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Frank,
Thanks for this message with so much relevant info.

> There's a book by Donald Mackenzie, written in 1993, "Inventing
> Accuracy:
> A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance" (portions available

The title sounds very promising.
Today I checked in my library the
book "Soviet Military Policy", which contains the paper
"The Soviet Union and strategic missile guidance" by Donald MacKenzie:-)
The book is partially available on Internet but this paper is not.

> Celestial through the periscope.

I would like to see one of those periscopes:-)

> There are some big problems with this process which may not have been
> discussed yet.

One problem I see immediately is that the waves will obscure the horizon
if the periscope is not tall enough.
If it is tall enough, one will need a dip-meter:-)
in the same periscope, for high accuracy:-)

On a small boat even very moderate waves frequently obscure the horizon
(from my own experience).

> But the really huge problem is the Earth's gravity field.

In 1970-s I worked as a researcher in a Soviet research institute.
(In Physics).
And even did something about search and detection of American submarines,
hope Byron will forgive me:-) It looked to me in 1970-s that almost every
physicist and mathematician in Soviet Union was somehow involved with
search of submarines:-)
I did not really have access to any secrets, and had no security
clearing, but I saw a list
of the kinds of research data which were restricted for publication,
and had to undergo censorship.
The list itself was secret:-)

N 1 in the list was "All research of the Earth gravity field in the
Arctic".
Publications in this area were "totally prohiboted".

Alex.

   

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