Real WWII Nav Accuracy

Lanzfeld · 12-23-08, 05:36 PM

I am playing around with doing real navigation and, for me, the best realism comes from not having my sub displayed on the map and use dead reckoning to navigate. When I have a clear day at sunrise or sunset I allow my nav to get a sextant shot to update my position. I used to do this by zooming in and "control-left-click" (CLC) to get a fix but this was too accurate for me. So what I am toying with now is not using the CLC meathod but I zoom wayyyyyy out to the 1000 km or the 2500 km map (the scale in the lower left corner) and have enabled my sub icon to be visible there. I click on my icon as best I can and then zoom in so the sub icon goes away again. Obviously I lose some accuracy but that is the intent!!! The farther out I zoom to mark my sub icon the less accurate my fix is. I have been testing this and immediatly zooming close in to CLC and see how accurate I was. Sometimes I am 6km off, other times I get it down to 1km. It really depends on my zoom when I do the marking plus some slop. Sounds real to me!

What I wonder is how close to real position could an average german navigator be with his sextant? This will give me a good idea what zoom to stick with so my error will be close to what real errors were. With a good sunrise, were they accurate to 1km or were they lucky to be within 20km ??? Anyone know this??? Anyone with sextant experience?

12-23-08, 05:36 PM	#1
Lanzfeld Grey Wolf Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: New Tripoli, PA Posts: 994 Downloads: 64 Uploads: 0	Real WWII Nav Accuracy I am playing around with doing real navigation and, for me, the best realism comes from not having my sub displayed on the map and use dead reckoning to navigate. When I have a clear day at sunrise or sunset I allow my nav to get a sextant shot to update my position. I used to do this by zooming in and "control-left-click" (CLC) to get a fix but this was too accurate for me. So what I am toying with now is not using the CLC meathod but I zoom wayyyyyy out to the 1000 km or the 2500 km map (the scale in the lower left corner) and have enabled my sub icon to be visible there. I click on my icon as best I can and then zoom in so the sub icon goes away again. Obviously I lose some accuracy but that is the intent!!! The farther out I zoom to mark my sub icon the less accurate my fix is. I have been testing this and immediatly zooming close in to CLC and see how accurate I was. Sometimes I am 6km off, other times I get it down to 1km. It really depends on my zoom when I do the marking plus some slop. Sounds real to me! What I wonder is how close to real position could an average german navigator be with his sextant? This will give me a good idea what zoom to stick with so my error will be close to what real errors were. With a good sunrise, were they accurate to 1km or were they lucky to be within 20km ??? Anyone know this??? Anyone with sextant experience?