Talk Morgan Forums Thread Like Summary - Remembering 06/06/1944

As the date approaches and all the local and International events are gathering pace I am reminded to drag this out from my files from back in the day when I joined the then Decca Navigator Co back in 1969.
A great firm to work for too for most of my career with just the best colleagues and bosses imaginable 32 years of free global travel and fun, I was truly blessed and thank the boys on this date for giving so much freedom for us all to enjoy 80 years ago

My career was in Marine Seismic Exploration, used to use the Racal Pulse 8 station nav chain off Malasia for long range navigation, ARGO ( Automatic Ranging Grid Overlay ) was used in the Arctic, the medium range radio nav was Hyfix and Hyfix-6 and Maxiran.. I can well remember the joys of checking calibration by cutting baselines and undertaking calibration 3 way fix's.. Then along came GPS, our parent company was Texas Instruments who was one of the US electronic contractors asked by the US Gov to develop the system.. the first reciever onboard we used was about 2ft by 2ft in size with a large calculator size hand set to interface to it.. Because we were involved in surveys all over the globe and many miles from land we were ideal test guinea pigs for GPS.. The early initial system used 3 SV's ( space vehicles ) and what was known at the time as an atomic clock ( now known as a cesium standard ) onboard, ohh the joy when we could lock onto 3 sats for an hour and navigate using GPS before going back onto long range radio nav. The only hiccup was that the military used to muck around with the positions of the SV's, so I had a direct tel number to white sands missile base to call via our Marisat system to check that they were not fine tuning and changing the SV orbits..
GPS nav then changed everything offshore and made life a lot easier to navigate, until they changed the quality of the position fix in the Gulf war, to obtain our degree of navigation precision, we then used a system called differential GPS, which was a mix of GPS positioning integrated with radio navigation from known positions of land based radio stations.. Those were the days..

Happy days indeed Richard, I started in 1977 all our onboard electronics were supplied by Texas Instruments, the main survey navigation computer was from an American battle tank ( ruggedly built ) from memory it was a version of a TI 980 series.. The land radio base stations were set up normally a few months before we arrived for each survey, each located in position using a refined scatterplot of position from many passes of transit satellite positioning, I cant remember the reciever model for the transit sat, but I know it was a Magnavox. The best base station I visited during this era was off the West coats of India, they had positioned it on the seashore right slap in the middle of Boliwood above Bombay where all the indian movies were made, it was something else to visit, as you never knew what you would see on each visit..
I have some photos of the early survey ships with their rigged texas towers and manual tracking antennas, we looked like spy ships..

For me too but that is why we must remember the sacrifices that were made at the time to ensure we don't don't suffer as the Ukraine and Palestinian folk are at this present time .

Yet all we get now is some unfounded fuzzy bleating about the re-introduction of conscription, which actually might be just 12 days of community service. Hang on I need to check with the Pravda Officer.

I have often seen those diagrams of the evolution of mankind, with due respect to those who are religious and believe it just sort of happened, so we'll go with aliens in that case. Going forwards we will have tiny bodies with extended digits for pushing buttons and swiping screens. I think they totally miss the obvious. There will be the IT driven morph but there will also be a second one with no spine that got developed through the refinement of politics. This squid like object will be able to change at random, shape, size, colour, smell, opinion, position, belief and anything you think might bring one more vote. It will however be totally dependant on anything and everything around it to sustain it's life.

Making a difference can result in pride and dedication, but you can't blog that, it's not clickable.

Sorry cynical mode on at the moment.

Richard, when I started in Aviation early seventies. Several of the Carvairs (ATL98) a converted DC4 had Decca navigators fitted. Great bit of kit although a bit large. Much better than Consul or Loran in my opinion.

Richard; that is indeed a valued memento and goes to show how many pieces there were in the tapestry of Operation Overlord to make it successful.

I had the system on my first sailing yacht a 1991 Moody 35. That and radar got us around Portland Bill approaching midnight in very thick summer fog and a foul tide. The loom of lighthouse and sound of foghorn left the impression we could almost have touched it.

Fascinating to read the history of the system, when I started sailing offshore we were shown the first Walker satnavs which the navigators eyed very suspiciously , I do remember using an RDF handheld though. Then in 99 sailing up to the Pacific all three of us on board had our own GPS units -and plotted our way on Admiralty charts comparing the results, such a huge change in a few short years.

That's interesting work to do too, several of my colleagues defected to Decca Survey to work with Hifix and Pulse 8 at the time.

