SBA
Re Chugalug 2’s observations on SBA, during the summer of ’44 I did a week’s course with no. 534 Beam Approach Training Flight at Shawbury. SBA was a highly accurate landing aid, but demanding to use (aural signals only, and those damned dots and dashes were positively hypnotic!), and suffering from the grave disadvantage of giving azimuth guidance only - no glide slope information aside from two marker beacons spaced about five miles apart. Crossing the first (outer) marker at 5-6 miles from touchdown at (say) 1500ft, descent was commenced at a rate that hopefully would bring one over the second (inner, later to be renamed middle marker, situated about a third of a mile from touchdown) at a specified minimum approach height from which a landing could safely be made. If one arrived at this height before reaching the inner marker (can’t recall what, but it was certainly quite low – 200ft or even less), then the minimum was held until reaching it, if too high then one might not see the runway at all. But get it right, and it certainly worked - I recall at least one totally blind landing. Not 100% blind of course, as all flights were with an instructor though I can’t now remember how IF conditions were simulated – probably by the student wearing the dreaded ‘tin hat’, a sort of cowl held to his head by a large spring clip. Aircraft used was the Oxford, a responsive bird and quite docile apart from a fondness for swinging off the runway after landing.
His observations on using American airspace without benefit of VOR/DME also brought back memories. Unbelievably the RAF Britannia was ordered without VOR or (so far as I recall) TACAN either, but when taking one to Hickam in late ’59 I recall no problems using Radio Range or NDB though possibly with a bit of radar assistance along the way; however, by the time of the Hastings incident he mentions, the Americans might reasonably have expected us poor Brits to have moved out of the stone age. As for the RAF Brits, inevitably they had to have VOR fitted a few years later, along with anti-collision lights and a few other things that should have been fitted in the first place - MOD procurement cock-ups are nothing new!