There I was at 40,000 feet in a United States Air Force flight suit, helmet and oxygen mask. We were headed east over the Atlantic, and it was dark. I was part of the 6-man crew aboard a B-52 bomber of the Strategic Air Command, loaded with nuclear weapons. I was the navigator. And I knew where we were. I had just plotted a good three-star position fix, so I had a little time to relax --- and I began to think about the people who developed the science of navigation which allowed the six of us to fly into the night with such solid confidence. Confidence that we would safely reach our appointed destination --- on target and on time.

“At this time, in the early 1960s, the Strategic Air Command had control of more than 2,000 nuclear-laden bombers. Along with the bombers, there were large fleets of in-flight refueling tankers. Both of these aircraft fleets required navigators and/or navigator-bombardiers.” [1]

“During the Second World War, the Army Air Force trained more than 45,000 navigators and 50,000 bombardiers.” [2] And anyone trained by the Air Force as a navigator knew how this science developed.

While the basic definition of navigation is “the art of finding the way from one place to another,” most early navigation was not navigation at all in the true sense of the word, but piloting.

Early mariners used piloting, the practice of remaining close to shore so they could use geographic landmarks such as prominent rocks and cliffs to guide them. True navigation skills came into play when these mariners ventured into open water away from sight of shore. “The Greeks and Phoenicians made great strides in navigation and developed techniques that remained in use for thousands of years. By some accounts, the Phoenicians were the first to use the Pole star --- Polaris --- for maritime navigation and the first to circumnavigate Africa. Polaris, which remains fixed above the North Pole, was critical for early navigation because it allowed navigators in the Northern Hemisphere to gauge their latitude by measuring its height.”[3]

Many times as a navigator I would use Polaris as an excellent latitude check. If the sextant read a height of 35 degrees 20 minutes, you were at latitude 35 degrees 20 minutes --- give or take a mile or so for the wobble of the earth around its axis.

Perhaps the best of the early navigators were the Pacific Islanders who navigated thousands of miles between islands by using their intimate knowledge of the effect of the various winds --- which they gave specific names for their direction and force --- along with the sea currents, and migrating seabirds.

They also developed extensive star charts using the bearing of selected stars to guide them to their destinations --- these stars were usually named the same as the islands they sought. Of course, one wonders how many of these trips were unsuccessful. An unexpected storm taking those navigators more than a dozen miles off course on a 2200- mile voyage would result in their passing by their destination unobserved.

The first piece of technical equipment to aid the early navigator was the magnetized needle compass “first used in China in 1100; and then appeared in Europe eight or nine decades later.” [4] Sir Francis Bacon, the renaissance author of the 1600s, wrote that the three greatest innovations of change in the world until that time were gunpowder, the printing press, and the compass. A slightly refined version of the Chinese magnet of 900 years ago, hanging on a silk thread, is a part of every military aircraft’s instrument package today. It is nicknamed the “whiskey compass,” because its magnetized compass card floats in a small enclosed container of alcohol. Today in an aircraft, if all electrical power fails, and all other electronic navigation aids are useless, the whisky compass can always point the way home.

Just a side note: early mariners had some problems with this simple “compass thing” because it did not always point at the Pole Star. This is because they didn’t understand that earth’s magnetic north pole is not exactly at the actual North Pole. It lies in northern Canada at approximately 74 degrees north latitude --- about 1000 miles from true North Pole. And while there was little variation between true north and magnetic north throughout the Greek’s and Phoenicians’ Mediterranean, the difference at the tip of Africa was significant: up to 30 degrees variation, which also changed year-to-year because the Earth’s magnetic field shifts over time.

So while other tools of navigation were practically non-existent for hundreds of years to mariners plying the earth’s waters, sail them they did.

“Half a century ago, most schoolchildren were taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America while searching for a shorter route to India and that he accomplished this remarkable feat because he was one of few people who understood that the earth was round. He simply blindly sailed west, not fearing that he would fall off the flat world. As Samuel Morrison points out in his Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Admiral of the OceanSea,’ however, no capable sea captain of Columbus’ era thought the earth was flat, and Columbus was a capable captain and an exceptional dead-reckoning navigator. Celestial navigation was not widely understood, and Columbus’ tools, knowledge, and skills were meager, but he knew how to maintain a track. He crossed an ocean unknown to him, found his way home, and found his way back again. He kept track of course and speed with a simple compass and a floating block.” [5]

The floating wood block, commonly called a “chiplog,” was used to estimate the ship’s speed. “This small float was affixed to a “rope knotted at intervals of 47 and ¼ feet.

