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The Triumph of Instrument Flight:
A Retrospective in the Century of U.S. Aviation
Copyright 2009
Most of the pages in the flying book featured here are devoted to actual experiences from all sectors of aviation. Readers are brought into the cockpit. This is not a "how to" book. In the few instances where technology is pivotal, the author keeps it simple. The published book contains some errors. First, below, are the errata detected so far ,with credit given to sharp-eyed readers. Then, an update discovery the author made that confirmed his belief, after reading Anne Lindbergh's book, North to the Orient, that the Lindbergh's Sirius aircraft was not equipped for instrument flight during their trip to the Orient. And finally, an Idlewild addition (July 2009) to this page on a 'letdown' that was not an 'instrument letdown,' but did have the benefit of the all-essential instrument flight instruments. s/s Franklyn E. Dailey Jr, author
Dailey International Publishers' book corrections, additions, and amplifications up to and including June 30, 2009.
For: The Triumph of Instrument Flight: A Retrospective in the Century of U.S. Aviation ISBN 0966625137
Erratum #1: Illustration 2 - on pages ii and 6. The aircraft identified in "near background" on page 6 is not a Stinson Detroiter but a gullwing Stinson. The author uncritically accepted the photo identification from the photo source. The author thanks pilot Mark R. Sellers for bringing the faulty identification to the author's attention. Pilot and author, Robert Mudge, commented further: "Just to be a real nit-picker, I would add, while it is a gull wing design, and that term was used to describe the wing configuration, I think you will find the model was a Stinson Reliant. Northeast Airlines (NE) flew them (SR-8s, SR-9s and SR-10s) in their instrument flight school in Boston and later at Burlington, VT. They were a great airplane. I flew them at Burlington as a student, then as an instructor before I got on the line. Then I flew them as the corporate pilot for Northeast after its school closed down. Northeast took the best one from the school, an SR-10 model, and painted it all up in NE livery. Not only that, as the "captain," I got 4 bucks an hour. Big money for a copilot in those days!"
Erratum #2: Page 334, in the paragraph crediting pilot Jerome Gerald Schnedorf . In the fifth line, the author has Schnedorf "instructing" at Louisiana State University. He was actually studying technical writing there.
Erratum #3: Illustration 18 - on pages ii and 154. The aircraft, identified as P2Y-2s, are P2Y-1s. The author uncritically accepted the original identification. The author thanks Jack E."Old Jack" Reich, Sitka flyer, for bringing this to his attention.
Author's Update #1: to pages 44 and 45: The Lockheed Sirius plane flown by Charles and Anne Lindbergh to the Orient did not have gyro-horizon and directional gyro instruments. At the time the first edition came out in mid-2004, I could only infer that from Anne Lindbergh's account of their 1931 flight in an episode in her book, "North to the Orient." Her pilot husband got into a touchy situation as their plane flew down the Japanese island chain, and he had to make a descent to a water landing with fog and overcast shrouding the island cove where he would have to tether their seaplane for the night. It took a third heart-throbbing descent attempt before he could make visual contact for a water landing. I have since had access to National Air and Space Museum (NASM) archives. Sirius was re-outfitted for the Lindberghs' Atlantic rim (including much of Europe) survey trip in 1933, with an engine change to increase power to 710 hp, and, according to the NASM archives, "A Sperry artificial horizon and directional gyro had been added to the instrument panel since the previous flight....(to the Orient)..."
I am indebted to B-52 pilot Joe Waldroff for helping me find this photo of an early Lockheed Sirius instrument panel. The Lindberghs, Charles and Anne, bought the first of the 14 Sirius aircraft built. This panel could well be the panel of the plane they flew to the Orient in 1931. I have strained my eyes to read the legends and at least one looks like a radio frequency. Mrs. Lindbergh (Anne) flew in the back seat as navigator and radio operator, mostly the latter. Her beautifully written book, "North to the Orient," also contains some of the very critical radio communications she made for information from the stations ahead on each leg of their epochal 1931 flight.
Now that the reader of this page knows that "Lindy" defied the odds once again in bypassing what would normally have taken "an instrument letdown," to get Sirius down safely close to a fogged-in cove, without instrument flight instruments available, let me offer pilot Harry Schmidt's experience, in his own words, in getting his Navion down, onto Idlewild Airport (now J.F. Kennedy Airport) with that field under declared IFR (fog) conditions. My own heading for this story would be, "Don't Do This!" (Harry's story took place in home territory for me for 45 years. I never landed at "East Hartford" airfield but did so many times at nearby Hartford-Springfield Airport, known to most air travelers as Bradley Field.)
