Originally Posted by
rolling20
On the Halifax, the navigator was in the nose below the pilot. I assume he was to the rear of the pilot on the Dakota.
The navigator role changed throughout the war with the advent of radio navigation aids such as Gee and H2S. Celestial navigation giving way to those developments, although it was used as a back up.
Dead reckoning was all they could do in the early years of the war.
The Nav would call the time to set course, call the turns, check wind etc. His tasks were varied. On him the lives of the crew depended. Not noticing a change in wind, not turning onto a new course at the correct time could be disastrous.
Thank you. Don't know how I got the impression that the Halifax position was behind the pilot. I didn't get these details first hand, unfortunately. They were more in the way of stories. I'm pleased you describe "on him the lives of the crew depended", because that's something I did hear first hand, but never since. Some navs were better than others, known to the pilots and indeed to the Squadron Leader. Mr W had worked in the bank previously (and subsequently), and got picked out as "good with figures". Which he always was. He had all the calculation aids of the era (I'd love to know what they were), but said he took his old school log tables booklet along with him for a bit of amusement on the way home to do the headings etc from first principles !
In the bank in the 1930s a traveller came in with a lot of US dollars to change, including an 1886 US silver dollar. So he put his own money in, surely calculated to the penny, and kept it. It went on every trip with him. I believe this was not unknown for crew members to take something along with them. As you might possibly guess, it now goes in my flight bag too. And I've long said, after hearing the repeated detail, that I reckon I could fly from Rangoon to Mandalay without charts
.