Celestial Navigation - Celestial Navigation Trainer

Celestial Navigation Trainer

Celestial navigation trainers combine a simple flight simulator with a planetarium in order to train aircraft crews in celestial navigation.

An early example is the Link Celestial Navigation Trainer, used in the Second World War. Housed in a 45 feet (14 m) high building, it featured a cockpit which accommodated a whole bomber crew (pilot, navigator and bombardier). The cockpit offered a full array of instruments which the pilot used to fly the simulated aeroplane. Fixed to a dome above the cockpit was an arrangement of lights, some collimated, simulating constellations from which the navigator determined the plane's position. The dome's movement simulated the changing positions of the stars with the passage of time and the movement of the plane around the earth. The navigator also received simulated radio signals from various positions on the ground.

Below the cockpit moved "terrain plates" – large, movable aerial photographs of the land below, which gave the crew the impression of flight and enabled the bomber to practise lining up bombing targets.

A team of operators sat at a control booth on the ground below the machine, from which they could simulate weather conditions such as wind or cloud. This team also tracked the aeroplane's position by moving a "crab" (a marker) on a paper map.

The Link Celestial Navigation Trainer was developed in response to a request made by the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1939. The RAF ordered 60 of these machines, and the first one was built in 1941. The RAF used only a few of these, leasing the rest back to the U.S., where eventually hundreds were in use.