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Amelia Earhart Search Forum => General discussion => Topic started by: Ric Gillespie on March 04, 2017, 10:20:10 AM

Title: Manning's instrument
Post by: Ric Gillespie on March 04, 2017, 10:20:10 AM
Can we identify the navigational instrument in these photos? It's apparently the instrument Harry Manning planned to use on the world flight?  The first photo was taken in NY or New Jersey in February 1937.  The second photo was taken in early March 1937 before Noonan joined the team.

From Finding Amelia page 18 and 19:
 
"Fred Noonan, having had a chance to assess the plane’s navigational
equipment, had identified a major deficiency in the flight preparations.
As described in a Time magazine article later that summer, Noonan was
“dismayed that there was nothing with which to take celestial bearings
except an ordinary ship sextant. He remedied that by borrowing a modern
bubble octant designed especially for airplane navigation.”33 Modern bubble
octants were expensive, and Noonan apparently did not own one himself.
It is equally apparent that he was unwilling or unable to borrow one from
his former employer, even though Pan American had a major terminal right
there in Alameda. Harry Manning held a commission in the U.S. Naval
Reserve, so he sent a telegram to the naval air station at San Diego urgently
requesting that a bubble octant be sent via air express to Oakland for use
on Earhart’s transpacific flight. Manning would sign for the instrument.34
At 10:10 the next morning, Wednesday the sixteenth, the naval reserve air
base at the Oakland airport received word that the octant would be on
the United Air Lines flight scheduled to arrive at 2:50 PM."

Is the instrument in the photos the "ordinary ship sextant" referred to in the TIME magazine article?

Title: Re: Manning's instrument
Post by: Martin X. Moleski, SJ on March 04, 2017, 10:49:22 AM
Can we identify the navigational instrument in these photos?

Gary LaPook (http://fer3.com/arc/m2.aspx/Website-with-flight-navigation-resources-LaPook-mar-2010-g12487) identifies it as a Bausch and Lomb A-6 Bubble Sextant (http://amhistory.si.edu/navigation/object.cfm?recordnumber=451564).
Title: Re: Manning's instrument
Post by: Ric Gillespie on March 04, 2017, 11:31:55 AM
"Gary LaPook identifies it as a Bausch and Lomb A-6 Bubble Sextant."

I think Gary is right.  So TIME had it wrong.  Manning did not have a "ship sextant," but Noonan obviously felt that the Bausch & Lomb A-6 was inferior to the Pioneer bubble octant he had Manning borrow from the navy.