So, did BOAC/BA keep the navs in place until the INS was fitted and certified in the 707, or did they go another route? If so what time period this eventually happen?
I don't recall INS being retrofitted to the 707 - 436 until around 1974 or later, but I think we were still carrying Nav. qualified F/O co-pilots / S/O 3rd pilots until around the end of 1974, certainly my logbook records two F/O's on trips at the end of 1974.
I think some of the older F/O's escaped the Nav. stint, but certainly all pilots, be they experienced RAF pilots or basic 2 year National Service conscripts, taken on during the 50's and 60's were engaged as pilots, but employed as navigators. I kept my post as a Nav Instructor until I was promoted Captain in 1974, tho' I had been also re-trained as a 707 pilot in 1962. We filled the dual role, 2 F/O's on each flight, and they would decide themselves who operated which sector as co-pilot or navigator on the longer, multi sector trips, unless one was needed in the Nav. Instructor role.
The 747 was delivered with a sextant mount in the roof of the flight deck, but never used, it then featured on an emergency check list as a smoke removal port !
Training as a navigator I found the atmosphere on the flight deck a little tense at times, the navigators were training us to take away their livelihoods, tho' to be fair I was never treated with anything less than a genuine interest in passing on their knowledge, great chaps, but the Flight Engineers had seen the Radio Operators go, then Nav's were going, and they reckoned that they were next. True, but it took more than 20 years to achieve, and I recall on one double F/Eng. flight the Snr. Eng. telling his junior colleague that the pilots had forgotten to record the take-off time - Don't tell them, he said !
One navigator told me that I'd never make a navigator until I'd been over Berlin with the shells coming through the cockpit as I tried to sort out the actual wind velocity using the drift sight. I never had to, but I had the same sort of feeling towards some of my students as they wrestled with the sextant - but they don't have to now !
I believe that someone not too long ago tried to copy Lindberghs solo flight across the Atlantic, using original methods, which included Astro, for which a Flt. Nav, licence was required but that no one in the FAA knew how, or was qualified, to conduct an airborne Flt. Nav. test ! They should have asked me !
.......a dual Bendix Doppler backed up by an EDO 600 Loran A unit
Yes, the 707's were fitted with Doppler and Loran A, but I seem to recall that the Doppler was not a lot of use, particularly over water ? We also used Consol, invented for the Nazi U-boats I believe.