Danny tells more about ye olde ATC.
Now about this time the RAF in general, and the new ATC Branch in particular, had two of the the best pieces of luck that it had had for many a long day. No.1 was the invention of the first (mobile) Ground Controlled Approach radar set (AN-MPN1). This may have come into use by the US in the last days of the war: it was certainly working at RAF Gatow during the Berlin Airlift in'48.
It was taken up enthusiastically by the RAF and rapidly introduced in the '50s round the larger home stations, where it was ideally complemented by the No.2 piece of luck, the Cathode Ray Direction Finder. This operated on the Very High Frequency radio band which had recently replaced all the previous short-range types (TR9) of radio/telepone communication (air to air and air to ground).
Now ATC was in business in a big way. For the first (post-war) time it really had something to offer the customers. Aircraft had always been able to get QDMs (homing Course to fly) from the old manual D/F sets, but it was a slow and cumbersome business with a high risk of error. Now this magical thing could give you an instant, accurate QDM, or a True Bearing (QTE) to help you with en-route navigation, the moment you clicked the transmitter button to speak.
The TWLOTAs were onto this like wasps round a jampot, they knew a good thing when they saw it. Why beat your brains out trying to work out the way home when all you needed to do was press a button and ask "Steer ?". And, by a happy coincidence, this came into common use just as the RAF was converting onto the first jets (Meteor and Vampire). Bloggs at his AFS was flying 30-35 minute sorties with 40 minutes in the aeroplane. It was risky. One wrong turning and that was it.
There is a closed thread in Military Aircrew: "Meteor Accident Statistics". It makes your hair stand on end to read it as it is, but without CR/DF the carnage would have been much worse (you can take it from me, as one who was a Bloggs in those days). Oddly enough, the losses didn't bother us at all at the time; flying was dangerous, everybody knew that, and in any case it would always happen to someone else.
As a bonus, it was an ideal means to feed aircraft into your GCA, and this enabled the MPN-1 ("Bendix") to be worked without a "search" director: now all you needed was a "feed" director, one of the two PPI tubes in the truck was unused, and you were one F/Sgt to the good.
For the whole of my 17 years in the Branch (apart from three years on the School), I would say that I did 40% my time as "Talkdown", and 90% of the rest as Approach Controller on the CR/DF, or, in later years, on the Commutated Antenna Direction Finder, which was the same thing on Ultra High Frequency.
One final word on CR/DF (I've mentioned this before, I think). A USAF Colonel had a look round our Tower one day. In Approach, he watched the CR/DF console being worked hard. "That's the best Goddam aid I ever saw", he said with obvious conviction. I would say "Amen" to that.
Next time I'll let you know a bit about the fauna in that habitat.
Cheers,
Danny42C
Old definition of GCA: - "The Blind leading the Blind".