NavList:

I'm writing a novel about USN ferry pilots during WW2 who flew from Kansas to California to islands in the Pacific during the war using sextants and the stars.  I'm trying to breathe life into an alternate history where some of them flew to the Moon and used sextants in space. I want to get the details as right as I can. It should smell like navigation. (g)

I have interviewed pilots and engineers on the mechanics, but I want more navigation, more stars, more astronomy.  Can any of you decsribe thetools a USN ferry pilot would have used? The /BASICS/ please!! What sort of "bubble octant" would have been used in 1945? Would it have been the ferry pilot's possession? Would she have maintained it, adjusted it, oiled it personally? What kind of ephemeris astronomical books would they have referenced into? Would these have been similar to astrological manuals? I'm asking just for some color in the story. I don't expect any of you all navigators to be astrology types. And can you any of you describe the stars and the the planets up there... how they look..... how it feels seeing the heavens up there in the thin air... Thank you all. I am awed by your knowledge, and I'm almost afraid to interrupt your discussions of such aethereal astronomical concepts.  ~/) S/V S.V.