Carrier Landings: "Fresnel Lens Optical Landing System Operation" 1968 US Navy Training Film MN-10442b; FLOLS Mark 6, Mod 1

more at http://quickfound.net/

Originally a public domain film from the US Navy, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_landing_system

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

An optical landing system (OLS) (nicknamed "meatball" or simply, "Ball") is used to give glidepath information to pilots in the terminal phase of landing on an aircraft carrier. From the beginning of aircraft landing on ships in the 1920s to the introduction of OLSs, pilots relied solely on their visual perception of the landing area and the aid of the Landing Signal Officer (LSO in the U.S. Navy, or "batsman" in the Commonwealth navies). LSOs used coloured flags, cloth paddles and lighted wands. The OLS was developed after World War II by the British and was deployed on U.S. Navy carriers from 1955. In its developed form, the OLS consists of a horizontal row of green lights, used as a reference, and a column of vertical lights. The vertical lights signal whether the aircraft is too high, too low, or at the correct altitude as the pilot descends the glide slope towards the carrier's deck. Other lights give various commands and can be used to require the pilot to abort the landing and "go around." The OLS remains under control of the LSO, who can also communicate with the pilot via radio...

The first OLS was the mirror landing aid, one of several British inventions made after the Second World War revolutionising the design of aircraft carriers. The others were the steam catapult and the angled flight deck. The Mirror Landing Aid was invented by Nicholas Goodhart. It was tested on the carriers HMS Illustrious and HMS Indomitable before being introduced on British carriers in 1954 and on US carriers in 1955.

The mirror landing aid was a gyroscopically-controlled concave mirror on the port side of the flight deck. On either side of the mirror was a line of green coloured "datum lights". A bright orange "source" light was shone into the mirror creating the "ball" (or "meatball" in later USN parlance) which could be seen by the aviator who was about to land. The position of the ball compared to the datum lights indicated the aircraft's position in relation to the desired glidepath: if the ball was above the datum, the plane was high; below the datum, the plane was low; between the datum, the plane was on glidepath. The gyro stabilisation compensated for much of the movement of the flight deck due to the sea, giving a constant glidepath.

Initially, the device was thought able to allow the pilot to land without direction from the LSO. However, accident rates actually increased upon the system's initial introduction, so the current system of including the LSO was developed. This development, along with the others mentioned, contributed to the US carrier landing accident rate plummeting from 35 per 10,000 landings in 1954 to 7 per 10,000 landings in 1957.

The LSO, who is a specially qualified and experienced Navy pilot, provides additional input to the pilot via radios, advising of power requirements, position relative to glide path and centerline. The LSO can also use a combination of lights attached to the OLS to indicate "go around" using the bright red, flashing wave off lights. Additional signals, such as "cleared to land", "add power", or "divert" can be signaled using with a row of green "cut" lights or a combination thereof.

Fresnel lens optical landing system (FLOLS)

Later systems kept the same basic function of the mirror landing aid, but upgraded components and functionality. The concave mirror, source light combination was replaced with a series of fresnel lenses. The Mk 6 Mod 3 FLOLS was tested in 1970 and had not changed much, except for when ship’s heave was taken into account with an Inertial Stabilization system. These systems are still in wide use on runways at US Naval Air Stations...