Navigators threw the float off the boat and counted the number of knots played out as they sailed on by. “The navigators timed their count, using a 28-second sandglass to ensure consistency. The number of knots that ran out in 28 seconds equaled the boat’s speed in nautical miles. The term knot, meaning one nautical mile per hour, originated with the chip log. If the first knot appeared as the sand ran out, the boat’s speed equaled one nautical mile per hour, or one knot.” [6]

The next navigation advancement of significance after the wide-spread use of the magnetic compass was the slow development of the sextant. Initially, the sole purpose of the early sextant was to measure the angle of the Pole Star.

Among the first angle measuring devices was the mariner’s quadrant, simply a wood or brass quarter-circle plate marked in degrees from 0 to 90 with a short plumb-bob to establish a vertical line of reference and two fixed sights to aim at Polaris. Columbus probably made use of a quadrant.

A more sophisticated device resembling the quadrant was the astrolabe. The astrolabe had no plumb-bob, but was the plumb-bob itself, having a circular metal frame hanging from a top ring. A rotatable center arm carried the sighting holes, and when aligned with the star, the angle observed could be read on the circular metal frame.

A more simple sighting device developed next was the cross-staff, two calibrated sticks resembling a Christian cross. The short arm called the transom slid up and down on the longer staff so that the star could be sighted over the upper end of the transom while the horizon was aligned with the bottom edge.

These instruments were in use for more than 250 years, primarily providing the navigator a reasonable estimate of his latitude.

But these sighting instruments had drawbacks: the plumb bob of the quadrant and swinging astrolabe were hard to use on a rolling deck, and with the cross-staff, the navigator had to look in two directions at once -- at the top of the transom to the star, and at the bottom of the transom to the horizon. “Thus, toward the end of the 1600s and into the 1700s, the more inventive instrument makers were shifting their focus to optical systems based on mirrors and prisms that could be used to observe the nighttime celestial bodies.” [7]

“The critical development was made independently and almost simultaneously by John Hadley in England and by Thomas Godfrey, a Philadelphia glazier, about 1731. The fundamental idea is to use two mirrors to make a doubly reflecting instrument --- the forerunner of the modern sextant.” [8]

The sextant was easy to use: simply swing an index arm holding the index mirror while observing a celestial body until that body appears to rest on the horizon of the horizon mirror. And since this was now an optical sighting instrument, refinements soon came in the form of sighting scopes using various optical magnification powers and in filters which enabled direct viewing of the sun, for very accurate measurements.

By this time, astronomers had developed methods of determining longitude from the sun, moon, planets and select stars, but the calculations and celestial observations were highly dependent on the time at the astronomers’ base of Greenwich, England, or zero degrees longitude designated as the “Prime Meridian.” “Even some of the best clocks of the early eighteenth century could lose as much as 10 minutes per day, which translates into a computational error of 150 miles or more.” [9]

One technique used by navigators in the early 1700s to celestially correct their timepieces involved a long and complicated series of calculations. “Astronomers had developed a method for predicting the angular distance between the moon and the sun, the planets or selected stars. Using this technique, the navigator at sea could measure the angle between the moon and a celestial body, calculate the time at which the moon and the celestial body would be precisely at that angular distance and then compare the ship’s chronometer to the time back at the national observatory. Knowing the correct time, the navigator would now determine longitude.” [10]

The longitude problem was so great to mariners that in 1714 England established a “Board of Longitude,” and offered a reward of 20,000 pounds sterling to whoever could resolve it. In 1764, British clockmaker John Harrison invented the seagoing chronometer which lost less than one second per day during long sea voyages.

“In 1779, British naval officer and explorer Captain James Cook used Harrison’s chronometer to navigate the globe. When he returned, his (final) calculations of longitude based on the chronometer proved correct within eight miles. From information he gathered on his voyage, Cook completed many detailed charts of the world that completely changed the nature of navigation.” [11]

“In 1884, at the height of the British Empire, Greenwich, England, was established as the world’s Prime Meridian. Previously, each major nation established its own prime meridian and local time; the promulgation of Greenwich Mean Time did away with these, and thus standardized navigational readings throughout the globe.” [12]

And so it was until the early 1900s. “That century opened with the first transatlantic radio transmission by Marconi in 1901, followed by the first airplane flight by the Wright Brothers in 1903. These two events would soon become closely linked, in navigational terms. The rapid acceptance of the airplane necessitated navigational improvements. By the 1920s, the development of radio navigation was underway. Radio direction finding thus became the standard for aircraft navigation, eliminating the need for celestial techniques.” [13] Except for the military. A direction-giving radio station could always be turned off, or its signal jammed -- whereas the stars are silent, yet dependable aids.

