When I talk with my commercial pilot classes about radar, one of my favorite “extra point” test questions deals with carrots. None knew the story of British ace, John Cunningham.
Cunningham was a Royal Air Force officer who went from boyhood to manhood at the age of 23. On the front side of 23, many described Cunningham as being close to an angel as possible without offense. On the backside of 23, he was perhaps the most dangerous night-fighter pilot of the RAF.
What made Cunningham dangerous was his ability to “see” in the dark. As a night fighter pilot, by war’s end he totaled 20 kills. Of course, Cunningham’s night vision was not the result of eating carrots, as the British High Command would have the world believe.
No, Cunningham’s prowess as a fighter pilot was the result of the invention of radar.
Radar has turned out to be a wonderful technology for the aviation industry in the last half of the last century. By emitting radar waves and receiving the reflections of those waves as they bounced off hard targets, pilots are able to “radar map” the terrain, “see” rain, and in the case of fighter pilots, find enemy aircraft regardless of the weather or time of day.
The ruse about carrots was the invention of the British military. In their quest to keep knowledge of radar away from the Germans, each aircrew member with any knowledge of radar received the same briefing regarding what to say if shot down.
The universal story all British pilots would tell was that the British put the night-fighter pilots on a very high and strict diet of carrots for the beta-carotene. This would improve their night vision allowing them to see the German aircraft in the dark.
The Germans bought the story for a while, but only for a short while. The Germans quickly realized that in order to improve a person’s eyesight to the degree necessary for that kind of night vision, they would have to eat a diet of massive quantities of carrots at every meal. Additionally, they would have to have large snacks of carrots between each meal.
The interesting thing about the story put out by the British High Command was that while the Germans failed to believe it for any length of time, the mothers and fathers of many children bought it hook, line, and sinker. To this day, parents are telling their children to eat their carrots so they can see at night.
After all, their parents told them the same thing, and their parents would not lie to them, would they?
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©2010 J. Clark
I don’t know about this one. I mean have you ever seen a blind rabbit?