Navigation school

Heroes Remember

Navigation school

Transcript

I ended up taking my nav training in St. John’s, Quebec and that was just an opening school too, even though the war had been on for two or three years, nothing was permanent residence, permanent places or anything like that but nav school consisted of a lot of ground training, and maybe 100 hours of flying training. That was our first experience in flying training. And we had Anson aircrafts then which was twin engine airplanes and so we did about 100 hours of flying, both day and night on cross country trips from St. Johns up to Ottawa and around down the St. Lawrence and back to Montreal, and down the other way, down to the American border then through Maygog and the lakes down there and those kind of routes. And we were navigating, you know, they’d give you a lot of ground work training, how to land, draw tracks on locator maps and read compasses and read altimeters and there was meteorology training and also you knew what the weather was going to be and you know a whole bunch of, five or six different subjects that they taught us. And flying at night, from St. John’s to Ottawa, they could see the lights of both towns, you know, so how much we were doing navigating, they were aiming for the lights, I’m not really sure!!

Description

Mr. Bower-Binns describes his experiences at Navigation school.

John Bower-Binns

John Bower-Binns was born in Ottawa, Ontario. One of two children, he was born on March 7, 1921. He had two uncles in the Royal Air Force, inspiring him to build model aeroplanes. There being a six month waiting list for naval enlistment, Mr. Bower-Binns opted for the Air Force. After being screened out of the pilot queue, he became a navigator. After crewing up in England, he flew many bombing missions, including one to Berlin. Mr. Bower-Binns was fortunate to fly with the same crew during his entire tour of duty. A recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross, he achieved the rank of Flight-Lieutenant during his Second World War service.

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