NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2015 Apr 15, 00:31 -0700
Lu wrote. I think that pretty well summarizes it. Technically, a RB expressed as an angle is always 0-360 clockwise from the bow. But you can make it "to the port/starboard" by making it clear that you are expressing things that way.
Here's another variation, as a small boy in the 1950s, after conning my way into all the classic films of WW2 naval encounters, true and fictional, I'm sure I remember the terms red and green being used by the Royal Navy. e.g. "Submarine red three zero!" for thirty degrees off the port bow, or did I just imagine it?
In RAF navigators' logs, bearings were always written 001 clockwise to 360. The type of bearing was always written last e.g. 045C, 045M, 045T, 045Rel. E.g. to plot a position line from a bearing on distant feature taken using an Astro Compass MkII with the heading arrow set to zero* whilst heading 060T, you would write X brs 045Rel + 060T = 105 + 180 Plot 285T. Dave *Although North was always printed 0 on aircraft compasses, if we wanted that heading we always asked for 360.