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We designed this logo for the Bowditch in 1962, long before the patches on
your website were born. This is on an ashtray we had made in Norway...this
may well be the last of that batch. Note that the turtle (not over 18
knots) is holding a magnet, an apple and a scale for the magnetics bunch,
the gravity bunch and the hydrography bunch. The white hat on the turtle
represents the Navy contingent. He is also wearing a backpack
for radar and LORAN-C /LORAN-A reception. SINS and GPS were long in the
future.
The connected dots on the
rim of the ashtray represent the usual course plots as Loran-C was always
running a little behind of where you actually were and you had to keep
giving small course corrections to try to stay on the survey lines. We were
spacing the survey lines 1,000 ft apart on a 10 nautical mile by 10 nautical
mile grid.
Of course if you
gave a course correction of too many degrees (a novice mistake) the ship
would suddenly be 1,000 ft off course in the other direction. Then the
see-sawing of the plot line would get out of hand as the poor soul in
hydro-plot began throwing in degree changes in the other direction. It
sometimes got so bad that the line would have to be resurveyed. That was
not looked upon favorably by the crew, the scientists or the navy contingent
as that extended the voyage just a little bit more. Usually we were out
about 24 to 28 days and in port 3 to 5 days. |

(Click on the thumbnail to display the image, then click
again on the image for a higher resolution.)
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