NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2026 Jan 6, 05:04 -0800
Joe Plazak You wrote "For others who might be interested in analog triangle computers, I recently stumbled upon this post about Trigonometers:
https://followingtherules.substack.com/p/whats-a-vector-victor-part-ii "
The Valiant, Vulcan, and Victor (Bombers not boys comics) were full of this kind of thing. The Navigation and and Bombing System (NBS) liked to jump between vector and N/S EW components to add W/V to Hdg & TAS to get Track & groundspeed and vice versa. The equipment was full of wire wound potentiometers fed by servo systems for compounding and resolving with wonderful names such as 'double sine cos pots'. Then there were the 'calcs continuous' where it was all put together. It got worse. There was the 'triangle solver' fed with height and range to give slant range to be fed into the range marker within H2S. The best named in my opinion was the 'square rooting pin wheel' connected to the end of the height shaft used in the basic forward throw calculation. There was one bit of 'digital' allowed. There was a roll of film for each bomb type full of black and clear squares running past a torch bulb. This allowed the switching of a row of relays which brought in appropriate resistors to modify the basic forward throw. When the range equalled the trail term, the weapon was released.
The basic traing course using a HP Hastings fitted with the same equipmet lasted 4 months. For the final ground exam, before you were allowed anywhere near a V Bomber you entered a closed room with blackboards mounted all round the wall. The examiner would draw some piece of equipment around the centre of the system and by a succession of questions over the next three hours ensure you could draw the entire NBS/H2S system all around the walls in chalk. Then they'd rub it out again for the next sheep to the slaughter. See Video: Navigation and Bombing System Mk1, V Bomber. DaveP






