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BOAC, in short, no. I had to get hold of all the nav logs, get the correct sector times, correlate with the 700s and message base.
I was unaware of the chaos as they had happily entered individual flight times of 3 hours and 8 hours on 5 hours sectors. They were all for sending me a message querying my corrections but a friend of mine in Ops said he knows what he is doing, accept it.

om15 wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 10, 2021 10:01 am

The term "seven seas" has been in use since about 2000BC, the seas referred to in those days were different to the seas that we name these days.
I found that I couldn't name the seven seas today, can anyone else name them without looking them up?

What are the Seven Seas?

PN:

Looking closer we thought they might be icebergs before identifying them as Greenland.
The Navigator was relieved of his job when we eventually got to Gander.

Surprised that you had the fuel for that sightseeing trip.

Ex-Ascot wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 11, 2021 10:54 am

PN:

Looking closer we thought they might be icebergs before identifying them as Greenland.
The Navigator was relieved of his job when we eventually got to Gander.

Surprised that you had the fuel for that sightseeing trip.

That wasn't his only cockup but that was hushed up. We descended rather early and levelled off at about 2,000 feet for a good 30 minutes. I think we even raised the undercarriage at some point.

I would need to look at a map but he might have been fooled by the pack ice. This used to extend about 100 miles and could be mistaken on radar for the coast.

His excuse was he had been kept awake by music from the NAAFI. He had decided to use grid nav contrary to orders which stipulated 2 navs. He applied grivation in the wrong sense.

I remember being taught the seven seas and five oceans at school, could have been Nautical. Always remember the oceans and can write down far more than seven seas but until G-CPTN noted them would not have been able to list the ones generally referred to as the seven seas . I am surprised the China sea didn't get a mention. I have managed all the Oceans but not so many of the seas, despite my early career at sea. The roughest places were the Bay of Biscay,Bay of Bengal(cyclone),Pacific(typhoon) and Great Australian Bight. Went through the eye of the typhoon, not many people can say that, nobody in their right minds wants to! That was about 1960 in this modern day and age no ship should be anywhere near one.

1DC wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 11, 2021 2:11 pm

Went through the eye of the typhoon, not many people can say that, nobody in their right minds wants to! That was about 1960 in this modern day and age no ship should be anywhere near one.

My Yorkshire genes caused me to have a cyclone just miss, and that was bad enough on dry land.

Holidays on Reunion are cheapest from around Xmas to Easter.
Nothing to do with religion. The cyclone season is roughly Xmas to Easter!

I had a money saving idea! If we took the last week of the 'low season' and the next week we would be unlikely to have a cyclone and we would have a fortnight at a good price.

A cyclone hit! But at the last minute it veered off and we only got the fringe.

Never been back in the cheap time

I don't know about the seven seas, but looking across the bay towards Brixham the sea is very very lumpy, that's enough sea for me.

At some point we crossed the IDL and that really fouled up the aircraft flight logs back at base,

Date Line ? F/O on the SFO -HNL sector handling the sector gave the Pax. briefing and got the time wrong. The Capt. apologised and corrected the time but then got the date wrong. In those days crew and pax. night-stopped HNL, so next day enroute to Tokyo the Capt. said ... " if you think we had trouble getting the time and date right yesterday, just wait until I tell you what we have in store for you today ! " Then went on to explain the Dateline and time (and date ) of arrival in Tokyo.

Nobody listened - listens - to crew briefings anyway. I once gave a route briefing leaving UK and flying over Europe, and ended by stating the time of arrival in Karachi. When I put the phone down the F/O said " but we're going to Bahrain ! ) Not one comment from either Cabin Crew or passengers.

Just checked the lyrics for "Sailed on the sloop John B". Sure we used to sing "Over the seven seas we did roam". Perhaps a different version to that sung by the Beach Boys !! Sung by a maudlin drunken crowd of 16 year olds in the Coronation Inn on the front at Weston Super Mud.

I'm familiar with the term of course, and seem to recall once wondering...why?

