Thursday, March 26, 2009
Quiz
20 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Mar 26, 06:34:00 PM:
It is a sextant and the officer is probably measuring the suns angle to the horizon.
Now they use GPS
By 
Escort81, at
Thu Mar 26, 07:00:00 PM:
By , at
Thu Mar 26, 07:04:00 PM:
Agreed it is a sextant. I was just having a discussion the other day about whether the USN still uses them.
It seems to me that using them should still be required. I would imagine that navigation with a sextant and chart should still be a part of basic seamanship. Any recent USN vets who can comment?
By , at
Thu Mar 26, 07:09:00 PM:
" navigation with a sextant and chart should still be a part of basic seamanship. "...And you don't have to worry about the batteries deserting you, when they are needed the most.
By Pax Federatica, at
Thu Mar 26, 08:02:00 PM:
Hint / bonus question: why doesn't the U.S. Navy use these things anymore?
GPS.
By , at
Thu Mar 26, 09:18:00 PM:
In addition to the above post about GPS, the U.S. Naval Academy no longer believes that proper seamanship is a requirement for officers as evidenced by the fact that they (1) dropped their celestial navigation course requirement and (2) dropped their required sail training program.
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Mar 26, 09:19:00 PM:
"It seems to me that using them should still be required."
Should swordplay, trumpet calls, and horsemanship be basic Soldier tasks?
Get with the times, men!
By Gammer Gurton, at
Thu Mar 26, 09:41:00 PM:
Dang! I thought it was micro-bagpipe.
By Escort81, at
Thu Mar 26, 09:56:00 PM:
DF82 - There are a number of good CelNav courses available to recreational boaters, but the enitre GPS sat network (which I understand has redundant systems built in) would have to go down for the Navy to be blinded.
I try to keep my coastal navigating skills reasonably sharp -- using dead reckoning -- and not rely 100% on my GPS unit while sailing. This is particularly important in parts of the Caribbean, if you are using a chartplotter with GPS, since many of the charts that have been converted for electronic use are based upon 19th Century British Admiralty charts that have not been updated and are not precisely accurate. You could be looking at your $3000 12" daylight viewable color chartplotter/GPS and it is telling you that you are 50 feet inland from the beach! There's never any substitute for keeping your head out of the cockpit and using common sense.
Question: does the Army still teach orienteering in OCS or Basic in non-Special Ops areas, and if so, is a compass involved, or is it electronic?
My favorite bit about GPS is Robin Williams impersonating the in-dash voice map unit of a Mercedes with a German accent: "Turn rrright here. Turn here. YOU VILL TURN RRRIGHT HERE, NOW!"
By , at
Thu Mar 26, 10:13:00 PM:
yeah, but remember the sextant is only useful for navigation if you know exactly the time and date where you are. I'd rather carry extra batteries than trust my Rolex, which stops every now and then.
By , at
Thu Mar 26, 10:14:00 PM:
yeah, but remember the sextant is only useful for navigation if you know exactly the time and date where you are. I'd rather carry extra batteries than trust my Rolex, which stops every now and then.
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Mar 26, 11:01:00 PM:
"Question: does the Army still teach orienteering in OCS or Basic in non-Special Ops areas, and if so, is a compass involved, or is it electronic?"
Yes, it does, called Land Navigation. (Land-Nav) Hand-held GPS units are not yet standard issue, while pretty kick-ass (durable, functional, well sized and weighted with little perks like glow-in-the-dark symbols and ties) lensatic compasses are.
Of course, lots of troops invest in GPS themselves and things like the Future Warrior Project want to incorporate them into basic gear, eventually.
By , at
Thu Mar 26, 11:18:00 PM:
Agreed it is a sextant. And a day shot would be on the sun or moon.
It seems very near noon.
I'm surprised to hear the naval academy doesn't teach celestial navigation or basic seamanship. It doesn't take long to understand and the history and applied geometry are of interest in themselves.
Skillful use of celestial at sea is quite another matter and naval officers shouldn't waste time with it today.
Those midshipmen aren't going to use calculus or relativity either but I bet they get courses in each.
By , at
Thu Mar 26, 11:56:00 PM:
An interesting topic and near and dear to my heart. I had an extra course in the spring of my senior year, 1967, at PU so I took Nav Sci 302 - NROTC Navigation. This was the first term with the pass/fail option so I chose that. One of the class exercises was to take a noon sight from Palmer Stadium. I miss estimated my height above the horizon and subsequently placed the stadium somewhere in Philadelphia. I have more recently taken the US Coast Guard Auxiliary's Advanced Coastal Navigation course and from the Mariner's School took the OUPV course. My Captain's license is pending.
Of my knowledge two of my classmates have undertaken circumnavigations. One in a Sundeer 64 which ended in New Zealand when his wife jumped ship and the other was more successful in a J-46. The latter traveled in a convoy with other boats.
USNA no longer teaches celestial navigation or Morse Code. Midshipmen are expected to pick up these skills after they join the fleet.
Unfortunately the current Sup. has de-emphasized the sailing program in favor of direct preparation for being in the fleet after graduation. The offshore fleet of Navy 44's is the closest thing that we have to an Intercollegiate big boat one design. I and many USNA watchers think that the Navy 44 is the best training vehicle for teaching seamanship and small unit leadership. There's nothing that will pucker a 21 year-old Firstie's asshole better than being out in the Gulf Stream and responsible for a $750,000 boat and 10 fellow mids.
JLW III P'67
By TOF, at
Fri Mar 27, 01:13:00 AM:
To be precise it's a marine sextant. We Air Force types flying aircraft used a bubble sextant -- a periscopic bubble sextant for pressurized jet aircraft. No, they don't use sextants in aircraft anymore either. GPS and computers have taken over that job.
Of course if we navigators had been unionized we might still be clinging to the past and making life much more difficult for pilots.
By , at
Fri Mar 27, 09:25:00 AM:
Years ago some neighbors celebrated their first year of retirement by sailing a boat to Europe, thanks to the sextant and Nathaniel Bowditch.
By , at
Fri Mar 27, 09:55:00 AM:
AHHH... I'm afraid thats not your father...Son
By Roy Lofquist, at
Fri Mar 27, 10:26:00 AM:
I remember an episode on "Twilight Zone" a number of years ago. Briefly, on a night military flight to Hawaii the navigator requested a number of turns to get a "double drift" reading of the winds aloft. The was considerable grumbling from the pilot and the crew about the incompetent navigator, who was a last minute replacement for their regular navigator. There was near panic when fuel was running low. They finally sighted their destination with less than 15 minutes of fuel left. The twist at the end was that the navigator's sextant had been damaged and he dead reckoned them 3,000 miles.
Possible?
By GreenmanTim, at
Fri Mar 27, 01:00:00 PM:
My Grandfather was a surgeon and LT. Commander with Marine Air Group 15 in the south Pacific in WWII. He taught himself celestial navigation on the Liberty Ship Jane Addams, and was called upon to use it in the air one dark night when the plane he was travelling in from atoll to atoll lost its navigator. No one else on the plane knew how to fly by the stars, so the navy surgeon with the love of the sea got them home.
By Escort81, at
Fri Mar 27, 02:52:00 PM:
Great story, GT. As a doctor, your grandfather probably had good math skills, which made it a bit easier to teach himself CelNav.
I will say that the GPS system might be the best $20 billion our government ever spent. The project illustrates that the federal government (largely the military in this case) can undertake significant projects and achieve a successful outcome, ultimately producing much in the way of useful private and civilian applications down the road.
Here's relatively new and cool application that's useful if you spend a great deal of time outdoors, especially solo.
