Blind Landings: Low-Visibility Operations in American Aviation, 1918 - 1958

In the early years of aviation, pilots were frequently forced to make blind landings due to inclement weather, a problem that led to proposals for a dizzying array of technological solutions from the suspension of lit balloons over airfields to the use of high-powered X- rays as guidance beams. Conway (a historian at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology) documents the solutions that were developed into functioning prototypes, focusing on government-funded development projects in the United States and, to a lesser extent, Western Europe from 1918 to 1958, when the goal of routine blind landings was finally accepted as not feasible. His focus is on the technological, technical, social, economic, and other determinants that shaped the choices of engineers and other decision makers in developing the various systems and assessing their worth.