In 1907, the gyroscopic compass, or gyro compass, was introduced. This heading indicator, once set to any direction and unslaved to a free-running mode, is unaffected by the Earth’s --- or the plane’s --- magnetic fields. Once set to true north, it always points to true north (give or take a small amount of instrument precession, which the navigator periodically corrects.

Gyro compasses are universally used today, even now as standard equipment in the smallest civilian aircraft. The last thing prior to take-off even a Cessna 150 pilot does is quickly set and unslave the gyrocompass to runway heading before advancing the throttle.

An unslaved gyro not affected by the earth’s magnetic north also has other advantages. At polar latitudes, the very large variations between true north and magnetic north are difficult to reconcile in a fast-moving aircraft --- especially near 101 degrees West longitude above 74 degrees North latitude where true north is actually in the direction of magnetic south. Another problem for navigators in Polar Regions is the way longitude meridians are represented on maps. At the equator, the distance between one degree of longitude is approximately 69 miles, but this distance decreases rapidly as one approaches either pole.

So, an Air Force navigator who anticipates flying over the pole solves both the magnetic compass problem and the longitude convergence problem simply by asking the pilot to unslave the gyro and set the indicator to an artificial “grid” heading. The navigator pulls out a grid map which is simply a series of straight-ruled longitude and latitude lines, superimposed over a conformal projection, with a constant grid north, which is aligned in parallel with 20 degrees east longitude.

From experience using grid, I can tell you that the navigator is happy with this arrangement, although I have on occasion detected a degree of apprehension on the part of the pilots, who are looking at a heading instrument which seems “sideways” with their “reality.”

In the early 1900s, advances in radio receivers and transmitters were a boon to peace-time aircraft navigation. RDF, or radio direction-finding equipped planes could home in on ground-transmitted signals or navigators could plot radio bearings from various stations on a chart to obtain a position. This is the form of navigation used by Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, that fateful day of July 1^st, 1937, as they searched for their destination of Howland Island, north of the Solomons. Like many early forms of navigation, when using the first radio direction finding equipment, the navigator needed to have a good approximation of his position to be successful. These early RDF bearings could either be toward a transmitter, or on the reciprocal of that bearing, flying away from a station.

By the early 1950s, a new radio navigation aid called the VOR, short for VHF Omni-directional Radio Range, had replaced the older radio beacon system. “This became a world-wide land-based network of ‘air highways,’ known in the U.S. as Victor Airways (below 18,000 feet) and ‘jet routes’ (at and above 18,000 feet).” [14] This network of VOR stations allowed pilots to not only fly from one station to another simply by keeping a course pointer centered on the VOR display, but they could instantly read their position from any VOR station from 1 to 360 degrees. And the “to the station” or “from the station” ambiguity had also been solved, with the VOR indicator prominently displaying the words “To” or “From” on the indicator itself.

All this was possible by rotating the ground based transmitting antennas at a rate of 30 times per second, along with simultaneously transmitting a reference-phase signal. The two signals are detected at the receiver and then compared to determine the phase difference, and thus the direction, or radial, from the station to the aircraft. “In the ‘50s, transmitters were vacuum tube, and the antennas rotated mechanically. By the 1960s, these systems were being replaced by solid state electronics and the antenna “rotation” was accomplished electronically, achieving an equivalent result with no moving parts.” [15]

The next evolution in this type of radio navigation was the co-location of DME equipment (distance measuring equipment) at VOR stations. This allowed a one-station position fix by knowing both the radial from the station, and the distance from that station. The military stations providing both azimuth and distance were named TACAN stations, for “Tactical Air Navigation.” Coupled VORS and DMES and VORS and TACANS (called VORTACS) are all accessible to both military and civilian equipment. And those Victor Airways and Jet routes over the United States today are not limited to flying from one VOR to the next, but now are often defined by a VOR radial and a DME distance.

For the navigator, another type of radio navigation system called a hyperbolic signal system was developed during the Second World War. It also used fixed ground-based transmitters.

