Forgive me for a land navigation war story. A million years ago (actually in 1967) I was the battery recce officer in A Bty in Germany. Before the last practice camp before I rotated home to go on the IG Course our recce vehicle, a M37 3/4 ton cargo truck, was fitted with a NAVAID. This was a rather bulky and not too mechanically reliable Canadian designed land navigation system that used a gyroscope for orientation and an analog system for distance traveled geared to the odometer. John Simons, the recce sgt, and I decided to give it a fair trial and to adapt to its limitations. A major limitation was that the gyroscope had to be started about an hour before the vehicle moved off in order for it to settle down. It, of course, oriented itself on true north so we had to input the lat and long to convert to grid bearings.
We also used to pick way points along our route in advance and correct the indicated grid references the NAVAID produced. As time went on it began to become more accurate, but I can't really explain this. We also tested it for accuracy on recces for live firing and had accumulated enough data that we would have been comfortable originating the battery grid from it. We actually did that on a night recce for a night deployment, but had time after first light to do conventional battery survey to confirm the orientation and fixation of the gun troops.
From time to time we would drive to each troop gun position, record the grid of troop centre, and then return to our point of origin, usually the battery director. If the grid of the point of origin matched the one when we started, we would have been able to use the troop grid references for firing.
It, of course, could not be used for orientation.
Maybe this was a tiny glimpse into the not too distant future.
