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AËRIAL NAVIGATION. By Lieutenant Commander P. V. H. Weems, U. S. Navy. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co. 1931. $5.00.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander D. C. Ramsey, U. S. Navy.
Lieutenant Commander Weems’s latest contribution to the art of aviation appears at a timely moment. While knowledge is fresh in mind of the splendid achievement of Post and Gatty in flying around the world in less than nine days it is appropriate that an appraisal should be made of the various factors which entered into the problems of that flight. An analysis clearly shows the outstanding importance of accurate navigation. Although the sustained courage and endurance of the airmen and the superb performance of their plane and engine marked the effort as one deserving of success, slipshod methods of position keeping and uncertain landfalls easily might have brought on failure or even disaster on any of the long legs of the flight. There is a great lesson in the Post-Gatty achievement to all aerial navigators of the future.
It is only fair to the author of this book that publicity should be given the fact that the navigator of the Winnie Mae was one of his pupils and a disciple of the Weems systems of determining position from aircraft. The public acknowledgments made by Mr. Gatty of the author’s contribution to this flight cannot fail to inspire interest and enhance confidence in a work which already carries with it the prestige of Lieutenant Commander Weems’s reputation as an authority in the field of aerial navigation.
It will be obvious to the reader that this book represents years of labor. No effort has been spared to make it complete, comprehensive, and up to date in every detail.
The efficacy of the author’s systems of aerial position finding is not unduly stressed. The aim has been, rather, to examine all approved methods and to point out the conditions and circumstances under which any particular system might be used to the best advantage.
One point emphasized by the author is the popular but fallacious idea that the establishment of position in flight by observation of heavenly bodies calls for tedious and involved computations. Here, he aptly and conclusively shows that when flying under normal conditions of visibility, over strange terrain or over the open sea, the processes of position keeping by dead reckoning alone are more tedious, complicated, and liable to error than position fixing by astronomical observations. This assumes, of course, that the aerial navigator is equipped with the necessary instruments, tables, and accessories and a working knowledge of the simple short cut systems of astronomical triangle solution described in the text.
Interesting and illuminating portions of Lieutenant Commander Weems’s book are given over to the treatment of instrument flying and the practical use of the radio direction finder. Here the reader is introduced to the most serious problem of aerial navigation; the problem of holding course and maintaining the ship on an even keel when all outside points of reference are obscured. While the author of this review shares with the author of the book the belief that flying under such circumstances should be avoided whenever it is possible to do so, he shares, likewise, the opinion that judicious choice and use of equipment combined with the experience resulting from a self-imposed progressive course in “blind flight” training should carry a pilot through all but the very worst flying conditions.
Two chapters in the latter part of Aërial Navigation deal with theoretical and applied aerology. In the selection of material for his text in this section the author has been careful to maintain balance in his work but, at the same time, has set forth the essential fundamentals of the science and the art of forecasting weather. Too much importance cannot be attached to the ability of the long distance or over-seas flyer to interpret correctly the significance of sudden shifts of wind and to seek the altitudes and zones where drift components favor the flight. Frequently he will be thrown on his own resources in this matter. Under these conditions there can be no substitute for a well-founded knowledge and understanding of the elements.
In the final chapter of the book, the author projects us into the future. We embark in a tri-motored plane at Chicago and take off on a regularly scheduled round-the-world flight. The logical route is easterly; the planned circumnavigation to be accomplished in flights of approximately seventeen hours duration. The assumed cruising speed of our plane in still air is 100 knots. The equipment carried includes instruments, tables, and paraphernalia needed to establish position by radio direction finder, astronomical observation, and dead reckoning. As the time of take-off is set we can accomplish much of our navigational work in advance. This has been done in the hope that the celestial bodies selected for observation will be in sight at the times for which our preliminary calculations have been made. Chances of this are always favorable. There is nothing lost in any case. A final survey of the weather map and we are off, holding the line of the Chicago radio beacon for the first 200 miles and when this fades out beginning our navigation work in earnest. There is low fog so we seek the higher altitudes and are rewarded by a sight of our selected stars. A fix, checked by a meridian altitude of the moon and our dead reckoning begins anew. The fog lifts. We drop to 1,000 feet and establish another fix by piloting. Davis Strait looms up; we are on time, but the wind strengthens and is setting us to the south. Two drift sights as we leave the coast and proper allowance
for the wind is made in shaping the new compass course—an additional check on the drift by sun line as we cross the strait. Frederikshaab, on schedule, and the first leg of our journey is over.
