945, the P-38Ms would obliterate any record previously held for air-to air-aircraft kill ratios, scoring nearly 598 kills with only one loss due to enemy flak. The Soviets were completely under the spell that the Germans were employing their high-powered 109 K-2 night fighters, and to hold them in this disbelief the USAAF would lie to them that they too were losing large numbers of their bombers during night raids. A number of non-radar equipped P-38Ls we’re also dispatched, armed with German bombs they would use to strike unoccupied equipment, roads, and, eventually, Soviet vehicles. “Operation Matador” was not as great of a success as the Western Allies had hoped in the aspect of war or its original goal, but it did provide prized German scientists and engineers time to move towards the western side of Germany in order to be captured by the Americans and British. Pilots who scored aerial victories during this campaign were attributed German kills in order to cover up the extent of the operation. When it came time to attribute kills to the victorious pilots, aircraft of the Soviet Air Force were matched to German aircraft of similar capabilities and performance (e.g. Lavochkin La-5 : Focke Wulf Fw 190, Yakovlev Yak-3/LaGG-3 : Messerschmidt Bf 109).

The Soviets would discover the reality years later, as researchers attempting to reverse engineer German radar-equipped aircraft found them to have been years behind the capabilities of the ones that had attacked their forces. This was coupled with Dr. Johann Schmid, an ex-Siemens engineer who was pressed into the Soviet employ to develop their first aircraft-mounted radar, who revealed that Siemens (developers of the majority of the radars used by the Germans during the war) was unaware of such a program, instead using the Bf 109 with the rather underpowered “Neptun” radar, which led to the aircraft being abandoned in favor of the larger Me 410 and Bf 110s with their more powerful radars. The clue came from the photographs of the “Bf 109 K-2”, which a veteran Luftwaffe officer informed the Soviets that it had utilized a NJD squadron that had retired by 1943, meaning that it wasn't possible that it had been around when the photographs were actually taken. Nothing would really come of this, since US-USSR tensions were already high at the time, and the fact that the US and Soviets had openly engaged in dogfighting over the Baltic towards the end of the war with little consequences to either side.

Displayed above is an incident that occurred on March 19, 1945, when Captain Pete “Mahjong” Peroni and SSGT Taylor Ville would engage with their ace-kill over Berlin. While the Soviet Air Force was bombarding the northeastern quarter of the city, USAAF aircraft were dispatched to pick off stragglers. As flak and other defenses were sent up by the Germans on the ground, the Lightnings darted amongst the Soviet aircraft and managed to draw the escort aircraft away from the pack. “Mahjong’s” aircraft, “Dealer’s Revenge”, would end up cornering a lone Yak-3 or Yak-7, firing along the inside edge of aircraft for his and Ville's 5th kill. Peroni and Ville would finish the war with 11 aerial victories (all but one being Soviet aircraft) and would continue to serve with the Air Force into the Korean War, where they added another 2 kills to their resume.

Description
Disclaimer: This is a what-if scenario. It is based off of historical context and real life scenarios, but is ultimately fiction. This work was mainly a test of night scenes, and I quickly ran out of layers trying to add details. Once I get Photoshop up and running, I plan to use it to add some more details.

==Blind War==
Towards the end of 1944, General Eisenhower held congress with the Lord Portal of the RAF and General Hap Arnold of the US Army Air Forces. The concern at the time was that the Soviets were pressing towards Germany faster than the Western Allies were, with the Battle of the Bulge and the Netherlands campaign significantly slowing the Western Allies. A plan was drafted to potentially slow the Soviet progress, with the eventual intent to reach Berlin first and hold it hostage against the threat of Soviet domination of Europe. Initially, the plan involved Allied airstrikes on German targets in Poland that would be monumentally supportive to the Soviets once captured, including railroads, bridges, and airfields. Their hope was to trap German forces against the oncoming Soviets, ensuring that the Germans would fight to the death rather than risk being captured by the bloodthirsty Soviet army or that the captured equipment would fail in the hands of the Soviets. While this initially showed promise and the Allies pressed ahead with crippling German infrastructure in the East, it was clear that this wasn’t going to slow down the Red Army from reaching Berlin first.

“Operation Matador” was the code name given to a series of plans involving a potential silent war with the Soviets. Drafted by Eisenhower, the plan was to engage the Soviets at night while pretending to be German military. At the time, the most advanced Soviet nightfighter was any aircraft with a pilot with good night vision, a large disparity between the Red Air Force and the German and USAAF with their radar-equipped fighters. “Matador’s Cape” was the name of a plan where US intelligence teams faked the creation of a superior German night fighter, the Bf 109 K-2. Using a captured Bf 109 G variant, the team added a Focke Wulf Fw 190 drop tank onto the right wing, bolted it in place to pretend that it housed a high powered air-to-air, night-time radar, and attached a Heinkel He 177 propeller to signify the aircraft was powered by a stronger powerplant than the existing variants. Photographs of the aircraft were taken at a captured German airfield using captured German camera equipment, and the photographs were circled around enough that the Soviets eventually got their hands on them. To further ensure that the Soviets believed such an aircraft existed in their opponent’s arsenal, the same aircraft was repainted with multiple Nachtjagdgeschwader (night fighter squadron) markings for separate photo sessions.

