Why the Navy brought back the sextant

Excellent! When my father became a navigator forTWA ( and later a pilot) , they flew C54 and Constellations to Greenland or the Azores; onto Europe. He often talked about using celestial navigation then ......
 
Interesting article, and interesting to think of your dad, Linda, plotting a course from a fast moving plane. Constellations over Greenland, indeed..:)
 
Great article JEK. My sister and BIL worked for Weems & Plath http://www.weems-plath.com in Annapolis for many years. Now retired. They have spoken about how the Academy dropped basic sextant navigation from their core curriculum for years, and then how they brought it back recently.

There doesn't seem to be any substitute for always knowing where you are on the sea (or in the sky! Yikes.) - whether your onboard technology works or not.
 
Anyone who calls themselves a professional captain should know how to use a sextant or they are a fraud......
 
Doesn't matter what the real reason is.....it s a neccesary skill....half of these guys would be out
there going in circles if their electronics failed them....what are they going to do in a cyber attack?....guess where you are?...it's a joke
 
From the article: "And given the limited training in the Naval Academy course — three hours of lectures and classroom exercises — the midshipmen who go through Reardon’s class probably won’t be plotting courses via the stars right away. 'These classes teach you the theory behind it very well,' said Hogan, 'but actually using a sextant out in the field would be another set of challenges.'"

On a more promising note - the 3 Academy entries in last year's Marion (MA) to Bermuda race swept their class using celestial so at least the sailing team can figure out where they are without GPS.
 
As any old Ensign will tell you, you learn what going to sea is all about from a Senior Petty Officer.
 
Funny post on the Service Academy Forums site (for USNA):

"For a Navigation final, one of my classmates made one of the most spectacular "F's" possible. The way the test was run was you were given a big nautical chart, a listing of courses and speeds to follow and a booklet of celestial observations and times to draw from. By the end of the test you would end at a certain point. The way it was graded, the instructors dropped a clear plastic overlay of a bull's eye over the correct spot and depending on how far away your ending point was, determined your grade. This guy screwed up a celestial fix at the very beginning which, of course, screwed up the whole test as his track was totally off. He did not realize it until his track took him right through a big island. By this time it was way too late to go back and re-do the whole test so in a burst of inspiration, he took a razor blade and very carefully cut out the island and moved it over about 10 miles and cut out a matching piece of ocean. He then reversed both the island and the ocean patch and attached them in place with tape on the back of the chart, tidied things up with his pencil and eraser and turned in his chart.

Of course he got a F but the instructors posted the thing on the wall with the big red F and added comments from the whole staff like: "Brilliant tactical solution", "This man is headed for flag rank", "My god, why did I not think of this when I was navigator on my last tour", "This changes sea warfare as we know it", "It's better to be lucky than good---this guy missed both"..........

He became famous. The other equally stunning test was done by a guy who wanted to flunk out. He was past the point of resigning and the only way you could be kicked out and NOT be sent to the fleet as an E-3 was for academic failure (this was during Vietnam and rules were different). He wanted to go to art school and wanted to only fail the courses he would never need and wouldn't transfer which, of course, included Navigation. So he brought in a pack of colored pencils and for the hours of the exam he sketched the most beautiful clipper sailing ship crashing through the waves on a huge blank spot of the chart. It was really good with flapping sails, billowing clouds, waves, men in the rigging, colors, the texture of the ship, sky and birds.......this kid was very, very good. He too got an solid F but the chart was framed and hung for months in the department halls. I heard that finally the instructors got to fighting over who would take it home and it soon disappeared after that.

I wish the future Midshipmen luck in that course, in any case. Thanks for the article and knowing the Navy's penchant for manual backups (think After Steering), I am surprised it ever got dropped."



When we were sailing as kids/young adults, on some very long-dstance races/cruises, my brother and I (along with my Mom and Dad, of course), had to learn celestial navigtion, and how to use the sextant.
 
We always carry a sextant as GPS fails, when it does, at the most inopportune moments... A classic yacht that spends much time on the quai in Gustavia always used celestial navigation, then GPS. Approaching coral reef ringed Bermuda, they had been unable to get any reliable star or sun sights, but the captain knew there was a daily 9 am flight from Hamilton to JFK. He scanned the sky for the plane... Not ideal, but a guideline and confirmation of good compass steering
 
...great story....

when I was COO in Texas of an international boat company ...I got a call one morning from Coast Guard Corpus Christi....they asked if a particular vessel, a 110 foot supply boat , was under my management...I said yes ....they said well it is currently high and dry on the east jetty entrance to our harbor......so off I go via SW airline to Corpus and I drove to the jetty where I had to take the very long walk out to the end where this 1.5 million dollar boat was high and dry and mangled on the jetty ......I get there and the deckhands are all gone and the captain is sitting on the rocks weeping...so I asked what the f$$k happened ...and he looked at me and said in all seriousness.." My Loran told me I was on course ".....so I told him in my own special way, to start walking away, dont look back, and I never want to see him again for the rest of my life.....which he thankfully did ......and he eventually lost his license .......

its sinful how these guys are trained these days ......so glad I was trained by ol school captains
 
We always carry a sextant as GPS fails, when it does, at the most inopportune moments... A classic yacht that spends much time on the quai in Gustavia always used celestial navigation, then GPS. Approaching coral reef ringed Bermuda, they had been unable to get any reliable star or sun sights, but the captain knew there was a daily 9 am flight from Hamilton to JFK. He scanned the sky for the plane... Not ideal, but a guideline and confirmation of good compass steering

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
 
Well, the sextant is a great tool if you have a cloudless sky and know where the tables are and can remember how to read the stars and . . . . .
 
Well, the sextant is a great tool if you have a cloudless sky and know where the tables are and can remember how to read the stars and . . . . .
:up:
We went 4 or 5 days only getting sun shots, because we had a slew of stormy/cloudy nights (another story!)... but fortunately our course was almost due south! So we relied on finding our latitude each day.....I recall my Dad getting a bit worried about our longitude after the second day, as there are some shallow spots in the middle of the Pacific south of the equator between LA and the Marquesas Islands.
 
Well, the sextant is a great tool if you have a cloudless sky and know where the tables are and can remember how to read the stars and . . . . .
Interpolation, extrapolation.... those three other things you had to do... there was a reason I was the cook and laundress.
 
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