It is regretted that the apportioned scope of this review does not permit more detailed treatment of Aërial Navigation. Only by reading it from cover to cover can it be appreciated. It reflects throughout the patience, enthusiasm, and tireless energy of the author who has given us an excellent work; an outstanding contribution to the library of aviation literature.
AËRIAL AND MARINE NAVIGATION TABLES. By Lieutenant John E. Gingrich, U. S. Navy, New York: McGraw- Hill Book Company, Inc., $2.50.
Reviewed by Commander G. T. Rude, U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.
(Author: Rude Star Finder and Identifier)
The requirements of the aërial navigator for simple, compact tables for celo-navigation have resulted in marked improvements in the methods and data furnished the marine navigator. The latter was once content with bulky tables and time-consuming methods. Not so the modern navigator. He now requires, as does his brother of the air, tables which combine accuracy, simplicity, and facility of use. The rearrangement, in recent years, of the tables of Doctor Ogura of the Japanese Navy by several American navigator-authors has resulted in the development of compact tables by the use of which the same plan can be followed in the solution of all sights and with an accuracy comparable with the older and more cumbersome methods. Lieutenant Gingrich’s Aërial and Marine Navigation Tables consist of a rearrangement of those of Doctor Ogura and others. Their essential difference from the Line of Position Book by Lieutenant Commander P. V. H. Weems, U. S. Navy, is that azimuth diagrams are used by Commander Weems in his book whereas in Lieutenant Gingrich’s tables the azimuth is calculated by a table similar to Lecky’s “A B C Tables.” Little extra work is required in obtaining from the tables the values for obtaining the azimuth. Personally, the present reviewer prefers the tables; others, no doubt, prefer the diagrams. About the same time is required in either case.
In addition to the altitude and azimuth tables, the book contains the following useful tables: Conversion of time into arc and the reverse; correction to observed altitude of sun’s lower limb; correction to observed altitude of star or planet; speed-time-distance, and total correction to the observed altitude of the moon’s lower limb.
The first few pages are devoted to a brief but clear description of the method of solution, with examples of sun and star sights, followed by an explanation of the tables; that is, the formulas used.
Page 7 of this publication contains a description and example of the use of the tables for determining the great circle course and distance similar to the solution of the same problem by use of cosine-haversine formula of the Marcq Saint-Hilaire method. The method is simple and the explanation furnished by Lieutenant Gingrich is clear and concise.
While the publication consists principally of a rearrangement of tables already extant, it will prove of assistance to the aerial and marine navigator. Its format is excellent and it is printed in a bold-face Roman type quite easy on the eyes, except possibly that the type is a little heavy for the compactness of Table B.
NAVAL OPERATIONS, Vol. V: 1917 to the Armistice. By Sir Henry Newbolt. London: Longmans, Green & Company. With accompanying volume of maps. 1931. $12.50.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander T. L. Gatch, U. S. Navy
This is the concluding volume of the official history of the World War, prepared by direction of the historical section of the Committee of Imperial Defence of Great Britain. The first three volumes of the work were written by the late Sir Julian Corbett, the eminent naval writer, and his volumes have been well sustained. This final volume is of course vitally interesting to an American; for no matter how inconspicuous a part a reader may have played, the history of events in which he was concerned is engrossing.
This history is almost purely factual, and that is one of its outstanding merits; for not until another generation studies the last war can any other kind of history well be written. A later historian will necessarily depend largely upon the work of Corbett and Newbolt, and the advantage that the start can be made here instead of going back to the original sources is incalculable. The magnitude of the labor entailed is adumbrated in the preface of this volume:
By the beginning of 1917 about a thousand telegrams dealing with events in Home Waters alone were being sent and received by the Admiralty in every period of three days. That is to say, that for the events of a single year in a single field of action the historian and his staff must consult 120,000 telegrams and make careful notes upon them.
And telegrams are the smallest part of the records. The reader is impressed more and more as he reads this volume that insofar as the British sources can provide everything is published.