Landing at Idlewild by Harry Schmidt
"During my work with P&W, although my primary assignment was as an engineering test pilot stationed at Edwards, there were occasions when I would travel back to Hartford for meetings or other temporary assignments. One of those temporary assignments included acting as the pilot of a corporate Navion that was kept in East Hartford but primarily was used to transport top executives of Hamilton Standard, a United Aircraft subsidiary in Windsor Locks CT. One lovely spring morning I had such an assignment. I picked up the president of Ham Standard at the crack of dawn to fly him to JFK (then called Idlewild) for an early morning airline departure. He sat in the co-pilot's seat as we flew south across CT, then continued south at low altitude across Long Island Sound, and continued south to the south shore of Long Island. Then we headed west along the south shore of LI on this beautiful morning. There were no clouds, no aircraft traffic, no turbulence ... nothing to distract from the beauty of nature at low altitude watching birds in their flight and the lovely LI seashore. Shortly after passing the famous Jones Beach I knew we were approaching IDL, so I called IDL tower telling them of my VFR flight plan, location about 5 minutes east of IDL, altitude 1500 feet, and asked for landing instructions. Just at the same time I noticed a low hanging cloud layer or fog bank hanging over the south shore further west. IDL tower replied to my call and advised that the field was closed to all IFR traffic stating that they were zero-zero in heavy fog. A couple minutes later we were over IDL at 1500 feet, well above the fog bank. But as we flew over IDL we noticed that vertical visibility was sufficient to see the ground, the buildings at IDL, and their runways. We judged that the fog bank was several hundred feet thick ... but we could clearly see the ground looking down through the fog. However, the fog had to be very dense and horizontal visibility was probably just about zero as the tower said.
"My high-ranking passenger told me that it was very important that we land and therefore encouraged me to figure out some way of completing the landing. I told him that I first needed to receive approval from the tower to land and that our first indication was that the tower would refuse such a request. At his urging, however, I called the tower a second time telling them of our location, now right above the airport, and asked again for landing instructions. Their reply was the same ... "Field closed due to zero-zero visibility in heavy fog." Their refusal to allow me to land merely reinforced my desire to land. They obviously didn't know I was an engineering test pilot at Edwards, and could not know that I previously had flown F-94s in an all-weather squadron in the Far East. If I could land an F-94 on a short 5000 foot runway with water at each end at 130 knots in bad weather, certainly I could land a Navion on a great 10,000 foot runway at 80 knots. And since I could see the runway from above maybe I had a plan?
"I called the tower a third time, this time telling them I was VFR, could see the field and the runways clearly, and although I knew the field was closed to IFR traffic, I asked them for permission to land VFR. My request obviously took them by surprise and it was quite a while before they replied, this time asking me to restate my request. Again I told them I had the field in sight VFR and asked for permission to make a VFR approach and landing. Again there was a long delay, but finally the tower replied that we were cleared for a VFR landing on runway 22R. My passenger smiled, gave me a thumbs up and I had my challenge for the day. It was clear that I would lose all forward visibility once we entered the fog bank, and hence planned my approach carefully. I had to be perfectly lined-up with 22R before entering the fog bank, and I had to have a very steep rate of descent to get thru the fog in the quickest period of time. We started the descent using a combination of visual and instrument techniques; the wings were kept level with the attitude gyro, the heading kept at 220 degrees with the directional gyro, a high rate of descent with the vertical speed, all the while keeping an eye out the window, looking straight down, waiting to see the runway more clearly right below. Through this combination of using both VFR and IFR flying cues we were able to land someplace in the middle of runway 22R.
"But once on the ground we were lost - indeed the horizontal visibility was zero. I could not even see the side of the runway. I called the tower telling them we were safely on the runway, but lost. We were unable to taxi since we couldn't see anything. The tower sent a follow-me jeep to find us (how they found us I will never know), and then we followed the jeep to an airline gate. My passenger thanked me for the extra effort and fine landing and left the aircraft. I was on my own.
"I had two options - I could have waited for the fog to clear and then return to Hartford, but that could have taken hours and it would have involved no challenge. Or ... instead, I called JFK tower once again and asked for takeoff instructions. The tower replied that the field was zero-zero in heavy fog and closed to all IFR traffic (sounding exactly as they had 30 minutes before when we were in the air). I called them back reminding them that I was the Navion that landed a little while ago VFR and requested permission to takeoff VFR on 22R. Once again there was a lengthy delay, but eventually they called me back and gave me permission for a VFR takeoff on 22R. I had to call them for the follow-me jeep to take me out to runway 22R, and some minutes later there I was, someplace in the middle of 22R, getting ready for takeoff. And I still couldn't even see the sides of the runway. My compass confirmed that my heading was 220, so I called the tower telling them I was ready for my VFR takeoff. They cleared me to takeoff VFR. The lightly loaded Navion was off the ground in a few hundred feet and quickly I had climbed above the fog layer and into the sunlight. The flight back to Hartford was as beautiful as the flight down - mission completed, passenger happy, and the JFK tower still probably wondering what they had approved? I would like to have been in the tower and listened to the conversation the controllers had among themselves after approving those two VFR operations while the field was zero-zero in heavy fog. My log book simply showed a flight to and from IDL. Can you imagine trying to do that today at JFK?"
Booknotes on the author's book on his destroyer experiences in the Mediterranean seawar in World War II: The 4th Edition of Joining the War at Sea 1939-1945, with a new ISBN 0966625153, came out January 1, 2009, and is the currently available edition of this book; it is priced the same, but has 44 more pages than the Third Edition. These pages comprise an original Index created by Dutch scholar, Pieter Graf, complete with corrected European/North African names and their spellings. Order Seawar Book