A Celestial Navigation Trainer is a device designed to train pilots in celestial navigation, the technique of position fixing by reference to the positions of stars and other bodies in the sky.
Early Celestial Navigation Trainers
The Link Celestial Navigation Trainer, 1941
The Link Celestial Navigation Trainer of the Second World War was an early Celestial Navigation Trainer.
Housed in a 45-feet high building it featured a cockpit which accommodated a whole bomber crew (pilot, navigator and bomber). The cockpit offered a full array of instruments which the pilot used to fly the simulated aeroplane. Fixed to a dome above the cockpit was an arrangement of lights, some collimated, simulating constellations from which the navigator determined the plane's position. The dome's movement simulated the changing positions of the stars with the passage of time and the movement of the plane around the earth. The navigator also received simulated radio signals from various positions on the ground.
Below the cockpit moved "terrain plates" - large, movable aerial photographs of the land below, which gave the crew the impression of flight and enabled the bomber to practise lining up bombing targets.
A team of operators sat at a control booth on the ground below the machine, from which they could simulate weather conditions such as wind or cloud. This team also tracked the aeroplane's position by moving a "crab" (a marker) on a paper map.
The Link Celestial Navigation Trainer was developed in response to a request made by the British Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1939. The RAF ordered 60 of these machines, and the first one was built in 1941. The RAF used only a few of these, leasing the rest back to the USA, where hundreds of Link Celestial Navigation Trainers were in use.
Sources
"World War II." A Brief History of Aircraft Flight Simulation. Accessed on January 27, 2005.