NavList:

Here's an image of a navigator who appears to be in IJN service, claimed to be from archival footage during the Second World War. The sextant appears to be a Tamaya with a higher magnification monocular scope (which was apparently standard in this period and, in fact, through the 1960s). The original video clip was mirrored, so that the navigator would be facing "screen right". That's a common trick in video when there are no obvious clues. Of course, a documentary editor would have no idea that sextants have been almost universally constructed "the other way". I flipped it.

The image is a screen capture from a mediocre history documentary series -- "World War II with Tom Hanks". It's hard not to watch, but I have so far learned not one thing from it that I haven't heard or seen a thousand times before, and the production values are standard "History Channel schlock". It does include some new sources of video and imagery that were not available in earlier decades (nothing dramatic so far), and this Japanese navigator image is one that I have not seen before...

Frank Reed

File: