On the subject of aircraft carriers, I understand that there is a time-honoured procedure (pre-GPS) which enables aircraft to locate and return to a moving mother ship without the ship having to emit signals to alert the enemy. How does this work ?
Ah, that's an easy one.
At the briefing the Fisheads would give the ship's MLA (Mean Line of Advance) and you could predict where the ship would be by taking the recipricol of the course and adding 5 knots.
Example: Cod Face says he's going to go 180 at 10 kts. Therefore, after one hour you would search 360 at 15 nms from the launch position.
A truly excellent means of locating the boat was to combine the calculation above with poor weather. If, in the example above, there was a fog bank 20 nms north of 'Mother', then you could put money on the fact that the Fisheads would have piled on a bit more speed to ensure they were cloaked in fog ready for your recovery.