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Navigation technologies in the Pacific Theater of Operations.


Tiger4-2

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Hey guys,

 

So I posted this in the subreddit and nobody cared. I figured I'd try my luck here. So here goes...

 

I'm beyond excited for the Leatherneck F4U-1D release, as well as the Pacific Theater; I'm something of a wwii naval aviation fanatic.

 

Because of this I've been scouring the web for original flight training manuals and doing my best to emulate the training curriculum from the time period(Yes I'm that much of a nerd, and yes I found alot of goodies), starting with the N2S for primary/ground school and ending with the SNJ/AT-6 for Advanced flight training. It's been a truly eye opening and awesome experience immersing myself in training manuals and flight procedures, and one of the most interesting subjects thus far has been navigation.

 

I was able to locate a consolidated version of "Air Navigation parts 1-5, c. 1943", the textbook used by flight schools to train their aviators, and I've been thoroughly intrigued by what I've found.

 

Before the days of INS and TACAN, Naval Aviators had to be experts at navigating with the big 4:

 

1. Pilotage - Using terrain features such as roads and buildings.

2. Dead Reckoning - Method of finding position by using a compass heading and time in flight relative to a starting point.

3. Navigation by Radio - using the directional properties of radio waves to find position, such as VOR or the YE-ZB(Think early INS)

4. Celestial Navigation - using the heavenly bodies and a bubble sextant, along with plotting charts to determine your position.

 

So I suppose I just want to speculate for a moment...what do you guys think will be our options as far as navigation and getting back to the carrier, particularly at night? We already know that DCS has an accurate star-map, so implementing a sextant shouldn't be too hard(They already have them in X-Plane and FSX). Will we see the YE-ZB? What about the Mk3a plotter and whiz wheel used to find the carrier position on a map?

 

I'm curious to know what you guys think. Also if anyone has any links to good resources for textbooks, manuals, or other things which will benefit me in this endeavor, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Also...I would literally finance an F6F myself if I could afford it. Can someone make this airplane before I have to learn to code and do it myself? Lol

 

Thanks and happy flying!

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On the topic of the F6F theres some good news for you. Nick Grey has said it's his favorite Pacific theatre fighter, the fighter collection has one, and he said they will 100% make one. Only problem is it is likely many years away. ED hasn't announced any Pacific fighters being in any stage of development other than Mag3's Corsair.

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I asked about Hayrake (YE-ZB) a long time ago, back when just the P-51 was around and there was very little interest in it. I think that it would be even more important now that we are looking at the prospect of flying the Corsair off of a carrier in the Pacific. I really hope they model this! :thumbup:

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]

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I asked about Hayrake (YE-ZB) a long time ago, back when just the P-51 was around and there was very little interest in it. I think that it would be even more important now that we are looking at the prospect of flying the Corsair off of a carrier in the Pacific. I really hope they model this! :thumbup:

 

Honestly sames. This game has soooo much potential, but right now my main gripes are that you can't just pull out a map and plot a course, given that you're on a 2D map rather than a 3D sphere such as x-plane or fsx/p3d.

 

I feel like the YE-ZB is a must unless they model some sort of plotting board.

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On the topic of the F6F theres some good news for you. Nick Grey has said it's his favorite Pacific theatre fighter, the fighter collection has one, and he said they will 100% make one. Only problem is it is likely many years away. ED hasn't announced any Pacific fighters being in any stage of development other than Mag3's Corsair.

 

That is great news! And hey, at least it's in the works, regardless of how far away it is.

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Totally interesting subject!

I'd love to learn and do some real navigation!

I agree. I hope ED gives us everything needed to navigate the Pacific. I can imagine that finding the carrier with realsitic navigation only will be more challenging and exciting than the combat before that...

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I agree. I hope ED gives us everything needed to navigate the Pacific. I can imagine that finding the carrier with realsitic navigation only will be more challenging and exciting than the combat before that...
When the fuel gets low...

 

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  • 1 month later...

