ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
Long, loooooong time ago in the forum, maybe two years when this topic was first raised back in Granddad's day, someone posted a link to a report of night island bombing by the Japanese, over a significant rangle. My muddled memory says it was Wake Island in 1941, with Bettys, maybe from the MArianas. I'm sure the Japanese historians here know of it. I recall some of our naval aviators stating that it's actually easier to see an island at night than the mainland, and any moon or starolight makes IDing island boundaries pretty easy (water shiny, beach not so much.)
They were Men in those days . . .
You made me laugh. Those naval avaitors must be the ones I see in the movies. Or maybe they just don't recall the days when you didn't have night vision goggles, FLIR, radar, INS, SatNav, etc. The point is, what is the available light? To put it in basic terms - what is the weather along the route. Better check the weather channel. Oops wrong war.
Lets say you lose the moon behind a cloud. Dang, there goes your light. No light, no see island. It will come back, you just know it. With your light gone, you have also lost much of your ability to pick your way thru undesireable weather. Thunderstorms and their lightning might help, but staring one of those down from the cockpit is about as scary as it gets without bringing aliens into the story.
Lets say a high altostratus layer takes away some of those lovely stars. Bummer, there goes your backup navigational source. You are now alone in the DR Zone. You've got one navigational source and it is called dead reckoning (DR). They called it dead for lots of reasons. If we had just stayed along the coast line - dang it. Oh well, we shall DR and call in for some divine guidance.
Lets say you can do 200knts over a trip of 400 nautical miles. Sounds like you have 2 hours there and 2 hours back. You would do your best to get accurate winds, but lets say your estimate is off by 10kts and just to make the story have a happy ending its a nice 90-degree crosswind. Ten knots of wind! Its a tropical breeze. It's nothing.
Over two hours you are now 20NM off from your DR plot and Wake island is where? Come on. . . its like 4 miles across - you can't see it! Oops, I forgot, it's damn dark out because that cloud is still in the way. One damn cloud - is that bad luck or what?
Hmm. . .well after a few minutes, most crews would turn around. This is because they know that adding a fuel problem to the absolutely huge one that they already have is insanity. You see they are lost, at night, over a big nothing. You know what that feels like? I don't think the avaitors that told you that it was easy seeing islands at night do. It's about as bad as it gets. Your testicles/ovaries actually shrink until you make it to an O-club at which time they will adjust, but will forever be smaller. Bold and daring are words you will no longer use to describe yourself. Yup, it will change you.
Back to our strike, if the wind remains steady and they don't alter their return heading , they probably will make it home with a scary story to tell. If it wasn't a 90-degree crosswind the problem gets more complicated due to traveling faster/slower on your out and inbound legs. And of course if the wind does change - usually the signal of weather coming in - they should of had their wills made out. This is because they are now forced to use rabbits feet and other classified navigational aids all crews carried when doing open ocean ops.
You know this happened all the time. Patrol aircraft would going missing almost every day and night of the war. What's the big deal? Nothing really - unless you think losing all those 2E/4E's is an issue.
The point of my story is to tell you how it could go down. I'm not saying that it can't be done. If you got a little moonlight, a nice coast line to follow, some lovely weather, its a walk in the park. But if things change, it can go bad. In daylight you can see the bad from miles away and who cares about a little crosswind. Your eyes and good old sunlight will cover the difference. At night, with no idea about the weather? You are playing roulette, hoping 00 doesn't come up. Gambling is not a favorite cockpit activity for most pilots.
BTW, Wake Island at night - from Eniwetok? Damn that's nuts. Did they do that in the war? The insanity. Oh wait. . . they had better than the weather channel! Their buds were chilling off the coast.
"Sure, come on over guys, the weather is peachy and will light the place up for you with some star shells that you can see for 50 miles."
See my point?