Radar Love
Before instrument landing systems, military pilots relied on controllers to steer them right to the runway.
- By Robert P. Mark
- Air & Space magazine, March 2012
The author at Wethersfield, England, in 1969, and an early Super Sabre.
Courtesy Robert P. Mark; USAF; Photo-illustration By Théo
Long before anyone dreamed up the Next-Generation Air Transportation System—using signals from satellites some 12,000 miles above Earth to keep airplanes from running into one another—the job of returning military aircraft from murky skies required pilots to do something they loathed: let other folks, like air traffic controllers, boss them around. But in the decades following World War II, when weather took away all other options, pilots put themselves in the hands of military air traffic controllers skilled in the use of Ground Controlled Approach radar systems. Many came to think of a GCA controller’s calming voice as that of another pilot who had happened along at just the right time.
The people talking the jet jockeys down were often enlisted kids like me, a student pilot and a recent graduate of the U.S. Air Force Air Traffic Control School at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. I was stunned when, with the Vietnam War raging, my first duty station turned out to be a Royal Air Force station in a sleepy English hamlet, Wethersfield, just a few miles east of what is now London Stansted Airport.
Wethersfield, along with a dozen other British military bases, was loaned to the Air Force to support NATO’s cold war commitment in Europe. I learned that the Air Force seasoned new controllers for a few years in low-key sites like Wethersfield before sending them to Southeast Asia to help battle-damaged F-100s, F-4s, and F-105s stagger home.
The idea of using radar to guide pilots to the runway in virtually any weather was a radical concept when GCA—sometimes called PAR for Precision Approach Radar—emerged in England during World War II. But it caught on quickly, and with help from the Brits, Gilfillan Brothers, a Los Angeles radio manufacturer, adopted, improved, and built it for the U.S. Army Air Forces and the Navy. One name associated with the early days of GCA development was Royal Air Force Flying Officer A. Clarke, a radar specialist who the world would later come to know as Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey and hundreds of other books, short stories, and essays. His 1963 novel, Glide Path, explored the lives of the scientists, pilots, and other service people who helped perfect the ground-controlled approach system. Clarke dedicated it to Luis Alvarez, who in 1945 was awarded the Collier Trophy for developing the microwave phased-array antenna, used in GCA.
In the late 1940s, GCA proved to be the only reliable method of safely landing tens of thousands of Allied military transports at West Germany’s Templehof Airport during the Berlin airlift. For the Allies, the ground-controlled approach became the primary method of guiding landing aircraft, far more precise than Automatic Direction Finder systems.
On my first day at Wethersfield, I was given a tour of the red-and-white GCA facility. The shacks usually sat just 100 feet from the runway for radar accuracy; when the weather was clear, the checkerboard paint scheme warned pilots to steer clear. When an aircraft did stray too close, a klaxon on the nearby control tower sounded, signaling “Run like hell.”
We were housed in two 20-foot semi-trailers joined end to end, and the facilities were cramped. One entire trailer alone housed the massive air conditioning units necessary to cool the magnetron tube, a GCA’s radio wave life force. In the other unit, our operations trailer, the aisle was just wide enough to seat four controllers in the dark for hours on end. (Slim waistlines were a plus.) Ordinarily, three GCA controllers handled basic air traffic control duties: One vectored aircraft to a 10-mile approach, at which point either of the other two controllers used a two-view (horizontal and vertical scans) radarscope that provided precise heading and altitude information. On a telephone, a fourth controller coordinated arrivals and departures with other air traffic control facilities.
Think of GCA as a sort of instrument landing system, only the needles are watched by the controller on the ground instead of the pilot. All a pilot needed to land were two snippets of guidance information—altitude and heading. The challenge for the controller was updating pilots rapidly and frequently enough to keep them on a smooth path to a landing. We focused on the radar blip, trying to stay 10 seconds ahead of an airplane headed toward the runway—and us—at 2.5 miles a minute.
Every controller-in-training had a hero. At Wethersfield, mine was Senior Master Sergeant John Mahoney, a man of some heft who had flown Northrop P-61 night fighters in World War II and served GCA tours in Vietnam. One morning, in fog so thick I could barely find my way from the standby shack to the GCA trailer, Mahoney offered a demonstration. For some reason, only three of us were on duty. With just a month’s experience, all I could do was don a headset and stay out of the way.
The arrival controller had split up a flight of three F-100s returning from a training mission. “Give them to me about seven miles apart,” Mahoney told the arrival controller.
Comments (10)
That is a great story about an approach which as a civilian pilot, you rarely shoot!
Although once, I had the opportunity to make a GCA at a military airfield, but that was on a clear blue sky and with full instruments available. Not really the same thing compared to landing in zero vis, but a great thing to do just being directed by the voice of the controller and end up at the centerline of the runway!
Posted by Niko Steensels on March 21,2012 | 11:13 AM
That is a great story about an approach which as a civilian pilot, you rarely shoot!
