INS Alignment at Sea

42 knots was no problem on the big "E" It is my understanding that it has the
highest max speed of all carriers due to its longer waterline and narrower
beam. The snipes told me the limits are the number of twists they can put into
the shafts or the bow being crushed by being forced through the water. I have
seen 50+
Alignments. I went from the A-6 were we learned all the manutia of alignments
to the Prower were it was pretty much turn it on and it works.
First thing is a level then the next is True North since all platform torques
are based on that.
Remember that the Intruder was a weapons delivery platform so it must derive
its position to the nats ass. In the Prowler if it was 1000 feet off no big
deal.
I used to laugh at the 129 cone heads trying to fix True north since it had to
compute TN to milli radians for the allignmet to work. Here he was ham handing
a degree or 2. If the platform alligned the TN was going to be correct.

On the boat Sins cable was prefered then the RF alignment but the first things
that the platform has to do is go to local level then True North then start to
factor in the ships movement. In the A-6 we got a software upgrade (85 or so)
and if everything worked it was 9 minutes to allign. Sometimes the AT
troubleshooter would start the alignment especially if the BN scheduled to fly
the plane was a little weak. I recall 20 minutes to be the norm. I think the
Prowler was faster.

Sparky