“The theory behind the operation of hyperbolic radio navigation systems was known in the late 1930s, but it took the urgency of World War II to speed development of the system into practical use. By early 1942, the British had an operating hyperbolic system in use designed to aid in long range bomber navigation. This system, named Gee, employed ‘master’ and ‘slave’ transmitters spaced approximately 100 miles apart.” [16]

“The Americans were not far behind the British in development of their own system. By 1943, the U.S. Coast Guard was operating a chain of hyperbolic navigation transmitters that became Loran A (The term Loran is the acronym for Long Range Navigation). By the end of the war, the network consisted of over 70 transmitters providing coverage over approximately 30 percent of the earth’s surface.

The theory of operation for this type of radio navigation was that the master and secondary Loran stations transmit radio pulses at precise time intervals. “The aircraft receiver measures the time differences between when it receives the master signal and when it receives each of the secondary signals. When this elapsed time is converted to distance, the locus of points having the time difference between the master and each secondary forms the hyperbolic line of position. The intersection of two or more of these line of positions plotted on special charts overprinted with a Loran time-delay lattice consisting of special hyperbolic time difference lines, produces a fix of the aircraft’s position.” [17]

“In the late 1940s and early 1950s, experiments in low frequency Loran produced a longer range, more accurate system, and Loran developed into a 24-hour-a-day, all-weather radio navigation system named Loran C. The United States continued to operate Loran C in a number of areas around the world, including Europe, Asia, the Mediterranean Sea, and parts of the Pacific Ocean until the mid-1990s when it began closing its overseas Loran C stations or transferring them to the governments of the host countries.” [18] Currently Loran continues to serve the 48 contiguous states, their coastal areas and most of Alaska.

However, the President’s Fiscal Year 2010 Budget, publicly announced by the Office of Management and Budget in February 2009 “suggests the termination of outdated system such as terrestrial-based, long-range radio navigation (LORAN-C) operated by the Coast Guard, resulting in an offset of $36 million in 2010 and $180 million over five years.” [19]

Since I was never assigned to LORAN-equipped aircraft, except at basic navigation school, I personally have no sympathetic feelings regarding the up-coming loss of this system which assisted navigators for more than 60 years. I do have a lot of feeling, however, for a navigation system that was developed on the same time-frame as Loran. And that is radar (short for “radio detection and ranging”).

After six months of Air Force navigator training, leaving the basics of maps and map-reading, plotting time and distance, using driftmeters, astro-compasses, and bubble-averaging sextants, we finally graduated to radar. “Well, here it is,” we all said, “an electronic reflection of what is on the ground --- how difficult can this really be?” Granted, at first, the confusing patterns of electronic “blips” lighting the radar screen were difficult to decipher, but like everything else, hours of practice brought high levels of understanding.

Wind the clock ahead 10 years. I no longer filled the navigator position on B-52 bombers, but had upgraded to the radar-bombardier position of this aircraft.

It was a cold night in February, and we were flying about 300 feet off the ground in this eight-engine aircraft, originally designed to fly strategically at high altitudes. The display on the 10-inch-diameter radar scope directly in front of me danced with changing patterns of black and white. The black areas were shadows behind hills and ridges we had yet to crest. The bright areas flickering and morphing as we passed were reflected radar returns of those ridges in this remote area of northern New York State.

This was an important mission. Scoring our weapons release to within 10-feet at the end of this 30-minute low-level run would be a ground crew from Air Force Strategic Air Command Headquarters. This was our Wing’s annual ORI, or Operational Readiness Inspection. All aspects of the Wing’s mission would be inspected --- not just our flying and bombing ability. The crews standing alert had already been tested on nuclear weapon procedures and safety, and aircraft ordnance crews were observed for safety during actual weapons download operations. All our alert aircraft nuclear weapons were downloaded, since these same aircraft were required to fly--without receiving any additional maintenance--exactly in the configuration they were when the inspection team arrived. And the safe handling of the nuclear weapons was critical to pass the inspection. Those were the days when “nuclear bombs were the standard bombs of the cold war and production peaked in 1962 at six warheads a day, with the U.S. inventory of nuclear weapons eventually reaching over 30,000.” [20]

So there we were, completing the last 100 miles of this low-level route, the navigator directing us left, right, up, and down over the terrain. Successfully hitting imaginary targets at the conclusion of this route very likely would make the difference between a number of people being promoted, or their status changed to “never promote again.”

The coordinates of the target had been selected by the Strategic Air Command Headquarters, which required our local Wing Bomb-Nav shop to evaluate the target area and select an offset aiming point for the Wing’s bombardiers. They had to select, based solely on a space photo of the area, some ground feature that would consistently radar-reflect during the bomb run. After much study of terrain-masking based upon the planned bomb-run direction and altitude, the Bomb-Nav shop selected a farmer’s barn as the final aiming point, as they concluded it had a metal roof that would reflect properly.

