Did 2WW aircraft actualky have ILS ?

[GL_64]

If this is true, I am flabbergasted !

[Jacques]

Check this out from 1943:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1343/ ... 7032468597

I think there is quite a bit of argument about whether it was used in wartime England, but I haven’t found anything definitive either way.

[FireRescue85]

Currently reading “three engines, half a wing, and a prayer” and it shows a map of the 303’s airbase in Europe. On either end of the longest runway it has a navigational beacon, so I’m curious if they had ILS capabilities.

[wothan]

ILS systems where tested as early as 1929 in the USA. But it was not before after WW2 that it started to be used outside USA.
Germany had a similar system used at Tempelhof Airport in 1932.

Navigation beacons at that time where more like NDB's.

The kind of ILS used in P3D / FSX (MSFS2020) and what is simulated in the A2A B-17G is definitly not from WW2, but has been added to give it some IFR capability in the modern world of these simulators.

[GL_64]

So we won't see the ILS gauge in any actual WW2 footage ?

[FireRescue85]

So we won't see the ILS gauge in any actual WW2 footage ?

Correct. It appears as though it was only operating in Germany under the Lorenzo beam. In the original B-17 manual, the gauge that is currently an ILS gauge is a turn indicator, next to a flight indicator gyro horizon.

BUT the ILS gauge that is in the B17 is true to the first type of ILS gauge used by the US Air Force when they started using ILS.

-Scott.

[GL_64]

Thnx for that.

Guess it's safe to say, if the war had continued, this gauge MAY have appeared a year or 2 later.....?

Luckily....and God Bless the "Bomber Boys" .....we'll never know.

[Nick - A2A]

Guess it's safe to say, if the war had continued, this gauge MAY have appeared a year or 2 later.....?

Just to be clear, this is a real "S.C.US ARMY I-101C" gauge that was fitted to some B-17s. It's just that the ILS simulation in FSX and P3D represents the modern world and not navaids that existed in World War 2.

https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/ ... -538706931

Now, I'm not sure from which date these instruments were fitted or even if it was ever a standard factory item for the B-17G. There's quite a variety of different cockpit configurations, and of course many surviving aircraft have been extensively modified with new avionics. However, this is a period "pilot's localizer indicator" as Jacques' link above illustrates and a quick browse of B-17 cockpit photos on the internet will show a few with this gauge fitted, such as this one at Fantasty of Flight.

Here's another example.



Thanks,
Nick

[Jacques]

I would like to complete a project I started around six or seven years ago, basically a navaid scenery overlay for the bunchers and splahers. You can find,on-line, rudimentary maps of their positions but very little information about their precise location or their frequency. Bunchers and splasher were non directional beacons used in forming up the bomber streams with bunchers being local and splashers being more regional. As far as radio navaids in wartime England, these may have been the only ones available.