Blind Pilot

Blind Pilots

A blanket of soupy fog swept suddenly in over San Diego one evening last week, swallowed a group of 14 Navy planes soaring over the city. Twelve of the planes, Boeing fighters, were up from North Island Naval Air Station. Two, Vought Corsairs, were from U. S. S. Detroit. None was radio-equipped. Few of the pilots were specially trained for enforced blind flight.

After groping in the swirling mist until their fuel ran low, one Boeing after another came down. Some found North Island; others reached Lindbergh Field across the bay; some landed on Army's Rockwell Field. One was demolished, one burned, several nosed over. No pilot was hurt. Meanwhile the two Corsairs continued to mill about in the peasoup. The only nearby field not fog-shrouded, an unused port near Camp Kearny, was hastily floodlit by the headlights of hundreds of volunteer motorists, but the Corsair pilots could not know about that.

Presently a southbound United Air Lines transport from Los Angeles was intercepted by radio, requested to find the Corsairs, lead them to Kearny. Pilot Charles F. Sullivan gingerly circled the city, picked up the two Navy ships, signaled with his wing lights dot-dot-dot-dash ("follow me"). Then he followed the radio beacon until he was directly over invisible Lindbergh Field, oriented himself, headed toward Kearny, guided by a radio groundsman who could follow the sound of his motor. All landed safely on the automobile-lit field.

Commercial transport operators puffed with pride over the San Diego incident as a graphic demonstration of advances in what they call "instrument" (rather than ''blind") flight. In addition to radio, both for beacon reception and conversation, the United Air Lines plane was equipped with rate-of-climb indicator, artificial horizon and directional gyro, helpful instruments which the Navy planes lacked.

At present all U. S. transport pilots are being trained to comply with a new Department of Commerce order effective Jan. 1. After that date all pilots in interstate passenger service must: 1) have logged 1,200 hr. solo in the last eight years, 500 hr. cross country; 2) have 75 hr. solo night flight; 3) in a hooded cockpit, maneuver a plane through turns, banks, climbs, spirals, recover from stalls, spins, skids, slips, and head the plane on a specified course.

A typical training procedure: at Newark Airport small Pilot "Bill" Lester of American Airways, who is 26 years old but looks 18, takes off in a Fairchild. Hidden in the blackened cockpit behind is old-timer Dean Smith, who flew for Byrd in the Antarctic. Pilot Lester disconnects the radio and instrument-panel light from the rear cockpit, zig-zags the ship every which way for a few miles, pulls it up into a stall, lets it fall off into a spin. At that instant he switches on the instruments, calls through the speaking tube: "All right, mister, take me to Newark."

By his instruments alone, Pilot Smith must recover from the spin. He knows from previous experience that what he must do is probably opposite to what his senses tell him. Pilots learn that they cannot "fly by the seat of their pants." On an even keel again he searches for the radio beacon, determines which of the quadrants of the beacon he is in, follows the correct one in until he encounters a small zone of silence. That tells him he is directly over the beacon near the field. That is enough. Completely blind landings are not required. Near perfection after long experiment are a localizing runway beacon and a radio "landing beam" down which the pilot may "slide" to a safe landing. But thus far there is no thought of flying passengers into a completely blind field. (Occasionally Eastern Air mail pilots do land by instrument at Newark in fog so thick that on the ground, with no radio functioning, they must taxi their planes by compass.)

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