One of my dreams about WWII-era flying, too. Inspired by old movies like, "Air Force" (1943). Although, I had never heard of the YE-ZB until now. B-17's, PBY's and other patrol aircraft going out several hundreds of miles to sea in search of enemy ships. The navigator's desk and radio operator's station aboard these larger planes. So far not a part of DCS's short-range tactical air combat. I think HF radio would be interesting in DCS, and MW and SW radio. If there could be a radio spectrum simulation associated with scenery maps where broadcast stations of the era could be received with realistic attenuation and interference from various sources, such as thunderstorms and ionosphere. I imagine being able to tune in vintage radio programs and vintage music while flying in the DCS map (ability to load your own mp3 files and have them sound like they are coming over the airwaves from long distance). Would one be able to tune in broadcasts from Hawaii or Australia from locations like the Mariannas or the Solomons? And that's not to mention sending and receiving key coded radio messages. I don't think they used Morse code, but we could use that, as well as an optional Morse code to text and text-to-code conversion tool in-game. Sometimes interference would make the coded message difficult to receive where only a partial message could be understood. And so forth. That would really help with immersion in the sim/game, especially on long flights over the Pacific. Imagine being able to send a key-coded message from a patrol aircraft on location of enemy ships, and then AI carrier battle group would "understand" message and launch planes on an airstrike. Way beyond the short attention span of most DCS players, I know, but it's a cool dream, I think...if we are entertaining the idea of WWII aviation at all.

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So I suppose I just want to speculate for a moment...what do you guys think will be our options as far as navigation and getting back to the carrier, particularly at night? !

 

 

As far as my reseach goes, night sorties from carries are operationel exceptions from the rule. They simply diden't do it becourse the risk was not worth it.

The Royal Navy's strike on Tarranto are one of the few exceptions.

They would send the strikes out a dawn, sometimes before the first light, but returning in darkness was almost never done.

 

 

 

Nightflying was restricted to land based bombers, transports and specialized nightfighters which had the ability co carry heavy nav radios as well as having RADAR to guide them home.

 

 

 

I flew a a lot of IL-2 1946 SEOW campaigns; Some from carriers. YE-Hayrake was the only tool to find your carrier as sea, since deadreckoning is useless when there are nothing but sea around you and wind could push you out of course.

 

 

 

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I flew a a lot of IL-2 1946 SEOW campaigns; Some from carriers. YE-Hayrake was the only tool to find your carrier as sea, since deadreckoning is useless when there are nothing but sea around you and wind could push you out of course.

 

 

 

As did I and I can say that DR (dead reckoning) navigation was not that bad. If you have an E6B navigation computer or have a virtual one online, you can be very accurate flying around in the virtual world of DCS or IL-2 and the biggest source of error is you not holding a planned course or airspeed and not minding the clock. The reason being that the winds set in the ME are constant throughout the map. Time, distance and heading are extremely useful in the absence of GPS or inertial nav :smilewink:

 

 

Having said all of that, I would still like to see ED model the Hayrake radio navigation system :thumbup:

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]

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One of my dreams about WWII-era flying, too. Inspired by old movies like, "Air Force" (1943). Although, I had never heard of the YE-ZB until now. B-17's, PBY's and other patrol aircraft going out several hundreds of miles to sea in search of enemy ships. The navigator's desk and radio operator's station aboard these larger planes. So far not a part of DCS's short-range tactical air combat. I think HF radio would be interesting in DCS, and MW and SW radio. If there could be a radio spectrum simulation associated with scenery maps where broadcast stations of the era could be received with realistic attenuation and interference from various sources, such as thunderstorms and ionosphere. I imagine being able to tune in vintage radio programs and vintage music while flying in the DCS map (ability to load your own mp3 files and have them sound like they are coming over the airwaves from long distance). Would one be able to tune in broadcasts from Hawaii or Australia from locations like the Mariannas or the Solomons? And that's not to mention sending and receiving key coded radio messages. I don't think they used Morse code, but we could use that, as well as an optional Morse code to text and text-to-code conversion tool in-game. Sometimes interference would make the coded message difficult to receive where only a partial message could be understood. And so forth. That would really help with immersion in the sim/game, especially on long flights over the Pacific. Imagine being able to send a key-coded message from a patrol aircraft on location of enemy ships, and then AI carrier battle group would "understand" message and launch planes on an airstrike. Way beyond the short attention span of most DCS players, I know, but it's a cool dream, I think...if we are entertaining the idea of WWII aviation at all.

