|
MEMOIRS - 5
|
|
|
By:
|
afstrom
|
|
Mood:
|
Happy
|
|
Date:
|
Nov 14, 2008
|
|
|
|
|
|
CONTINUED SERVICE AS AIR RECONNAISSANCE OFFICER
I would like to extend my thanks and appreciation to my friend Carlos Marbán for proofreading and correcting my manuscript.
This time I had finished as # 1 of the course, and I suppose that is why I given command of a B 3 (Junkers 86) named Blondie. This aircraft had been specially prepared for signal reconnaissance, and we were to fly in accordance with directives given by officers of FRA, the Radio Department of the Swedish Armed Forces. We were all required to sign a commitment not to disclose anything of our activity.
I am able to write this now, because a couple of years ago, our secrets were published in the newspapers, and in a book with the title: BEYOND THE HORIZON, Swedish Air Reconnaissance Against the Soviet Union 1946 – 1952. On page 136 there is a photo of me with my crew. We were the pioneers, and I had been appointed as the first commander of the reconnaissance flights. The radio signal specialists sat inside the aircraft, attending to their equipment, designed to receive radio and radar signals. This had been given to Sweden at the end of the war, and had previously been installed in a secret British radio station on Oeland island in the Baltic, for the purpose of obtaining information about the German V-weapons being developed at Peenemuende. This was top secret, as Sweden was officially neutral.
The head of the FRA team briefed me about the equipment and its function. In a nutshell, signals from a radar station continue beyond the range at which an aircraft can be identified, and we were to obtain the radar signals outside that range, in order not to be detected by the Soviets. I soon learned the modus operandi. The FRA operators gave us orders in the cockpit about the headings to fly on, i.e. straight ahead, turn left, straight ahead, turn right, etc., As we were mainly flying above the clouds, this kept me very busy with the dead reckoning, known as DR navigation, in order not to get lost.
I was free to select the airports from which we were to fly, based on the wishes of the FRA staff. Thus, we were flying from Visby, Malmoe, Stockholm and Gothenburg, normally staying a couple of days at each. Here I would like to quote a couple of paragraphs from the book Beyond the Horizon, written by one of the FRA staff:
"To work as a signal reconnaissance officer"
"When the airborne signal reconnaissance began in 1946, the activity was primitively organized. Aake Palmblad, ex- signal reconnaissance officer of FRA, tells that the environment inside the B 3 aircraft was bad. It was cold, and when we flew below the clouds, dark. However, we frequently flew above the clouds on an altitude of 3000 meters, where there was normally sunlight. FRA used to have three or four operators in the B 3. We sat on a wooden bench along one side of the aircraft, and the equipment was mounted on the bench on the opposite side. When we attempted to take bearings on a radar station, the pilot was ordered to make a turn of, e.g. 360 degrees, in order that the fixed antenna would be turned around. Later on, we got a rotatable antenna, which made it possible to read the direction directly."
"We flew from Bromma, Visby and Wing # 17 at Ronneby, and on a few occasions from Wing # 12 at Kalmar. The most adventurous flight that Palmblad experienced, was on a flight from Visby, on Gotland island. The pilot was, as usual, Stig Lindberg. After having descended through the clouds on the return flight to Visby, one engine stopped, and Lindberg detected that he was able to keep the altitude on only one engine."
Palmblad tells: "It soon became evident that the aircraft was losing height. It was too far to attempt to land in Visby, and instead he selected the airport of Bunge on the North of Gotland. We had parachutes, but couldn't jump over water. We prepared for an emergency landing, and took a grip of fixed parts of the aircraft".
"However, at the last minute, the mechanic and the pilot managed to get the engine started. However, we couldn't climb and were only some 15 – 20 meters above the water. We managed to clear the telephone wires at Bunge. Lindberg requested landing clearance, without circling, and managed to get the aircraft down. That is an unpleasant memory. We understood that time that what we were engaged in was not a game."
" On another occasion, when we were close to the German coast, we passed straight over an ex-German battleship, being towed from Koenigsberg to Leningrad. We saw a lot of people coming up on the deck. The air reconnaissance officer, Oscar af Strom, shouted to the pilot:" "Get as close as you dare." "He got a good picture, which we talked about later on. However, there was no shooting at the B 3, and we made a turn and disappeared as fast as we could."