So, over the next ridge and I would get a radar look at the barn in the valley. I switched the radar from full-scan mode to tracking mode and we popped over the ridge. And there were two small, separate returns where there should have been one. Which one? Quick, think. The return on the left was directly below the highpoint of the next ridge. This was the pointer I needed to make the choice. But was this ridge showing correctly? Decision. Cross-hairs on the left return, offset switch number one in, and with 40 seconds to go I called the pilot to give me “second station.” The bombing computer was now in control of the aircraft, and as I moved the cross-hairs slowly to refine their placement, I could feel the bomber respond. Twenty seconds. Scoring tone on. Tracking well --- don’t touch anything. Ten seconds --- the return to the right is still booming in; no time to wonder what it is --- then we are on to the next target.

Well, we were told later that the return on the right was the farmer’s tractor, which he had taken out of the barn and driven down the road to begin spring plowing. I was still in good standing with my crew, the squadron commander, the Wing commander, and as far as I knew, General Power (CINCSAC himself), and God. During these missions I talked to God often, but never to General Thomas Sarsfield Power.

My next Air Force assignment--one for which I had applied and personally interviewed--was a school assignment at the University of Southern California to receive a master’s degree in motion picture production. After graduation from that 18-month vacation from navigating, I was called to fly the back seat of F-4 fighter-bombers during the Vietnam conflict as a “weapons systems officer.” Now, the Air Force version of the F-4 Phantom was configured for two pilots, with full aircraft controls in the second cockpit. But what was remarkable is that this back-seater was provided an automatic navigation system: inertial navigation. While the WSO (Weapon System Operator) had plenty of flight duties to keep him busy, navigation certainly was not one of them. The navigation effort was simply: turn the inertial system on, wait four minutes until it has spun up to speed and stabilized, set the base latitude and longitude coordinates and unslave the unit. It would then track the position of the aircraft in changing latitude and longitude read-outs for the duration of the flight.

All the early inertial systems used a three-gimbal system.

“The gimbals have a bearing at each end. Each has a motor, built around one of the bearings, and at the other end a synchro (an electromagnetic angle-measuring device). No matter how the vehicle maneuvers, the innermost gimbal maintains its orientation in inertial space. The synchro on the innermost gimbal thus measures azimuth (or heading), the synchro on the middle gimbal measures pitch, and that on the outer gimbal measures roll. The innermost gimbal can be thought of as a ‘stable platform’ on which are mounted the gyros and accelerometers. The whole arrangement is generally called a ‘gimbaled platform’.” [21]

The military now uses inertial navigation in many applications because the system is impossible to (electronically) jam or sabotage from outside using existing military technology. As early as 1958, U.S. submarines used inertial navigation to guide them under Arctic ice to the North Pole. “Today, inertial navigation is required safety equipment in passenger aircraft making international flights. However, inertial guidance systems are too expensive for widespread public use.” [22]

What has become quite inexpensive for civilian use is the GPS (Global Positioning System) developed and maintained by the military and now available for general public use at no cost. “GPS was conceived in the 1970s by the Department of Defense for ballistic missile submarines to accurately determine their position before launching missiles.” [23] Other systems were too inaccurate, too complicated, or subject to electronic jamming.

The initial GPS system consisting of 24 solar-powered NAVSTAR satellites in high orbit cost $12 billion. As of May of 2009, there were 34 satellites, each with an estimated average life span of 7 ½ years, and maintained by the GPS Wing of the Air Force Space Command, in Los Angeles, California. The satellites are arranged so that anytime, anywhere on Earth, there are at least four “visible” in the sky.

The system works by comparing the “lag time” in nanoseconds from a signal sent from the satellite to the synchronized clock of the receiver. The length of the delay is equal to the signal’s travel time, and thus the distance from the satellite’s known position. That is, the satellite’s signal speed (186,000) miles/second) times the delay time it takes to receive that signal (usually around eight hundredths of a second) equals the distance (generally 12,000 to 15,000 miles) to the satellite.

The GPS receiver surveys all the satellite signals available to it in a similar manner, resolves these distances for a single position, and displays that location electronically on a display screen.

When measuring delays in signals that travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second), it immediately becomes obvious that the clocks in both the satellites and receiver need to be perfectly synchronized.

