Blind Landings: Low-Visibility Operations in American Aviation, 1918–1958

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NOTES

ABBREVIATIONS

INTRODUCTION

1. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Night Flight (New York: Century, 1932).

2. Charles Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953), 6–7.

3. “A Classification of the Causes of Forced Landings, from January 1924 to July 1925, with Recommendations,” 7 November 1925, file A14.48: Mgr. Monmouth Ill. Development Division, box 47, Records of the Post Office Department, General Correspondence of the Air Mail Service, record group (RG) 28, National Archives, Washington, DC (NA).

4. I’m grateful to my colleague Michael Buckley for the phrase “military-postal-industrial.”

5. William M. Leary, “The Search for an Instrument Landing System, 1918–1948,” in Innovation and the Development of Flight, ed. Roger Launius (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), 80–99; James R. Hansen, “Aviation History in the Wider View,” Technology and Culture (1989), 643–56.

6. Nick A. Komons, Bonfires to Beacons: Federal Civil Aviation Policy under the Air Commerce Act, 1926–1938 (1978; reprint, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), 151.

7. Ibid., 125–46. The best history of the airmail service is William M. Leary, Aerial Pioneers: The U.S. Airmail Service, 1918–1927 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985). Only nine of the Post Office’s original forty mail pilots were still alive in 1925; Roger E. Bilstein, Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts, revised ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 52. For comparison of railroad and airline times during the early 1930s, see Edward W. Constant II, Origins of the Turbojet Revolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 166–67.

8. Robert Wohl, A Passion for Wings: Aviation and the Western Imagination, 1908–1918 (New Haven: Yale University Pess, 1994), quote from p. 1.

9. Joseph Corn, The Winged Gospel: America’s Romance with Aviation, 1900–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), vii.

10. Ibid., 46–50.

11. See Tom D. Crouch, “An Airplane for Everyman: The Department of Commerce and the Light Airplane Industry, 1933–1937,” in Launius, Innovation and the Development of Flight, 166–87.

12. Corn, Winged Gospel, 139–40; Komons, Bonfires to Beacons, 68. Boeing Air Transport merged with National Air Transport, Varney Air Lines, and Pacific Air Transport to form the core of United Air Lines. See Frank J. Taylor, High Horizons (New York: McGrawHill, 1964).

13. The best synthesis of strategic bombing fantasies is Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Airpower: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 1–9. The classic histories of strategic bombing are Raymond H. Fredette, The Sky on Fire: The First Battle of Britain, 1917–1918 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1976) and Lee Kennett, A History of Strategic Bombing (New York: Scribner, 1982). On Mitchell’s struggle to militarize aviation, see Sherry, Rise of American Airpower, 29–31, 34–37, and Bilstein, Flight in America, 43. A full length treatment is Alfred F. Hurley, Billy Mitchell: Crusader for Air Power (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975). John R. M. Wilson, Turbulence Aloft: The Civil Aeronautics Administration Amid Wars and Rumors of Wars, 1938–1953 (Washington, DC: Federal Aviation Administration, 1979), 63–83.

14. Eric Schatzberg, Wings of Wood, Wings of Metal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 5, 15–19.

15. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), xix.

16. An Army Air Forces C-54 cargo plane rigged with a special autopilot system flew nonstop from Stephensville, Newfoundland, to Ireland in 1947. See “Automatic Controls for Pilotless Ocean Flight,” Electronics (December 1947): 88–92.

17. Erik M. Conway, “Echoes in the Grand Canyon: Public Catastrophes and Technologies of Control in American Aviation,” History and Technology 20, no. 2 (June 2004): 115–34.

CHAPTER 1: INSTRUMENTAL FAITH

1. Monte Dwayne Wright, Most Probable Position: A History of Aerial Navigation to 1941 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1972).

2. See ibid., 70, for a detailed description of the magnetic compass’s airborne misbehavior.

3. Annual Report of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1915–1916, Flight (24 August 1916): 720–22.

4. See Elmer Sperry Jr., ts. dated December 1969, Elmer Sperry Papers, National Air and Space Museum Archives, Washington, DC; description based on U.S. Patent 1,407,491, Elmer A. Sperry, “Turn Indicator,” 21 February 1922. Pioneer Instrument Company memos on the patent issues involved make clear that the idea for the Sperry Turn Indicator came from Luis de Florez of the Navy Bureau of Construction and Repair (during World War II, de Florez became head of Navy flight instrument research), while Charles H. Colvin, who left Sperry Gyroscope to help found Pioneer Instruments in 1919, actually perfected the turn indicator. Elmer Sperry did not initially believe the turn indicator would work. See M. M. Titterington to Lt. E. W. Rounds (Aviation Section, Bureau of Construction and Repair), 9 August 1921, Elmer Sperry Papers. Historian Thomas Hughes gives a different account of the turn indicator in Elmer Sperry: Inventor and Engineer (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), 233–36. “Le Gyrorector,” L’Aérophile (1–15 Janvier 1930): 16.

5. Charles Colvin, interview, 27 May 1971, p. 22, Lawrence B. Sperry Papers, National Air and Space Museum Archives; Elmer Sperry Jr., ts. dated December 1969, Elmer Sperry Papers.

6. Quote from Elmer Sperry to Lawrence Sperry, August 10, 1920, Lawrence Sperry Papers. On Alcock’s flight, see Sir John Alcock and Sir Arthur Whitten Brown, Our Transatlantic Flight (London: William Kimber, 1969). William Davenport, Gyro! The Life and Times of Lawrence Sperry (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1978), 253. Apparently, the engine on his Sperry Messenger failed and he glided in. A coastguardsman saw the airplane go down and a search found the plane two hours after the crash about two miles from shore, but Lawrence was never found.

7. Elmer Sperry to Lawrence Sperry, 10 August 1920, Lawrence Sperry Papers.

8. The best history of the U.S. Post Office’s airmail service is William Leary, Aerial Pioneers: The U.S. Air Mail Service, 1918–1927 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985).

9. Ibid., 87–89.

10. Ibid., 171–85.

11. Ibid., 205.

12. Eighteen pilots died in the first thirty-four months of Post Office airmail service, fully half the original complement of pilots. Ibid., 95–112, 147.

13. Ibid., 86–87, 109, 188–90.

14. Ray H. Boudreaux, “The Ocker-Meyers Method of Blind Flying,” Aero Digest (July 1928): 48, 183–85; William C. Ocker, “Economic Value of Flying by Instruments,” Aero Digest (October 1930): 62–63.

15. William C. Ocker and Carl J. Crane, Blind Fight in Theory and Practice (San Antonio, TX: Naylor Printing Company, 1932), 7.

16. A German instrument called the “Gyrorector” existed that was a workable artificial horizon, but it appears not to have been marketed in the United States. The army obtained one via a military attaché in Europe and tested it at Wright Field in 1926 but did not find it suitable for military aircraft. Its weight also discouraged airline use.

17. William C. Ocker, “Under the Hood,” Southwestern Aviation (May 1934), 4–6, 28.

18. Ocker and Crane, Blind Fight, 12; I use the definitions of “natural” and “mechanical” pilots described by Ocker supporter Boudreaux in “The Ocker-Meyers Method,” in this analysis (see n. 14).

19. Hughes, Elmer Sperry, 234.

20. “Rosenbaum Gyrorector,” War Department report, 28 May 1926, ts., Turn and Bank Instruments Technical File, National Air and Space Museum Archives.

21. Hughes, Elmer Sperry, 235.

22. Richard Hallion, Legacy of Flight: The Guggenheim Contribution to American Aviation (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977), 101–27; Solving the Problem of Fog Flying (New York: Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics, 1929); Hallion, Legacy, 117.

23. Elmer A. Sperry Jr., “The Artificial Horizon,” Aeronautical Engineering (October– December 1930): 289–91.

24. Hallion, Legacy, chap. 6; James H. Doolittle, “Flying an Airplane in Fog,” SAE Journal (March 1930): 318–20, 345.

25. Wolfgang Langewiesche, “Flying Blind,” Harper’s Magazine (April 1947): 328.

26. “Blind Flying and the Airlines,” Aviation (August 1932): 349. See also Harold C. Stark, Instrument Flying, rev. ed. (Pawling, NY: Harold C. Stark, 1934), iv.

27. Stark, Instrument Flying, 6, 8.

28. Ibid., 15. The same system was published by two army fliers the following year under the name “A-B-C system.” The army fliers’ book is William C. Ocker and Carl J. Crane, Blind Flight in Theory and Practice (San Antonio, TX: Naylor Printing, 1932).

29. The Air Corps introduced instruction in June 1930. See “Blind Flying and the Airlines,” 350.

30. E. A. Cutrell, “Instrument and Radio Flying,” Aviation (June 1935): 11–14; E. B. Schaefer, “The Stark System of Instrument Flying,” Aviation Engineering (March 1932): 21–22; Karl S. Day, Instrument and Radio Flying (Garden City, NY: Air Associates, Inc., 1938), vi.

