Ships Must Practice Celestial Navigation

In February 2022, the USS Essex sailed from Hawaii to California using only celestial navigation methods. Bill Bray interviews Walter O’Donnell and Caroline Stanton Chlaupek, the navigation team that tested their own proof-of-concept for navigating with a total loss of integrated electronic navigation equipment.
To read the article, visit: www.usni.org/m...

[@maxwaller8344]

*¡celestial navigation should had NEVER been stopped!*

[@oceanmariner]

I served on destroyers and riverine boats in the 1960s as a QM. Stars, planet, sun, moon shots went on every day when the sky was clear. We had no GPS although there were rumors that carriers and nuclear subs has something like GPS. In some of the North Pacific there was loran that was more accurate than celestial shots. I did some commercial courses and a couple ships sent me to advanced navigation schools. After my time in the navy I went into commercial shipping and later commercial fishing. On my fishing boat I had a loran A set from a WWII bomber. Learning celestial, etc., really paid off for me. I still shoot stars to keep in practice. I also use a sextant for bearings with a 3 arm protractor. It's more accurate than compass bearings and 10x better than plotting using relative bearings. Like during refresher training when the inspector shuts off the gyro compass repeaters. I've been a commercial captain for about 50 years and have my own ship. The only USN ship that had a proficient navigator was one where the XO was the navigator and a grad of a maritime academy. The others had no real experience in celestial and learned on the job. There was no electronic charts or plotting. As everyone should know, the first day of a major war will have the enemy trying to shut off GPS.

[@StevenPalmer-cs5ix]

I enjoyed reading that the co-authors went the extra mile to get their unlimited 2nd mate and 1600 ton master's licenses. This brings back memories of going Beaumont, TX to Dammam, Saudi Arabia to Tacoma, WA on the S/S Nancy Lykes ship with the old Transit SATNAV, a banged up sextant and two "Helen Keller" radars. The radars were not state of the art when the ship was built in 1961. It was quite a fun 6 months on that ship.

[@ericmccarty2369]

Good point!

[@mrfarenheit9159]

What is the accuracy and reliability of inertial navigation? That should be the primary redundant system if electronic systems are destroyed, spoofed, or hacked. When I took my celestial nav class back in the 80’s, I remember on the best case you could locate yourself in a triangle 7ish NM on the edge, which is easily bested by inertial.