During an overnight stop at Barkarby, the base of Wing # 9 of fighter aircraft, outside Stockholm, I was approached by one of the officers of that Wing. He wanted to hear me about the accident during our return flight from Gothenburg, and whether I had told the pilot about the altitudes with risk of ice formation. I told him that I couldn't state for sure. As the Squadron Leader had arrived early, well ahead of the scheduled briefing time, he collected the weather map from the Met office, and left ahead of us, who arrived at the scheduled time for the briefing. Some of the Squadron had also left early. However, I didn't know if he was one of them, or if he was in the group with me in the dressing room, changing to overalls, where I had told about the ice formation. If he was in that group, he had been told. If he was in the group with the Squadron Leader, I hadn't told him.
At the end of the summer, I was temporarily moved back to Skavsta, while one of my former course mates replaced me, in order for me to get familiarized with the new reconnaissance aircraft, the twin engine S-18, which were to replace the B 3s. While there, I got a letter from the Director of Operations of the Swedish Airlines, ABA, Captain Sven Aablom, offering me a position in the airline, first to serve as navigation instructor and, thereafter, as flight navigator on the line.
I was delighted. This was what I had had in mind ever since I saw the ad in the newspapers, while still serving on the SS Galeon. I accepted the offer, provided I could be released from the Navy and Air Force, which was not that easy, due to the general mobilization.
In fact, it proved more difficult than I had expected. I was forced to make an application "to the King", which an applications to the highest authority was called, in this case to the Minister of Defense. I was lucky. The Wing Commander approved and recommended my application, and so did the Personnel Managers of both the Navy and the Air Force. However, I had to apply to be released from my position as a Navy Reserve Officer. A few weeks later, I received the letter from the Minister of Defense, releasing me from my position and service.
AIR NAVIGATION INSTRUCTOR AND FLIGHT NAVIGATOR WITH SAS
In September, 1946, I took up my position as Navigation Instructor with the Swedish Airlines, ABA, and reported to the head of the school, Captain Lundin. This was at the time when the transatlantic routes were in the planning stage. In Sweden, this was handled by a company named SILA, and for a while, the name of the Swedish Airlines and this airline were usually combined and known as ABA SILA. However, negotiations between the three Scandinavian airlines were going on, and a year later, the Scandinavian Airlines System, SAS, was formed.
ABA was expanding, and several courses were scheduled for new airline pilots and radio operators. My task was to serve as instructor in Air Navigation and Rules of the Air. The first thing I did was to familiarize myself with the curricula, syllabuses and tests and the final examinations by the Civil Aviation Authorities. There were no textbooks, and an important part of the lessons was for the instructor to introduce the subject in such manner so as to make it possible for the students to take notes, and then give them related problems to solve at home.
These were then fully explained during the following lessons. I liked the job, and used more or less the same method I had used for my lessons to the crew of the H 4. It was not only the students who had to study, I too had to spend several hours each day, to prepare the next day's lessons, and to familiarize myself with equipment that was new to me, such as the Dalton E6B navigation calculator, then called computer and nicknamed "confuser".
I was appointed as instructor in Air Navigation and Rules of the Air for one class for radio operators, and two classes for pilots, one for young reserve officers, and one for seasoned commissioned officers, who had been granted leave from the Air Force to join the airline. The students of these classes were attentive and interested, and I had no difficulty teaching them. Among the reserve officers were two who had been cadets, belonging to the same squadron as I had, and among the others, I knew quite a few.
During one of the first days, I received an order from the Air Force to attend the final hearings of the above-mentioned accident. I had just purchased a used car, an Opel, in which we went to Skavsta and the hearing, which proved to be under a civil judge. Now, I discovered that not only military justice could be unjust, but also civil justice.
I wasn't aware of what the Squadron Leader and the others had said, but when the hearing came to my turn, I found out that nobody but I was responsible, as I had been the orderly officer.
I had not seen the final report, but obviously it didn't contain all that had happened, such as that the Squadron leader had arrived early and collected the weather map and report.
Thus, when I tried to inform the judge about what had happened, he interrupted me, when I was to state that I didn't know whether the victim had been in the group that left early, or in the one I had informed about the weather situation in the dressing room. He didn't want to hear any explanations. He had read the final report, which I hadn't, and told me that I had been the orderly officer, and should inform the court, not by explanations but with a Yes or a No, whether or not I had briefed the victim.
As he could have been among the group in the dressing room, I answered with a Yes, thinking that God, who knew what happened, would forgive me if I were wrong. However, this matter plagued my conscience long thereafter.