31. “Blind Flying and the Airlines,” 349–52.

32. Day, Instrument and Radio Flying, 1.

33. Private pilots had no minimum number of solo hours to receive a private license at this time. Komons, Bonfires to Beacons, 97; Luis W. Alvarez, Adventures of a Physicist (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 30.

34. Robert B. Parke and Lloyd L. Kelly, The Pilot Maker (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1970): 3.

35. Ibid., 18–20, 26.

36. Ibid., 36.

37. Ibid., 38.

38. Leary, Aerial Pioneers, 224–25.

39. The best account of Brown’s activities is F. Robert Van der Linden, “Progressives and the Post Office” (Ph.D. diss., George Washington University, 1996). See also Komons, Bonfires to Beacons; Leary, Aerial Pioneers, 222–37; Frank J. Taylor, High Horizons (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964); and Robert J. Serling, Eagle: The Story of American Airlines (New York: St. Martin’s, 1985), 63–76. F. Robert van der Linden, The Boeing 247: The First Modern Airliner (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), 20–21; Taylor,High Horizons, 73–94; Komons, Bonfires to Beacons, 197–210.

40. This account is a very brief synthesis of sources that do not all agree on how, exactly, Roosevelt came to cancel the contracts, although they do agree on why. See Komons, Bonfires to Beacons, 219–99; Norman E. Borden, Air Mail Emergency 1934 (Freeport, ME: Bond Wheelwright, 1985); and Benjamin Foulois with Col. C. V. Glines, From the Wright Brothers to the Astronauts (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960): 235–59.

41. Komons, Bonfires to Beacons, 261–62, 272–73.

42. Parke and Kelly, Pilot Maker, 52–53.

CHAPTER 2: PLACES TO LAND BLIND

1. Deborah G. Douglas, “The Invention of Airports” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1996), 322–23.

2. John Law has argued for the importance of understanding “natural” factors in the design and success of technological systems. See his “Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese Expansion,” in The Social Construction of Technological Systems, ed. Wiebe E Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987), 111–34.

3. Maj. Gen. Benjamin D. Foulois, with Col. C. V. Glines, From the Wright Brothers to the Astronauts (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), chap. 7.

4. Douglas, “Invention of Airports,” 275–77.

5. Capt. Eddie V Rickenbacker, Fighting the Flying Circus (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 9–10, describes World War I French aerodromes.

6. A. C. Blackall, “Why Britain Uses Grass for Runways,” Airports (September 1928): 38; Hans-Joachim Braun, “The Airport as Symbol: Air Transport and Politics at Berlin-Tempelhof, 1923–1948,” in From Airships to Airbus: The History of Civil and Commercial Aviation, Vol. 1: Infrastructure and Environment, ed. William Leary (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 45–54.

7. H. Oakley Sharp, G. Reed Shaw, and John A. Dunlop, Airport Engineering (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1944).

8. “Addendum to Air Service Information Circular, vol. IV, no. 303—Discussion of Airplane Tires and Wheels” (Washington, DC: USGPO, 15 September 1922), 4.

9. Pressure is, by definition, the force, or load, applied to each square inch of surface area. Mathematically, that is, Pressure = Force/Area. With pneumatic tires, increasing the force, or load, on the tire also increases the tire’s contact area with the ground. The pressure exerted on the ground is therefore not a direct linear relationship to the load applied. Ronald Miller and David Sawers, The Technical Development of Modern Aviation (London: Routledge, 1968) is the classic work focusing on the achievement of greater efficiency, power, and performance in aircraft.

10. Bendix Landing Gear Service Bulletin, 1 March 1945, located in “Landing Gear, General,” Technical File Y4000200, National Air and Space Museum Archives, Washington, DC.

11. Deborah Douglas, “Airports as Systems and Systems of Airports: Airports and Urban Development in America Before World War II,” in Leary, Airships to Airbus,55–86.

12. Nick A. Komons, From Bonfires to Beacons: Federal Civil Aviation Policy under the Air Commerce Act, 1926–1938 (1978; reprint, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989), 130–31. This was the source of one of Foulois’s early conflicts with Billy Mitchell, who wanted airfields placed in the northeast, nearer to most of the army’s infrastructure. See Foulois, Wright Brothers to the Astronauts, 139.

13. Eddie Rickenbaker referred to such days as “dud days” in his memoir of World War I flying (35).

14. Archibald Black, “Landing Field Roads and Runways,” Aeronautical Digest (April 1923): 253–54, 292; (May 1923): 330–32.

15. Archibald Black, Civil Airports and Airways (New York: Simmons-Boardman Publishing Company, 1928).

16. Quincy Campbell, “Runways of Brick,” Airports (September 1928): 8–9.

17. Douglas, “The Invention of Airports,” 289–330.

18. C. N. Connor, “Airports and Transportation Engineering: Effect of Airplane Impact on Airport Surfaces,” Aviation Engineering (December 1932): 18–21.

19. William F. Centner, letter to the editor, Airports (August 1929): 27, 28, 49; Wendell Miller, “The Drainage Factor in Airport Site Selection,” Airports (March 1929): 9–10, 44.

20. The tendency of airport designers to minimize costs using centerline drains ended when a CAA study in the mid-1930s found that many runways had cracked after the pipes under them had collapsed. Airport engineers then adopted the current practice of putting the drainage piping down each edge of the runways, which at least doubled the amount of piping required; Edwin A. Miller, “Good Runways and Drainage at Rochester Airport,” Airports (August 1929): 42–44, 58.

21. D. W. Crum, “Iowa City,” Airports (March 1931): 19–20; “Airports in Pictures,” Airports (July 1929): 32.

22. Jerold Brown, Where Eagles Land (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990, 40.

23. Ibid., 82.

24. Charles Stevenson, “Induction through Air and Water at Great Distances without the Use of Parallel Wires,” Proceeding of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 20 (1892–93): 25– 27; H. Cooch, “Landing Aircraft in Fog,” Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society (June 1926): 365–93.

25. John S. Gray, “The Loth Leader Cable System for Electrical Steering of Aeroplanes,” Proceedings of the Institution of Aeronautical Engineers 9 (1923): 7–30; Monte Duane Wright, Most Probable Position: A History of Aerial Navigation to 1941 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1972); A. Verdurand and J. Blancard “Utilisation des procédés Loth pour le guidage des avions par ondes hertziennes,” L’Aérotechnique (October 1930): 364–76; Paul Larivière, “Le câble de guidage-son emploi pour l’atterrissage sans visiblité,” L’Aéronautique (March 1935): 33–39; Capitain P. Franck and Capitain A. Vomerange, “Le guidage des avions par câbles électriques,” L’Aéronautique (1924): 39–47.

26. William Loth, “On the Problem of Guiding Aircraft in a Fog or by Night When There Is No Visibility,” National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Technical Memo 57, January 1932. Translated from Comptes Rendus des Seances de l’Academie des Sciences, no. 23, 5 December 1921.

27. A. Verdurand and J. Blancard, “Utilisation des procédés Loth pour le guidage des avions par ondes hertziennes,” L’Aérotechnique (October 1930): 364–76; Paul Larivière, “Le câble de guidage-son emploi pour l’atterrissage sans visiblité,” L’Aéronautique (March 1935): 33–39. Captain P. Franck and Captain A. Vomerange, “Le guidage des avions par câbles électriques,” L’Aéronautique (1924): 39–47.

28. Charles Çhristienne and Pierre Lissarague, A History of French Military Aviation, trans. Francis Kianka (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986), 210–43, 310; Verdurand and Blancard, “Utilisation,” 375.

29. Cooch, “Landing Aircraft in Fog,” 365–93.

30. Ernest T. Williams criticized Cooch’s paper, ibid., 388. However, Cooch discounted the comments (390–91) as did Mr. Handley Page (383).

31. Ibid., 391.

32. Ibid., 391; F. W. Meredith, “Air Transport in Fog,” Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society (February 1931): 75–85.

33. For a detailed discussion, see Chapter 3.

34. Tymms in Meredith, “Air Transport in Fog,” 90. Emphasis added.

35. William M. Leary, “The Search for an Instrument Landing System, 1918–1948,” in Innovation and the Development of Flight, ed. Roger D. Launius (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), 80–99.

36. Frederic Celler, “Landing Blind: The Loth System of Energized Cables for Fog Landing Guidance,” Aviation (December 1931): 699–700; M. Heinrich Gloeckener, “Methods for Facilitating the Blind Landing of Airplanes,” NACA Technical Memo 687, trans. by Dwight M. Miner from “Verfahren zur Erleichterung von Blindlandungen,” Zeitschrift für Flugtechnik und Motorluftschiffahrt 23 (24 June 1932): 12.

37. “Hanson Announces Fog-Landing Device,” Aviation (22 February 1930): 402.

38. Edward Nelson Dingley Jr., “An Instrument Landing System,” Communications 18, no. 6 (June 1938): 7–9.

39. G. H. Mills to Chief of the Bureau of Ships, 14 February 1941; Chief of the Bureau of Ships to Chief of Naval Operations, 1 August 1941, both in file: C-F42-1/88, box 18, Bureau of Ships, General Correspondence 1940–1945, RG 19, NA. Stark’s order is contained in the fourth indorsement to the basic letter.

