Frank was one of the most popular officers in the proof division. Raised on a farm in South Dakota, he was six or seven years older than most of the pilots when he entered the Army. In addition he was balding and rather portly, and this made him appear even older. Although a first lieutenant at the time, he could easily pass for a full colonel if his rank insignia were not visible, and he made every effort to keep them not visible. He said he was the terror of the visiting officer's quarters latrine. When he came in to shave in his underwear, young officers who actually outranked him deferred to him so that he could use the basin first. He always wore the billed garrison cap that does not display rank rather than the more comfortable flight cap that does. Since he was not a pilot, when he attended conferences someone had to fly him there, and when he strutted into operations in his flying suit, carrying a briefcase and followed by his pilot, he was sometimes mistaken for a general. He had, and still has, a prodigious memory for jokes, or "old gags," as he called them, and could dredge up several to fit any occasion.
Because of my inexperience with the intricacies of radar, Frank arranged for me to travel to the naval air station on Boca Chica Key, near Key West, where the Navy had a few trainers, Beech SNBs (C-45s in the Air Force), for some in-flight indoctrination. Accordingly, I was flown to Boca Chica by the Marine liaison officer at Eglin and the head of the weapons branch in the proof division, Lieutenant Colonel Hubbard. We arrived too late in the afternoon to begin my training, so the three of us went into Key West, where I was introduced to turtle steak and Key lime pie, both of which were delicious.
They left for Eglin in the morning, and I spent the day in ground school learning the details of the APS-19 radar set and how to operate it. The next two nights were spent in the right seat of the SNB with a radar instructor behind me, running practice intercept missions on a target SNB. The instruction was first class, and I acquired at least a modicum of skill in tuning the set for maximum efficiency, identifying and tracking targets, and minimizing the effect of ground clutter. Although airborne interceptions were the primary goal of my training, I also learned a bit about radar navigation and locating targets on the water. The next day Lt. Fred Belue from my squadron came down in an F-82 and flew me back to Eglin.
A short time later the F-84 arrived with the APS-19 radar in a pod mounted under the belly just forward of the cockpit and the radar scope in the middle of the instrument panel. As test officer I did most of the flying on the test, with Capt. Don Dessert, the operations officer who had flown night fighters in combat, and Rode Rodewald flying some of the missions.
The early test missions were flown in daylight to familiarize us with the system and to check the radar in its various modes. We found out immediately that it was impossible to see the images on the scope in the bright Florida sunshine, or in any bright sunshine for that matter. To read the scope it was necessary to use a scope hood, a long opaque tube that fit around the face of the scope on one end and the face of the pilot, or at least his eyes, on the other; these were standard equipment for radar observers. This solved one problem and added another. The scope images were now clearly visible, but the horizon and the flight instruments were not. The pilot's eyes could not adjust quickly enough from the darkness within the hood to the brightness of the cockpit to allow for quick checks outside the cockpit or of the flight instruments to control the airplane properly. If the pilot kept his eyes in the hood he ended up flying on his back or in some other unusual attitude (for a while I was ready to go back to the hammock seat test), and if he didn't he could not read the scope. That problem was solved by cutting a small hole in the hood, positioned so that the pilot could see the attitude indicator while keeping his eyes in the hood. On all daylight missions a safety pilot flew behind the radar plane to ensure that the pilot, with his head in the hood, did not collide with the target plane or with another aircraft. Quite often a T-33 was used as the safety plane, which allowed Frank Smith to ride along and monitor the mission firsthand.
After we overcame the growing pains, the daylight missions went quite well. We were able to locate and track airplanes ranging in size from B-29s to B-26s, and we could find even jet fighters, but only at short range. On one tracking mission, the squadron commander, Cyclone Davis, was flying the B-26 target plane. After making several passes on which the radar was not up to snuff, I decided to cancel the rest of the mission but did not tell Colonel Davis. Instead, I waved off the safety pilot and told Cyclone that I was going to try a high-speed pass from his left rear quarter. I advanced the throttle to full power and climbed several thousand feet above the B-26; then, as I started diving toward the target with a closing speed of about 150 mph, I began a running commentary, saying that I had him on the scope and was closing in from the left. About five seconds away I told him I had lost him, then put my eyes against the hood and passed him on the left, missing his left wing by a few feet. He screamed, "Lope, you almost hit me. What do you think you're doing?"
"I didn't realize I was that close," I said. "The radar is acting up."
He told me to go back and land and get it straightened out, which I did.
After landing, I didn't know whether to tell him I had done it on purpose and have him think me a clown or pretend it was an accident and have him think me an idiot. I decided that clown was better than idiot and told him it was just a joke. To my relief, he had a good sense of humor, which I had suspected since he had "Cyclone Davis, the Mormon Meteor, no guts, no glory" painted on his helmet and also since he had nicknamed his son Typhoon. In fact, he has kidded me about it over the years. Cyclone was the third commanding officer that I served under at Eglin, and by coincidence all had flown P-38s in combat: Colonel Muldoon in North Africa, Colonel Slocumb in Italy, and Colonel Davis in the Pacific. Maybe commanding two engines imbues one with leadership qualities.
The night-flying portion of the tests that followed began with simple missions in which the interceptor and the target plane met at a predetermined altitude and location, and both aircraft operated with their navigation lights (on both wingtips and the tail) turned on. The goal was to determine how effectively the interceptor pilot could locate and track the target without using the navigation lights as an aid. All flights were monitored by the GCI (ground-controlled intercept) radar so that the range at first radar contact, which the interceptor pilot read off his scope and noted on his knee board and simultaneously radioed to the ground, could be cross-checked by the ground radar. In almost every case the figures were in close agreement.
Don, Rode, and I found it much easier to operate without the scope hood. The scope was clearly visible in the dark cockpit, and it was not difficult to watch the scope and monitor the other instruments. As expected, tracking large, propeller-driven aircraft was not a problem, since they provide such a large radar-reflecting surface; the jet fighters could not be picked up by the APS-19 radar except at very short range. The GCI radar could not track F-80s unless they were equipped with radar transponders (electronic devices that transmit, when actuated by incoming pulses from the ground radar, a signal on the same frequency that shows up strongly on the ground radar scope), but the F-80's transponders did not work with the APS-19 in the F-84. We ran a great many missions recording the ranges and angles at which we could pick up and track the different types of targets to determine the capabilities of the APS-19 as installed in the F-84.
In the next phase of the test we ran night intercept missions versus bombers and jet fighters in which the targets were blacked out, but for safety the interceptor's lights were on. On these flights we attempted not only to locate the target with our radar but also to get into position for visual firing. The airborne radar sets of that era were far less sophisticated than those of today, and it was not possible to fire at and hit a target by radar alone. We were usually successful in making visual contact with the bombers but had far less success with the fighters. If we were able to pick them up with our radar we could get close enough to fire, but picking them up was the problem. With the bombers we found it better to stay a little below them, for two reasons: they presented a much larger visual target from below than from directly behind; and we didn't have to fly in the turbulent propwash, which makes accurate firing difficult. With the fighter targets we could sometimes see a bit of light if we were directly behind the tail pipe.