Here's a pic of my station, now called Nav/Radar. Stuff looks like it came out of WWII in comparison with today's solid-state "glass cockpits." The main ones in front of me were altimeter, Green Satin (RAF code word name) to show groundspeed and drift, and, to the right of the display, is the GPI6 (Ground Position Indicator), which was fed by several other nav instruments
and showed latitude and longitude - the inside was like a large, finely made chronometer, full of cams, pinwheels, relays and pinions, quite advanced for the time, sort of an early analog electromechanical predecessor to the GPS that came 30 years later. The first job, on entering the aircraft before a sortie, was to orient the GPI6 with a known lat/long of the hardstand where the Victor was parked, and the heading. These were displayed on large notice boards placed around the hardstand.
As wonderful as the GPI6 was, errors crept in during flight and had to be corrected, using "fixes" from radar, TACAN or, at night, astro star fixes with, believe it or not, a sextant. The sextant was mounted on what looked exactly like a submarine periscope, and to use it you located the "point" under a small round airlock in the cabin roof; then by operating two controls in sequence you could push it up through the airlock and do your thing - provided that you could get the skipper to keep the plane straight and level for 5 or 6 minutes. You then had to perform mathematical calculations because, unlike on a ship for example, from the time you got your first "fix" to the last one the plane could have traveled 40 miles or more.
The other stuff is an Radio Direction Finder, giving a relative bearing from whichever radio beacon was selected, and a TACAN display giving the same from a TACAN beacon. One of my jobs was to keep the aircraft log, with regular entries of our position.
The white knob sticking down from the roof was used in getting in and out of the seat. It is identical to the ones you see in London Unerground trains that commuters hold onto! The main problem about facing aft was, surprisingly, a higher likelihood of airsickness in the early days, and a constant danger of giving the pilots a wrong change of direction. You can see the little window in the upper left, which was largely irrelevant as a) you couldn't see out of it when seated; b) if you looked you would generally see cloud, or the black of night; c) during the day it was a nuisance as it interfered with the radar screen, but there was a blind you could pull down. Slightly below this is the "War and Peace Box," with the bomb(s) [always referred to as "heavystore"] key switch.
The screen is the H2S Mk. 9a display, and mounted above it the R88 camera which took photos of the display during a trip, and was used to critique after a simulated bomb run. The panel to the left of the screen allowed the radar scanner to be tilted at various angles so as to vary the coverage from near to far. The thing below the display is the 626 Joystick, which was used to control the display and set the impact point, and also set up a windage factor, or offset.
The big panel in the upper center contains large Heading and Ground Speed repeaters. Sticking out above the display is the radar altimeter, ancient technology (early 1940s) but still very accurate. In fact, one of my jobs was to frequently set this to "hgh level" and check actual altitude against the regular, or "pressure," altimeter. By working backwards, as it were, you could then reset the barometric pressure, which could vary greatly on a long trip, on the pressure altimeter.
All this was for the purpose of dropping one or two of these. Have you ever actually seen nuclear weapons?
On a mission the two navigators would draw from the armory vault the unique key for the weapon(s) to be loaded on the aircraft. I would normally keep the key, and it was the Nav/Radar's job to accompany me everywhere until we boarded the aircraft. The bombs would have already been loaded into the bomb bay, and guarded by two armed MPs. Before flight the two navs would have to use the key to set the delivery mode to be used (airburst altitude, or ground burst), and also for the "yield," or power of the weapon - bet you didn't know that you could vary it from 100% to a fraction of this! These setting were done on a panel on the side of the weapon, and confirmed by the captain.
Luckily, we only ever had to do this in simulation on concrete-filled bombs. During the Cuban Missile Crisis it was done by a team of senior officers whom I had never seen before, and never saw again.
Rick; you really shouldn't get me going on this again!
These folks have been working their butts off keeping this bird alive and I salute them.