CHAPTER 3: RADIO BLIND FLYING

1. A. Hunter Dupree, Science in the Federal Government (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 271–77. The name National Bureau of Standards was in use from 1901 to 1903, when the organization became Bureau of Standards. That name lasted until 1934, when the organization was renamed National Bureau of Standards again. It is now the National Institute of Standards and Technology. For clarity, I will use Bureau of Standards throughout and abbreviate it NBS. William F. Snyder and Charles L. Bragaw, Achievement in Radio (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1986), 43.

2. The official history is Nick Komons, Bonfires to Beacons: Federal Civil Aviation Policy under the Air Commerce Act, 1926–1938 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989).

3. Ibid., 147–63.

4. H. Diamond, “Use of the Radio Beacon System for Landing in Fog,” 19 November 1928, unpublished ms. in box 10, Papers of J. H. Dellinger, RG 167, NA. Diamond was born in Minsk, Russia, in 1900 and was naturalized a citizen on 4 June 1923. He had previously served as an instructor in electrical engineering at Lehigh University until joining the NBS in July 1927; the term “hertz” was not in use at the time, but for purposes of clarity, I will use it exclusively in this chapter. The historically correct term is “cycles per second,” with the usual metric system prefixes “kilo-,” “mega-,” etc. One hertz is by definition one cycle per second, and they are therefore identical mathematically, if not historically.

5. Richard Hallion, Legacy of Flight (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977).

6. James H. Doolittle, “Flying an Airplane in Fog,” SAE Journal (March 1930): 318–20, 345. Doolittle reported that the aircraft could withstand landing at 1,000 fps but he could not.

7. Doolittle’s equipment is described in Hallion, Legacy of Flight, and The Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics, Equipment Used in Experiments to Solve the Problem of Fog Flying (New York: The Guggenheim Fund, 1930). The airline estimate is United’s. See J. R. Cunningham to Major Chester Snow, 16 November 1934, in file 827.1 vol. 1: July 1934–July 1937, folder 1 of 2, box 359, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA.

8. E. F. W. Alexanderson, “Height of Airplane above Ground by Radio Echo,” Aviation Engineering (December 1928): 12–13; A. P. Rowe, “Flying and Landing in Fog,” Aircraft Engineering (July 1939): 169–72.

9. H. Diamond and F. W. Dunmore, “A Radio Beacon and Receiving System for Blind Landing of Aircraft,” Bureau of Standards Journal of Research, RP 238 (1930): 897–931; R. Schultz, “‘Nebellanden’ mit hilfe von Richtfunkbaken” [Fog Landing with Help from Directive Radio Beacons], Zeitschrift für das Weltflugwesen (March 1931): 129–34; Secretary of the Navy to Secretary of Commerce, 9 August 1933, file: F42-1/88 vol. 1, box 789, Bureau of Aeronautics Confidential Correspondence, RG 72, NA; an example is K. Baumann and A. Ettinger, “A New System for Blind Landing of Airplanes,” Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers 24, no. 5 (May 1936): 751–54; a long-running program to develop a system using very low frequency electromagnetic fields is detailed in the previous chapter.

10. Marshall Boggs to Col. H. H. Blee, 14 September 1931, file 827.1 vol. 1: June 1930–June 1934, folder 2 of 2, box 359, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA.

11. Deborah G. Douglas, “The Invention of Airports” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1996), 248–50; W. S. Hinman Jr., “Preliminary Report on Tests of the Blind Landing Systems at Newark Airport,” 23 May 1934, file: Blind Landing Newark 1932–1934, box 14, Papers of J. H. Dellinger, RG 167, NA.

12. Some controversy exists over the status of the Newark and Oakland installations. A 1939 Aero Digest article states that United got custody of the discarded Newark installation from the Bureau of Air Commerce in 1934 and transported it to Oakland. See Henry W. Roberts, “United Air Lines Radio Laboratory,” Aero Digest (November 1939): 60, 62. Leary and Douglas have followed this article. Internal documents of the Bureau of Air Commerce, file 827.1 vol. 1: Inst. Landing Systems, box 359, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA, and W. E. Jackson, “The Status of Instrument Landing Systems,” CAA Technical Development Report no. 1 (Washington, DC: Civil Aeronautics Authority, October 1937) make clear that these were two separate installations. The Newark equipment was moved to Indianapolis in 1936, where the Bureau of Air Commerce began working on it again.

13. W. S. Hinsman Jr., “Preliminary Report on Tests of the Blind Landing Systems at Newark Airport,” 23 May 1934, file: Blind Landing Newark 1932–1934, box 14, Papers of J. H. Dellinger, RG 167, NA.

14. Memo from G. Fulton to Head of Material Branch, Bureau of Aeronautics, 16 December 1935, file: F42-1/88 vol. 1, box 789, Bureau of Aeronautics Confidential Correspondence, RG 72, NA. The Washington Institute of Technology consisted of a number of laid-off Bureau of Standards radio researchers who were interested in continuing the blind landing work.

15. William Leary, “The Quest for an Instrument Landing System,” Innovation and the Technology of Flight, ed. Roger D. Launius (State College, TX, 1999), 93.

16. Ibid., 80–99; Capt. George V. Holloman, “Inspection of Instrument Landing Systems,” 24 June 1936, file 413.44, July–December 1936, box 1256, Office of the Chief Signal Officer Correspondence, RG 111, NA.

17. S. H. Ingersoll to Bureau of Engineering, 31 March 1939; Commander Aircraft, Scouting Force to Chief of the Bureau of Engineering, 13 December 1937; Capt. Mark Mitscher to Chief of the Bureau of Engineering, 11 August 1939, all in file: F42-1/88 vol. 1, box 789, Bureau of Aeronautics Confidential Correspondence, RG 72, NA.

18. Roy Jackson to Chief of the Bureau of Engineering, 31 May 1940, file “F-42-1/88” vol. 2, box 789, Bureau of Aeronautics Confidential Correspondence, RG 72, NA.

19. Commander, Patrol Wing Seven to Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, 14 February 1942, file “F-42-1/88” vol. 3, box 789; Captain C. A. Nicholson to the Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, 10 November 1943, and Chief of BuAer to Chief of BuShips, 10 October 1943, file “F42-9,” box 892, all in Bureau of Aeronautics Confidential Correspondence, RG 72, NA.

20. Foulois, From the Wright Brothers to the Astronauts (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 207, 224.

21. Monte Duane Wright, Most Probable Position: A History of Aerial Navigation to 1941 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1972), 86–87, 90–94.

22. Ibid., 127.

23. Foulois claims in his memoirs that the army’s work of 1934 was the beginning of ILS and GCA; Wright Brothers to the Astronauts, 258; Chester Snow to Rex Martin, 6 June 1934, file 827.1 vol. 1: June 1930–June 1934, folder 2 of 2, box 359, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA.

24. Cunningham to Eugene Vidal, 31 October 1934; C. C. Shangraw, 28 November 1934; Walter J. Addems, 5 November 1934; H. M. Hucke to Cunningham, 7 November 1934; H. B. Sneed to Jack Frye, 4 January 1934, all extracted in Lloyd L. Juleson to Rex Martin, 5 April 1935, file 827.1: July 1934–July 1937, folder 1 of 2, box 359, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA.

25. C. C. Shangraw, 28 November 1934, ibid.

26. J. R. Cunningham to J. Lyman Briggs, 1 May 1935; Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics to Chief of Naval Operations, 25 November 1935, both in file “F42-1/88,” box 7, Bureau of Engineering Confidential Correspondence 1940–1945, RG 19, NA.

27. W. E. Jackson, “The Status of Instrument Landing Systems,” Technical Development Report no. 1 (Washington, DC: Civil Aeronautics Authority, October 1937).

28. I have not been able to find reliable ceiling statistics for the 1930s. A 1949 document puts the percent of time below a 500-foot minimum for La Guardia at 5.5 percent, and for Los Angeles, 5.2 percent. See Edgar A. Post, “Airline Operating Experiences with the Instrument Landing System,” Institute of Aeronautical Sciences, 22 July 1949.

29. Diamond and Dunmore, “Radio Beacon and Receiving System”; R. Stüssel, “The Problem of Landing Commercial Aircraft in Fog,” Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society (1934): 807–36. The Lorenz system was produced in conjunction with the German aeronautical research institute, Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt; Jackson, “Status of Instrument Landing Systems,” 7–9.

30. Carl Lorentz A. G. to Major Gardner, 18 March 1936; First indorsement to Lt. Col. C. K. Nulsen to Military Attache, Berlin, Germany, 27 January 1936, both in folder 413.44: Inst. Landing no. 1, box 1256, Office of the Chief Signal Officer Correspondence, RG 111, NA.

