Time we were back onto the Thread !
BEagle (#8101),
...But had any of them any idea of their actual position?...
and
Chugalug (#8110),
...Like others I am intrigued by Beagle's picture of WWII baby navs under instruction in that unique Fokker a/c. Is that a P12 compass sitting on the table between them? I wonder if that had been swung, either on the ground or in the air?...
An old (even older than I) Staff Pilot at ANS on Thorney Island, some half-century ago, told me that, had it not been for the homing instinct of the "old hairies" up front, half the navexs from Thorney would never have got back home at all !
I well remember "A" Flight of 110(H) Sqdn moving up to war on 12 May '43, and entrusting the navigation to a baby nav. But for the Grace of God they would have ended up strewn all over the North East Frontier Province (Bangladesh now). Yours truly, left behind with a snag on the aircraft, was told to "follow the van, and don't dilly-dally on the way". Old Boy-Scout type mapreading led me straight to destination, no trouble at all.
Danny.
