I scanned the horizon ahead for the front but saw no sign of even one cumulonimbus. I got a quick hack off WWV. From the almanac I determined the local hour angle and from there went to the declination tables and picked one object that should be on the nose and a second at about 5 o'clock. The third would be my favorite and easiest to shoot and as always at 9 o'clock. I prepared the A-10 for the first shot. Assumed altitude would be 53 degrees on a bearing of zero nine five. Sure enough there sat Arturo dead center of the bubble and cross hairs. Watching the second hand hit its mark, I started the averager for the two minute run. Time up, I quickly wrote down the average altitude and switched to the second object, a huge red giant. This time the altitude was 49 degrees and a two ten bearing. Again it hung steady in the bubble level and cross hairs and again I started the averager for the shot. That done and noted on my pad, I swung the A-10 around to shoot my favorite. My assumed latitude was 48 degrees. Never moving and always due north. There sat Polaris as she had sat for thousands of years and thousands of travelers like me.
Above is what I wrote for my daughter Drissing, She is a bi lingual school psychologist and had a project where she wanted to demonstrate the difficulty a person might have interpreting the meaning of a story unless they were familiar with the jargon or the context in which the speaker or writer was making. She had asked me because -One I am her Dad, and Two, she felt some part of aviation would be unfathomable by most people. I thought "Why not about the lost art of celestial navigation?" Thus what was written above. I assured her that another navigator would understand every word.
Writing it, I was taken back to my early days with Pan American in 1966, when they made me a navigator. I view it now with nostalgic fondness. I learn a lot under the tutorage of "Blackie" Blackburn, our instructor and Pan Am's chief navigator. A whole book could be written on just his experiences I am sure.
Though I was hired as a pilot, my first position would be as a Navigator and celestial navigation was one of the disciplines we had to learn. Though not difficult it required a number of precise steps (10) which included precise timing with a very accurate watch. Believe it or not all this intertwined to produce I and my wife's, ( we had been married just six months) first argument. But more about that latter.
First Blackburn was perfect to introduce an ignorant pilot like me to arcane art of celestial navigation which by 1970 was no longer used at Pan Am. He was from the old school of navigators that plied the far flung routes in Pan Am's flying boats. This was the really - really early days when celestial navigation was the only means of keeping track of one's position. His expertise was such that he was instrumental in writing the USAF Navigators Manuals. He was an excellent instructor too and seem to have just the right analogy where any students could latch on to a concept. I remember one in particular. "How to get un-lost". Paraphrasing him, "If you find yourself lost, use some simple deductions. First your are the third planet in the solar system. That eliminates a whole lot places you could be. Next you started out over one of seven bodies of water on this planet, just try to remember which one. In the scream of things compared to the universe, you now have a precise fix". From that point he went into the finer points of procedures to deduct your actual position to within 10 nm, which in those days (1966) was considered accurate over water and out of range of radio signals. That tenacity to stick to the problem and deduct it out, would stand me in good stead when some 7 months later I needed that process of deduction and that in the "scream of the universe" my problem was quite small.
The stories about Blackie at Pan Am were legions among the pilots. How he would hold up a navigator's chart up to the light to see where the pin picks from the navigator's dividers (used to measure distances) were on the chart. (Some navigator would fake their position to show "on course" when really way off course). One enterprising chap surmised this, and left Blackie a message ( supposedly "F&#K you, Blackie" ). When confronted with this story, Blackie always swore it said "Merry Christmas". Another was that Blackie once neglected to bring his charts on a flight. This was a flying boat Boeing 314 from NY to SNN. This seem to not phase Blackie. He went to the purser's cabin and got a big piece of paper from a roll that was used in cabin. He than proceeded to draw his own map. Now I don't know the facts of how he did this, (most likely drawing up a grid to represent the longitudes and latitudes) but I was assured by a number of 'old timers' Blackie found Shannon with no problem and hit his ETAs right on.
Not much got by him either. Once I found myself in a hurry to get the POMAR (position & meteorological report) up to the captain in time to be transmitted to ATC. One of numerous things on this report was figuring what the actual winds were. This took some time and so thinking no one "up front" could tell one way or the other, I quickly penned in "L/V" which stood for "light and variable". At the end of each flight all navigation paper work was turned in, and went straight to the nav office and right to the hands of Blackie. Some days later, I get a hand written note in my company mail box from Chief Navigator Blackburn.
"Mr. Goolsby.
As to you flight of - - - - - in aircraft ------ , JFK to LHR. When your TAS (true airspeed) is 480 kts and your GS (ground speed) is 590 kts, winds are not likely light and variable.