31. First indorsement to Lt. Col. H. H. Fuller to Assistant Chief of Staff (G-2), 19 February 1936; third indorsement to Lt. Col. H. H. Fuller, ibid.

32. Wright, Most Probable Position, 103–29.

CHAPTER 4: THE PROMISE OF MICROWAVES

1. William M. Leary, “The Search for an Instrument Landing System, 1918–1948,” in Innovation and the Development of Flight, ed. Roger Launius (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), 94–95.

2. William Osmun, The Authority of Agreement: A History of RTCA (Washington, DC: RTCA, 1985).

3. Captain G. V. Holloman and Major F. S. Borum, “Lorenz Instrument Landing System,” file 413.44: Inst. Landing no. 4, box 1256, Office of the Chief Signal Officer Correspondence, RG 111, NA.

4. John O. Mauborgne to Chief Signal Officer, 19 May 1937, ibid. The Chief Signal Officer of the Army was responsible for radio development within the Army, including aircraft radio; therefore the Director of the Aircraft Radio Laboratory at Wright Field worked for him. This required considerable coordination with the Army Air Corps.

5. Noise abatement requirements ended the “straight in approach” during the 1970s, except in bad weather. The ILS, obviously, permits only straight approaches.

6. “Pilots Ultimatum Condemns Washington Airport”; “Fears for Friends Flying to Capital, Mrs. Roosevelt Says,” both in The Air Line Pilot (July 1937): 1; “An Editorial in Pictures,” The Air Line Pilot (November 1937): 1. The editorial was reprinted from the Washington Times; “Ask Removal of Hazardous Obstructions,” The Air Line Pilot (November 1937): 4; FDR’s decision was to move the airport to Gravelly Point on the Virginia bank of the Potomac River; it later became National Airport.

7. W. E. Jackson to Gazely, 28 June 1937, file 827.1: July 1934–July 1937, folder 1 of 2, box 359, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA; David Behncke, “New Developments on Instrument Landing System,” The Air Line Pilot 6 (August 1937): 1, 5, 7, quote p. 5. Freng was Superintendent of Flying for United at this time; Paul Goldsborough to Major A. W. Marriner, 25 June 1937, file 413.44: Inst. Landing no. 4, box 1257, Office of the Chief Signal Officer Correspondence, RG 111, NA. Marriner communicated extensively with the Aircraft Radio Laboratory, which probably explains why a copy of this letter is in the Signal Office’s files. Donald MacKenzie discusses the influence of ARINC in the context of the laser ring gyroscope in “From the Luminiferous Ether to the Boeing 757: A History of the Laser Ring Gyroscope,” Technology and Culture (1993): 475–515.

8. Secretary of War to Secretary of Commerce, 21 April 1938; Col. Frank M. Kennedy to the Chief of the Air Corps, 13 April 1938, both in file 413.44: Inst. Landing no. 5, box 1257, Office of the Chief Signal Officer Correspondence, RG 111, NA.

9. H. H. Buttner and A. G. Kandorian, “Development of Aircraft Instrument Landing Systems,” Electrical Communications 22, no. 2 (1945): 179–92.

10. Report of Meeting of Subcommittee #4, Instrument Landing Devices, Radio Technical Committee for Aeronautics, file 827.1 vol. 2: November 1938–December 1939, folder 1 of 2, box 359, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA. For the record, the pilots were Otis Bryan, TWA; Fred Davis, Eastern; R. T. Freng, United; E. A. Cuttrell and B. O. Howard, American. Northwest Air Lines and National Air Line were also represented, but not, apparently, by a pilot.

11. Ibid., 2.

12. Preston Bassett, 27 October 1939, file: Instrument Landing, box 35, Sperry Gyroscope Company Collection, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware.

13. Report of Meeting of Subcommittee #4.

14. Ibid., 14. Arnold later concurred with Mitchell’s assessment in an independent memo to Clinton Hester, 2 November 1939, file 413.44, box 673, AAF Central Decimal Files, RG 18, NA.

15. Report of Meeting of Subcommittee #4, 8.

16. Ibid.

17. John M. R. Wilson, Turbulence Aloft: The Civil Aeronautics Administration in War and Rumors of War, 1938–1958 (Washington: FAA, 1980), 1–42; CAA had no authority over military aviation, unlike the current FAA. That problem was not rectified until 1958, when CAA (which was organizationally revised in 1941 into an Administration, operating under the Commerce Department) was replaced with the FAA.

18. See W. L. Barrow and L. J. Chu, “Theory of the Electromagnetic Horn,” Journal of the Institute of Radio Engineers 27, no. 1 (January 1939): 51.

19. Donald G. Fink, “3 Spots and a Horn,” Aviation 37 (September 1938): 28, 29, 73, 74; Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, “Edward Bowles and Radio Engineering at MIT, 1920–1940,” Historical Studies of the Physical Sciences 20, vol. 2 (1990): 313–37.

20. E. L. Bowles, W. L. Barrow, W. M. Hall, F. D. Lewis, and D. E. Kerr, “The CAA-MIT Microwave Instrument Landing System,” preprint of AIEE paper dated 2 December 1939, in file 413.33: Inst. Landing no. 6, box 1458, Office of the Chief Signal Officer Central Files, RG 111, NA.

21. Arthur L. Norberg and Robert W. Seidel, “The Contexts for the Development of Radar: A Comparison of Efforts in the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1930s,” Tracking the History of Radar, ed. Oskar Blumtritt, Hartmut Petzold, and William Aspray (Piscataway, NJ: IEEE, 1994), 199–216; undated ts., folder 8, box 4, Russell Varian series, Varian Papers, SC 345, Stanford University Archives.

22. Undated ts., Russell Varian series; copy of agreement, 26 April 1938, folder 11, box 5, ibid. This later agreement references the original dated 6 October 1937.

23. Undated ts.; agreement between Leland Stanford Junior University and Sperry Gyroscope Company, 27 April 1938, folder 11, box 5, Russell Varian series.

24. The Chief Signal Officer was a Major General billet, and upon promotion to Brigadier General and assignment as CSO, he was breveted to Major General. The visit appears to have been arranged by the Office of the President, in the White House. Compton transmitted his thanks for the visit through a memo addressed to the Office of the President, which then wrote to Mauborgne. See Allen W. Horton to Maj. Gen. John Mauborgne, 30 April 1938, file 413.44, box 1256, Office of the Chief Signal Officer Correspondence, RG 111, NA.

25. Col. Hugh Mitchell to Col. Bender (the addressee is “My Dear Bender”), 26 March 1938, ibid.

26. Sperry Gyroscope Company, “A Proposal for an Instrument Landing System,” n.d. [late 1939], ts., file: Instrument Landing #21, box 35, Sperry Gyroscope Company Collection, Hagley Museum and Library.

27. Clinton Hester to Maj. Gen. H. H. Arnold, file 413.44, box 673, AAF Central Decimal Files, RG 18, NA.

28. Maj. Gen. H. H. Arnold to Assistant Secretary of War, 20 August 1939, ibid.; H. H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Arno Press, 1949), 165.

29. Franklin D. Roosevelt to Dr. Paul Brockett, 30 August 1939; Frank B. Jewett to President of the United States, 1 September 1939, both in file 413.44, box 673, AAF Central Decimal Files, RG 18, NA.

30. Frank Jewett to President, 24 November 1939, ibid.

31. Charles Stanton to Vannevar Bush, 14 October 1939, file 827.1 vol. 2: November 1938–December 1939, folder 1 of 2, box 359, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA.

32. Edgar S. Gorrell to Vannevar Bush, 30 September 1939, Committee on Airplane Instrument Landing Equipment Collection, National Academy of Sciences Archives, Washington, DC (NAS Archives).

33. Bush, head of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, was also a member of MIT’s Electrical Engineering faculty and therefore not quite a disinterested party.

34. Lt. Col. Hugh Mitchell to Richard Gazely, 25 October 1939, General file, Committee on Airplane Instrument Landing Equipment Collection, NAS Archives. Mitchell’s statement is a summation of one sent by Maj. Gen. Arnold to Clinton Hester, 2 November 1939, which also stated that the straight glide path should extend to at least ten miles. Letter in file 413.44, box 673, AAF Central Decimal Files, RG 18, NA.

35. Edward L. Bowles to Vannevar Bush, 2 November 1939, Committee on Airplane Instrument Landing Equipment Collection, NAS Archives.

36. Ibid.

37. He referred to ultra-high frequency, but he clearly meant what we call (and others at the time called) microwave. At this time, the frequency spectrum did not yet have its current structure, and different terms were in use for the same frequency band. Col. Mitchell, for example, referred to Bowles’ work with super-high frequencies, a term Bowles never used.

38. Bowles to Bush, 2 November 1939.

39. Ibid.

40. Vannevar Bush to Members of the Conference Committee on Instrument Landing Systems, 20 November 1939, General file, Committee on Airplane Instrument Landing Equipment Collection, NAS Archives.

