NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2020 Nov 6, 16:14 -0800
I did what Frank did. I just tried to find it on Google Maps & Google Images. Images gave me the same photo on Pinterest & in the IWM Collection. It didn’t take long on Maps to find 50.790000, -4.555000*. The tide is higher and it’s 56 years earlier and the orientation is about 45 degrees out, but the Black Rock Café hasn’t changed much. Comparing with the straight sandy track from the bus stop to the beach, the aicraft's heading must be about 045. The shadow of the tailplane on fuselage is about 45 degrees above and behind, so it’s around noon at whichever time of year the Ht Sun is 45 degrees at noon. I.e. the Sun’s declination is 51N-45=6N. That’s early September, but it’s a very rough guess. The corn has been cut, but the stubble hasn’t been ploughed in yet (or burned; stubble burning was still legal in 1964), so it’s probably more like August or even July/Aug. It depends what a good year for farmers1964 was.
*Actually I had a bit of help. In July 1963, as a 40hr student pilot, I was briefed to fly a London UAS Chipmunk on a solo navex from St Mawgan to King Arthur's Castle at Tintagel and back. I must have missed Tintagel completely, because the first thing I recognised was Bude, much further up the coast, so I must have flown right past the photo spot. Upon return, flying what I thought was downwind with the cloudbase not much higher, two huge wheels appeared though the cloud ahead of me attached to a great big Shackleton calling "joining deadside". It was only then that I learned that navigating by the numbers written on runways is not a good idea when RW13 is the reciprocal of RW31. DaveP
Best Wishes Dave