In the Advanced Navigation School, the cadet soon found that he was concerned
with only one problem--how to determine by one means or another where he was, how to
go where he wanted to go, and when he would get there.
That is navigation. In the air this science, centuries old on the sea, takes on new
complexities. There are three dimensions about which one can be wrong instead of two.
Positions must be determined and navigational decisions taken at 300 miles an hour---
the time required for corrections results in considerable progress of the aircraft in
the wrong direction if the first determination is wrong. The radius of action of an
aircraft is determined by how much gas it has left--it plunges and is wrecked, or is
at least incapacited, if it runs out of fuel, whereas a ship does not face this problem.
Estimated times of arrival must therefore be pretty near right.
The way a navigator finds out what he must know when he is hurtling through space across
the top of the world, traversing oceans and droning over trackless wastelands is to convert
what he can observe or compute into usable information.
The science of navigation offers four ways of doing this. First is pilotage, or the art
of navigating by landmarks. Inasmuch as an ocean has no landmarks, or a low undercast may
prevent observation of landmarks, this method has its limitations. Further, it requires
the use of maps and charts upon which landmarks may be identifited, and many parts of the
world are not reliably charged.
The second method is dead reckoning--which consists of keeping track of far you have gone,
and in what direction, since you started. This is done by means of instruments which
measure various aspects of the plane in motion such as speed, direction, wind drift, and
so on. It's fine if you know where you were when you started, and keep an accurate log of
the trip.
The third method depends on the radio, being radio navigation. It consists simply of
"riding the beam" on one known station after another until you progress to where you want
to go. Many of the places where the Army Air Forces bombers and transports planes were
flying had no radio beams to guide our navigators.
The fourth and last way to navigate is by celestial navigation by the stars and other
celestial bodies. These are immutable. But you must be able to identify them in their
different configurations in all quarters of the heavens, at all times of night and day.
These were the problems to wich the navigation cadet addressed himself. He had to
first learn the terminology of his trade, and then its instruments, gadgets, charts,
and tables, and how to use them. This he did in the classroom. Here also he learned
the theory of navigation, so he could understand how he was to arrive at his results,
and be able to check intelligently for errors.
For eight hours a day and three hours in the dead of night he continued his unceasing
instruction. He was liable to be pulled out of bed at any time between taps and
reveille to take out his octant and practice "shooting" the stars.
As the final stage of his work, the cadet entered a navigation training plane and took
off to work out actual navigation problems of his own in all four of the methods he had
studied in theory. He had put in at least 100 hours in the air in "flying classrooms"
by the time he graduated.
With him rode on each mission a pilot, a rated navigator, and two fellow cadets. By
the time he had finished his training, he had put in practice under various conditions
all the theory he learned, and used all of his equipment.
On the day he got his navigator's wings and second lieutant's or flight officer's bars,
he was pretty well trained in the art of getting there and getting back.