41. Ibid.

42. Vannevar Bush to Frank Jewett, 21 November 1939; Frank Jewett to President Roosevelt, 24 November 1939, file 413.44B; Brig. Gen. Edwin Watson to Hon. Harry H. Woodring, 5 December 1939, cited in Harry H. Woodring to Brig. Gen. Edwin Watson, 28 December 1939, file 413.44, all in box 673, AAF Central Decimal Files, RG 18, NA. Clinton M. Hester to Vannevar Bush, 18 December 1939, General file, Committee on Airplane Instrument Landing Equipment Collection, NAS Archives.

43. Paul Brockett to Frank Jewett, 21 December 21; Paul Brockett to Frank Jewett, 26 December 1939, both in General file, Committee on Airplane Instrument Landing Equipment Collection, NAS Archives. It isn’t clear whether the White House was irritated with the Authority, a five-member board that directed the agency, or the Administrator, who was supposed to actually run it. The confusing structure of the CAA was resolved in 1940, when the Authority was separated out as the Civil Aeronautics Board, and the administrative functions were placed in the Civil Aeronautics Administration, a unit of the Commerce Department.

44. Woodring to Watson, 28 December 1939. Woodring’s reply was taken verbatim from Maj. Gen. Arnold’s response to the report. See 2nd indorsement to Adjutant General to Chief of the Air Corps, 20 December 1939, file 334.8: National Academy of Sciences, box 1773, Office of the Adjutant General Central Files, RG 407, NA.

45. Maj. Gen. H. H. Arnold to Chief Signal Officer, 20 December 1939, file 413.44, box 673, AAF Central Decimal Files, RG 18, NA.

46. Franklin Roosevelt to Brig. Gen. Edwin Watson, 5 January 1940, ibid.; Adjutant General to Chief Signal Officer and Chief of the Air Corps, 9 January 1940, file 334.8: National Academy of Sciences, box 1773, Office of the Adjutant General Central Files, RG 407, NA.

47. Second indorsement to Adjutant General to Chief Signal Officer and Chief of the Air Corps, 11 January 1940; Harry Woodring to Brig. Gen. Watson, 16 January 1940, file 334.8: National Academy of Sciences, box 1773, Office of the Adjutant General Central Files, RG 407, NA.

48. Maj. Gen. Arnold to Brig. Gen. Watson, 12 February 1940, folder 413.44, box 673, AAF Central Decimal Files, RG 18.

49. Clinton Hester to Maj. Gen. H. H. Arnold, 12 April 1939; Sixth indorsement to Aircraft Radio Laboratory to Chief Signal Officer, 10 October 1939, ibid. The Sixth indorsement is signed by Arnold, under date 20 December 1939. Second indorsement to Adjutant General to Chief of the Air Corps, 20 December 1939, file 334.8: National Academy of Sciences, box 1773, Office of the Adjutant General Central Files, RG 407, NA. Note that the date on this indorsement is the same as the date under which Arnold asked the Chief Signal Officer to contract with Sperry for the microwave system. Given that the Chief Signal Officer’s memo had begun its trek through the bureaucracy in early October, it seems very likely that Arnold was waiting for the NAS recommendations before making his own recommendation to the CSO. In his response, Arnold quoted the committee’s microwave recommendations verbatim.

50. Anonymous to Maj. General Arnold, 12 March 1940, file 413.44, box 673, AAF Central Decimal Files, RG 18, NA.

51. Arnold, Global Mission, 165; Wilson, Turbulence Aloft, 28.

52. Lt. Col. Orlando Ward to the Chief of the Air Corps, 3 April 1940; Brig. Gen. R. K Yount to the Secretary of War, 13 April 1940; draft of memo (with routing info) in Office of the Adjutant General, all in file 334.8: National Academy of Sciences, box 1773, Office of the Adjutant General, RG 407, NA. Final and “EMW” (Brig. Gen. Edwin Watson) to The President, 2 May 1940, in file 413.4B, box 673, AAF Central Files, RG 18, NA.

53. Pan American, of course, used seaplanes extensively, but that organization had its own system. Since it was not technically a domestic airline, it also does not seem to have been invited to these conferences. It certainly never attended.

CHAPTER 5: INSTRUMENT LANDING GOES TO WAR

1. The glide path was 330 MHz. This was a UHF frequency until 1944 when it was redesignated VHF.

2. Major E. M. Powers, 20 June 1940, file 413.44, box 673, AAF Central Decimal Files, RG 18, NA.

3. According to the Army, seven sets built with 1940 and 1941 money and installed during 1941 were Chicago, Cleveland, Fort Worth, Kansas, Los Angeles, New York/La Guardia, and Washington, DC. Office of the Chief of the Army Air Forces, “Air Force Communications Policy: Instrument Approach and Landing Systems,” 31 October 1941, in unmarked folder, box 404, RD 158, Records of Wright Field (Sarah Clarke Collection), RG 342, NA.

4. Sir Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany, 1939–1945 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1961); H. H. Arnold, Global Mission (New York: Arno Press, 1949), 215–40; David B. Langmuir to Lee DuBridge, 14 January 1943, file: Project 102, box 404, RD 158, Records of Wright Field (Sarah Clarke Collection), RG 342, NA.

5. See “Air Force Communications Policy,” n. 186; David Little, 21 November 1941, file 413.44: Inst. Landing no. 7, box 1459, Office of the Chief Signal Officer Central Files, RG 111, NA.

6. Henry L. Stimson to Secretary of Commerce, 19 May 1942, file 413.44: Inst. Landing no. 8, box 1459, Office of the Chief Signal Officer Central Files, RG 111, NA. Although the date of the official letter is May, the arrangements for this program began in January.

7. International Telephone Development Corp., a subsidiary of International Telephone and Telegraph, changed its name to International Telephone and Radio Manufacturing Company (ITRM), in 1941, and then to Federal Telephone and Telegraph Company, apparently in 1943. The name changes were likely due to its connection to ITT, which was attacked in the press, and investigated by the military, over its subsidiaries in Germany (of which Lorenz A.G. was one).

8. John M. R. Wilson, Turbulence Aloft: The Civil Aeronautics Administration during Wars and Rumors of War (Washington, DC: FAA, 1979). The agency was the Interdepartmental Air Traffic Control Board.

9. See, for example, CNO to CG, AAF, 21 June 1944, file: F42-9 vol. 1, box 892, Bureau of Aeronautics Confidential Correspondence, RG 72, NA.

10. Major Lyman D. Swendson to Chief, Maintenance Division, Air Service Command, 11 May 1944, file: Project 102, box 404, RD 158, Records of Wright Field (Sarah Clarke Collection), RG 342, NA, contains the allocation and priority lists for the various theaters. Receivers were held up for months at shipping depots: see Deputy Directory, ATSC, to CG ETO, 14 September 1944, file: Project 102 (UK); Major F. L. Moseley, “Visit Report to Air Transport Command and Office of the Chief Signal Officer,” 10 November 1943, file: Proj. 102 (CAA Correspondence), both in ibid. By May 1944, there were twelve in operation in the United States.

11. William Rose to author, 24 March 1998, personal communication. Rose was a pilot assigned to 92nd BG (H). The ceiling data is from Strategic Bombing Survey, Weather Factors in Combat Bombardment Operations in the European Theater, 2nd ed. (January 1947): 9A; J. W. Howland to author, 23 March 1998, personal communication; see also Rose to author, 24 March 1998. Apparently the Gee method also only worked at certain airfields. Howland served with 381st BG (H) and 91st BG (H).

12. Col. Daniel C. Doubleday to Chief Signal Officer, 8 November 1943; European Theater of Operations (Eisenhower) to Wright Field, telegram dated 8 February 1944; War (Secretary of War) to ASCPFO, 13 March 1944, all in file: Project 102 (UK), box 404, RD 158, Records of Wright Field (Sarah Clarke Collection), RG 342, NA.

13. Frank Griffiths, Angel Visits: From Biplane to Jet (London: Thomas Harnsworth, 1986): 101–103. Arnold to McClellan (signed by Spaatz), telegram, 14 March 1944, file: Project 102 (UK), box 404, RD 158; Carl Spaatz to [recipient unreadable, but probably General McClelland], 13 May 1944, file: Project 102D, box 405, RD 159; 1st Lt. Donald Hansen, 29 January 1945, file: Project 102 (UK), box 404, RD 158, all in Records of Wright Field (Sarah Clarke Collection), RG 342, NA.

14. Wilbert Swank, 8 May 1944, file: Project 102; 1st Lt. Donald Hansen, 29 January 1945, file: Project 102 (UK), both in box 404, RD 158, Records of Wright Field (Sarah Clarke Collection), RG 342, NA. This author noted that SBA’s failure continued to cause hesitation to use SCS-51.

15. HQ USSTAF, London, to ATSCWFO, telegram dated 12 September 1944, file: Project 102 (UK), box 404, RD 158, Records of Wright Field (Sarah Clarke Collection), RG 342, NA.

16. See Director of Bombardment to Director of Communications, 8 January 1943, box 1107, AAF General Correspondence, RG 18, NA.