From around here..the Tasman Sea, Arafura Sea, Timor Sea, Coral Sea..and then

Philippine Sea
Banda Sea
Sea of Okhotsk
East China Sea
South China Sea
Celebes Sea (Say that one fast)
Solomon Sea Sulu Sea

There's others....

And then there are the Gulfs...

There's a gulf between a sea and a gulf.

Pontius Navigator wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 10, 2021 5:40 pm

.........Once, in one of Ex-A's chariots we were SLF on a flight to Singapore. The first leg was to Gander. ......... In that cold hard light of dawn, a slate grey we could see stark white clouds below. Looking closer we thought they might be icebergs before identifying them as Greenland.
The Navigator was relieved of his job when we eventually got to Gander.

Was it this incident which featured in "Air Clues"?

VC10 wanders a bit over the Atlantic

4mastacker wrote: ↑

Thu Feb 18, 2021 2:29 am

Pontius Navigator wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 10, 2021 5:40 pm

.........Once, in one of Ex-A's chariots we were SLF on a flight to Singapore. The first leg was to Gander. ......... In that cold hard light of dawn, a slate grey we could see stark white clouds below. Looking closer we thought they might be icebergs before identifying them as Greenland.
The Navigator was relieved of his job when we eventually got to Gander.

Was it this incident which featured in "Air Clues"?

VC10 wanders a bit over the Atlantic

Just as well they found land, Green or not! If the error had set them flying south from the start they may have not encountered land on the radar before they reached a critical fuel situation. One wonders why the Captain, or first officer, hadn't bothered to look out for a reassuring check on the pole star's position relative to the crew's lucky monkey in the corner of the cockpit window and noticed things didn't look right before the radar alerted them!

It seems multiple institutional issues were uncovered here, not least a navigational cross checking process for all planned flights, before the flight, and en route, as well as an ongoing assessment of navigators' skill sets over time!

Thanks for posting, the VC10 site is such an excellent and interesting resource.

ExSp33db1rd wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 12, 2021 4:35 am

At some point we crossed the IDL and that really fouled up the aircraft flight logs back at base,

Nobody listened - listens - to crew briefings anyway. I once gave a route briefing leaving UK and flying over Europe, and ended by stating the time of arrival in Karachi. When I put the phone down the F/O said " but we're going to Bahrain ! ) Not one comment from either Cabin Crew or passengers.

Many of the passengers were well aware that something was totally wrong when this flight, Varig 254, went off in the wrong direction, but didn't say a word to the cabin or flight crew....

And it keeps on happening...

Douglas Corrigan must roll in his grave knowing that none of the folks in these cases got to where go where they meant to, when they flew off in the wrong direction, unlike him!

One wonders why the Captain, or first officer, hadn't bothered to look out for a reassuring check on the pole star's position relative to the crew's lucky monkey in the corner of the cockpit window and noticed things didn't look right before the radar alerted them!

Similar to that BOAC Argonaut accident in the Sahara, details escape me now ( 'tho someone will have it all available no doubt ! ) but basically the navigator applied the drift x 10 i.e. something like 50 deg. instead of 5 ? and the aircraft set off in the wrong direction, eventually running out of fuel. Apparently this was brought to the crew's attention by a passenger querying why the sun was on the wrong side of the aeroplane ?

4ma, that's the one.

I've just heard a recently retired mariner on the radio refer to 'the 7 seas and the 5 oceans'

Which I don't suppose helps at all...

The reality is that there is no precise definition for the seven seas, as, what definitions that may have pertained, have changed over time.

It seems we are all at sea!

Many of the passengers were well aware that something was totally wrong when this flight, Varig 254, went off in the wrong direction, but didn't say a word to the cabin or flight crew....

Actually at least one passenger tried to alert the cabin crew but was brushed off with a "they know what they're doing". In the meanwhile the flight crew sat fat and happy for over an hour without giving a thought to why they had the setting sun in their eyes when it should have been just aft of left.