|
On record, the first pilot to report a “fog bank” that caused electromagnetic havoc with his navigation equipment was no less than Charles Lindbergh. He had taken off from Havana in Spirit of St. Louis to head across the Gulf of Mexico. He records what  happened in his Autobiography of Values (1976):
The last flight of my around-the-Gulf-and-Caribbean tour should also have been routine. I took off from Havana airport about 1:35 in the morning on February 13, 1928, intending to fly nonstop to St. Louis. It should have been an easy flight— about a third the distance from New York to Paris. My take-off was quick, my cruising speed high. I felt no need to be miserly with fuel. I climbed to an altitude of four thousand and settled back to enjoy the night and piloting. But halfway across the Straits of Florida my magnetic compass started rotating, and the earth-inductor-compass needle jumped back and forth erratically. By that time a haze had formed, screening off the horizon.
At first I thought the Spirit of St. Louis had dropped a wing and was banking; but the turn indicator needle held its center, and a push with my foot on the rudder showed the gyroscope to be working properly. I had only once before seen two compasses malfunction at the same time. That was over the storm I encountered crossing the Atlantic en route to Paris. But then the magnetic compass only oscillated. Although it was through an arc of close to one hundred eighty degrees, I could get an approximate idea of direction by taking the midpoint of the card’s swing, and I could hold it by the stars. Over the Straits of Florida my magnetic compass rotated without stopping, and my earth inductor was completely useless. I had no notion whether I was flying north, south, east, or west.
A few stars directly overhead were dimly visible through haze, but they formed no constellation I could recognize. I started climbing toward the clear sky that had to exist somewhere above. If I could see Polaris, that northern point of light, I could navigate by it with reasonable accuracy. But haze thickened as my altitude increased. High thin clouds crept in to make the stars blink. Surely a storm area lay not far away— very likely above the southern states I had to pass. Should I spiral until daybreak, when I could get a general direction from the sun? That would prevent flying in the wrong direction and possibly finding myself hundreds of miles over the Atlantic or gulf.
Clouds thickened, formed a layer, lowered. I descended to less than a thousand feet to keep contact with the sea. Even then I could barely distinguish water from the haze it joined. Turbulence increased. The compass card rotated too erratically to give an indication of direction. Dawn came slowly. Its diffused light seemed to originate in every azimuth, helping my navigation not at all. But while waves below were still half merged with night, a darker shade drew in toward me like a  curtain— land, vague in early twilight, only a narrow strip with more water beyond. . .
Charles Lindbergh had discovered he was over the Bahamas. “That would mean I had flown at almost a right angle to my proper heading, and it would put me close to three hundred miles off course!”
A fairly good indication that this was the “electronic fog” comes from the fact Lindbergh could see both directly above him and directly below him. Yet when he climbed altitude to break out of what he felt was only a fog bank he could never make it. He believed high clouds must have rolled in and been responsible for making the stars “blink.” The fog, which seemed to have a limit, then seemed limitless as he kept trying to get above it, a possible indication the fog was flying with him and he was not flying through a fog bank.
See the similarity in the case of Martin Caidin and the Electronic Eggnog and with Bruce Gernon in his flight. He is the pilot who coined the term “Electronic Fog.”
|
