Why the Navy brought back the sextant

outstanding.....we left Port Isabel Texas for New Orleans one night and I told my relief captain he had to do the trip with a Fathometer, a chart, and a compass.....and nothing else.......he looked horrified ......but he did it and he was dead on the entrance bouy and he felt like a million bucks afterward....

The Vikings used to carry a cage full of crows onboard when they were out looking for new lands....and what they would do is release a crow every day....and if the crow circled the boat and stayed close to it they would know no land was near by...and if the crow took off, they would get a line on its path relative to the sun and follow it to land....it's how they found Iceland[/QUOTE

The compass and a chart! That crow story is amazing. The original flight from Bermuda to JFK, so to speak!
 
In my days in the Navy I flew in P-3's. This airframe had a periscope hole where the navigator took periodic star or sun shots with our sextant out the top of the fuselage. My crew's navigator was not the most capable and was forever asking to "give me a fix" with my radar. Fortunately we were operating in the Mediteranean at the time and were seldom outside the range of the radar.
 
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