17. Hansen, 29 January 1945 (see n. 14). See also Robert B. Parke, The Pilot Maker (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1970), on the Link Trainer.

18. Only twenty-five were installed. The remaining five were dispatched to the continent after the Normandy invasion, where they were used to mark the front lines so that pilots would know when they were over friendly territory. This was done to reduce the probability of aircraft mistakenly attacking friendly ground forces. With the localizer aligned parallel to the front, the 90 Hz signal zone marked friendly territory, and the 150 Hz zone marked enemy territory. Telephone conversation with Timothy Bland, 23 March 1998.

19. Preston R. Basset to T. A. Morgan, 18 July 1941, file: Instrument Landing, box 35, Sperry Gyroscope Collection, Hagley Museum and Library.

20. Hugh G. J. Aitken, Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio, 1900–1932 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 1–27. The term “intellectual tradition” is my own formulation of his much more complex argument. See also his earlier work on radiotelegraphy: Hugh G. J. Aitken, Syntony and Spark: The Origins of Radio (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).

21. More detail on the Lab’s founding can be found in Chapter 6.

22. A. L. Loomis, “Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Instrument Landing,” 16 February 1942, box 53A, Records of the MIT Radiation Lab, RG 227, NA.

23. J. H. Buck to Lee DuBridge, 2 December 1942, file: PGP [1941–1943], box 54A, MIT Radiation Laboratory Records, RG 227, NA; for comments suggesting this interpretation, see Buck to DuBridge; Robert Davies to J. H. Buck, 13 April 1943, ibid.; Loomis, “Report”; MIT Radiation Laboratory Records, RG 227, NA.

24. Buck to DuBridge, 2 December 1942.

25. Ibid.; Henry Guerlac, History of Radar in World War II (New York: Tomash Publishers, 1987).

26. The best work on ICAO’s foundation is Alan Dobson, Peaceful Air Warfare: The United States, Britain, and the Politics of International Aviation (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1991).

27. On Watson-Watt, see his autobiography: Robert Watson-Watt, Three Steps to Victory (London: Odhams, 1957); on Stanton, see Wilson, Turbulence Aloft, 137–40.

28. Robert Watson-Watt, “Record of an Informal Fourth CERCA meeting held on Sunday, 10 November 1946,” COT/15, PICAO documents, International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Library and Archives, Montreal, Canada. CERCA stood for “Commonwealth and Empire Radio Committee Assembly.”

29. Special Radio Technical Division, “Minutes of the Tenth Meeting,” 11 November 1946, COT/21, PICAO documents, ICAO. Stanton’s criticism of Watson-Watt is in COT/22, same date.

30. MATS had stripped a number of lesser-used airways in the United States of their ranges during the war and shipped them overseas, where they were installed to facilitate cargo and aircraft movement. See Wilson, Turbulence Aloft, 119.

31. Special Radio Technical Division, “Minutes of First Meeting,” 30 October 1946, PICAO documents, vol. 23, ICAO Library and Archives, Montreal.

32. Edward P. Warner, “Work of the Interim Council of the PICAO,” Aero Digest (March 1946): 24–25, 148.

CHAPTER 6: THE INTRUSION OF NEWCOMERS

1. Robert Buderi, The Invention That Changed the World: How a Small Group of Radar Pioneers Won the Second World War and Launched a Technological Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 38–51; James Phinney Baxter, Scientists against Time (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1946), 3–25.

2. Buderi, Invention That Changed the World, 38–51.

3. J. L. Heilbron and Robert W. Seidel, Lawrence and His Laboratory: A History of the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Vol. 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 493.

4. Ibid.; Buderi, Invention That Changed the World, 46–49; Luis W. Alvarez, Adventures of a Physicist (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 88; Lawrence Johnston, interview with Frederik Nebeker, 13 June 1991, transcript, MIT Radiation Laboratory Oral History Collection, IEEE Center for Electrical History, Rutgers, NJ.

5. Alvarez, Adventures, 32–49; Heilbron and Seidel, Lawrence and His Laboratory, 236–37.

6. Alvarez, Adventures, 31.

7. Johnston interview; Buderi, Invention That Changed the World, 43.

8. The name was originally Ground Controlled Landing (GCL), but the Army insisted that blind landings were impossible, drawing Alvarez’s scorn. The name was changed nonetheless, and of course the Army was proven correct. Although GCA could land aircraft completely blind sometimes, it could not do so with perfect reliability. That has been true of every blind landing system. At least two other approach systems based on the ground control model were invented during the war, both by technicians in combat theaters before Alvarez’s GCA was deployed. In both cases, radars designed for airborne use (H2S/APS-15 in one case, and SCR-717 in the other) were modified and set up at an airfield to scan the runway approach sector. An operator then gave pilots landing directions via voice radio. George Reynolds to author, 23 March 1998, personal communication; “Baby GCA [1944–1945],” box 35B, MIT Radiation Laboratory Records, RG 227, NA.

9. The LSE still has a job, and modern carrier pilots also have a stabilized visual reference system on the ship’s deck to assist in the approach. Certain aircraft can utilize a fully automatic radar-based “carrier controlled approach” system developed between the mid1950s and the late 1960s.

10. A. L. Loomis, “Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Instrument Landing,” 16 February 1942, file: Report of Ad Hoc Committee on Instrument Landing, box 53A, Records of the MIT Radiation Lab, RG 227, NA.

11. Alvarez, Adventures, 86–110, and Buderi, Invention That Changed the World, 137–38.

12. Lawrence Johnston, “GCA: Ground Controlled Approach, Radiation Laboratory Report 438” (Cambridge: MIT Radiation Laboratory, 1 October 1943, photocopy of copy #87), file: RB 334.8 NDRC RL Report ET-2047, box 1428, Office of the Chief Signal Officer Central Files, RG 111, NA.

13. Alvarez, Adventures, 98. See also Jennet Conant, Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 260.

14. Homer Tasker, “Technical Report of Radio Set AN/MPN-1 (XE-1),” Report no. 103, 15 June 1945 (Los Angeles: Gilfillan Bros., Inc., photocopy) file: GCA[GCL] GCA-Mk II [AN/MPN-1] GCA Mk III [1941–1945], box 53B, MIT Radiation Laboratory Records, RG 227, NA.

15. Alvarez, Adventures, 99–100; the military designation for the Gilfillan sets was AN/MPN-1(A).

16. Luis Alvarez, “Minutes of the Coordinating Committee,” 20 January 1943, file: “Group 73, Landing [1942–1943],” box 41B, MIT Radiation Laboratory Records, RG 227, NA; Alvarez, Adventures, 100; Johnston, interview.

17. Johnston, interview. Date from Johnston, “GCA,” 46 (see n. 12); Commander Fleet Air, Quonset Point, to Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, 26 April 1943, file: F42-9, box 892, Bureau of Aeronautics Records, RG 72, NA.

18. Tasker, “Technical Report,” 8–9. The Mk I required 4,400 drawings totaling 12,800 square feet.

19. A fascinating incident happened during this test series when two RAF Mosquito bombers, one painted silver, the other black, at the same altitude, gave two very different readings. The black one disappeared from the scope at a distance of ten miles while broadside to the antenna; the silver one stayed visible until twenty miles out. The AAF took considerable notice: Lt. Lawrence McFadden to Chief Signal Officer, 25 August 1943, file: GCA Correspondence 1943, box 53, MIT Radiation Laboratory Records, RG 227, NA; the information in this paragraph has been synthesized from several sources: Johnston interview; Alvarez, Adventures; Clarke, Glide Path; George Comstock, transcript of interview with Henry Guerlac, 7 December 1944, in file: GCA/GCL Mk II [AN/MPN-1] Mk III [1941– 1945], box 53B, MIT Radiation Laboratory Records, RG 227, NA. Although Clarke’s work is a novel, enough of the events it reports match with those reported in the other sources to consider it to be a largely true account, even if it differs in its chronology.

20. Anonymous memo to the Coordinating Committee, 22 May 1945, file: GCA Memoranda, box 65A, MIT Radiation Laboratory Records, RG 227, NA.

21. Saipan and Iwo Jima. On Iwo Jima, P-61s with experienced pilots could be brought in under ceilings down to 25 feet, but the base implemented a policy of ordering crews to bail out over the island (directed by the GCA operator) for ceilings of under 100 feet because pilots who could not see below that point, even if landed safely, tended to collide with ground obstacles such as parked aircraft. Anonymous, undated document [c. June 1945], file: Baby GCA, box 35A, MIT Radiation Laboratory Records, RG 227, NA.

22. Frank Griffiths, Angel Visits: From Biplane to Jet (London: Thomas Harnsworth Publishing, 1986), 99.

CHAPTER 7: THE POLITICS OF BLIND LANDING

1. AOPA Pilot was a members-only insert to Flying magazine, provided by AOPA’s staff. Because Flying had no editorial control over the insert, I have documented it as an independent publication. It is essentially a newsletter, and library editions of Flying did not contain it. It is difficult for scholars to access as a result, but the Hagley Museum and Library contains a complete set. AOPA Pilot became an independent publication in 1958.

