NavList:

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