In December of 1944, Eisenhower gave the go ahead for Matador's primary mission. The Soviet forces had reached Eisenhower's crossing line (drawn at Budapest), and Berlin was to be soon within reach.

===Blind War===
The Blind War began with a handful of engagements between P-61 black widow aircraft and DB3 bombers of the Red Army. Engagements were relatively tame and rare at first, but eventually they escalated in February 1945. The main reason for the escalation was the introduction of the P-38M, the first small sized fighter aircraft for radar operation. To cover their tracks, USAAF aircraft were armed with German weaponry, with the MG 131 machine guns in place of the M2 machine guns, and MG 151 20 mm cannons to replace the existing Suiza 20mm cannons. Aircraft would perform "Hen-House Hunting" operations, where radar-equipped aircraft such as the Consolidated EB-24 ("Den Mother") would coordinate the nightfighter ("Fox") to a batch of enemy aircraft ("Hens") in enemy airspace ("Henhouse"). This tactic was extremely beneficial primarily in-part due to the enemy's lack of radar-equipped aircraft to counteract or even warn aircraft of the impending assault, and would pave the way for its continued use during the wars to come, ultimately seeing its success go until the modern era with the introduction of stealth aircraft such as the Boeing F-83 Stratohawk.

Between February and May 1945, the P-38Ms would obliterate any record previously held for air-to air-aircraft kill ratios, scoring nearly 598 kills with only one loss due to enemy flak. The Soviets were completely under the spell that the Germans were employing their high-powered 109 K-2 night fighters, and to hold them in this disbelief the USAAF would lie to them that they too were losing large numbers of their bombers during night raids. A number of non-radar equipped P-38Ls we’re also dispatched, armed with German bombs they would use to strike unoccupied equipment, roads, and, eventually, Soviet vehicles. “Operation Matador” was not as great of a success as the Western Allies had hoped in the aspect of war or its original goal, but it did provide prized German scientists and engineers time to move towards the western side of Germany in order to be captured by the Americans and British. Pilots who scored aerial victories during this campaign were attributed German kills in order to cover up the extent of the operation. When it came time to attribute kills to the victorious pilots, aircraft of the Soviet Air Force were matched to German aircraft of similar capabilities and performance (e.g. Lavochkin La-5 : Focke Wulf Fw 190, Yakovlev Yak-3/LaGG-3 : Messerschmidt Bf 109).

The Soviets would discover the reality years later, as researchers attempting to reverse engineer German radar-equipped aircraft found them to have been years behind the capabilities of the ones that had attacked their forces. This was coupled with Dr. Johann Schmid, an ex-Siemens engineer who was pressed into the Soviet employ to develop their first aircraft-mounted radar, who revealed that Siemens (developers of the majority of the radars used by the Germans during the war) was unaware of such a program, instead using the Bf 109 with the rather underpowered “Neptun” radar, which led to the aircraft being abandoned in favor of the larger Me 410 and Bf 110s with their more powerful radars. The clue came from the photographs of the “Bf 109 K-2”, which a veteran Luftwaffe officer informed the Soviets that it had utilized a NJD squadron that had retired by 1943, meaning that it wasn't possible that it had been around when the photographs were actually taken. Nothing would really come of this, since US-USSR tensions were already high at the time, and the fact that the US and Soviets had openly engaged in dogfighting over the Baltic towards the end of the war with little consequences to either side.

Displayed above is an incident that occurred on March 19, 1945, when Captain Pete “Mahjong” Peroni and SSGT Taylor Ville would engage with their ace-kill over Berlin. While the Soviet Air Force was bombarding the northeastern quarter of the city, USAAF aircraft were dispatched to pick off stragglers. As flak and other defenses were sent up by the Germans on the ground, the Lightnings darted amongst the Soviet aircraft and managed to draw the escort aircraft away from the pack. “Mahjong’s” aircraft, “Dealer’s Revenge”, would end up cornering a lone Yak-3 or Yak-7, firing along the inside edge of aircraft for his and Ville's 5th kill. Peroni and Ville would finish the war with 11 aerial victories (all but one being Soviet aircraft) and would continue to serve with the Air Force into the Korean War, where they added another 2 kills to their resume.