NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Howard G
Date: 2022 Feb 28, 13:31 +0000
Hi Jacob
Glad to hear your story and similar experience as a frontline military navigator. You would be a little bit faster than us and slightly
higher I suspect – our ceiling was about 37000 to 100 ft – we could loiter on 3 engines around 270 kts – or cruise at about 380 to 400.
[I suspect the B52 fleet will be getting a shakedown at the moment – thanks Mr Vladimir Putin!!!!!]
3 star fixing just a little difficult at low level out in the middle of the ocean – but typically if we were on patrol – boomer hunting
– 25000 – with everything turned off – astro was king – 3 star, 2 star, 1 star, planets, moon.
Never did pressure flying – know the concept but it was not something practiced.
Polaris – did shoot that when north of Hawaii on patrol – but typically southern hemisphere flying – The Southern Cross was our biggee.
I think when someone with some money & some common sense decides to go looking for AE aircraft – N to NW of Howland between 40 to 150
out – 3000 ft down (at that depth little oxygen, no coral) – it should be preserved – then we just might get to find out the truth.
Like a fix (a conspiracy theory) gets less accurate the further out you go from the last piece of fact. Unfortunately – the AE story
has grown into a huge myth – but at least we as navigators and aviators can filter the dross and fluff.
Howard G
From: NavList@fer3.com <NavList@fer3.com>
On Behalf Of Jacob M. Huffman III
Sent: Monday, 28 February 2022 16:30
To: Howard George <HHG@raptorbusinessservices.com.au>
Subject: [NavList] Re: Amelia Earhart
Howard, as a former USAF nav in B-52s I read your thoughts and found a lot of points that sounded both comfortable and familiar. Especially the comments about the standard 3 star fix. I think I was pretty
good at cel nav in my AF time, and I avoided two star fixes altogether, In fact, I sometimes added a fourth LOP, usually from Polaris (dirt simple to precompute or post compute) to increase my level of confidence in my fix. Day or night I always had a DR
position, and sometimes resorted to an MPP even at night based on the infamous 'nav judgment". Daytime, of course, was almost always an MPP based on comparing my DR to my sun line. I usually asked the pilot to hand fly during cel shots just as you mentioned
and for the reasons you mentioned. By the way, I found pressure pattern nav to be quite accurate overwater, and especially useful anytime three body fixes were not available. I doubt Earhart and Noonan had the equipment necessary for pressure pattern nav,
though.
Calculating and evaluating wind speed and direction were central to what we did in the nav compartment in my time, as the on board DR equipment (ASQ-38 in B-52Gs in the 1970s and 80s) sometimes ran away or
got messed up by a bad radar fix.
Anyway, thanks for the trip back in time. I suppose we will never know on this earth what really happened to Earhart and Noonan.
On Sun, Feb 27, 2022 at 7:31 PM Howard G <NoReply_HowardG@fer3.com> wrote:
Hi Hewitt
A reasonable assumption but that is what a navigator is for - i.e. aeronautical.
In 1937 meteorological forecasting was primitive to nil - often relying on information gathered by aircraft on routes throughout the world - and weather information gathered using balloons sent aloft sending back information - in 1937 I am not sure even they had those.
In the air force in the 70s - 90s meteorological information from satellites was only just becoming a reality - certainly in 1937 through WWII and beyond - The Navigator used forecast inofrmation to essentially work out an expected time of flight and hence fuel load - which Fred did.
From then on - the navigator (unless he is DR all the way) - which they were not - can calculate groundspeed between 2 fixes - and work out a wind direction and speed - that is what we do ALL the time - we then use this to update our DR plot which runs parallel to your fixing whether (visual) - which they had early on then celestial fixes.
Fred would have known early on that the wind was greater than he had planned for - and as he was flying at night he would have known this all the way along.
They were at 10k feet - they crossed islands (these were further out) further on - though difficult to identify which, but certainly enough to give you a psoition line at right angles to your course and an accurate groudspeed - and even without perhaps a drift reading which is possible at night on crashing surf on islands - but even without - a wind speed and direction would have been known quite accurately.
As military navigators on long range maritime patrols - weather forecasts were often used just to get you started - and it most cases we found them no more that just basic starting information. Often we flew were there was no met info and had to guess - that is what navigators get skilled at - navigation, celestial, meteorology etc.
Fred would undoubtedly be skilled at meteorology.
Howard G