From the first months as instructor, I remember how I and Harriet, who was then pregnant, went to the company medical doctor for the purpose of a check-up and advice about a good maternity hospital. He checked her very well, and gave us advice about future check-ups and instructions as to how to pass the remainder of the pregnancy. He also recommended a hospital named Pro Patria, where we went and made all arrangement for the forthcoming birth.
During this period, I also talked about the Dalton E6B with some Air Force friends, and when I mentioned that in my opinion it was faster and simpler to operate then the one of the Air Force, they replied that having to write, while flying, as you had to with the E6B, was considered dangerous. Some years ago, this had led to an accident, and one of the best officers had died.
At about the same time we had a visit to the ABA school of a salesman of a company named Kemigravyr, manufacturers of rulers and plotters with engraved scales. I asked if the company would be able to make a calculator like the E6B, which I showed him. He answered that they were able to, and would be happy to make some for us, if we required. This made me think more about a calculator that combined the qualities of the Air Force and the E6B calculators, and awakened my inventive or creative mind, which in hindsight, I would have been happier to live without.
I thought that it would be easy to modify the E6B to eliminate the need to write. I also thought that a modified E6B could include the logarithmic scale, based on the sinus theorem, of the Air Force computer. I could or should have stopped there, but I both went to Kemigravyr and to the Air Force, to discuss my idea. The Air Force engineers I talked to, were lukewarm, and said that if somebody gave them an order, they would be happy to do the manufacturing.
In the early March, Harriet's pregnancy was in its final stage, and we carefully checked her conditions day by day. On the 9th of the month, the students of one of the pilot courses had scheduled a dinner to celebrate the end of their course and the fact that all had passed the final examinations. I was invited, but wasn't sure whether I would be able to attend. Harriet and her mother discussed this every day. They would have preferred that I stay at home, but finally we came to an agreement that Harriet's mother would stay with her during my absence.
On the day of the dinner, she had begun to feel some of the early pains. We called the hospital and told them about the symptoms. They asked us to check the time between attacks of pain, and concluded that the birth was still 24 hours away. Of course, Harriet and her mother would have preferred for me to stay at home, and that was probably what I should have done, but they also sanctioned my participation in the dinner.
Thus, I went to the farewell dinner, and in accordance with the strict rules about drunk driving, hired a car driver to take me back home. I prepared the car for the night, which meant to empty the radiator of the mixture of water and spirits to prevent freezing, as the temperature could fall to minus 20 degrees C or more.
In the morning, we were leaving for the hospital at an early hour. However, I had first to refill the radiator, which made Harriet a bit impatient. Notwithstanding, we arrived at the hospital at about 8.30 AM, and Harriet was installed in a good room. After having convinced myself that she was well cared for and exchanging many kisses and hugs and good wishes, I left for my job with ABA.
During the morning and early afternoon, I made many calls to the hospital, only to be told to call back later. Before leaving ABA, I made a call, but still nothing had happened. I decided not to drive home, but spend the rest of the afternoon with my friend, Nils Fagerbeg, in his uncle's workshop near the hospital, from where I called both the hospital and my family. I was then informed by my father that it was a girl, and she had been born at about 2.30 PM.
I called the hospital, and managed to talk to Harriet, who had just returned to her room, together with our newborn daughter. I went to the hospital as soon as I could, but couldn't visit mother and daughter until the official visiting hours. At this time, fathers were still not permitted to attend and assist in a birth, and visits were restricted to visiting hours.
A few days later, I brought mother and daughter home. During my spare time, I joined Harriet on walks with our daughter, resting in the perambulator we had bought a couple of weeks before her birth. I also spent time on designing a prototype of the navigation calculator I had in mind and on the design of the scales, one set of circular scales and one sliding speed scale.
The circular scales consisted of one 360 degrees compass scale, 2 logarithmic numeric scales, one calibrated in units of time and the other, opposite scale, in units of distance, one logarithmic sinus scale, plus scales to correct indicated altitude and speeds for temperature. The sliding scale was calibrated in units of aircraft speed, and was used together with a scale on a diametric bar of the circular 360 deg. scale, calibrated in same units of speed as the sliding scale, representing wind speed.
The sliding speed scale and the diametric wind speed scales were used for vector calculation of the ground speed and heading of the aircraft at different wind directions and speeds. This was all. I hope you didn't get confused, and I am not going to talk about how to use them.
I managed to find a decent workshop, and had a prototype made, which I demonstrated to my students. They were interested, and after a while, I had taken enough orders for a small series of 100 calculators. I first ordered the scales from Kemigravyr, and when ready, I brought them to the workshop, where the scales were cut out and assembled into calculators.
