If that headline is creeping you out, then let’s first put you at ease. If you were under the impression that the term “blind flying” corresponded to flying with your eyes closed or something on those lines, you couldn’t be farther from the truth. For “blind flying” actually implies using only instruments for flying an aircraft as seeing might be difficult through clouds or mists.
You might be further reassured when you know that most commercial pilots these days fly under instrument flight rules, which means that they rely almost entirely on instruments and not their visual sightings, to perform the flying. With that out of the way, it is time to introduce James Harold “Jimmy” Doolittle, the person who first demonstrated blind flying.
Born in California in 1896, Doolittle spent much of his childhood in Alaska. One of the first things that Doolittle learnt to pilot was a dogsled, which is a sled pulled by one or more sled dogs to travel over ice or snow. Back in California, he attended high school in Los Angeles and impressed everyone as a gymnast and a boxer.
He became a flying cadet with the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1917 and was soon flying solo and serving as a flight gunnery instructor. His dreams of combat during World War I, however, didn’t come true as he was sent to work at the Army’s Kelly Field in Texas, before completing his degree at Berkeley.
First to fly coast to coast
Doolittle became the first to fly across continental United States in less than 24 hours in 1922. Setting out from the Florida coast on the night of September 4, Doolittle made just one stop along the way – to refuel at Texas just after dawn – before touching down in San Diego on September 5.
Having always flown using visual sightings till then, it was during this coast to coast flight that Doolittle had employed instruments for the first time. He had acquired a bank-and-turn indicator for this flight and had planned his journey for the full moon, hoping it would aid his visibility. Heavy thunderstorms and flashes of lightning, alternating with periods of complete darkness, however, meant that it was only these indicators that kept Doolittle oriented properly despite the turbulent night sky.
Drawn towards instruments
The Army sent him to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but the idea that instrumentation could allow for flying in little or no visibility kept burning brightly in him. His researches pertained to flying and he obtained his master’s and doctoral degrees in aeronautical engineering, always eager to return to the question of flying blind.
So it was on September 25, 1929, that Doolittle performed the first blind take off, flight and landing. His airplane was specially fitted with a radio beacon for communication with the ground and gyroscopes to establish an artificial horizon.
The artificial horizon, a forerunner to altitude indicator, determined a plane’s relative orientation with respect to the ground and turned out to be an important instrument to make blind flying possible. Equipped thus, Doolittle carried out his feat, even though it was done under special conditions and at a landing field that was familiar to him.
The impact that this flight had on commercial flying was instant. It wasn’t difficult to realise that blind flying would soon lead to all-weather flying, as it would not only be more practical, but also way more safe. As for Doolittle himself, he spent a decade with the Shell Oil Company heading the aviation department and returned to the army full-time in 1940. And in 1942, he planned and led the Doolittle Raid, the first air raid on Japan by the U.S. Army Air Force – a feat for which he is much better remembered than his blind flight.
