Flying WITHOUT Instruments

I know this is gonna sound totally stupid. With out the use of a gas gauge or any of the modern instruments we now take for granite, how could a pilot determine how much flight time and combat time he would have??

[Dan_San_Abbott]

Jeremy Scott:
Almost all aircraft had a gas guage, a watch/clock, compass, tachometer, altimeter, airspeed indicator. Almost all had a map pocket with maps. All the pilots knew the endurance of their aircraft. The watch would tell them when they had to be back at the airfield, the gas gauge told them what was left in the tank, the altimeter gave them their altitude. So with the familiarty with the front area which was supported by the maps and the compass gave them direction. The Germans had the minimum instrumentation in their aircraft, British aircraft the best.
Blue skies,
Dan-San

Thanks I am what you would call an amatuer. I guess I am an amatuer

[franzkait]

for sure many German pilots did dream about a gas guage, altimeter,airspeed... but

[Jeff Brooks]

I imagine that the pilots had to learn to fly by feel ... without an airspeed gauge, impending stalls are harder to avoid.
The Fokker compass on the floor must have been fun ... going into a cloud to follow an attack or avoid an attack ... looking down at the compass then back up at the altimeter, vertigo waiting to happen.
The night flying without an artifical horizon! the more I learn about the world war I aviation, the more amazed I am! those men were either crazy or just didn't know any better!
Jeff

[greatwarpilot]

Fuel status and endurance require a watch or some sort and/or a fuel gague. But as most pilots can attest to, when you learn to fly a light airplane you do so from visual references OUTSIDE the cockpit. The instruments should only be used to cross reference. Further with some expereince I think its safe to say that most pilot learn to fly by feel, sound and references other than instrumentation.

Keeping that in mind it doesn't seem quite so unreasonable that pilots few with a minimum in instrumentation.

[retread]

I have a few "practical flying" manuals from the period of the war. These examples were not issued by any of the governments engaged but were written by military pilots who recognized the need for such books. Paraphrasing one I was scanning last night the author claimed that during the war pilots flew with very little reference to their instruments. Definitely "seat of the pants" stuff.However, he anticipated the need for the developement of greater reliance on instruments and even IFR type flight with the growth of commercial aviation which he foresaw as developing postwar.
Regarding clouds he advised just stay outof'em and went on to include that this was a point continually stressed to student pilots.
My guess is very few wartime pilots used their compasses in any precise sort of way, or had the need to. Once a combat pilot was familiar with his section of front he could, as stated in previous posts, fly by visual reference.In poor weather ("flyer's weather" as opposed to "flying weather") you generally just didn't go.
There was certainly a lack of appreciation of stall speed generally and as regarded individual aircraft. So they weren't benefiting from the single most important aspect of their airspeed indicator.Entire graveyards could be filled with the men who died 1914-18 because they lacked this basic knowledge we take for granted today.

[Dan_San_Abbott]

Gentlemen:
From the Somme north to the coast, if pilots only flew on good days with clear skies and/or broken clouds. There would have been very little flying done. The weather in northern France and Flanders is at best rain almost every day. During the "Battle of France", 21 March-9 April 1918 on the first pilots on both sides were flying in foggy conditions. The battle situation demanded the pilots to fly. I asked a friend in Brussels, "How often does it rain in Flanders?" His response was, "366 days a year in Flanders and northen France!" So the pilots generally flew in rain and bad weather. For those of you who have,"Hunting With Richthofen", translation of "Jagd in Flanders Himmel," Bodenschatz Dairies by Jan Hayzlett. Read the daiy weather observations and then read how many flights were made. About the only time flying operations were curtailed was in real bad foggy conditions.
Blue skies,
Dan-San

[Dan_San_Abbott]

Franzkait:
In all the German aircraft I have studied, I have not found one that did not have a fuel gauge. Most had the anemometer air speed indicator and an altimeter. Fokker aircraft, for the most had poor instrumentation, but all had a fuel gauge.
Blue skies,
Dan-San

The SE's fuel gauge was mounted on the rear of the fuel tank and was almost impossible to see in flight. To see it you had to duck your head into the cockpit, underneath the coaming, and look into a dark hole over part of the panel. As Dan and Great War Pilot have said, a watch will tell you what you need to know. You figure out your fuel endurance based on how much fuel you are going to take off with and just watch the time. As far as stalls, you don't normally avoid stalls with your airspeed indicator except, to some degree, on take off and landings. What you use when flying is the feel of the airplane. You can feel the shuddering of the airplane as a stall approaches. It's not subtle in most light aircraft. It is useful to have an ASI on landing and takeoff just because its good to make sure that you have a nice speed pad as you get close to the ground. Many of these airplanes, particularly early in the war, had climb out and descent airspeeds only a few knots above stall. An inadvertent stall at altitude may be easily recoverable, but it can be deadly at low level. Remember, the ground has a pk of 1. Retread's comments about full cemeteries are dead on there.

Matt