2. Quote from Charles V. Murphy,” The Last 500 Feet,” Life (12 May 1947): 93; Minutes of the Robert J. Collier Trophy Committee, 8 August 1946, Collier Trophy Collection, National Air and Space Museum Archives, Washington, DC; report prepared by Carl Hinshaw, Aids to Air Navigation and Landing, House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Subcommittee on Air Safety, 80th Cong., 1st sess., 11 July 1947, 17–18. This chapter appeared in a shortened form as Erik M. Conway, “The Politics of Blind Landing,” Technology and Culture 42, no. 1 (January 2001): 81–106.

3. For clarity’s sake, I will refer to both SCS-51 and ILS as ILS and both AN/MPN-1 and GCA as GCA. Although GCA is less a piece of equipment than a procedure, the distinction was not made at the time, and all references to GCA in the literature are to Alvarez’s invention.

4. John M. R. Wilson, Turbulence Aloft: The Civil Aeronautics Administration amid Wars and Rumors of Wars, 1938–1953 (Washington, DC: FAA, 1979), 164–68; Joseph Corn, The Winged Gospel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).

5. A parallel Senate investigation also took place. The House record is more detailed and complete, and I have therefore relied on it.

6. John Stuart, “Aviation Accidents: Ground Control Approach System, Backed by Many, Runs into Cost Objections,” New York Times (2 February 1947): 14.

7. AAF Instrument Flying Standardization Board, “Recommendations of the Staff Study of the Relative Merits of SCS-51 and GCA,” 26 May 1945, 202.2-54, attachment 225, Air Force Historical Research Agency (AFHRA), Maxwell AFB, AL; Air Transport Command, “Report on the Pilot and Instrument Approach System Evaluation Tests Conducted at Indianapolis,” 11 July 1946, K239.0249-4609AU, AFHRA. The Air University’s evaluation of the Indianapolis tests was requested by Gen. Carl Spaatz by memo dated 1 August 1946 and was forwarded to AAF Headquarters on 18 March 1947. Both are attachments to K239.0249-4609AU, AFHRA.

8. And, as if in a mirror, the pilots’ union demanded radar control of the airways (but not radar-directed landing) during the 1950s, after a series of spectacular midair collisions demonstrated that the skies had become too crowded to permit the absolute freedom that pilots had traditionally enjoyed. They also fought to ensure that ground controllers’ authority was carefully circumscribed, however. See Stuart I. Rochester, Takeoff at MidCentury: Federal Civil Aviation Policy in the Eisenhower Years, 1953–1961 (Washington, DC, Federal Aviation Authority, 1976), 57–78.

9. Navy pilots retained the right to ignore flight deck orders because the person issuing them was an enlisted rating, and by law enlisted ranks cannot give orders to officers—and almost all Navy pilots were officers. Hence, legally, the Navy had to allow pilots the right to ignore directions from the LSE, as the position is known. Further, the Navy’s tradition of independence of command applied to aircraft as well as ships. The Navy therefore expected its pilots to accept directions from the flight deck, but it could not force them to. Navy pilots thus retained legal autonomy while still typically submitting to deck-based directions.

10. Commerce Member, IATCB to Director of Federal Airways, 10 February 1945, file: 504.0 vol. 6, box 83, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA.

11. Chief, Ultra-High Frequency Unit to Acting Chief, Radio Engineering Section, 22 May 1945, ibid.

12. “Washington Observer—CAA Touchy on GCA,” Aviation News (3 March 1947): 3.

13. Chief, Air Traffic Control Division, to Director of Federal Airways, 17 February 1945, file 504.0 vol. 6, box 83, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA.

14. Ibid.; Thomas Bourne to Brig. Gen. H. M. McClelland, 14 February 1945, file 818.1 vol. 1, box 285, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA. Unfortunately, Kroger’s version is the one that CAA’s official historian, Wilson, relied on. See William Kroger, “CAA and Airlines against GCA,” Air Transport (March 1947): 30–33, 77–78; and Wilson, Turbulence Aloft, 323. I used the FAA History Office’s annotated copy of Kroger’s article in this analysis.

15. Wilson, Turbulence Aloft, 217; Ben Stern to Maurice Roddy, 12 November 1946, file 818.1: ASR vol. 1, box 825, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA.

16. Gilbert later became one of the leading authorities on Air Traffic Control matters. See, for example, Glenn A. Gilbert, Air Traffic Control: The Uncrowded Sky (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1973); Nick Komons, “Federal Government Helped Forge New Enterprise, New Profession,” Aviation’s Indispensable Partner Turns 50, Department of Transportation, n.d.

17. Chief, Air Traffic Control Division, to Director of Federal Airways, 17 February 1945, file 504.0 vol. 6, box 83, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA. In combat theaters SCS-51s and runways were utilized at landing rates of up to one plane every thirty seconds. AN/MPN1s were occasionally used at equivalent rates, but that seems to have been accomplished by landing several aircraft simultaneously, in formation. That was obviously only possible with small, fighter-sized aircraft. Such rates were clearly too risky for commercial aviation.

18. Ibid.

19. Asst. Chief, Airways Engineering Division, to Director of Federal Airways, 27 February 1945; Chief, Air Traffic Control Division, to Director of Federal Airways, 17 February 1945, both in file 504.0 vol. 6, box 84, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA.

20. William Kroger, “Standardized System Expected in Instrument Landing Dispute,” Aviation News (10 December 1945): 9–10; Robert B. Hotz, “Two Congressional Probes tackle Air Safety Problem,” Aviation News (27 January 1947): 7–8; “TWA Ready to Use GCA-ILS,” Aviation News (27 January 1947): 28; Austin Stevens, “Gander Radar Test Guides Planes In,” New York Times (10 January 1947): 7.

21. T. P. Wright to James C. Johnson, 19 November 1945, file 818.1: ASR vol. 1, box 285, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA.

22. CAA’s personnel are estimated in Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Safety in Air Navigation, 80th Cong., 1st sess., January 1947, 244. The cut was not CAA specific. Congress had passed the FY 1946 budget and then passed the Ramspeck Act, raising the pay of federal civil service employees 14 percent percent. It then refused to go back and fix the payroll budgets, leading to widespread furloughs in all federal civilian agencies. See ibid., 237; and Wilson, Turbulence Aloft, chap. 6.

23. Assistant Administrator for Federal Airways to Administrator, 21 February 1947, file 818.1: ASR vol. 2, box 286, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA. Unit maintenance files in RD 1276–1280, Records of Wright Field (Sarah Clarke Collection), RG 342, NA.

24. John Stuart, “Aviation Accidents: Ground Control Approach System, Backed by Many, Runs into Cost Objections,” New York Times (2 February 1947): B-14. De Florez had submitted Alvarez’s name to the Collier committee, and, as a member, had spoken in support of his nomination.

25. AOPA Pilot (November 1945): 42b–42c.

26. Brig. Gen. Alden Crawford to Commanding General, Air Material Command, 24 July 1946, file 413.44: AN/MPN-1, box 1870, AAF Unclassified Central Decimal Files, RG 18, NA.

27. The three sets used highly modified experimental displays that required only two operators, one for the search set and one for the two precision sets.

28. Alonzo Hamby, Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1995): 218, 248–60.

29. Anthony Leviero, “Congress Aroused over Air Crashes,” New York Times (19 January 1947): B-16.

30. Ibid.; “Pressure Builds Up for GCA,” Aviation News (6 January 1945): 3.

31. C. B. Allen, “Radar-’ILS’ Rift Studied by CAA Chief,” New York Herald Tribune (24 November 1946): 45; William Kroger, “Collier Trophy Award to Alvarez Spotlights GCA Development,” Aviation News (16 December 1946): 7–8.

32. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Safety in Air Navigation, 572–73 (see n. 22).

33. Allen, “Radar-’ILS’ Rift,” 45; Kroger, “Collier Trophy,” 8.

34. T. P. Wright to Bob Sibley (Aviation Editor, Boston Traveler), 24 January 1947, file 818.1: ASR vol. 2, box 286, CAA Subject File, RG 237, NA. This letter is based on one provided to Wright by the Asst. Administrator for Federal Airways, 10 January 1947, file 504.0: vol. 11, box 84, ibid. Stanton held the office at that time, and the memo was actually written by C. M. Lample, Director of the Air Navigation Facilities Service.

35. Wright to Sibley, 24 January 1947. Emphasis in original.

36. Director, Air Navigation Facilities Service to Asst. Administrator for Federal Airways, 10 January 1947, file 504.0, vol. 11, box 286, CAA Subject File, RG 237, NA.

37. “AOPA Cites Needs for GCA Units,” AOPA Pilot (January 1946): 42a.

38. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Safety in Air Navigation, 1431, 1436, 1434.

39. Ibid., 1431.

40. Ibid., 1451.

41. Ibid., 570–71. He used “route miles” for his argument.

42. George E. Hopkins, The Airline Pilots: A Study in Elite Unionization (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); George E. Hopkins, Flying the Line: The First Half Century of the Air Line Pilots Association (Washington, DC: ALPA, 1982). Behncke was a United Airlines pilot until his union presidency became a full-time job.