Although once, I had the opportunity to make a GCA at a military airfield, but that was on a clear blue sky and with full instruments available. Not really the same thing compared to landing in zero vis, but a great thing to do just being directed by the voice of the controller and end up at the centerline of the runway!
Posted by Niko Steensels on March 21,2012 | 11:13 AM
I am a now-retired profesional (civilian) pilot. However, over the course of my career, I had the need to shoot several Par(GCA) approaches at RCAF Station cold Lake in northern Alberta (Canada).
Posted by Robert McDonald on March 22,2012 | 04:07 PM
As a retired Air Force enlisted Air Traffic Controller (1960 - 1981) I thoroughly enjoyed "Radar Love" by Robert Mark. My first assignment after tech school at Keesler AFB was Itazuke AB, Japan where I "cut my teeth" on F-100s and, later, F-105s. Many of the Non-Commissioned Officers I worked with had served in WW II as Commissioned bomber, fighter, and glider pilots. My On-The-Job-Training Instructor started his military career as an Army Rifleman during the Korean War. My first Crew Chief served in WW II as a Marine, the Korean War as an Army Rifleman, and, during the later 1950s, in the Navy. My only criticism of the article concerns Robert Mark's description of the incorrect phraseology used by SMSgt Mahoney. I was taught that Air Traffic Control phraseology, just as with operating procedures and separation rules, was precise and exacting. The "old heads" I worked for did not tolerate the use of non-standard phraseology and really came down hard on any controller who violated separation rules. "Knowing the book" and skillfully applying prescribed phraseology, separation rules, and other procedures was a point of pride and taken quite seriously by all the controllers I knew.
Posted by Terry Bowman on March 23,2012 | 02:25 PM
While writing this story was certainly fun, the process of simply going back in time recalling everything that happened so long ago was just as much of a hoot.
But who is that young Sergeant in the photo with the funny hat? I seem to remember seeing him somewhere.
Rob
Posted by Rob Mark on March 23,2012 | 05:02 PM
This article really brings back some neat memories.
In the spring of 1957 I was a 19 year old USAF Airman 2nd Class who graduated from ATC School at Kessler AFB and was then stationed at the USAF AirBase at RAF Station Manston at Margate, England (located along the English Channel in Kent north of Dover). I was one of those "enlisted kids" GCA controllers and had considerable experience in "talking the jet jockeys down". We worked primarily with USAF F-84 & F-89 aircraft that were conducting air defense day & night time surveillance missions over central Europe. I do remember one specific mission where I was the final approach controller for a RAF (Royal AirForce) Vulcan bomber that needed to make an emergency landing because of a low engine oil indicator.
In May 2000, I was able to return to the Margate area while on vacation in the UK. The airfield now is a commercial facility but some of the living quarters AND the Control Tower of the 1957 time frame were still there. Lots of nostalgia!
As Bob Hope always said: "Thanks for the Memories."
Posted by Bob Hackney on March 29,2012 | 05:12 AM
I read the article & it brought back a lot of nostalgia. I, too, was a USAF air traffic controller 1964-1968. While stationed in Korat, Thailand, as a 20 yr old GCA controller, I talked down hundreds of aircraft, mostly F-105's returning from bomb runs on North VietNam. It was both exhilarating & satisfying after the recovery. Most came back shot-up, hydraulic failures, with hung ordinance and low on gas. They needed to land regardless of the weather & we were the last link to getting on the ground. I loved the job enough to spend 30 years doing it with the air force and FAA.
Thanks for the article and walk down memory lane.
Posted by Stan Bartlett on March 30,2012 | 10:48 PM
Great article!! I truly reminisced the early days of my ATC career. I vividly remember tech school at Keeseler AFB and Cody Hall where I learned the profession. I was on the "D" shift (midnight to 6 am) mostly throughout the course.
Posted by Jerry Torres (JT) on April 17,2012 | 08:25 AM
Relived memories - having been a F-100 pilot based at RAF Lakenheath (30 mi. north of Weathersfield) for 3 years and many GCA approaches. One of which, in 1963, was in zero vizability in a driving thunderstorm (the F-100 rain removal system was not effective in heavy rain). We were returning from a training flight for some practice formation low approaches and realized in the storm that we could not see the runway at minimums (200 feet), so we split up for full stops. However, after the split my radio failed so I was left with the option of the NDB approach (3 trys) at 400 ft. minimums, and I never saw the field. With low fuel I headed to my alternate (the storm was headed there too) but it came to me to check the NDB box and switch to voice - and, sure enough, there was the old senior controller talking to me. I landed in zero vizability and the GCA unit received an "aircraft save award" - and a bottle of JD from me.
Posted by David Diffenderfer on May 8,2012 | 02:34 PM
In the late 1980's I was on a tour at Little Rock Air Force Base. We went by the GCA facility just off the flightline near the tower. I remember how impressed I was to see a young blonde haired controller about 19 or 20 years old talk down a C-130. Awesome bunch of folks.
Posted by James Roberts on May 11,2012 | 03:07 PM