Returning Home 2: How Japanese Pilots Navigated Over the Ocean in WWII

Hello aviation fans!
Due to the fact that after I published my last video, many of you asked in the comments section how the Japanese pilots navigated over the Pacific - I decided to create a small supplement. In this material I describe the basic navigation methods used by Japanese pilots and pilots of other countries at a time when radio navigation aids were not available. I hope you enjoy the video and as usual I would appreciate subscriptions, comments and likes. Thank you for your attention and enjoy watching

All 3D animations done in Blender/Autodesk Maya

[neurofiedyamato]

The Japanese radios should be mentioned worked fine in the more Northern parts of the world (ie. home islands). It wasn't like the Japanese gave radios to their aircraft despite the radios not working. It worked and it was standard on all modern Japanese aircraft. There is a reason why the famous "Tora tora tora!" line could be transmitted during the attack on Pearl Harbor. The model 21 radio the A6M used were actually fairly decent but they did not properly shield them from electrical interference.
But in the South Pacific, the Earth's magnetic field was particularly troublesome for HF radios. There was also solar minimum during the time the conflict took place which made the interference even worse. This was not as bad in the Japanese home islands. The conditions in the South Pacific were so bad, the pilots often just removed the radios since it was just dead weight. This was AGAINST regulations but was done regardless.
This affected the US too, but they grounded and shielded their radios so minimized the effects. Nonetheless, the situation in the South pacific is the worst out of all combat theaters and radio range are noticeably shorter there than in Europe even if you used the same radio sets. Early in the war, the combined allied fleets also had communication issues although it is unknown how much can be attributed to the magnetic fields and electrical interference.

[pacificostudios]

My uncle Yukihiko was an IJN pilot who flew to late war Japanese bases around the Pacific. His last post was Taiwan. I've wondered how he could fly a little plane around the Pacific with so few landmarks.

[stormtroopercommander]

Love the current content you're producing! Please keep up the amazing work!!!

[chrislong]

This is an amazing aspect of the intricacies of flying a plane back in the day!
One doesn't really give much thought to these aspects of piloting a fighter at sea!

Similarly, how to adjust fuel mixtures in flight during a dogfight!!!! Yow!!!
Wow!!!

[welshpete]

Very interesting. As someone who navigated yachts at sea, and small planes here in the UK, I found this fascinating !

[Matthews_Resume]

I appreciate you thinking of us. Thank you for answering our question from the American video.

[littlebritain]

According to Saburo Sakai, the japanese air ace, they were trained to recognize stars in daylight. Training was hard and they were often beaten if they didn't accomplish these tasks.

[Rickardsson]

Very cool, no wonder trying to go for an island landing was preferred, this seems like it could easily go wrong.

[hornetscales]

Not even a radio beacon for navigation? That's gutsy. Best I could do for Dead Reckoning is "Reckon I'm lost and be dead when I run out of fuel".

[jakobc.]

Wow this is horrible. So let me get this streight:

- If you can't plot location because of, idk, a prolonged dogfight, you are f***ed.
-If you are inattentive because of sleeplessness or any other factors you are f***ed.
- Japan didn't rescue their pilots so if you ditch nobody is coming to rescue you so you are f***ed.
- If you got rushed threw training (as was the case in late war) and didn't have enough familiarity with these complex navigation systems you are f***ed.
- If your calculations are off by a tiny margine you are f***ed.
- If the carrier has to change heading because it gets attacked or whatever you are f***ed.

Actualy crazy. I am suprised this worked at all.

[ninehundreddollarluxuryyac]

The bubble sextants are cool. I didn't know anything like that existed.

[danielstickney]

Another technique for overwater navigation is plotting your base course to an offset point from your destination, so you know which direction to turn if your destination is not in sight when you get there. Let's say your destination is an island but that island isn't visible when your chronometer says you've flown long enough. If you plotted your base course directly to that island you can't be sure which way to turn to find it unless you are really, really confident in your wind drift calculations. But if you plotted your course to a point South of that island you could be reasonably confident it was somewhere off to your North and you could start your search in that direction. This becomes a lot more difficult with moving ships.

The diagonal markings on the horizontal stabilizers of some Japanese aircraft may have been aids to help calculate wind drift.

[devimead]

Brilliant, really, really interesting.

[mj-orrr]

You probably should have mentioned that Japanese Navy planes were equipped with a domestic copy of the Fairchild RC-4 direction finder, licensed before the Second World War, in addition to the radio for communication, although they were unreliable.

[michaelbevan]

the 3 seat Kate also had a Morse key so the navigator could send messages to the ship or other aircraft.

[mikebikekite]

I'm full of admiration for a Japanese pilot who could risk their life one moment then fly out into the blue yonder trying to find a moving aircraft carrier using just a sextant etc. I'll admit I didn't quite grasp how the sextant worked but I'll try watching again. A suggestion for another video might be how German pilots used radio waves for night bombing. Also perhaps one on the allies Norden bombsight. Other more general topics might be how air speed and altitude is measured on aircraft. Artillery aiming might also be a good (and topical) one.

[allegory]

What I learned is that I wouldn't have made it back.

[saxon]

We see so many videos about what happened in this battle or that but your videos on how things worked are so valuable and interesting. Like "Shattered Sword" by Parshall and Tully

[filovirus]

I was just wondering about celestial navigation yesterday and this pops up. amazing coincidence so I had to sub. more upload pls...

[Ochademodouzo]

I think a lot of Japanese fresh pilots could not return to their carrier due to the reasons described in this video.