[ARC5] Navy Compass on P-38 Flight

[Robert Eleazer]

We had a short discussion on one of the aircraft forums on the subject of the "Navy Compass" used in the lead P-38 for the Yamamoto intercept mission.   I had always assumed it as simply a big, large diameter magnetic compass out of a Navy aircraft or even a ship.

But the Navy Compass is described as being mounted on the floor of the cockpit.  Having had some experience with large errors in the magnetic compass on my own airplane I realized that it could not have been a magnetic compass.  It must have been a flux gate compass, with the sensor unit likely located out in the wing.  A magnetic compass would never have worked on the floor of a P-38, with all that steel and those electrical currents around.

The P-38 mission involved flying at low altitudes most of the way to the intercept point so to avoid detection.  That would make navigation very difficult over the Pacific, but they hit the intercept point exactly.    

Wayne