Chugalug,
To add to the zoo of strange things you describe, I seem to remember the Sperry Zero Reader, which functioned, I believe, as a sort of "What to Do" meter, and which, if bolted onto an ILS instrument, might have helped enormously.
But in my (single seat) generation they gave me a needle & ball (sometimes two - why ?), a DI and an AH. "Count yourself lucky", they said. As there were no aids of any kind
in the aircraft (and precious little outside), we muddled through.
The principle of the Lorenz beam had been known for a long time. According to Wiki, the first use of ILS by a scheduled service was in the US in '38.
There was a general belief that the "Blitz" bombers were guided to their targets as "beam-riders", and that our boffins had devised a cunning way of "bending the beam". This belief was reinforced when they bombed Dublin by mistake in '41.
But it would have needed a very unintelligent pilot indeed
to confuse a brightly lighted city with the British blacked- out ones.
Cheers, Danny.