Landing in heavy weather?

[Voyager]

So, how did the WWII air forces handle heavy weather moving in? I don't think the P-47 or any of the big bombers have ILS type systems. I have seen jokes about the P-47's low visibility landing process being 'throw a brick out the window and fly in formation with it' and I know RS Johnson's second P-47 (Lucky) crashed while another pilot was operating it in bad weather, so it sounds like heavy weather operations were a thing. 

Question is, how did they do it? Did pilots try to run everything with just VFR flight rules, or did they have any sort of tools to find the runway? Or did they just divert if they didn't have enough visibility? 

[randomTOTEN]

define heavy weather

[grafspee]

They just did not perform any ops with low visibility, they could encounter some bad visibility during mission but planes weren't equipped with any system which allow to land w/o seeing runway.

[Voyager]

7 hours ago, randomTOTEN said:

define heavy weather

That's a good question. What was defined as "heavy weather" at the time? I know there planes lost because of bad weather (ref Lucky), but that doesn't say what that means. 

7 hours ago, grafspee said:

They just did not perform any ops with low visibility, they could encounter some bad visibility during mission but planes weren't equipped with any system which allow to land w/o seeing runway.

So they didn't plan Ops during bad weather, so if bad weather rolled in after the squadron was airborne, how was that handled? Divert to another airfield? Did they have limits on what was too much, or was it more local judgement? 

[randomTOTEN]

18 minutes ago, Voyager said:

(ref Lucky)

I'm sorry, I don't know this reference...

[Voyager]

1 hour ago, randomTOTEN said:

I'm sorry, I don't know this reference...

Robert S Johnson's second P-47D-5 was named Lucky. He scored something like 21 of his kills in it. 

It was lost when another pilot crashed while flying it in bad weather. 

[ARM505]

It's actually an interesting question, as a pilot IRL, my knowledge of the history of instrument approaches is a little sketchy at best; from basic beacons (the ADF), to 'radio ranges' (the predecessor to the VOR I think) and 'talk-down' type of approaches is where my knowledge goes to.....I'm pretty sure they diverted, as even with the experimental radio navigation they had at the time, nothing was either a) suitable for the final approach segment of the approach down to whatever they would use as minimums (more on that later), and b) fitted as standard equipment to fighters, given the bulk and weight of electronic equipment of the day (something like the Mozzie was needed before the aircraft was big enough).

As for minimums (ie. the minimum defined weather, be it cloud base, visibility, runway visual range, precipitation/contamination etc), I'm not sure what they did - was it 'force' wise (ie. the USAAF), squadron standards, base standards.....I'm not sure what their 'collective' approach was to what defined conditions they needed to commence an approach, or whether they just winged it when desperate (been there, done that, it's high risk).

tl;dr - DIVERT to a place with better weather would have been the absolute best option IMHO, given the primitive/non-existant approach aids of the time.

[grafspee]

2 hours ago, Voyager said:

So they didn't plan Ops during bad weather, so if bad weather rolled in after the squadron was airborne, how was that handled? Divert to another airfield? Did they have limits on what was too much, or was it more local judgement? 

I don't know how exactly things were organized, but if really bad weather came to home airfield, there had to be someone responsible to evaluate weather conditions were fit for safe landings or not and divert planes to other airfields if needed.

[randomTOTEN]

I just looked through a manual for a P-47N, and there's a section on instrument flying. It was equipped with communication radios, a HOMER system, and period IFF. So it could fly radio ranges, home to beacons, and be talked down by a controller giving at least bearings on a QGH approach.

That would make it non-precision approach capable. And I assume approved for instrument flight. I believe this would also apply to other variants so equipped.

YMMV

Edited August 3, 2023 by randomTOTEN

[grafspee]

They had some equipment to help navigate and planes were fit for instrument flight, definitely better low visibility capabilities then ww1 planes but all this discussion comes down to what bad weather conditions are we talking about.

[DD_Fenrir]

I've read a great number of books from WW2 pilots of various Air Forces perspectives across many theatres and there's some general themes, some of which you may find surprising.

1. The weather may be bad but that would not necessarily scrub a mission - if cloud base was so low or if visibility was so bad at your home airfield that it was deemed unsafe to land 99% of missions would be scrubbed and you wouldn't take-off in the first place.

That said, look to RAMROD 564 (Operation Jericho) where operational expediency overruled the blizzard conditions and it was assumed that the Wings Mosquitos would divert to RAF Ford for recovery. This was briefed.

2. Divert fields seem to have been a briefed item for bomber types but not so much for fighters. Fighters being more manoeuvrable and flexible in regards to the runway & visibility minima they can accept may have been deemed able to wing-it a bit more in this regard.

3. In fighters, an individual pilot's local knowledge, navigation skill and airmanship was leveraged far more than in modern aviation. The modern Safety First doctrines were just further down the priority list back then, and were based on a the experiences learned from WW2.

If you got back to where your field was only to find it socked in then you had the following options:

a) Crawl around at low level trying to catch glimpses of the ground - and maybe the airfield or a known landmark - in order to orient yourself for a very sketchy tight pattern and approach to your home airfield (see 'First Light' by Geoff Wellum,  'Sigh for Merlin' by Alex Henshaw or 'Spitfire: A Test Pilot's Story' by Jeffrey Quill),

b) Know where the nearest airfields are and self divert to see if conditions are any better there,

c) Climb out of the muck and if available contact the Ground Control agency to see if they can give you a steer to the nearest airfield with some vaguely landable climate! This of course relies on you having sufficient fuel; if you're already at Emergency Fuel status then a) and b) are your only recourse, unless you go with option d)...

d) Get to a safe bail-out altitude and leave the plane.

 

 

Edited August 3, 2023 by DD_Fenrir

[Bozon]

The cloud base is what matters the most. If the cloud base is high enough, then they had an instruments descent process to penetrate the clouds and end up just under the cloud base with the runaway in front, to proceed with visual landing. I am not sure of the details, if this was GCI guided, or instrumentation, or both.

If the cloud base was under the limit or runway visibility too poor (fog) then they had to divert to another field.