A CHAIN is as strong as its weakest link. And a large, expensive, and important machine of war, such as a bomber, is as safe as the instruments used by the navigator.
The importance of watches in safe- guarding American ships of the air is vividly pointed out in a report by Lt. James M. Kaiser of the American Air Forces in a War Department release.
This possessor of the Silver Star, Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal was in the first heavy bombardment group to leave the United States after Pearl Harbor, and he served successfully in the India-China-Burma theater, the Middle East with the British 8th Army, and finally with Major General Doolittle in Algeria and Tunisia.
“Each navigator,” explains Lt. Kaiser, “is equipped with two master watches and a hack (wrist) watch. The master watches have to be perfectly accurate, and we must check them regularly with the time signals from Greenwich or the Naval Observatory at Washington. You can see why it is essential that they must be correct to the nearest second, when you think about what happens when the navigator takes celestial shots with his octant. If your watch is four seconds off, your plane will be a mile off its course.”