43. David Behncke, “Technically Speaking,” The Air Line Pilot (March 1946): 5.

44. David Behncke, “Airlines Pilots Stake in Safety,” Air Transport (June 1947): 27–30.

45. ALPA does not have locals. Instead, its regional councils have members from each represented airline that operates in that region; David Behncke, “Pilots Prefer ILS by 46–1 Margin,” The Air Line Pilot (November 1947): 3, 5.

46. Nick A. Komons, The Third Man: A History of the Airline Crew Complement Controversy, 1947–1981 (Washington, DC: Federal Aviation Administration, 1987); “New Radar Tests by Army Air Force,” New York Times (15 February 1947): 8.

47. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Safety in Air Navigation, 351.

48. Ibid., 489, 804.

49. Ibid., 805.

50. Ibid., 21; “Text of Air Safety Report,” New York Times (3 July 1947): 8; House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Subcommittee on Air Safety, report prepared by Carl Hinshaw, Aids to Air Navigation and Landing, 80th Cong., 1st sess., 11 July 1947, 17–18.

CHAPTER 8: TRANSFORMATIONS

1. “Text of Air Safety Report, New York Times (3 July 1947): 8.

2. Ibid.

3. U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Military Analysis Division, Weather Factors in Combat Bombardment Operations in the European Theater, 2nd ed. (January 1947), 9A. The difference in the two organizations’ minimum ceiling requirements was due to Bomber Command’s policy of night bombing, which demanded a higher ceiling in the absence of an effective low approach aid. The Eighth Air Force bombed, and landed, by day and hence could afford a lower ceiling within the same technological constraints.

4. David B. Langmuir to Lee DuBridge, 14 January 1943, file: Project 102, box 404, RD 158, Records of Wright Field (Sarah Clarke Collection), RG 342, NA.

5. Slightly more than a hundred collisions between bombers occurred in the thousand or so flying days the Eighth Bomber Command existed. About half occurred over England. See Roger A. Freeman, with Alan Crouchman and Vic Maslen, Mighty Eighth War Diary (New York: Jane’s, 1981), 19.

6. George Comstock, 2 May 1945, file 1022 GCA, box 19, MIT Radiation Laboratory Records, RG 227, NA. See various correspondence in file: GCA correspondence [1945], ibid.; Acting Technical Assistant to Director, ANF Operations Service, 17 June 1946, both in file 818.1: vol. 1, box 285, CAA Subject File, RG 237, NA.

7. Glen Gilbert to Chief, Technical Development Division, 14 December 1945, file 818.1: ASR vol. 1, box 285, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA.

8. Chief, Air Traffic Control Division to Chief, Technical Development Division, 14 September 1945; Air Navigation Facility Operation Service, “Operational Tests in the Use of Ground Radar Aids to Instrument Landing and Air Traffic Control,” 1 June 1945, both in file 818.1: ASR vol. 1, box 285, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA.

9. T. P. Wright to Mr. [Donald M.] Stuart, 30 November 1945; J. H. Miles to Donald M. Stuart, 30 April 1946, both in ibid.

10. Acting Technical Assistant to Director Air Navigation Facilities Operations Service, 17 June 1946; T. P. Wright to Asst. Secretary of Commerce, 26 December 1946, both in ibid.

11. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Safety in Air Navigation, 80th Cong., 1st sess., January 1947, 768.

12. Edwin E Aldrin, “Fair to Foul Weather Flying,” Aeronautical Engineering Review 5, no. 7 (1946): 26–29; “Civilian Application of Radar Moves Forward on Two Fronts,” Aviation News (11 February 1946): 12; Deputy and Assistant Chief of Bureau of Aeronautics to Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air, 24 January 1947, file: Equipment, Materials, Supplies, 1947, box 19, Bureau of Aeronautics Arcata Landing Aids Experimental Station Records, RG 72, NA.

13. The one-a-minute rate was a CAA estimate. The AAF believed that only one aircraft every three minutes could be accommodated, due to deflection of the ILS beams by the leading aircraft.

14. Arthur C. Clarke, Glide Path (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963), chaps. 23, 24. Milton Arnold claimed that there had been four FIDO installations in England by the end of the war, and that FIDO did not stand for anything—it was just a code word; “FIDO for Los Angeles,” Aero Digest (April 1949): 60.

15. The average figure for Los Angeles was 2.5 percent, using a 200-foot ceiling. I have found no data presenting an average for all U.S. airports, or even the ten busiest. For comparison, La Guardia’s average was 1.7 percent, again using a 200-foot ceiling. From Edgar A. Post, “Airline Operating Experiences with the Instrument Landing System,” Institute of Aeronautical Sciences, 22 July 1949.

16. David L. Behncke, “Invitation to Progress,” The Air Line Pilot (February 1946): 2. See also “Technically Speaking,” The Air Line Pilot (March 1946): 5.

17. John M. R. Wilson, Turbulence Aloft: The Civil Aeronautics Administration amid Wars and Rumors of Wars, 1938–1953 (Washington, DC: FAA, 1979), 237–41.

18. CAA coined these terms to eliminate confusion over what “GCA” meant. “GCA” was used in the media to variously represent all radar, the actual AN/MPN-1 equipment, all landing procedures controlled from the ground regardless of equipment, and just the short-range precision radars. By splitting the AN/MPN-1’s three radars into two categories, ASR and PAR, CAA hoped to clarify its policies and improve aviation writers’ understanding of its policies.

19. E. M. Sturhahn to Administrator [Wright], 30 January 1947, file 818.1: ASR vol. 2, box 286, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA.

20. Wilson, Turbulence Aloft, 225–28.

21. Ibid.

22. Com. Paul Goldsborough, RTCA Executive Committee Meeting minutes, 6 April 1944, binder 1944-1945-1946, courtesy RTCA, Washington, DC. ARINC had been established by the airlines during the early 1930s to produce aircraft radios, since the airlines felt they were not being well-served by existing radio companies. Rentzel replaced Wright as Administrator of Civil Aeronautics in 1948. L. M. Sherer, RTCA Executive Committee Meeting minutes, 7 December 1945, binder 1944-1945-1946, courtesy RTCA.

23. RTCA, “Recommended United States Policy,” Air Navigation-CommunicationTraffic Control, 28 August 1946; Wilson, Turbulence Aloft, 233; The “Buck Rogers future” comment is from Ben Stern to the Editor, Business Week (2 October 1945), file 818.1: ASR vol. 1, box 285, CAA Central Files, RG 237, NA.

24. Walter McDougall, ...the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (New York: Basic Books, 1985), 229–31; Federal Aviation Agency, FAA Statistical Handbook of Aviation (Washington, DC, 1959), 22.

25. Erik M. Conway, “Echoes in the Grand Canyon: Public Catastrophes and Technologies of Control in American Aviation,” History and Technology 20, no. 2 (June 2004): 115–34.

CONCLUSION

1. This sketch is based on the opening statement of Gregory A. Feith, the Investigatorin-Charge, to the public hearing on the accident held March 24, 1998. See also the final investigation report: National Transportation Safety Board, “Aircraft Accident Report: Controlled Flight into Terrain, Korean Air Flight 801, 6 August 1997,” NTSB/AAR 0001, 13 January 2000, ix.

2. Karl F. Kettler to the editor, Aviation Week and Space Technology (May 4, 1998): 6.

3. Roger G. Miller, To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift, 1948–1949 (Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 1998).

4. Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977), 326. Emphasis added.

5. Brian Balogh, Chain Reaction: Expert Debate and Public Participation in American Commercial Nuclear Power, 1945–1975 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.)

6. Susanne K. Schmidt and Raymond Werle, Coordinating Technology: Studies in the International Standardization of Telecommunications (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 20–21.

7. See Richard Hallion, Legacy of Flight (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976).

8. On SAGE, see Kent C. Redmond and Thomas M. Smith, From Whirlwind to MITRE: The R&D Story of the SAGE Air Defense Computer (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000). For Project Beacon’s interest in SAGE as an air traffic control system, see Richard J. Kent, Safe, Separated, and Soaring: A History of Federal Civil Aviation Policy, 1961–1972 (Washington, DC: FAA, 1980), 29–34; and Erik M. Conway, “Echoes in the Grand Canyon: Public Catastrophes and Technologies of Control in American Aviation,” History and Technology 20, no. 2 (June 2004): 115–34.

9. Twelve O’Clock High, 20th Century Fox, 1949. Based on a book by Lay Beirne, Twelve O’Clock High (New York: Harper, 1948).

10. See David DeVorkin, Science with a Vengeance (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1992), 3.

11. Dale O. Smith, Screaming Eagle: Memoirs of a B-17 Group Commander (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1990), 64.

12. Frank Griffiths, Angel Visits: From Biplane to Jet (London: Thomas Harnsworth Publishing, 1986), 98–115.