The production was not as easy as I had thought it would be. The major difficulty was to cut out the circular scales with required accuracy, so that the rotatable ring with a logarithmic time scale would match the stationary ring with a logarithmic distance scale. Previously, I had been joking about the quality of certain imported slide rules, with which the result of 2 x 2 did not become 4, but 3.99. Now, I faced the problem of matching the scales well enough to avoid such an error. For this reason, I had to personally check the mounting of the ready cut scales in the circular metallic base rings.
The core of the problem was the centering of the scales in the lathe, and we managed to design an accurate centering device for this purpose, and soon thereafter, I was able to deliver the calculators to those who had ordered them.
I brought personally one calculator to the Air Force department in charge of purchasing. The engineer in charge became quite interested, and told me that they would test the calculator in the field. Shortly thereafter, I got a negative report from one of the radio operators, who had bought a calculator. He was flying on the South America route, and had left the calculator in the sun in Rio de Janeiro. As a result, the rotatable vinyl scale, inside the metallic base ring, had expanded and warped, and could not be moved.
That meant that in order to avoid such a happening, we would have to make the scale rings and base ring of a material that would withstand the heat of the sun in the tropics. I settled for Plexiglass, i.e. acrylics, and shortly thereafter I had a prototype ready for the Air Force to test.
At about the same time, we had managed to find a larger apartment in a suburb area of Stockholm, named Gubbaengen. During that period, I had got my first class of US and British pilots. As mentioned above, my English wasn't very good, even though it had improved since I started my spare time lessons.
As I have stated above, my teaching system included dictation of the text and problems to the students. Thus, using the British Royal Air Force textbook in air navigation, I learned the parts I was to introduce by heart. To my relief and satisfaction, that system functioned well, and it increased my vocabulary enough for me to be able to discuss and to explain the various problems, and in this manner, my students became good friends of mine.
I remember that sometimes when I dictated something that I hadn't memorized, a student would call out: "in good English, please", but never disrespectful, and this manner I learned English by practice, and got to know most of the SAS English and American pilots.
.
In the summer of 1947, due to an increased flight schedule on the North Atlantic, a need for one more flight navigator had arisen, and I was invited to fill this position, simultaneously with my work as instructor. I remember well my first flight, together with the Swedish Chief Flight Navigator, Captain Crister Melén.
I had never before utilized practically what I had been teaching, such as how to check the magnetic deviation of a compass, using an astrocompass, or taken the altitude of a star, a planet, the sun or the moon, using a sextant with an air bubble horizon. I got plenty of practice during our first flight, as well as in the use of radio beacons.
Due to a strike by SAS technicians, we had to travel by train to Copenhagen, where the aircraft we were going to fly with, a DC4, was located. Early, the following morning, we took off for the first leg of our flight, to Prestwick, Scotland. On that leg, the services of a flight navigator were not required.
However, on the next leg, to Gander, Newfoundland, a 12 hour flight, I got my first practical navigation experience. During the climb following the take off, the navigator prepares the astrocompass, in order to, as quickly as possible, check the deviation on the first leg of the overseas flight, and to fill out a form with the heading to steer for the Captain.
We were following the great circle between Prestwick and Gander, which includes regular changes of the heading, about once every hour, in order to stay on track. Also, at about the same intervals, the position is being determined by use of the sextant, to obtain the height of suitable heavenly bodies, stars, planets, or the moon. When available, radio beacons are also used, such as those from the Meteorological Watch Ships in the middle of the North Atlantic.
When approaching Gander, a radio range, a US kind of radio beacon, provides good guidance. Once flying on the radio range, the flight navigator's main occupation becomes to check the distance and corresponding estimated time to the airport. Today, all this activity is carried out automatically by use of the satellites. But they were not available at that time.
We detected the Gander radio range at about the time I had estimated. Using available radio beacons, I managed to calculate the ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) reasonably well and we arrived at Gander airport without any difficulties, following the radio range.
After having refueled, we continued the flight along the Canadian and US East Coast, over Boston, to La Guardia Airport, outside New York City. On this leg, there were plenty of radio aids to guide the pilots, and the service of the flight navigator was not required. The radio operator tuned in a local station, and I remember hearing for the first time "I am looking over a four leaf clover, that I overlooked before". I could swear that it was Louis Armstrong who was singing, but I have not been able to confirm this on "Youtube.com".
