Flight Lessons

In article ,
Steve writes:
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)

That's a good question, and, while I'm here, I've got a somewhat
related piggyback question. Art, did you guys use the Norden Sight to
measure drift while navigating to and from the target? Some of the
Navy documents that I've read on the early days of the Norden's
development indicate that that was one of teh things they wanted to
use it as a drfftmeter. From what I know, it ought to work, but since
the only real Nordens I've seen are display items...

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster