Alex Henshaw did a great job in '39. We've come along way since - but let's understand how he did it, show that we can replicate that art and then adopt new tools.
No disagreement, stik
But let me put a bit of perspective on the great navigation achievements of years ago.
Those that got lost were mostly never found (in Africa). Probably got eaten by the cannibals
Other factors:
- Pilots like Henshaw were very good
- Very current
- very clever
- very clever technically (unlike 99% of today's PPLs)
- there was no CAS
- if you landed in a dodgy but populated place you probably did not get shot because they saw you as another mad Englishman
Sure DR works, if you are good. And I am sure you are very very good.
The good thing about modern tools is that they work even if one is not very good. I am not very good... a good enough pilot but like to mess around e.g. take photos, movies, watch the scenery and generally relax. Shortly I am off across the Alps, via a maze of controlled airspace so bad that when I used to go VFR I could barely decipher the Jepp VFR charts. I am going IFR... but have done it VFR a number of times, all the way to Crete. I have done DR on checkrides / revalidations and was ok enough to get to Place X but not ok enough to be sure I would not bust CAS unless I gave it a very wide berth. This is the issue today... if you have enough juice you will find the place eventually but one cannot afford to bust some airspace.
Have you seen that long thread now running on flyer.co.uk? Does not exactly make a good case for traditional nav... and nothing changes in the way people die in this game if you use the
same old methods.