For all you V force rear seaters, the ultimate in home entertainment
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For all you V force rear seaters, the ultimate in home entertainment
Imagine the fun you could have sitting at home whiling away the hours, think of the money you would save in heating your home as this would do it for you, the ultimate boys toy..
Navigation and Bombing System NBS
(H2S Mk 9A and Navigation, Bombing and Computer NBC)
used in V-bombers Victor, Vulcan and Valiant.
All wired up and running in a HOUSE!!!!!!!
Tatjana van Vark ~ Navigation and Bombing System NBS
Now that dedication for you.......
Navigation and Bombing System NBS
(H2S Mk 9A and Navigation, Bombing and Computer NBC)
used in V-bombers Victor, Vulcan and Valiant.
All wired up and running in a HOUSE!!!!!!!
Tatjana van Vark ~ Navigation and Bombing System NBS
Now that dedication for you.......
Lads.... could one of you explain what this is?
I assume it's the back seat panel that allowed a nuclear weapon to be dropped? Or Blue Steel, or conventional weapons?
Which would all be done digitally today no doubt...
I assume it's the back seat panel that allowed a nuclear weapon to be dropped? Or Blue Steel, or conventional weapons?
Which would all be done digitally today no doubt...
Oh the Calc3 - the most amazing collection of cogs, wheels, levers, gizmos and whizzits ever assembled - and all to calculate the forward throw of the bomb, and thus the release point. When they finally realised it was redundant in the Victor tanker and removed it, the extra space made the cockpit seem positively roomy!
Tartare - in answer to your questions, basically "yes", "yes", "yes", and "without a doubt", but she wouldnt have half the fun playing with a digital one!
Ive always thought there was a fine line between genius and madness - not sure which side of the line this lady inhabits
Tartare - in answer to your questions, basically "yes", "yes", "yes", and "without a doubt", but she wouldnt have half the fun playing with a digital one!
Ive always thought there was a fine line between genius and madness - not sure which side of the line this lady inhabits
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
Tartare, to follow through on Tankertrash,
Tatjana is trying to get a Calc 7. That was one piece of kit directly linked to dropping a nuclear weapon but only for the Valiant and Blue Danube. After 1965 it was well and truely obsolete so her chance of getting one will be vanishingly small.
The other thing she has not got, and does not know she hasn't, is either panel EY, EP or ER for the later nuclear weapons or a 90-way panel for conventional bombs. However these were not truely integrated with the NBS.
Tatjana is trying to get a Calc 7. That was one piece of kit directly linked to dropping a nuclear weapon but only for the Valiant and Blue Danube. After 1965 it was well and truely obsolete so her chance of getting one will be vanishingly small.
The other thing she has not got, and does not know she hasn't, is either panel EY, EP or ER for the later nuclear weapons or a 90-way panel for conventional bombs. However these were not truely integrated with the NBS.
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Just look, maintaining internal silence, until the meaning of my work becomes clear.
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Ms van Vark has, in the past, made her own 40-rotor cryptograph, improving somewhat on the original German Enigma in that it supports punctuation. The workmanship on all her stuff is impeccable.
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
Because she can.
I am not sure but I think the kit has been rearranged from its first layout. In some respects the layout is better than the trainer at Lindholme although a bench would add to it; give somewhere for the external offset box.
Mad as a hatter.
I quite agree that the internals of the calc 3 were fascinating but my favourite was the calc 5. 2 motors, 3 potentiometers, a length of steel tape, a handful of chopper relays and a couple of valve amplifiers. Result ? an electro mechanical Pythagoras machine that calculated Rp from Ht and Rs. Quite brilliant.
She also appears to be missing a Test set TS501
I quite agree that the internals of the calc 3 were fascinating but my favourite was the calc 5. 2 motors, 3 potentiometers, a length of steel tape, a handful of chopper relays and a couple of valve amplifiers. Result ? an electro mechanical Pythagoras machine that calculated Rp from Ht and Rs. Quite brilliant.
She also appears to be missing a Test set TS501
Last edited by The Oberon; 11th May 2010 at 08:27.
More Like The 40's
...And our "proud boast" was that there was only one solid state component in the whole shebang when we did our L-Fitt Q AV- NB training.
And, you still continued to beat the nice people across the pond in the bombing comps didn't you
And, you still continued to beat the nice people across the pond in the bombing comps didn't you
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
but the square rooting pin-wheel was something else 
and double sine-cos pots
and double sine-cos pots
Last edited by Pontius Navigator; 11th May 2010 at 12:44.
"And, you still continued to beat the nice people across the pond in the bombing comps didn't you"
Ah yes, Giant Voice, when NBS fairies came to the fore, many happy memories. Mind you I believe that the chinagraph lines on the windscreen aligned with the bodge tape on the probe came in handy for low level targets.
