/8th Air Force
I had never heard of trailing antennas before until talking to Bob Cash, radio operator of the McKoy Crew R-09. It's a powerful emergency antenna used by many types of planes back in those days. Basically it is a long cable (anywhere from a 100 to 300 feet long) spooled up on a reel with a heavy weight on the end. The radio operator could reel it out when he needed to use it, and of course, winch it back up before landing.
Bob said he never had to use it in combat, but there was one time when he used it here in the US. Actually, he was just a passenger, but when the plane lost its radio the pilot asked him if he could help them out. Bob used it to call the tower and make arrangements to land.
I made a note to myself to check this out the next time the Collings Foundation brought its WWII planes to our town. Sure enough, on the B-24's right side of the bottom, between the radio operator's desk the the bomb bay, you can see the weighted end sticking out. I checked the B-17 out, too, but they didn't have a line hooked up. However, inside back by the ball turret you can see the empty spool for it. The Collings people will show you this stuff if you ask them.
Afterwards I talked to Ernie Haar, pilot of Crew 912, about this. He said they never had to use theirs either, but one time in England they did spool it out just to see what it could do. They were only flying at about 8,000 feet and yet it picked an oriental station (Japenese, Chinese or something) somewhere in Asia. That really is powerful!
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“Trailing antennas”
Al Blue wrote...
As with any device involving humans, human error sometimes reared its ugly head. Forgetting to reel in the trailing antenna before landing was a not uncommon example of this. The antenna weight was always the first thing to hit, and where it went after that was anybody's guess. I am aware of one instance where a cow was at the right place at the wrong time. Perhaps the first one ever to be killed by radio activity ???
Paul Arnett wrote...
Ernie Haar called me in response to this blog and shared two of his experiences with trailing antenneas.
The first one was when he was a boy growing up in New Jersey. He and a friend were playing in a field at the end of the local runway. A DC-2 came in for a landing with its trailing antennea still spooled out. The weighted end whipped right between the two boys where they were standing. Had it hit one of them, that kid would have been killed.
The other story takes place in England. While he had taken his crew up for a little practice excersise he suggested they spool out the line to see how everything worked. To their surprise they picked up an oriental radio station. They don't know if it was Japanese, Chinese or what but it was definitely oriental. That's one powerful antnnea!
8q2l wrote...
Hahaha well said! I agree completely!
Richard Norman wrote...
My dad and mom both worked for Boeing during the war. My dad wanted to join the Air-Force but had a bad heart valve and flunked the physical. But he did work for the war effort as most people did back then if they weren't in the military. He wound antennas at plant 2 in Seattle for aircraft, more than likely, the B-17. They would wind just 8 a shift as these were 300 feet long and were wound by hand. My dad thought this through and decided there must be another better way. Back then, they didn't have electric drills that came with reverse, which was needed, so he made a couple of gears out of some phenolic to make it work. His boss caught him doing this during working hours and chewed him out royally. So he finished it at home and brought it back to work. Instead of the 8 they would normally wind in a shift, his winder wound 80! His boss told him he could even bring his car in and polish it if they could get 80 out every day.
Robert Baumgardner wrote...
My uncle, Haynes Baumgardner, flew a low-level supply mission to the 101st Airborne near Son, Holland on 18 September 1944, the second day of ill-fated Operation Market-Garden. During the return flight, to avoid enemy ground fire, the entire squadron (491st Bomb Squad) flew out of Holland "at tree top level or below". At some point the trailing antenna snagged on something and the cable broke, evidence that they were, indeed, flying very near the ground.