Signed, Chief Navigator, Blackburn"
I was caught. And by a man I deeply respected. I was duly embarrassed and never did that again. And I wish he could have appreciated my dilemma some months later, when I had my most perplexing and than proud moment as a navigator.
Pan Am's crew scheduling had called me out from a standby reserve to "deadhead to Shannon, lay over, and navigate ferry flight #17 from Shannon to Gander. Deadhead to JFK." Now I should have been at least a little more astute and asked questions at that point, but being new at PAA, I'd better just get dressed, packed and head for the airport. I deadheaded out on a PAA 707 to Shannon and checked into the hotel with instruction that the pilots would pick me up around 0300. Sure enough on the morning of Sept, 18th at 0300 I was by the front door when a van pulled up. Typically I didn't know any of the pilots, nor they me. We arrived at PAA's operation office and I quickly gathered up my copy of the flight plan, maps, wind aloft maps, ship at sea position reports, and rushed out the door.
There sitting on the ramp was one airplane. A DC-6B (N6110C) Clipper "Natchez". Now I need to back up here a little. First, to this point I had navigated nothing but PanAm's Boeing 707 jets. I knew nothing of the DC-6 systems or what she had for navigation! Hell, I didn't even know how to get in the DC-6! PAA had used DC-6s on its "IGS" (inter German service). Germany was still divided back than and the only way from West Germany to Berlin was flying "the corridor" set aside between the east and west. PAA was phasing out the DC-6 for the newer and faster Boeing 727s. This DC-6 was on her way back to either be sold, scrapped, or used on the R&R trips out of Viet Nam. This happened to be the last one and thus the last PAA piston airplane to cross the Atlantic. None of this crossed my mind as I quickly tried to get ready for the flight. I didn't have a whole lot of time to get ready either. Since this was a ferry flight, we didn't have wait for catering, passengers, or their bags. As soon as the crew could get the engines started, we'd go. Fate stepped in to give me some breathing room.
On the IGS none of the DC-6's long range fuel tanks were needed to used in its daily service. Her long range tank caps had become stuck without use. It took the ground crew some 2 hours to get them loose, and fueled (we needed them for the ocean crossing) and that gave me time to check and learn the DC-6. It turned out she had the standard stuff needed, though some of it was old vacuum tube stuff. The LORAN was a old APN-9 with huge tuning knobs. Looked like something from a WW2 movie (it was). I had only seen one in ground school and was taught how to use it, but never used one 'on the line'. I turned it on, tested it, than turned it off until I needed it. The rest of the equipment was the normal things, sextant, ADF, radar altimeter, VOR, DME, etc etc.
With required fuel finally on board, we fired up, and blasted off into the night sky headed for our first check point along the 10 degrees west longitude. As navigator I gave the captain the VOR bearing he was to fly and I started plotting VOR/DME fixes. I was doing this at my normal "jet rate" of a fix every 15 minutes. I suddenly found all my fixes were falling on top of one another! You see a B707 cruise at about 10 nm (nautical miles) per minute, while a DC-6 cruise at a leisurely 4 to 5 nm per minute. On the chart, my carefully drawn fixes, were piling up next to each other so close that I could not measure the distance between them with the dividers. For the first time in my navigation career, I HAD to relax and let the DC-6 go some distance before I take another fix. Something I didn't dare do in the 707. "You can get lost quickly in a jet".
After making our 10 west report to Shannon Ocianatic Control, we started losing the VOR/DME signal due to the 'line of sight' characteristics of the station and the earth's curvature. Time to turn on the LORAN APN-9. Loran is a 'long range air navigation' its signal actually follows the curvature of the earth somewhat. At night that signal extents far out into the Atlantic (almost a thousand miles) but during the day light hours, it is severely shorten to less than half. It was also very fast way of figuring out a fix requiring about 3 or 4 steps. A average navigator could get a LOP (line of position) from 3 different LORAN stations in about 3 minutes and plot them on the chart in about another 3 minutes. While it had its limits, it was the most used method.
But this night again the fates were to step in. About 30 minutes after I turned on the APN-9, it started smoking! Now smoke in an airplane causes all kinds of concerns! Particularly among the pilots up front. Three sets of eyes, (captain, co-pilot, and flight engineer) immediately riveted back on me. I was ahead of the command "Shut that damn thing OFF!" and I was not about to turn it on again, particularly on hearing the skipper's command, "And leave it OFF!" Well so much for the LORAN, she was "Tango Uniform" or in pilot's vernacular 'tits up'.
