"Mike Marron" wrote in message
...
(Gordon) wrote:

My specialty is WWII nightfighting and I can say that, particularly in
the
first half of the war, as many a/c were lost or abandoned due to weather
(or
collisions in poor visibility) than to enemy action. One night off the
top of
my head, a small RAF bomber force had to all abandon their aircraft due
to viz
over their bases - something like 5 Wimpys, I think. On more than one
occasion,
a Mosquito raid that lost no aircraft due to enemy action had to abandon
their
aircraft upon return because there was no clear landing field. Such
events were
not rare on either side and veteran nightfighter pilots uniformly
considered
the weather every bit as much of an enemy as the other team.

I can think of a time or two that I would've loved to "abandon the
A/C" in Can't-See-**** conditions had I been wearing a chute.
One of my former bosses flew Huns in 'Nam and used to poo-poo
us lowly charter jockies when we'd complain about launching from
a short runway way over gross at night and in bad weather (of course,
he hadn't flown in ages and it was our asses on the line and not
his!) Granted, we weren't getting shot at but the risk was probably
just as great because we weren't launching from a nice 10,000 ft. long
runway with barriers and emergency equipment/personnel at the end
in a jet equipped with an ejection seat and the best maintenance
that money could buy. In any event, other than NDB's, what type of
instrument approaches were generally available back in WW2?

-Mike Marron


Ground controlled approach using precision radar was pioneered by the RAF in
WW2. Arthur C Clarke wrote an excellent book
called 'Glide Path' about the project (on which he worked)

The Germans had the Lorenz blind landing system and both the
Americans and British had similar systems in use pre war

In 1930 the American Bureau of standards introduced the first directional
guidance system using a transmission on 330 kHz with two tones
that were transmitted of 65 and 85.7 Hz.
In the aircraft receiver, these were received, applied to filters, detected
and used to energise a centre zero meter. The edge of the airfield was
defined
by the cone of silence over a simple beacon modulated at 40 Hz

F. Dunmore improved on the system by adding a VHF signal on 93 MHz that
was transmitted from a location at the upwind end of the runway, if the
aerial
was mounted at a suitable height, then a line of equal field strength would
approximate to the require vertical guidance pattern.

The first blind landing using this system took place in 1931

Keith