NavList:

Gary – To be honest, at the time, I never questioned why we did it that way.  It seemed pretty specialised, and most people assumed it must be more accurate, but I don’t remember having a full explanation of why it was more accurate. The concept of Standard Operating Procedures for RAF Navigators in a particular Command, role or aircraft started to take hold around 1942/3 shortly after the trade of Navigator was formerly introduced in 1942.  It coincided with the vast enlargement of the bomber and coastal forces and the need to train large numbers of volunteer aircrew from civilian life to a required standard.  All logs and charts were assessed by a fellow Navigator from the same Squadron, and this continued right up to the demise of the RAF Navigator trade group occasioned by the arrival of GNSS, so you had to follow the SOP.

Quite why we practised astro so much in the Vulcan is unclear now, because it was hardly a practical proposition for a war sortie over Europe as Bomber Command also found in WW2.  We only really needed it for about six Atlantic crossings a year, a Navigation Competition in the UK, one in the USA if you were lucky enough to be selected for the team, and a west about round the World trip about once a career if you were very lucky.

I quite liked using astro.  I even did all the calculations although it wasn’t really my job.  Once more than 180nm from land, the nav-radar didn’t have much to do apart from serve coffee and hand round flight rations, so it filled up the time.

I’m not sure why the shots got so complicated.  There was a lot of work done on astro shortly after WW2 at the Empire Air Navigation School when the RAF was pioneering Trans-Polar flying.  There was also a Bomber (later Strike) Command Development Unit.  More importantly were the annual Bomber (later Strike) Command and SAC Bombing and Navigation Competitions, and the RAF’s desire to beat SAC at all costs.  Lots of time was put in preparing for these competitions, and it wouldn’t surprise me if seven shot fixing came in because of this.  There was also the need in the Blue Steel stand off weapon Vulcan and Victor Squadrons to provide a method of updating the 1^st generation inertial platform in Blue Steel if normal ‘best aids’ methods were unavailable.

Apart from the need to only open the air almanac and AP3270 (Red Band) once per fix, the only advantage I can think of is the extra averaging, 240 mini shots for four shots as opposed to 60 for one and the same for heading and speed changes.  The fore and aft and athwart ships shooting ability with a two star fix made the flying pilot’s job easier in theory, but concentrating for seven shots might have tired him out more, poor chap!

For an excellent work on the developing authority of the Navigator in the RAF V the Pilot, see the latest edition of Wg Cdr Jeff Jefford’s ‘Observers and Navigators and other non-pilot Aircrew in the RFC, RNAS, and the RAF’.  For the development of the need for SOPs see Gp Capt Dickie Richardson’s (the chap who wrote the famous 1941 Edition of AP1234) ‘Man is not Lost’ available very cheaply at the moment on Amazon.  Alternatively, Jeff has produced an excellent three page article ‘The First Hundred Years – Aerial Navigation in the RFC/RAF’ in the Nov/Dec edition of Navigation News. I can send you a copy if you contact me privately. Steady for Astro. Dave