Description

2 B-17s from 482BG are despatched on a night operation to Wesel, Germany to test the OBOE MkII navigation system.One aircraft aborted the mission because of radio failures of the test equipment.

Oboe was a British aerial blind bombing targeting system (also experimented with by the USAAF) in World War II, based on radio transponder technology.[1] Using triangulation to determine relative location, the system consisted of a pair of radio transmitters on the ground, which sent signals which were received and retransmitted by a transponder in the aircraftt (typically a De Havilland Mosquito or Avro Lancaster). By comparing the time each signal took to reach the aircraft, its location could be calculated to a fair degree. In this way, an aircraft could be directed blindly over a specific target, all of which were pre-calculated and kept on file. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oboe_(navigation)