I’ve previously referred to scenes from Ernest K. Gann’s book “Fate Is The Hunter” in these pages. The combined autobiography and ground school traces his flying career from DC-2s over the eastern U.S., C-47s and C-87s over the North Atlantic during WWII, and DC-4s on the Honolulu/San Francisco run after the war. One of the book’s memorable scenes involves the young Gann, still a first officer, flying the DC-2 on approach to Newark, N.J. The flight had just bounced its way through convection-laden weather and the attitude gyro had tumbled.
The captain gave Gann the approach. This was back pre-WWII, before VORs, when the principal navaid was the four-course A-N range. As Gann maneuvered for the approach, the captain began lighting matches in front of his face, enraging him. The match-lighting continued through the partial-panel procedure turn and back to the A-N station, presumably ending only when the matches were exhausted, some moments before the landing. Of course, he didn’t fully realize or appreciate it at the time, but the purpose of lighting the matches and holding them in front of Gann’s eyes during the night approach while he tried to fly was to distract him from a complicated task.