At La Guardia, we went through immigration and customs, and continued to our hotel, the Henry Hudson, on 57th street, in a SAS station wagon. After a short breakfast in the hotel bar, we all went for a rest in our rooms, as we were all tired after the flight, close to 24 hours, including stops.
In the afternoon, I joined my Instructor, the Chief Flight Navigator, and saw for the first time a supermarket and a cafeteria, then not available in Sweden. As we were all tired, we went early to bed. The following day I visited Woolworth and the Macy's department store, where I remember purchasing a rubber doll, named Amosandra, for my daughter, and some nylon stockings for my wife.
The following day we went down to 14th Street and I got to know the shops with low prices. Among others, I remember hearing "Riders in the Sky" for the first time, in one of the shops. This song, I liked very much, and it is still one of my favorites. In the afternoon, we went to Rockefeller Center and then to Radio City where I saw the famous ballet for the first time, and also a movie, but I have forgotten which.
The next day we returned on almost on the same track as we had arrived, i.e. via Gander and Prestwick. This time we had mainly tail winds, instead of the headwinds on the way out, due to the location of the main low pressure, with winds in a counter-clockwise direction. While we didn't have a radio range to guide us, like at Gander, we used the various radio beacons located in the North of Ireland, and Scotland, during the approach to Prestwick.
Finally, we went home to Bromma airport, Stockholm, via Forneby airport , outside Oslo, Norway. I was overwhelmed by my first experience of a transatlantic flight and all I had seen and experienced in New York
Shortly before my first transatlantic flight, we had moved again, this time to an apartment on Rindoegatan, opposite the apartment of my parents and my brother Richard. My sister Gisela, lived in an apartment adjacent to the one of my parents, together with one of her course mates at the Institute of Dentistry. Thus, we were all close together.
One morning, I got a big surprise, a request from the Air Force for a quotation for 650 of my navigation calculators. While I was very happy for the success of having received an order for a quotation from the Air Force, I was not sure at all what to do. I didn't have any company, and only knew Chemigravyr and the workshop that had produced the 100 calculators I had sold to students and friends.
When I discussed the matter with my colleagues at the SAS School and Training Section, the head of the Link Trainer section suggested that I ask the technicians who maintained the link trainers and who were now on strike if they would be interested. They were, and in order to carry out the business, I registered a personal company, Aeronautic O.af Stroem.
We rented a workshop in one of the nearby suburbs, Sundbyberg. My mother was helpful and sold some stocks to provide me with working capital, as advance of my inheritance. For this I
bought a Swiss precision instrument lathe of the kind my technician companion recommended, to be used to cut out the scale rings, But we still hadn't got any engraved scales to cut out.
When I was to order the same, one of the Kemigravyr executives told me: "now you are going to earn money, and we too", and then the company increased the price of engraving that I had paid for the scales for the first 100 calculators I had sold. This I didn't accept, as I had expected to receive a rebated lower price. At about the same time I made my second transatlantic flight as a flight navigator, with the Chief Flight Navigator still as my instructor.
He recommended that I be checked out, and the next flight, I made under the watch of the Senior Check Navigator, Capt. Einar Pedersen, who was later on to become famous as a Polar Flight expert. He and his family also became our personal friends. During my rest stop in New York, I contacted the Kodak Company in Rochester, and as a result, they sent me a brochure of a photo engraving process.
I also contacted other companies, like Rohm & Haas, the manufacturers of Plexiglas, and the manufacturers of Vinylite. I also visited shops on Canal Street, where I bought a drill press, to be used as such and as a milling cutter for our workshop.
When I was back in Stockholm, I made friends with one of the salesmen of a company that represented Kemigravyr, and through him I obtained a quotation and placed an order for the engraved scales, at the previous, lower price. I then gave the Air Force the requested quotation, and soon thereafter, I received an order for 650 calculators, which were given the type name "t48".
I also received an advance payment, to pay for material. For the 650 scales, I had utilized the area inside the calculator scale rings, for the purpose of engraving scale rings for a pocket size calculator. The Air Force didn't like that. However, I convinced them that the material I used for the pocket calculator would otherwise be scrapped, and eventually they accepted the fact that I used part of the advance payment from them for a private pocket calculator.
Soon thereafter, the scales were completed and brought to our workshop, where the technicians started to cut them out in the lathe. Some of the work was carried out in an adjacent workshop, about 10 km away, and I used to visit them frequently.