 

 

There are a lot of good suggestions in this thread, but the above sums it up for me...

 

Radio operator in a Catalina on long-range maritime patrol, chattering out the morse, and doing trigonometry on the plotting chart to find some calm water in a quiet island bay to land. Bliss.

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By the end of the war they had pretty sophisticated nav capabilities. But all you need is a radio direction finder, a compass (or the stars), and some math. dead reckoning is pretty accurate if done correctly. I trained in aircraft before GPS was a thing. I didn't get lost.

 

As far as playing period broadcasts over radio stations goes, this is all possible through the mission editor already as far as I can tell. You just need some sound files and a little coding

 

 

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Leatherneck Simulations writes in 2020 Spring update "...we took an effort to implement a Ye/Zb radio navigation system used by U.S. aircraft during WW2...".

 

So, one day, WWII Marianas map, F4U-1D and Essex CV slass with working Ye/Zb radio :)

(everyone could have dreams)

 

http://leatherneck-sim.com/2020/05/20/crouching-update/

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Hey guys,

 

So I posted this in the subreddit and nobody cared. I figured I'd try my luck here. So here goes...

 

I'm beyond excited for the Leatherneck F4U-1D release, as well as the Pacific Theater; I'm something of a wwii naval aviation fanatic.

 

Because of this I've been scouring the web for original flight training manuals and doing my best to emulate the training curriculum from the time period(Yes I'm that much of a nerd, and yes I found alot of goodies), starting with the N2S for primary/ground school and ending with the SNJ/AT-6 for Advanced flight training. It's been a truly eye opening and awesome experience immersing myself in training manuals and flight procedures, and one of the most interesting subjects thus far has been navigation.

 

I was able to locate a consolidated version of "Air Navigation parts 1-5, c. 1943", the textbook used by flight schools to train their aviators, and I've been thoroughly intrigued by what I've found.

 

Before the days of INS and TACAN, Naval Aviators had to be experts at navigating with the big 4:

 

1. Pilotage - Using terrain features such as roads and buildings.

2. Dead Reckoning - Method of finding position by using a compass heading and time in flight relative to a starting point.

3. Navigation by Radio - using the directional properties of radio waves to find position, such as VOR or the YE-ZB(Think early INS)

4. Celestial Navigation - using the heavenly bodies and a bubble sextant, along with plotting charts to determine your position.

 

So I suppose I just want to speculate for a moment...what do you guys think will be our options as far as navigation and getting back to the carrier, particularly at night? We already know that DCS has an accurate star-map, so implementing a sextant shouldn't be too hard(They already have them in X-Plane and FSX). Will we see the YE-ZB? What about the Mk3a plotter and whiz wheel used to find the carrier position on a map?

 

I'm curious to know what you guys think. Also if anyone has any links to good resources for textbooks, manuals, or other things which will benefit me in this endeavor, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Also...I would literally finance an F6F myself if I could afford it. Can someone make this airplane before I have to learn to code and do it myself? Lol

 

Thanks and happy flying!

 

 

Dad was a V-12A Naval Aviator (Marine), who graduated at the very end of WWII/VJ as a Corsair Pilot.

 

 

On land, it was low-frequency radio range.

 

 

Around the boat, it was YE-ZB, pre-flight course plotting, and dead reckoning.

 

 

[EDIT]

 

YE-ZB.pdf

 

YE-ZB Presentation

 

 

 

 

Bowie


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  • 3 months later...

LORAN was one of the early radio navigation technologies used in the war, mostly in the Pacific theater. It was steadily improved on over the years, evolving into LORAN-C in the 70's. Some further experimentation was done (LORAN D and F) but never made it further than C mostly because satellite technology was evolving in the late 70's.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LORAN

 

My service (USCG) operated a number of the stations until 2010 when it was shut down permanently.


