NavList:

I am a member of an organization named the Quiet Birdmen. It was started in a New York bar in 1921 be a group of World War One pilots. It's membership is restricted to professional pilots since you need to have at least one thousand pilot in command hours. Last week our speeker was a retired airline pilot. But before that, he flew light aircraft over Laos in the 60's, directing bomb missions. After that he flew U-2s for many years. After the presentation I aked him how he navigated the U-2 in areas (as in "hostile") where radio navaids were not available. He said by celestial. I asked him if they had a navtracker and he said "no" that he use a sextant built into the airplane. I asked him how he did the calculation and he told me they had a strict flight plan and ground personnel would calculate the "pre-comps" for a series of fixes and he would take his observations to make sure he was on course. At the end of a thousand mile run he was never off by more that eight nautical miles.