B-17 Flying Fortress Crew Positions
The ten men who made up the crew of a B-17 Flying Fortress were each specially trained for their position. Most were unaware of the death and destruction they would soon be facing as they flew their Fortresses into combat.
Click on each of the crew positions on the B-17G Flying Fortress to learn more about their duties.
Navigator:
Navigator's duties and responsibilities on B-17 Flying Fortress
Air navigation is simply defined as determining the position of an aircraft in relation to the earth. A task far from simple in practice, navigation is a highly exacting art demanding a quick mind and a knowledge of mathematical calculations. A navigator had to know the position of his aircraft at all times, even when guided by a formation-for in war, situations could change rapidly and a crew couldn’t afford not to know where they were over enemy territory. Navigation was the key to avoiding heavily defended areas, reaching the target and returning to base; the pilots flew the plane, but the navigator supplied the course they must fly. Navigation could be by pilotage (visual reference to the ground), dead reckoning (using true airspeed, winds aloft, heading and time to calculate new position from last known), radio, celestial, or any combination of these four.
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| Under attack the navigator manned the cheek guns |
The navigator’s table was fixed at the rear of the nose compartment, against the left side, behind the bombardier’s station. Above the table were mounted two vital instruments: the gyro- magnetic compass and to its right, the radio compass. The radio compass was linked to a rotating loop antenna inside a tear-shaped housing located just forward of the bomb bay and to a fixed sense antenna, slung along the bottom of the nose. The signal received by these atennas was presented visually on the compass face as a relative bearing to a radio station. On the opposite side from the table was the drift meter. This was used to determine the angle between the heading of the aircraft and its track over the ground. The amount of drift was essential in the calculation of the winds aloft element of dead reckoning.
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| A navigator in training computes time and distance to an assigned check-point |
Throughout the mission the navigator would inform the pilot of their position and time estimates to various check points. When the initial point was reached for the bomb run the navigator would then inform the pilot.
The navigator operated the two cheek guns in the nose when not at his regular duties.
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| Landmarks seen by the navigator through the side windows could confirm the plane’s position |