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LORAN was one of the early radio navigation technologies used in the war, mostly in the Pacific theater. It was steadily improved on over the years, evolving into LORAN-C in the 70's. Some further experimentation was done (LORAN D and F) but never made it further than C mostly because satellite technology was evolving in the late 70's.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LORAN

 

My service (USCG) operated a number of the stations until 2010 when it was shut down permanently.

 

There is a law (2018 ) on the books in the US directing the establishment of a GPS alternative. This system in all likelihood will be LORAN.

 

SEC. 514. BACKUP NATIONAL TIMING SYSTEM.

(a) SHORT TITLE.—This section may be cited as the ‘‘National

Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2018’’.

(b) IN GENERAL.—Chapter 30 of title 49, United States Code,

is amended by adding at the end the following:

‘‘§ 312. Alternative timing system

‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—Subject to the availability of appropriations,

the Secretary of Transportation shall provide for the establishment,

sustainment, and operation of a land-based, resilient, and reliable

alternative timing system—

‘‘(1) to reduce critical dependencies and provide a complement to and backup for the timing component of the Global

Positioning System (referred to in this section as ‘GPS’); and

‘‘(2) to ensure the availability of uncorrupted and nondegraded timing signals for military and civilian users in the

event that GPS timing signals are corrupted, degraded, unreliable, or otherwise unavailable.

‘‘(b) ESTABLISHMENT OF REQUIREMENTS.—

‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—Not later than 180 days after the date

of enactment of the National Timing Resilience and Security

Act of 2018, the Secretary of Transportation shall establish

requirements for the procurement of the system required by

subsection (a) as a complement to and backup for the timing

component of GPS in accordance with the timing requirements

study required by section 1618 of the National Defense

Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 (Public Law 114–328;

130 Stat. 2595).

‘‘(2) REQUIREMENTS.—The Secretary of Transportation shall

ensure, to the maximum extent practicable, that the system

established under subsection (a) will—

‘‘(A) be wireless;

‘‘(B) be terrestrial;

‘‘© provide wide-area coverage;

‘‘(D) be synchronized with coordinated universal time;

‘‘(E) be resilient and extremely difficult to disrupt or

degrade;

‘‘(F) be able to penetrate underground and inside

buildings;

‘‘(G) be capable of deployment to remote locations;

‘‘(H) be developed, constructed, and operated incorporating applicable private sector expertise;

‘‘(I) work in concert with and complement any other

similar positioning, navigation, and timing systems,

including enhanced long-range navigation systems and

Nationwide Differential GPS systems;

‘‘(J) be available for use by Federal and non-Federal

government agencies for public purposes at no net cost

to the Federal Government within 10 years of initiation

of operation;

‘‘(K) be capable of adaptation and expansion to provide

position and navigation capabilities;

 

 

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Hayrake is fun to use in IL-2 1946. It's both a simple system but requires good awareness. It has 12 primary sectors but since the signal strength falls off and sectors bleed into each other you can often tell if you are on the middle, early boundary, or late boundary of the sectors. This effectively doubles the precision of the system. If you have really good ears you can get even better precision than that by judging the relative volumes of the sector overlap signals.

 

The signal was semi-secure in that the appropriate equipment on board could decode the signal but of course direction finding to the source was still theoretically possible. IJN did have the kind of signal analysis prowess to figure out such a system. The primary security was that the system was LOS only and would require an airborne receiver to be intercepted. For extra security the system could be turned on briefly at scheduled rendezvous times to limit the time spent transmitting.


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  • 3 weeks later...

My dad always said his navigator couldn't find his (BUTT) with both hands. The only reason they made it from Oahu to Tarawa was the lead aircraft had a navigator who could navigate. For the long haul flights it was mid-Pacific windage, with a little radio direction at the far end if you were good enough to get there.

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  • 3 months later...

I served my apprenticeship with Decca Navigation and Decca Radar Ltd installing and servicing Decca Navigators and Radars.

The Decca Navigation Chain was first set up in WW2 and was used for the D-Day Landings in Normandy to give a precision navigation ability to ships to clear the minefields 

The Decca system was also used on aircraft with a moving map display but that was in 1949.

 

Decca Navigator System - Wikipedia

 

Decca for aircraft:

Decca Navigator - Airborne Receivers and Indicators (jproc.ca)

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