In article ,
ArtKramr wrote:
-Subject: Flight Lessons
-From: Steve
-Date: 8/7/03 11:56 AM Pacific Daylight Time
-Message-id:
-
-In article ,
-ArtKramr wrote:
--Subject: Flight Lessons
--From: "Paul J. Adam"
--Date: 8/7/03 10:10 AM Pacific Daylight Time
--Message-id:
--
--
--With GPS you wouldn't need navigators, the lead pilot just follows the
--little arrow and everyone else formates on him. Big saving in manpower,
--training, and it frees up some weight per plane for more fuel or armour
--(or lets the B-26 be a little lighter)
--
--Not really. In the B-26 the bombardier and the navigater was they same guy
--
-
-I gotta wonder: would the bean-counters have figured that out before or
-after they removed the navigators and then sent out bombing missions?
-
-Or ever, for that matter.
-
-
-Steve
-
-
-
-
-Only the B-26 carried a bombardier navigator with that one guy doing both jobs.
- But our nav training was purely dead reckoning, pilotage and air plot. We had
-some celestial training, even had to derive the astro tables, but never had
-enough hours to be both confident and proficient in celestial. Well, I guess we
-could do an LOP ok.
-
-

Thanks, Art. I appreciate everything you write. I'm kind of curious for no
good reason; how far would you have had to fly to get a handle on cross-winds?
Assuming the weather guys didn't have any info for you, would you know on an
on-going basis how far you were being pushed sideways, or would you have to fly
a while and compare your dead reckoning with something else? What else would you
have available on a typical mission? (I don't know anything about navigation, you
won't insult me by talking down)

I couldn't help myself, though - when I read your comment next to
the one before it I had this vision of somebody in an office somewhere signing
off on a white paper that said we didn't need navigators anymore because of GPS,
then sending out your B-26 with nobody to work the bombsight.

"Pilot to bombar... --hey! HEY!!"


Steve