“To make a satellite positioning system using only synchronized clocks, you would need to have atomic clocks not only on all the satellites, but also in the receiver itself. But atomic clocks cost somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000, which makes them just a bit too expensive for everyday consumer use.

“The Global Positioning System has a clever, effective solution to this problem. Every satellite contains an expensive atomic clock, but the receiver itself uses an ordinary quartz clock, which is constantly reset. In a nutshell, the receiver looks at incoming signals from four or more satellites and gauges its own inaccuracy. In other words, there is only one value for the ‘current time’ that the receiver can use. The correct time value will cause all of the signals that the receiver is receiving to align at a single point in space. That time value is the time value held by the atomic clocks in all of the satellites. So the receiver sets its clock to that time value, and it then has the same time value that all the atomic clocks in all of the satellites have. The GPS receiver gets atomic clock accuracy ‘for free’.” [24]

The last required element in this system is for the GPS receiver to know exactly where all the satellites are at all times. They travel in very high, predictable orbits that circle the Earth twice each day. “The GPS receiver simply stores an almanac that tells it where every satellite should be at any given time. The Satellites do change positions slightly due to minor gravitational pull from the sun and moon.” [25] “The Department of Defense tracks all the satellites by radar, and transmits any errors in position back up to the satellites themselves, then each includes this revised position information in the signal it broadcasts.” [26]

A person might guess that the small errors observed in a GPS position are the result of clock error or orbit error. While a few feet, on average, are the result of clock and orbit errors, the major GPS error --- when there is one --- results in changes in the speed of light. The speed of light is not constant, except in a vacuum. The signals from satellites are often slightly slowed when traversing through charged particles in the ionosphere, and to a very small degree by water vapor in the troposphere.

And for navigators who have GPS units that read out a position in degrees and minutes of latitude and longitude, they must make sure that the maps they are using match the same geodetic datum as the GPS. “Geodetic datums are mathematical descriptions of the Earth used to construct maps. Very early datums assumed the Earth was a perfect sphere. Older maps are based on the North American Datum of 1927. GPS uses the World Geodetic Systems 1984 datum.” [27]

A very significant accuracy upgrade to the basic GPS system in the United States was the development of WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) in mid-year 2000. WAAS uses additional geostationary satellites (not the regular GPS satellites) and numerous ground stations providing signal corrections which increases GPS accuracy from 60 feet to 6 feet or less, 95 percent of the time.

Free Flight Systems of Waco, Texas, advertises their aircraft cargo utility GPS navigator receiver as being 6 inches x 7 ½ x 3 inches, weighing three pounds. It reports a new position accurate within five meters every second. It measures aircraft speed within a tenth of a knot, instantaneously calculates and displays bearing and distance to destinations, with a running ETA and course deviation indicator, and with a quick access search to the 20 nearest airports (not including the Hudson River).

What a navigator! But what about those real flesh-and-blood navigators who spent their careers answering the question “Are we there yet?” Those thousands who trained by learning memory jogs such as “East is least and West is best” to know whether to add or subtract magnetic variation from a true heading to obtain a magnetic heading; or if “Ho is Mo it’s toward,” to plot a celestial line of position toward the assumed position if the height of the body observed (Ho) is higher (Mo, or more) than the height calculated for that assumed position.

Today, the Air Force no longer trains navigators. Through a joint service agreement, a few are still being trained by the Navy. The title “navigator” is gradually being replaced with “combat systems officers,” as the navigator’s traditional duties are eliminated with each new aircraft model or systems up-grade.

What would Capt James Cook have thought? But then again, how he would have loved a GPS unit!

Background of the Author:

Monte Stuck graduated from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s degree in Communication Arts, majoring in Technical Writing. He then spent the next 26 years in the Air Force, flying as a B-52 Navigator and Bombardier and later as a Weapon Systems Officer in F-4 Phantom jets, with 184 combat missions in Vietnam.

He received his master’s degree in Motion Picture Production at the University of Southern California while still in the service, and subsequently held many Air Force management positions in film production, including Squadron Commander of a Photographic Squadron, Director of Joint-Interest Film Procurement for the Department of Defense (at the Pentagon) and Assistant Deputy of Operations for the Department of Defense Audiovisual Agency.

Upon retirement, Monte worked for Riverside County Department of Building and Safety, first as a building inspector, then as a plans examiner, and finally retiring in 2000 as a Deputy Director of Building and Safety for Riverside County.

He is currently Secretary of the Board of Air Force Village West, a continuing care retirement community of 600 residents in Riverside.

 

Footnote References:

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