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As a Sea Scout I became fascinated with the art and science of navigation and, by the time I was just 16, was successfully competing against experienced navigators 5 or 6 decades older. Little did I realize that the Tide and Current Tables that I was using were being calculated in those days of the 1950s, on mechanical analog computers designed a century earlier, nor of the key role they played in such wartime uses as anti-aircraft guns and bomb sights.
WWI
Computers
WWII World War Two
Posted >1 y ago
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MAJ Ken Landgren
CPT Jack Durish - Nice background information. I have read that some navigators have an uncanny ability that mystifies logic.
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CPT Jack Durish
MAJ Ken Landgren - You may be interested in this story about the recreation of the Polynesian voyages between Hawaii and Tahiti that was commemorated during the American Bicentennial in 1976. They had hired a navigator from one of the other islands who still used the "Old Ways." Each day, each reported his estimated position to the chase boat that accompanied the Hawaiian canoe and they compared his estimate with the position their modern instruments reported. They were surprisingly close. As soon as they beached in Tahiti, the navigator walked off the canoe without a backward glance, pronounced the crew unfit, and left for home.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C5%8Dk%C5%ABle%CA%BBa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C5%8Dk%C5%ABle%CA%BBa
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MAJ Ken Landgren
CPT Jack Durish - Thank you. I watched a documentary on sailing from Peru to somewhere in the far west Pacific area.
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