By the end of April, 1917, there was no possible doubt in the mind of anyone conversant with things that the German submarine campaign was going to win the war for Germany, and that in not much longer than the six months the war lords had promised. Hindsight is so sure—hence the jibes of the amateur strategists who always know so much, but always afterwards. Of course the convoy system was the answer; it should have been instituted at the outset; then the Allies would have been spared the darkest days of the war. But in April, 1917, no one knew that, not even the amateurs. The institution of a convoy system had been under serious consideration for a long time. It was not until April 26 that the Admiralty consented to try it, and then it seemed almost a policy of desperation. Something had to be done, what else was there to try? On the face of the theoretical discussion it is impossible to see why the convoy system should have been such a success. What better could a submarine commander ask than to come up in the middle of a helpless unwieldy convoy, each ship afraid to shoot for fear of her consorts, a few destroyers around the edge unable to get in because of the scattering merchantmen? The U-boats had proved that they could go under closely patrolled barrages with considerable impunity. Why would they not go under an escort into a convoy? The greatest real reason for the success of the convoy system, as events were to prove, was the power of evasion a convoy had. By careful continuous plotting of submarine positions, by careful frequently changed routings, convoy after convoy was run through without a U-boat getting a chance at it. The author points out that this power of evasion was not seriously advanced as an argument by any of the proponents of the convoy system. When Admiral Sims arrived in London the Admiralty was still opposed to the convoy; Admiral Sims immediately fell in with their views and so informed Washington. Apparently Washington was in accord with this opinion; for when the Admiralty changed, two or three weeks later, the United States could not keep up.
In their opinion, transmitted by cable to the Admiralty, defensively armed vessels were safer than vessels under convoy; and early in May, when the Navy Department at Washington was asked to assemble a convoy of from sixteen to twenty Allied vessels, and to send them across to England under the escort of a group of American destroyers which were then about to leave, they answered that they considered the ships to be escorted were too numerous and that they ought only to sail in groups of four. The proposal was, therefore, not pressed, the destroyers sailed by themselves, and the merchant ships crossed singly without escort.
Providence was allied with the Allies. One of the practical objections to the convoy system was that sufficient escorting vessels could not be found without dangerously weakening the screen of the Grand Fleet. Then the United States entered the war and our destroyers, a drop in the bucket, were just sufficient to eke out those that the British could detail to escort duty, and so make it possible to put the system in effect both to the northward and southward of Ireland. Later in the Mediterranean, when the sinkings became dangerously numerous there, our old coal burners and patrol craft made just enough to allow the Mediterranean convoys. Moreover, the entry of the United States into the war made it possible to effectuate the scheme of Sir Leo Chiozza Money to draw supplies from Canada and the United States as far as practicable, and thus have the bulk of the shipping on the shortest and safest routes.
Economics is not very exciting. The entire submarine effort was economic warfare. On either side there were brave men a-plenty, doing their prescribed work well; and yet there were no inspiring events, no pulse-quickening names, produced in the whole long grueling campaign. The antisubmarine forces finally won:
Never in the history of warfare has a great victory been reported with so little clamour and emotion. The figures of shipping losses which recorded the achievement were printed in a few statistical returns; those returns were circulated to the persons who were entitled to read them, and that was all. The reason is that nobody could say that the victory was won on a particular day or that it was connected with a particular event in the daily succession of events at sea. There is nothing by which to remember it. It was, moreover, the outcome of a vast composite exertion, in which the Allied admirals . . . the officers of the subordinate committees, and the officers and men at sea conjointly contributed. No single individual had a right to say quorum pars magna fui and none claimed the right. The splendour of the achievement cast an equal lustre upon all. This dateless victory at sea was decisive according to the strictest definitions of decisive victory.
One must turn to the so-called "side shows” of this last year and a half of the war at sea for thrilling action. The valiant fighters of the Revolution and of 1812 sent their spiritual descendants to the mole at Zeebrugge. The forthright account of the night at Zeebrugge in this book is one of the most stimulating pieces of writing that will be found in many a day; the facts speak for themselves. Another time we see Lieutenant Commander Fox in the ill- starred Mary Rose driving to within 2,000 yards of the cruisers that were raiding the Scandinavian convoy. A foolhardy thing for Fox to do. Yes, almost as foolhardy as Commander Rizzo’s attacking a battleship with a motor boat—except for the result. For that matter, it was almost as foolhardy as a cruise one John Paul Jones once made in an ill-found Indiaman around the British Isles. Such fools are loved.
On July 19, 1917, the crew of the Prim Regent Luitpold became openly disobedient. For the next month conditions in the German Navy were bad. The Germans were spending most of the time in port, and were living, compared to the British, an easy life. It was the old story; a fleet that stays in port rots. Thereafter conditions improved for a time, but at the end the German fleet steamed down a long double line of Allied ships to Scapa Flow. “The commander in chief . . . regarded the whole matter as an act of administration which was hardly worth describing.” In that spirit this fine book is written; heroics are eschewed.