Sequestered deep in the bowels of a B-52 bomber in the 1960s sat Ernie Davidson, the ships navigator. He and the crew constantly were prepared to rain nuclear bombs on targets in the Soviet Union.
Bob Morgan, who flew the legendary Memphis Belle in World War II, wrote in his memoirs that early in the air war B-17s returning to their bases in England occasionally drifted back over the French coast and suffered the fury of the Luftwaffes deadly flak. I wondered why.
Davidson volunteered to explain how navigation works, which prompted me to stop by his and wife Wandas rural home north of Humboldt.
Davidson pulled several sheets from a notebook and started diagramming intricacies that, when woven together, keep an airplane on the straight and narrow. He explained how latitude, parallel to the equator, and longitude, radiating from the poles and widest at equator, compose an essential grid. A navigator also has to rectify location of the North Pole with magnetic north, there being 7 (compass) degrees difference. Wind also has a role, sometimes a major one.
All that, to be true, is a simplified explanation.
DAVIDSONS path to be a seven-year Air Force veteran started at Juniata College in Pennsylvania, a small liberal arts school known for its rigorous academic standards. He earned a degree in math and upon graduation in 1960 joined the Air Force.
His math degree immediately earned him a job in data processing at Topekas Forbes Field, which after a year was upgraded by new technology. That made him expendable, but opened the door to flying, his preference from the start.
He completed flight school in California. Next, as a first lieutenant, Davidson honed his navigation skills at Waco, Texas. He also was qualified to step in if the bombardier was disabled.
The bomber of choice was the B-52, as it had been since the 1950s.
About 75 of the original 750 are still flying.
The Davidsons, he married Wanda in Topeka in 1964, were off to Minot, N.D., and a Strategic Air Command base.
Minot came into existence in 1886 when construction of the Great North Railroad stopped there for winter bivouac. At one time it was called Little Chicago, a concession to it being a center of bootlegging and predictable other legal and social shortcomings.
Minot was home for the next three years. Davidson was poised daily to guide a B-52 over the North Pole and dart into Russia, if the Cold War came to open conflict and a nuclear response were dictated.
