(5) Invention
(a) Paul E Fontenoy, Aircraft Carriers; An illustrated history of their impact. ABC-CLIO, 2006, at page 115
https://books.google.com/books?i ... ipstick&f=false
("The higher landing speeds of jet aircraft rapidly pushed beyond the limits of landing signals officers' ability to appreciate the aircrafts' [sic; aircraft is spelled the same singular or plural] motions and make signals to which the pilots could respond. Captain Campbell's assistant, Lieutenant [later promoted to rear admiral] Commander Nick Goodhart, initially proposed an optical landing control system in a paper he wrote in 1951. A gyro-stabilized mirror, surrounded by red and green illuminated datum lines, reflected a fixed light back to the pilot's eyes so that he could tell his position relative to the optimum glide approach path, while an audio tone indicated his airspeed. Goodhart formally presented his concept, which he had tested on a small scale [天平] using his secretaru's pocket make-up mirror with datum lines drawn on with her lipstick, in January 1952. The first very successful full-scale trials took place in November 1953 aboard the carrier Illustrious, leading to the adoption of the mirror landing aid on British and American carriers within less than two years. The later Fresnel lens system replaced the mirror with a lens and moved the light source forward of the unit but operate identically")
* "moved the light source forward of the unit"
See (6)(a) below.
(b) Thomas C Hone, Norman Friedman and Mark D Mandeles, Innovation in Carrier Aviation. Naval War College Press, 2011, at page 125 (Newport Paper No 37)
https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachm ... 5543d78e8d31/37.pdf
Three consecutive paragraphs:
"Campbell and his assistant, Cdr Nicholas Goodhart, polished a scheme of Goodhart's to replace a carrier's landing signal officer with 'visual indication of the optimum approach and landing path * * * [using[ a steady light source.' According to an article in Naval Aviation News in 1955, Goodhart had served as an engineer pilot at the Patuxent Naval Air Test Center in 1948-49, between landing signal officers (LSOs) and pilots of jet aircraft. Engineers at Farnborough had already been working on a mechanical replacement for LSOs, and Goodhart took his idea to them. The first component of his system was a large light placed at the after end of the flight deck. About 150 feet from the stern, Goodhart and the Farnborough engineers set up the second component—a large concave mirror, eventually gyrostabilized, that would reflect the light at an angle suited to the type of aircraft coming in to land. On each side of the mirror would be a row of three green lights. The pilot’s task would be to keep the reflection of the light level with the green lights.
"Campbell's account of how they tested the idea in the office he shared with Goodhart is classic: 'We borrowed a small vanity mirror from Miss Montgomery, our secretary, and propped it up at a simulated 3 degrees approach angle. . . . [W]e then borrowed Monty's lipstick and stood it on end [upright] a few feet away. Looking at the lipstick in the mirror, we found it easy to keep it in view while we moved forwards and downwards.'
"Campbell and Goodhart realized that it was 'blindingly obvious that the two revolutionary inventions [angled deck and landing mirror] would be complementary.' When this 'visual glide slope system' was tested first at Farnborough and then at sea on HMS Illustrious in November 1953, two US Navy pilots were part of the test team, and one, Lt Cdr Donald D Engen, wrote a report to the [US] Chief of Naval Operations recommending 'that the Navy procure the mirror immediately.' Engen was at that time one of two US Navy exchange pilots at the Royal Air Force's Empire Test Pilots School at Farnborough." (footnotes omitted; brackets in original)
(c) Norman Polmar, Aircraft Carriers; A history of carrier aviation and its influence on world. page number not displayed
https://books.google.com/books?i ... ipstick&f=false
two consecutive paragraphs:
"Jet aircraft approached a carrier at speeds that were too high for a landing signal officer or (British) batsman to provide the pilot with adequate warning if he was approaching too high or too low through the use of 'paddles' or lighted baton. Lieutenant Commander Nick Goodhart, Captain Campbell's assistant, an engineering officer and test pilot, sought a means of letting pilot himself determine his approach angle. Initially using his secretary's pocket mirror and the point of her lipstick, he developed the concept of the mirror landing system in 1951. It was flight tested by British and IS carrier pilots at Farnborough in 1853 and quickly adopted by both navies. Th initial mirror was fabricated of highly polished cast aluminum, formed to a cylindrical concave shape [presumably with an horizontal axis]; it was five feet six inches wide and four feet high.
"As developed, the device, mounted on the port side of the flight deck, was visible to an approaching pilot. I provided a mirror reflecting a circle of light (leading to the term 'meatball') and a datum line of green lights to enable the pilot to see if he was high or low by glancing at the 'meatball' relative to the datum line; the mirror was concave so that the pilot could see it as he turned into the angled deck. A pilot could land a high-performance aircraft on a carrier solely by watching the mirror (which was illuminated at night) and the air speed indicator within his cockpit. The air speed was later provided to the pilot by sound pulses in his headphones.
(d) The Contrail ('The official monthly magazine of the 177th Fighter Wing), September 2014, at page 17 of 25
https://static.dvidshub.net/media/pubs/pdf_23135.pdf
("In the summer of 1951 a Royal Navy pilot, Lt Cdr Nick Goodhart, working for Captain Campbell, came up with the idea of a landing aid based on reflected light. The story goes that he got the idea while 'chatting-up; an attractive squadron secretary. hile the young lady was powdering her nose at her desk with a compact mirror, Goodhart's eye was caught by the reflection of a desk lamp in her mirror. Setting up her borrowee lipstick and mirror on her desk he noted that if he moved his head, keeping the image of the lipstick in the mirror, he could reproducibly approach the desktop at the same spot. Thus came the idea of the mirror landing system!")
* Presumably Mr Goodhart conflated the lamp (light source) and red lipstick tip for the benefit of night landing.
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