"A Wing And A Prayer" thoughts

[B29WereWolf]

Currently reading "A Wing And A Prayer" by Harry Crosby, who was a B-17 navigator. I can't put the book down, I read about 70 pages of it today. It got me thinking, and wanting to know, about the navigators. My great uncle was a navigator, but he was KIA. What was navigator training like, what did they go through to earn their wings? I'm very much intrigued by it.

 

[fubar57]

Maybe this might be of help. Written by a navigator

Introduction
In August 1940 a group of young men from all parts of the United States converged upon
Coral Gables, Florida, to become cadets in a military navigation training program. Raised as
children of the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s, what they wanted more than anything
else in life was to fly airplanes. They had all volunteered for the US Army Air Corps with hopes
for becoming pilots, but the Air Corps had other ideas. They would become navigators on the
world's finest bomber, the B-1 7 Flying Fortress.
The cadets did not think of themselves as warriors. None of them had ever seen a Flying
Fortress. They were civilians who wanted to fly and joining the Air Corps was a means to that
end. The thought of flying where man had never flown before or of bombing cities all around the
world was farthest from their minds as they struggled with the intricacies of celestial navigation.
On Celestial Wings tells of the development of the first program to mass produce celestial
navigators as America geared up for entry into WWII. It also tells of heartrending tragedies
resulting from America's lack of preparedness for war and the fight against overwhelming odds
in experiences of members of the US Army Air Corps Navigation School class of 40-A. It tells
of their honors and victories and their disappointments and bitter defeats in a war unlike any that
will ever occur again.

 

[fubar57]

Another one here.... WWII Air Navigation manual