It's May 1941, it's night, you have to land, but how?
Hi All – I don’t know if this is the right forum to ask this question but here goes!
I’m looking into the crash of a Stirling Bomber in May 1941 at 02:00, he was 3 miles from his home aerodrome and was returning from a bombing raid. Met office says that it was clear weather, quarter moon, cloud base was 4,000 ft. His undercarriage was down and he was only about 2 degrees azimuth off the centreline of the runway. He hit trees at 30 ft above the ground; the ground itself was 150 ft above the height of his airfield. He had 800 Hours flying time and had been a Cranfield graduate before the war. He had contacted the tower by R/T at some point (while less than 30 miles away) and had nothing to report. He was the only aircraft near the field the next aircraft was 15 minutes behind him.
I believe that the airfield only had gooseneck flares and probably a Chance floodlight. It was not a DREM site at that time. While the Stirling had the relevant aids such as DF and SBA the airfield apparently didn’t have the relevant ground systems.
I’m not trying to find out more about the aircraft, crew or the airfield. I’m not trying to work out or speculate why he crashed (though that is the next step).
I would like to know what the procedure was for landing under such conditions. It seems to me to be a task equal in danger to the actual bombing they did but I can find very little about it on the Internet – unless you know more!
At the moment I have pieced together the landing sequence but it is very sketchy:
1. Start: Coming from the mission. The field is less than 30 miles away, he is roughly at right angles to the runway. The pilot radios the field, I know he did this but what would he have said to the tower? What sort of conversation would have gone on? I believe that an important item would have been the QFE(?) given to him by the Tower stating the atmospheric pressure at the field.
2. Approaching the airfield. How soon would he have been able to ‘see’ the runway. What would he have seen?
3. Turns to fly parallel to the runway but ‘upwind’ ie in the direction he would be landing in. Would he have used the gooseneck lights to do this?
4. Turns 180 degrees and flies back downwind, again parallel to the runway. Would he have seen and used the gooseneck lights to fly with? I assume that he would have noted his heading.
5. He flies away from the field on the same heading, at least 3 miles. Was that too far or was it reasonable? Would he have flown that far to be ready to line up for the landing? At 120mph that would have been just 90 seconds of flight. Would he have lowered his undercarriage by now?
6. He performs a 180 degree turn to line up to fly back and land. When would he lower his flaps?
7. At what distance would he have seen the Gooseneck flares? The Chance light would have come on at some point – but when?
I want to make a 3D animation of the event and I want to be accurate or failing that at least realistic! I guess I need a 1941 pilot to answer these but I’m reaching out to anyone who may know. It's a pilot sort of question.
Thanks in anticipation!
James