William Charles Ocker, the Father of Blind Flight

It was one thing to have these new tools available; it was yet another thing altogether to be able to use them in actual flight. U. S. Army pilot William C. Ocker nearly crashed one day in 1918 testing the Sperry turn indicator. He could not convince himself to trust these new instruments instead of his senses, as he and every other military pilot had been taught: “Ignore them”; “Fly by the seat of your pants,” they were told. Pilots who relied on anything other than a magnetic compass and the altimeter were considered lightweight and weak.

During a routine Army physical exam in 1926, Ocker was subjected to a Jones-Barany chair, which is a spinning, swiveling seat designed to measure balance and equilibrium. When deprived of his visual cues, he naturally became completely disoriented and confused. He could not tell if he was stationary or spinning, or which way. With the doctor’s help, he practiced using the turn indicator and a pen light rigged up in a shoe box as he was spun around. Watch­ing only inside the box, he could tell the doctor which way he was going, and how fast. This

device, the “Ocker Box,” became the first blind flying trainer. (See Figure 10-8.)

In spite of the Army’s refusal to teach instrument flying, Ocker became something of an advocate, and convinced many pilots of the worth of his designs. The Army forced Ocker to undergo psychological exams for his pen­chant for sitting in spinning chairs. He invented the idea of the covered cockpit, used by Jimmy Doolittle for a flight around the pattern in 1929, but Ocker made the first cross-country flight in a completely covered cockpit on June 24, 1930, flying 900 miles from Brooks Field, Texas to Scott Field, Illinois.

Pan American pilots soon began using Ocker’s techniques and instruments. In 1932, in cooperation with Col. Carl Crane, he published the world’s first instrument flight manual, Blind Flight in Theory and Practice. The Soviet Air Force adopted the book before the U. S. Army did. Orville Wright called him a “missionary” and he considered among his friends Eddie Rick – enbacker, Billy Mitchell, and Jimmy Doolittle. A year after his death in 1942, the Army made his training procedures standard for all military pilots.3

At the same time, experimentation was proceeding on various fronts, including with

radio, not only as a means of voice communi­cation from air to ground, but also as a means of navigation. By May 15, 1920, airmail ser­vice had been extended westward from Chicago to Omaha, Nebraska, establishing a through route all the way from New York. On August 16, 1920, a route was added southward from Chicago to St. Louis. On September 8, 1920, the transcontinental route was completed to San Francisco. Although the airmail service operated only during daylight hours, the rail­road coast-to-coast mail time was bettered by 22 hours.

The promise of airmail was yet unfulfilled. Moreover, Otto Praeger was concerned that the entire airmail program might be cancelled if bet­ter results were not soon achieved. Night flying was the only way to free the airmail service from its earthbound dependence on the railroads. Fly­ing at night had been experimented with, and successfully under certain conditions, like clear, moonlit nights, for short distances. But what about transcontinental distances on a regular schedule? Could it be done?