NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David C
Date: 2019 May 6, 21:09 -0700
A very interesting life. George Bennet was born in London so he is not related to that other Bennett navigator (DCT) who was born in Australia and who also had a very interesting career. The first edition of DCT Bennett's The Complete Air Navigator was published in 1936. In the seventh edition (published in 1967) you can learn about map reading, tail drift sights, haversines, doppler and inertial navigation amongst other things. DCTB died in 1986 so it is possible he was aware of the pending arrival of GPS.
In a section headed General map Reading DCT Bennett wrote:
"With large aircraft it is perfectly reasonable to leave the map-reading to the Aircraft Officer on flying watch. This officer then passes his map-reading fixes or position lines to the navigator for logging and use.
<snip>
The very high speed, very high level aircraft which are coming into use will provide certain additional difficulties for map-reading.
<snip>
Finally it is stressed that fixing of position lines by visual operations is the simplest of all forms of observation. They are, therefore, the most satisfactory."
