Things were a bit primitive back then. When an aircraft had any radio direction finder (RDF), it was a manual radio direction finder which at first was a loop or coil of wires enclosed in a circular metal pipe about a foot to 15 inches in diameter mounted on the top of the plane just back of the cockpit. It was on bearings which permitted it to be rotated directly by a shaft through the top and turned by a knob with a pointer to an azimuth showing relative direction from the nose. Later, the loop was smaller and enclosed in a large football-shaped streamlined plastic enclosure which did the same thing. Someone inside the plane, usually a radioman or navigator or co-pilot stood behind the captain and called out relative bearings which permitted the pilot to fly to a station or box the station and make a semi "precision" descent and landing if all went well.
Seaplanes could be set to a 200 foot per minute descent at approach speed until the keel touched the water at which time the throttles were eased back and the yoke eased back slightly until planing on the step. And when slowed, it took a bit of back pressure on the yoke to prevent it digging the nose in. More or less, this is the basic way we made totally blind landings when it was necessary.
I was the Flight Radio Officer with Capt. Bob Ford and Co-pilot Ralph Cone (both became famous later) when we made my first totally blind RDF landing in a Pan Am Sikorsky S42 four-engine flying boat in Kingston, Jamaica. It was "interesting" to say the least but worked just fine with visibility almost nil.
Back then, there was only needle, ball and airspeed with a magnetic compass and altimeter for control instruments until Pioneer came up with a gyro which was a great help. We had to make the landings using only those instruments and some with only needle, ball and airspeed.
