NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2022 Apr 8, 05:03 -0700
Howard
I’d moved on from the Vulcan two years previously and had been retired from the RAF for six months by April 82. I was safe in England completing a PGCE in Technology for Schools. However, I did know many of the Vulcan aircrew involved by face and name. I can also remember walking along the Lincoln Edge with my children one sunny afternoon around Easter 82 and wondering why some Vulcans were overflying the Waddington runway diagonally rather than along it. Beware, believing any old online Falklands article. Of the few I’ve chanced upon, there are a lot of errors. One of the best books based upon interviews with the actual aircrews involved is ‘Vulcan 607’ by Rowland White. It includes a significant amount upon the pre-GNSS navigational aspects of getting the aircraft after such a long flight to a position where, when the radar was moved out of ‘Stand-bye’, the markers were somewhere near the Falklands Is. Could it be done by celestial alone or did they need to add inertial? DaveP
