Today, flying blind. The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.
I recently took a flight overseas on your typical airliner, from a typical airline company in typical weather conditions. All good. But sometimes the weather is not so typical. Occasionally it's bad, even really bad. Yet in all but the worst weather conditions, pilots are easily able to reach their destination and make a safe landing. Well it seems easy, but that wasn't always so.
Things were very different in the early days of aviation. Unless the sun was shining and skies were clear there was a good chance one would not make it their destination alive. Aircraft navigation back then was mostly what you could see from the air and that included seeing the ground as the most important part.
If you can't see the ground while piloting an aircraft you will quickly lose orientation and crash. Your brain will play tricks on you and you will feel the airplane flying in a different attitude than you think. This type of disorientation was killing many pilots, especially air mail pilots. They would often fly into bad weather, or even clouds, and unknowingly enter death spirals to their demise. Something had to be done.
Enter Jimmy Doolittle. Yes that Jimmy Doolittle. Before he was famous for his world War II bomber raid on Tokyo, Doolittle was a pioneer in aviation navigation. A graduate of MIT, he helped invent the technologies aircraft use for navigating in bad weather. Not just bad weather, but near zero visibility weather.
“Doolittle in his instrument flying test aircraft with the hood open.” National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution (SI 79-9405)
Doolittle outfitted an aeroplane called a "Husky” with special instruments. A newly invented directional gyroscope and extra sensitive altimeter that used atmospheric pressure to show height above ground. Special radio transmitters were setup around the airport that would give him guidance and distance to the airfield.
To test his contraption, Doolittle proceeded to takeoff with a completely covered cockpit where he could not see outside. He then flew around the airport and landed completely blind to the outside world. He could only see his few cockpit instruments.
“Instruments used by Jimmy Doolittle to “fly blind"”. National Museum of the United States Air Force
Jimmy knew that he had to trust his instruments and ignore his senses which would lie to him. He could determine where he was in relation to the airport just by observing his instruments. He also knew much time it takes for his aircraft to perform certain types of turns.
This was a simple flight. But it was also the very first of what we now call instrument flying. There were still more pieces to add such as the use of radio beacons for long distance navigation and of course training others on how to do instrument flying, as they later called it.
Jimmy Doolittle is most famous for his wartime exploits. But his peace time pioneering and research in aircraft navigation likely saved countless lives. Many more lives than were taken as a result of his combat flying. He was able to take separate pieces of technology and combine them into a remarkable system that we mostly still use today.
I’m Fitz Walker for the University of Houston, and I too am interested in the way inventive minds work.
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Links:
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/about/history/pioneers/First_Instrument_Flight_Doolittle.pdf
https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2024/january/pilot/musings-flying-blind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system
This episode first aired August 5, 2025.