One afternoon, we had to pay a visit to the other shop. I went with one of the technicians in my car. It had been snowing most of the day, but the road looked OK, so I kept a speed of about 60 km/h. Suddenly, the car skidded towards the right. I lifted my foot from the accelerator and managed to avoid the ditch and, instead, skidded to the left, over a railway bridge. By luck, I managed to get the car skidding towards the right again, and in such a manner we passed the bridge, luckily without touching any of its edges, and I managed to regain control of the car. This event gave me a lesson for life, and I have luckily not experienced anything similar. However, it reinforced my belief that I must have a guardian angel protecting me.
The work progressed well, although we experienced the same difficulties in centering the scales in such a manner that distance covered in 30 minutes, at a speed of 300 km/h was 150 km, and not 149.9 km. Assembling of the ready parts was carried out by my brother Richard and a friend of his, who also served as my driver. I also obtained nice, illustrated cardboard boxes and instructions for use booklets from a printing shop in the neighborhood.
I personally checked the scales, packed each calculator, before delivering them to the Air Force. However, when about half of the order had been delivered, the strike of the technicians came to a halt, and they could not continue the manufacturing, but went back to their ordinary work. Luckily, one of the technicians had a friend, Eng. Hellstrom, who was the head of a vocational school for unemployed, Stockholm Arbetstraining Institute, and he accepted to continue the manufacturing of the calculators, He did a great job, and we became good friends.
As I mentioned above, I had obtained instructions from Kodak about photoengraving. I obtained the necessary liquids and plastic sheets, and commenced experimenting in the kitchen of our apartment. In order to protect the dish bench, I covered it with an old magazine. While I had not been able to make any photoengraving of a scale on the vinylite sheet, to my surprise, I detected the image of one of the popular comics, which appeared on the magazine page I had placed as protection of the dish bench. I examined it. It had been well absorbed by the vinyl sheet, and couldn't be erased, but how had it gotten there?
I spent the rest of the night, experimenting and transferring pictures from the magazine. I was enthusiastic. I had discovered a system to transfer images from paper to plastics. Was it known to others? I told my boss, Mr. Vandiver, and showed him the transfers I had made. He got interested, and contacted one of his friends, a Count Moerner, who decided to invest Swedish Kronor 5,000 in a corporation. Aeronautical Utilities, AB.
Through Eng. Hellstrom, I found a suitable workshop apartment, and soon I had obtained the required machines, and was spending most of my spare time in the shop, experimenting. Soon, I had found a suitable acrylic varnish, with which we first coated the printed images to be transferred in a coating machine, and then pressed the coated paper to the substrates in a cylinder press. After this we submerged the laminates and removed the image paper backing.
The system functioned so well, that we obtained an employee through Eng. Hellstrom., a graduate from his vocational school, who lived in the neighborhood.
At this time, we had moved from Rindoegatan to a larger apartment on Aengskaersgatan. I had also been flying twice a month to New York. SAS had also changed hotel, from the Henry Hudson to the Wellington on 7th Avenue, not far from the Metropolitan Opera. During one of these flights, we had a run-a-away propeller, and had to return to La Guardia.
We also changed airport from La Guardia to Idlewild, now known as Kennedy Airport. The airport buildings at that time were mainly barracks. Incidentally, I was onboard the very first flight that took off from Idlewild. A flight back to Prestwick that I still remember well. The weather was bad at Gander, so we used the Goose Bay airport, which was the alternative airport of our flight plan. When we had reached our cruising altitude on the return flight to Prestwick, and I had made the astrocompass ready for the first course check, the captain called me and pointed at the magnetic compass, which was rotating.
I gave him a course to steer on the gyrocompass, and told him not to worry. The sky was bright, full of stars, and I would give him the course to steer at regular intervals, as usual. We soon discovered the reason for the magnetic storm, a giant aurora borealis, or Northern Light, as it is called in Sweden. In this manner we crossed half of the Atlantic, without a functioning magnetic compass.
From my flights on the North Atlantic route, I remember well a landing at Prestwick. The captain of the aircraft was the Danish veteran Hedal Hansen, thank God. I am not sure if a less experienced pilot would have achieved what he did. The weather was very bad with heavy rain and absolutely no horizontal visibility. I don't remember exactly how many approach attempts we made, 5 or 6, but I calculated that we had spent all fuel needed for flight to an alternative airport and most of our reserve fuel, before we finally landed. Prestwick had a GCA, i.e. Ground Control Approach system, and that was what saved us. While I had experienced GCA approaches at Gander, this was my first and only GCA experience on that side of the Atlantic
|
|
