DAYTIME FOG LANDINGS

Year Published: 1940s

Description: This silent training film "Daytime Fog Landings" was made by the Blind Landing Experimental Unit, or BLEU, which was formed at RAF Woodbridge and RAF Martlesham Heath during 1945 and 1946. BLEU was a unit of the British government tasked with creating an early autolanding system for military and civilian aircraft from the late 1940s until the mid-1960s. Research during the first few years at BLEU led to the conclusion that a promising approach to blind landing would be a fully automatic system, and produced a definition of the requirements for such a system, later designated Autoland. BLEU's work resulted in an eponymous system for controlling airplane landings; Flight Lieutenant Noel Adams made the first automatic landing on 3 July 1950 in BLEU's test plane, a Vickers Varsity. The system was eventually approved for commercial use, and on 4 November 1964, Captain Eric Poole landed a British European Airways flight at Heathrow with visibility of 40 meters, which was the first use of the system to land a commercial flight in such severe conditions.The BLEU played a vital role in the development of autolanding, and descendants of its system are still in use around the world today. This film was shot by the R.A.E. Bedford Flight Photographic Group. The runways shown are likely at Heathrow, which was used by BLEU pilots for test flights when it was fogged in.