NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: The Old vs. The New
From: Jim Thompson
Date: 2004 Jan 22, 07:40 -0400
From: Jim Thompson
Date: 2004 Jan 22, 07:40 -0400
Here is another potential influence on the
rise of tabular methods. My father was a navigator on Lancasters in
WWII. He grew up in a poor area of Nova Scotia around boats.
Like tens of thousands of boys on both sides of the Atlantic, he went from home
to shooting stars over theaters of war in a matter of months. I have no
doubt that he was very happy to learn the fastest, simplest way to
reduce sights and get back alive. No doubt many young men entering naval service from streets and farms
must have been "in the same boat" as the
aviators. CN innovators would have
had tens of thousands of "tabula rasa" to imprint tabular methods. Some of
those students would have gone on to professional careers in navigation
after the war ended.
(Dad died a couple of years ago,
so now that I've learned CN, I
cannot ask him about his navigation techniques and
training. All I have is his old "Leupold Sporstman" compass that he
used for hunting birds in British Columbia after the
war. I know that my interest in the sea and navigation comes straight from his shy, justifiably
proud stories about guiding his Buffalo
Squadron Lanc over Europe in the
dark. In fact navigation feats were the only war stories he ever
told. He had a talent for math, and used
to talk with pride about the navigation skills that he never used again
professionally after the war ended. )
Jim
Thompson
jim2@jimthompson.net
www.jimthompson.net
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-----Original Message-----
From: Navigation Mailing List [mailto:NAVIGATION-L@LISTSERV.WEBKAHUNA.COM]On Behalf Of Frank Reed
(snipped)also an example of the old axiom 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. Before they would even consider learning a new method, practical navigators had to see solid evidence that a new method worked with absolute reliability and provided some clear and obvious advantage. They had lives and money on the line (not necessarily in that order!) when they raised their sextants and took their sights. Given that celestial navigation today (in 2004) is no longer a primary means of navigating a vessel, it's much easier for modern navigation enthusiasts to experiment with different reduction techniques, historical methods, and exotica like lunars.
(snipped)