Landing a Stirling at Night - Many Questions!

[jamesinnewcastle]

Hi All

I researching into the crash of Stirling N6012 at Dry Drayton on May 3rd 1941. As part of this I am making a 3D animation of a Stirling landing at night.

To get this right I need to get a fine level of understanding about landing this aircraft. The aircraft would have been heading for Oakington Airfield and was 3 miles to the SW when it crashed and on a direct line to the only runway there at the time. I believe that the runway would still have been grass and lit by 'gooseneck' flares only.

My questions then:

1. Would the Stirling have had any lights on? It had a large landing light and others, but which would have been switched on, if any? I'm pretty sure that there were no enemy planes in the area at the time.

2. How far out from the runway would the pilot have circled the field (what radius)? Would it be a circle or more like a square? I'm assuming that he would have circled at a high altitude for a while and then been told to land in a descending 'spiral' But please assume I know little about landing procedures!

3. What conversations would there have been between the Control Tower and the pilot? The pilot had 'nothing to report' according to official records, so I guess the conversation would have been fairly standard. Ideally some example sentences and replys would be good!

4. How would the crew had navigated to the field and been able to turn in on such an accurate heading? What would have been the procedure?

5. How would the pilot have known how quickly or how low to descend given the area was probably pitch black (It was actually a quarter moon but I don't know what the weather was like that night)

6. At what point in the descent would the undercarriage have been lowered? It apparently took a long time to come down on the Stirling.

7. Where would each member of the crew been at the time? What would they have been doing?

8. What sort of speed would the aircraft have been doing at each point in the procedure? especially at the point of the crash?

Anything else around this subject that would be useful is also greatly received. I aim to put the final landing sequence up on You Tube for more comments and further refinement!

Many thanks

James Harris

[kookabat]

James,
Max has something on his website that might help - see this link, and scroll down to the section 'Getting Down Safely'. Though come to think of it I don't know when the Drem system was developed; perhaps it was still a thing of the future in 1941.

I've got some documents that I think came from the 6 Group Summary of the entire war (I got them through 'cintrepid' on that other forum) that describe a few of the procedures (like a 'great circuit' around two close-by airfields, where their individual circuits may have conflicted) but again, these are probably more relevent to practices later in the war. Happy to provide extracts if you're interested however.

Looking forward to seeing the finished production!
Adam

[Upkeep]

In terms of locating the home base and making a successful approach, there were a number of technical aids. HIgh Frequency Direction Finding equipment was available from the beginning of the war and was used to help a/c locate their own airfields. The Beam Approach Beacon System was developed in the early 1940s and was a primitive form of ILS, using a mobile transmitter at the end of the runway to transmit a series of dots to one side of the runway and dashes to the other. Not sure how widely this was available in 1941 though.

As for lights, it seems to have been common practice for a/c to switch on their nav lights when orbiting their airfield waiting to land, to avoid collisions. This was not without its risks, however, as it was not unknown for enemy night fighters to follow the bomber stream home and attach them as they were preparing to land. For the same reason I am guessing that landing lights were not commonly used.

[jamesinnewcastle]

Hi All

Adam - I've seen that article, it describes the DREM system which I'm pretty certain didn't get put in until after the incident - Oakington weren't even given a hard runway at the time! However there are some possible bits of conversation which is very likely to have happened.

I think that I have got some stuff from 'cintrepid' too (I've been chasing this topic for a while now!). Most of what I've found has been after early 1941. Really I do need the exact procedures at Oakington at the time but I suspect I may have to get an 'average' of what happened.

I am going to get a copy of AP 129 soon - I'm hoping that there may be clues in that.


Upkeep - I'll look up those two systems to see when they were likely to be in use. It seems odd not to use landing lights though - it would have been pitch black. The crew in question knew a lot about being hunted by Intruders as they had been shot at and crashed at Q-Site just a month before. After crash landing the JU88 bombed them! They all survived though.

I've made a brief animation showing a Gooseneck lit landing - any comments gratefully received, I need to adjust it for colour, flicker speed, intensity, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_d9rF7pdlk

James

[Upkeep]

I'd be very interested to know for sure if landing lights were used landing from an operation. Nothing I've read, and none of the (wartime) footage I've seen indicates that they were (but then there isn't much film of night landings at all !) I've certainly read and seen evidence that they were not used during taxiing after landing - the a/c being guided by the ground crew and the bomb-aimer in the nose with an Aldis lamp.

Personally I think the flarepath would have been adequate, but it would be good to get confirmation one way or the other.

[Upkeep]

Forgot to say - in your animation, it looks (looks) as if you have a single line of light down the centre of the runway ? I don't believe this is correct - there would be two rows, one either side. I'm also not sure that the approach to the runway was a 'T' as in modern airports - I think is some cases at least it was a V-shaped 'funnel' or just a cross bar ?

Some airfields (e.g. Finningley) had an electric flarepath as early as 1940. This was an electrically controlled series of Glim Lamps wired through a rheostat and working off the Chance light generator. This system worked very well and the lights could be dimmed or extinguished immediately if required in the event of enemy aircraft being in the vicinity

Interesting discussion and pictures of Glim Lamps here:

http://www.airfieldinformationexchange. ... -Glim-Lamp

Note the comment that the crossbar lights at the end of the runway were screened blue (and always too bright !)

BTW - what software are you using to produce your animation ?

[jamesinnewcastle]

Hi Upkeep

I'm running the airfield related questions in several threads at AiX and it's from replies in that forum that I have put the lights as a single line and arranged the T shape. I've been sent various WWII typed documents which generally support the T shape, certainly for emergency use of goosenecks anyway. I guess the pilots at some stage must have been taught what they might expect so I can't see that a single row of lights would have thrown them.

But, I don't know, and I'm fully open to suggestions, my only proviso is that I do need it to be the Oakington layout or it won't be realistic!

I'm getting AP 129 soon - hopefully the various systems will be in there!

I'm using a 3D package called Cinema 4D for the animations.

James

[jamesinnewcastle]

Hi All

Don't forget the other questions - The problem with doing too many questions in a thread is that one answer tends to hi-jack the others, I suppose I should have started independant threads but that may have looked a little odd!



Cheers

James

[Upkeep]

I may well be wrong on the T-Bar. But the purpose of the flarepath is to delineate the boundaries of the runway, and I'm thinking about the practicality of single line of lamps for a pilot. Clearly he can't use them as his centre line - you can imagine what a Lancaster/Stirling tailwheel would do to a line of swan-necks ! The only option would be some kind of General Order that the flarepath shall always be set to e.g. the righthand edge of the runway. He could then use it as his right marker. But he still needs to know where the other side of the runway is if he is to avoid running into soft ground. Interesting.

[jamesinnewcastle]

Hi Upkeep

I think that the reasoning is the same as the reason for circling airfields anti-clockwise, that is the pilot is sitting on the left so he can see best to his left. Also the Stirlings nose would get in the way of his forward vision as he settled on the field, meaning he would only be able to see to his left - so any lights to the right would have been useless to him anyway.

At Oakington the whole runway area was grass so it probably didn't matter too much where he put it down as long as it was sort of parallel to the lights!

Apparently the lighting for American planes was for two rows of lights but their planes usually had a front nose wheel so the pilot could always see ahead at all points in the landing.

But I'm only repeating what I've heard elsewhere, all input is welcome.

James