We have a mock up of a heavy bomber's cockpit in building 2. One of the things that the school children find unbelievable is all the equipment that a navigator would have to use to work out the plane's position. No Sat Navs,no GPS, no computer, just the ability to work out the position by using a map, a compass and at times intuition. To qualify as a navigator in WWII there were 500 hours ground instruction and 100 hours air training. The final qualification test was to plot a route with no more than 11 degrees of error and less than 1 minute off per hour of flight time. At night they had to reach within 15 miles of a target. There were radio beacons to assist the navigator on the homeward flight. GEE was a radio navigation system that came into service with Bomber Command in 1942. It measured the time delay between 2 radio signals to produce a fix with an accuracy of around a few hundred metres. Our mock up shows a Flt Sgt working as the wireless operator. Again th...
