Tommy Thomason commented on my last post with info that all should read:
“Two McAir F-101s collided on 8 June 1960 during production flight test from St. Louis. Because of the nature of these flights, the pilots of the Voodoos were 1) operating in a block of assigned air space rather than at ATC assigned altitudes on airways and 2) focusing on instrument readings, manually recording data, and making changes to switches and knobs: i.e. head down in the cockpit to a greater extent than usual.
As a result of the accident, Mr. Mac immediately implemented a company-funded program to develop a collision-warning system. This resulted in EROS. Once it was developed and qualified, McAir aircraft conducting experimental and and production flight test out of St. Louis routinely carried an EROS pod that communicated with the pods on other airplanes to provide collision warning.”
Also, he found a PDF from 1971 in the Clay Whitehead collection that contains several Collision Avoidance System Letters and Memoranda concerning the EROS project. Note page 10, especially.
Click here to download memos in PDF form (104.3 Megs)
Previous posts here, here and here
A nice overview from Popular Science (Aug 1988) of all companies efforts in this field is here
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