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Old 03-22-2010, 03:43 AM
Skoshi Tiger Skoshi Tiger is offline
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Location: Western Australia
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt View Post
Some aircraft might also have specialized equipment. In B17 the mighty 8th, the navigator had a scope that looked down towards the ground. It had some continuous horizontal lines running across the scope view, as well as dotted lines that could be rotated. The idea was to rotate the dotted line lens until the view seemed to be moving without any drift (it's been a few years, don't remember it exactly), then you could read out the drift from the markings on the wheel that turned the dotted lines.
The Norden Bomb sight also allowed you to measure your ground speed as well, which is aways useful.

It has been a long time since I used trig tables to do any calculations but as it was the technology of the day yould have to make sure you had a copy on board (as well as your slide rule - though you'ld definately have a dead reconing computer on hand). I wonder if they were standard equipment?