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[Alco Canfield]

A British pilot who was suddenly blinded by a stroke during a
solo flight
was talked safely down by a military pilot, the Royal Air Force
said Friday.

Jim O'Neill asked for help after he went blind 40 minutes into a
flight
from Scotland to southeastern England last week. The BBC reported
that
O'Neill, flying a

small Cessna aircraft, lost his sight 5,500 feet in the air.

"It was terrifying," O'Neill said. "Suddenly, I couldn't see the
dials in
front of me."

The air force said in a news release that O'Neill initially
believed he'd
been "dazzled" by bright sunlight, and made an emergency call for
help. He
then realized that something more serious was happening, and
said, "I want
to land, ASAP."

RAF Wing Commander Paul Gerrard was just finishing a training
flight nearby
and was drafted in to help the stricken pilot.

Gerrard located the plane, began flying close to it and radioed
directions.

"For me, I was just glad to help a fellow aviator in distress,"
he said.

"Landing an aircraft literally blind needs someone to be right
there to say
'Left a bit, right a bit, stop, down,'" Gerrard said. "On the
crucial final
approach, even with radar assistance, you need to take over
visually. That's
when having a fellow pilot there was so important.

O'Neill's son, Douglas, said his father is an experienced pilot
who has
flown for nearly two decades. The 65-year-old is recovering in
hospital
where he is beginning to regain his sight.

by The doctors have confirmed that he suffered a stroke from a
blood clot, but
he doesn't seem to have suffered any other ill-effects apart from
losing his
sight," Douglas O'Neill said. "He says he went blind very
suddenly and then,
once he'd got over the shock, was able to distinguish a bit of
darkness and
light."

In a recording posted to the BBC'COMSO news Web site, Gerrard gives
O'Neill
instructions - "a gentle right hand turn, please," is called for
at one
point - and he can be heard apologizing.

"You could hear the apprehension in his voice over the radio and
the
frustration he was experiencing," said radar controller Richard
Eggleton. "I
kept saying 'Are you visual?' and he would reply 'No sir,
negative, I'm
sorry sir.' He kept on apologizing.

With Gerrard talking him down, O'Neill's plane hit the runway and
bounced up
again, the RAF said. It did the same on the second touchdown. On
the third,
O'Neill was able to keep his plane on the ground.

by It's one of those things you might hear about happening in some
sort of
all-action film but it's hard to believe what they did," Douglas
O'Neill
said of the RAF. "They were just tremendous."

Alco