Almost immediately the radar altimeter blew its tube. As I was about to jot down a reading from it, I saw its trace suddenly get very bright and than go out totally. The radar altimeter is a very useful gadget for a navigator. By comparing 'actual altitude' to 'pressure altitude' over a specific distance, and dividing that difference by a "Dog Factor" for your latitude, you can get your drift that is caused by the wind. Knowing you "drift" allows you to stay on course. I had now lost 2 of my primary means of navigating.
I told the captain of my predicament and only received an indifferent surge in acknowledgement. I was quite definitely on my own. Time to start thinking. I still had the sextant and though celestial navigation was not my best forte, I pulled it from its case and set it up in to mount in the top of the cabin. I than started my pre computing for my first fix. The first star I picked was Polaris. A very friendly star to all navigators who ply the northern hemisphere. Getting its angle from level, and with very little adjustments, it automatically gives you your latitude. The next stars gave me a "along track line of position" which in essence defined my actual position, at least at the time I measure the stars angles. You see the airplane is still moving at 4nm per minute.
While I was taking the 'star shots' I noted with some concern that the sky to the east was getting alarming bright. The sun was coming up! Soon my friendly stars would be hidden in its glare. I was getting really concerned now as I realized that most of this flight would be in day light.
I do not know where inspirations come from. In my case I believe the 'Great Navigator' above looks after me big time. For whatever reason, He pulls rabbits out of my cranium and says "See stupid, the answer was there all the time." This rabbit, steamed from a book I read just the year before, by Sabruo Sakai, Japan's top Ace in WW2. In reliving his flight training days, he mentioned that Japan's pilots were taught how "to find and see Venus in the day time." Taking Sakai at his word, I turn to the Airmen's Almanac and sure enough, along with the sun, moon, first point of Aries, was the sidereal hour angle for Venus. Making a quick calculation, I found that its LHA (local hour angle) would be almost perfect for my flight.
I jumped to the sextant, dialed in the height and than swung the sextant around to the bearing listed in the declination tables book. Opening in the pressure valve, the sextant was neatly sucked up by the pressure of the cabin. Leveling the sextant with its bubble level and cross hairs, there sat Venus in almost perfect alignment! I was surprised on how bright it was even in day light.
Now if only I had another star to steer by. Duh! There it sat in all its splendor. The sun. It is a star and can be measured. So now I had 2 stars (actually one star and one planet) to steer by. Life was good.
Since my radar altimeter was TU, I used the wind aloft charts to pick up wind speed and direction. I used these to figure my what my drift MIGHT be, and applied that to my magnetic course. I now sat back and let the DC-6 make some distance that I could measure. I went and got a cup of coffee, hit the john, went forward chatted a little with the rest of the crew, who seemed unconcern, and indifferent to my problems. (After all fly west over the Atlantic, you're bound to hit North America somewhere) Some 45 minutes later I was please to find that a sun and Venus fix, showed me to be very close to on course. Making some small adjustments, I passed up the info to the captain and on we went.
The rest of the flight was like that. In many ways despite my problems it was the most comfortable flight I had had to that time. The DC-6 was not in a big hurry to get lost. Everything was done a leisurely pace compared to navigating a jet. By the time we picked up the VOR/DME from Gander, I was truly in love with the DC-6. I was even able to take a quick 10 minute nap between fixes!
It was standard practice back then to give the captain a estimate time, radial, and distance when he would receive a signal from a VOR/DME as we approached the coast. This was based on line of sight for the altitude you were flying. How good a navigator you were to most of the pilots, was close you came to that estimate. I didn't go up front to watch, but was gratified to hear the skipper, called back, "Right on" and see a thumbs up signal from the flight engineer.
After that flight, I never felt rushed or behind as a navigator again. I had earned my spurs so to speak. To this day I still will show off my navigator's license. A real oddity to inquiring FAA inspectors and other pilots. And I was a member of a dieing breed of airmen whom like the navigator of the great sailing ships that plied seas and push civilization forward, did the same for the airplane. Since than I've "never been lost". Just "doubtful" as to my "exact position".
The first argument with me and wife, Dede? We were married just 6 months, and hardly had a nickel between us. PanAm was paying $500/month. We lived in a basement apartment near LGA and were really watching our pennies. It became obvious to me in navigation school, that I needed a very good navigation watch. My high school graduation watch just was not up to the task. One day at the company store, for $35.00 I bought a "Astrojet Navigator". A windup main spring (no batteries back than), it had a sweep second hand, with a 24 hours face, and guarantee to keep perfect time for 24 hours. The problem was I had not cleared this with Dede. Not that she would not have not let me get the watch, but that I had violate one of the first covenants we had made together. Consulting on each and every purchase. That purchase cause much cachous to her finely planned budget. To this day friends, (45 years at this writing) Dede buys my watches.