Ah yes, Giant Voice, when NBS fairies came to the fore, many happy memories. Mind you I believe that the chinagraph lines on the windscreen aligned with the bodge tape on the probe came in handy for low level targets.
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Excuse my idiot question -
What was the point of having all this whirring secret gubbins in the aircraft? If its output was the bomb release parameters, and its input was position, track, bomb weight etc, this would lead to a finite set of results, so why not just tabulate all the possible inputs, and outputs, and then issue a set of tables? Even if it were equivalent to 30 telephone directories, it would have been much more reliable than such a complex system, especially airborne.
I used to have an ex-RAF radar tech as a colleague, and his comment was "H2S wasn't all that accurate, only a couple hundred yards or so, but it didn't matter, it was a nuclear bomb"!
What was the point of having all this whirring secret gubbins in the aircraft? If its output was the bomb release parameters, and its input was position, track, bomb weight etc, this would lead to a finite set of results, so why not just tabulate all the possible inputs, and outputs, and then issue a set of tables? Even if it were equivalent to 30 telephone directories, it would have been much more reliable than such a complex system, especially airborne.
I used to have an ex-RAF radar tech as a colleague, and his comment was "H2S wasn't all that accurate, only a couple hundred yards or so, but it didn't matter, it was a nuclear bomb"!
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
Excuse my idiot question -
What was the point of having all this whirring secret gubbins in the aircraft? If its output was the bomb release parameters, and its input was position, track, bomb weight etc, this would lead to a finite set of results, so why not just tabulate all the possible inputs, and outputs, and then issue a set of tables? Even if it were equivalent to 30 telephone directories, it would have been much more reliable than such a complex system, especially airborne.
I used to have an ex-RAF radar tech as a colleague, and his comment was "H2S wasn't all that accurate, only a couple hundred yards or so, but it didn't matter, it was a nuclear bomb"!
What was the point of having all this whirring secret gubbins in the aircraft? If its output was the bomb release parameters, and its input was position, track, bomb weight etc, this would lead to a finite set of results, so why not just tabulate all the possible inputs, and outputs, and then issue a set of tables? Even if it were equivalent to 30 telephone directories, it would have been much more reliable than such a complex system, especially airborne.
I used to have an ex-RAF radar tech as a colleague, and his comment was "H2S wasn't all that accurate, only a couple hundred yards or so, but it didn't matter, it was a nuclear bomb"!
The cruical component was the radar and its ability to display a discrete aiming point. The theoretical accuracy (50%) for the system was 325 yards (IIRC).
When you say tabulate all possible inputs, it would take a finite time to check true airspeed, temperature, altitude, rate of change of altitude, groundspeed, drift angle, aircraft heading and so on, extract the forward throw and amend the release point.
The forward through was groundspeed times the square route of height divided by g plus +/- H dot (rate of climb) divided by g plus taw (a time value to allow for bomb ballistics), plus time advance (to allow for the lag in the system) with an addition for the range component of cross-trail, H tan lamda times the cosine of the drift angle.
Now a feature of the NBS, as an analogue computer, is that it could make all these calculations simultaneously which contemporary digital computers could not.
The system could cope with a rate of change of height of 50,000 feet per minute which was pretty impressive given that the Vulcan would climb at only 8,000 feet per minute or so.
One weakness was in the speed of ballistic computation as it would take 4.55 seconds for the Calc 3 to run a B-bank scan. The system would also open the bomb doors at 7 seconds before bomb release. To ensure that the computer didn't change the release point and try to release the bomb before the bomb doors were fully open the system would lock out at 10.55 seconds.
The timing was pretty impressive. Back to doing it using tables, the aircraft was flying at some 300 yards per second. A tenth of a second timing error equated to 30 yards. No, automatics were far more reliable.
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PN - Thanks for the comprehensive answer. The 300yds/sec is the telling bit. If the accuracy of the system is roughly one second of flying time, then that answers it all.
The realtime nature of the analogue computer is also a plus, though obviously today's digital computers do the calcs so quickly that they appear to be simultaneous.
How did the system account for the various types of bombs and quantity? I should think dropping a single larger HE bomb would be a very different kettle of fish to dropping a stick of 21 on a target (eg Black Buck). In fact, DID the V-force drop larger single HE bombs, or was that option deleted in favour of nuclear?
The realtime nature of the analogue computer is also a plus, though obviously today's digital computers do the calcs so quickly that they appear to be simultaneous.
How did the system account for the various types of bombs and quantity? I should think dropping a single larger HE bomb would be a very different kettle of fish to dropping a stick of 21 on a target (eg Black Buck). In fact, DID the V-force drop larger single HE bombs, or was that option deleted in favour of nuclear?