I did some time aboard the H class RN vessels running the Master Stations of our LAMBDA (Low Ambiguity Decca) system so you were always working on the base line with minimal errors in daylight hours. We calibrated the system using Tellurometers back them (before GPS). I remember well calibrating in allowances for wave front tilt as a function of the changing tides

The function was to enable the RN to sound and plot their charts for the Hydrographic Office charts who are in your neck of the woods.
All good clean fun and visited some very interesting places, this would have been just prior to Hyfix as it and Pulse 8 superceded Lambda.

They utilised some of our old masts to set up their Differential landbased Tx.

Happy days.

That's really interesting Auster, have a great reunion with fair weather for the memorial weekend.

Here is a first hand experience of navigating through the mine fields on D day.

A little more background.

And a glimpse at the Future of global navigation with MagNav..

Richard and Dave these are fascinating reminiscences. I'm familiar with the terminology but only vaguely familiar with the workings of Decca, Loran and the offshoots so to hear from those who contributed to the advances is enlightening. .

Re the original thread, June 6th. Allow me to put in a mention of the Auster pilots who'll be gathering at Falaise in Normandy between 5th and 7th June to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Up to 20 Austers, some of them Normandy veterans, will be flying across the channel in the days ahead of the 6th and will be at Falaise aerodrome for a few days. Falaise aeroclub is hosting us and on the 6th there'll be much fraternising between us and the locals. Quite a few historic Normandy vehicles, jeeps etc, will be there also.

Wish us good weather and drop in if you're in the neighbourhood.

For me D-Day has also some very sad aspects: The many allied soldiers who died on the beaches...

I can only agree that it is incredibly sad; the loss of life, the terrible toll on soldiers and civilians. I can only hope that by remembering those events, and thinking about the origins of the conflict, that we learn to avoid such tragedy in the future. My friends here in Europe all seem to agree that this should never happen again.

I did my commercial flight training at Exeter, my trainer was an ex Spitfire pilot. I didn't realise the history of the airfield.

A piece of local history I have only just discovered relating to D Day





Parachutes on D-Day

The USAAF used Exeter alongside the RAF, with two squadrons of P-38s in October 1942 for operations over France. In April 1944, the RAF units were withdrawn and the airfield taken over by the US 9th Air Force as Station 463.

On the 18th April the 440th Troop Carrier Group flying seventy C-47As and seventy CG-4 gliders, with other types, arrived in preparation for D-Day. The group comprising the 95th, 96th, 97th and 98th Squadrons had so many aircraft that many had to be parked on the grass as there was insufficient hard standing. The Third Battalion 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment Screaming Eagles arrived in Exeter from Hungerford by train on 27th May and briefing for Operation Neptune, as D-day was coded commenced on 29th May. The battalion was on standby to depart on the 4th June but bad weather in the Channel postponed the operation until the 6th June. On 5th June the US Army Signal Corp photographed troops of the Battalion preparing to embark, each man loaded down with kit that weighed as much as himself. At 22.30 the battalionenplaned and the first aircraft took off at 23.20.

After take off, the four squadrons, totalling 45 aircraft, and codenamed Serial 10 carrying 723 men and 2 platoons from C/326th Airborne Engineers also of the 101st Airborne headed for the assembly area at Portland, in poor weather, before joining aircraft from other southern airfields for the journey across the Channel. The unit lost three C-47s dropping the paratroopers over Carentan in the early morning of the 6th June. On the next day they continued flying parapacks, fuel and ammunition to the landing area of Normandy, losing two more aircraft, for which they received the Distinguished Unit Commendation. They lost a third aircraft that day, when it was hit by a stray bomb from a higher flying P47 Thunderbolt.

The unit moved to Rheims in France in September and the RAF returned to Exeter, but in smaller numbers than formerly. As the Allies fought their way across France and Belgium to the German border, the need for defensive units lessoned and the airport transferred to 23 Group of Training Command in January 1945. No 3 Glider Training School relocated to Exeter where glider-tugs and gliders also used Culmhead airfield as a landing ground.

Ouistreham re enactment over the weekend with English parachutists in 40's gear.

When doing Royal Marines Commando training we had to do beach assaults from landing craft the same as used on D Day. You feel so vulnerable in the wood and steel craft bouncing and rolling through waves with splashes of water coming over the sides not being able to see where you are going, then the order "Prepare to Beach" followed by the command "Down Ramp Out Troops" and there you are wading and running for your life totally exposed. I can only just begin to imagine the fear those young men felt amongst the chaos of battle with only one way to go. Total respect and admiration, as we say "Until we meet at the Final RV".

Richard thanks for that picture. That is a modern LC Vehicle they are disembarking from here is a picture of my Troop in a good old LC Personnel back in the 70s.

To be fair Rich, they would have needed their passports before Brexit as we weren't in the Schengen zone ... just a bit of stirring on the part of the journalists not to point that out.

K