Yep, it was my first time out of the gate as CiC. However orders did include map grids! Co-ordinating instructions, para b.
b. Targets.
(1) Alpha North - V66 Bremen Map Grid 9.15.4
(2) Bravo North - A131 Hannover Map Grid 9.13.8
(3) Alpha South - A137 North of Stuttgart Map Grid 10.5.5
(4) Bravo South - V82 Schweinfurt, Map Grid 11.7.8
My wife actually studies the kind of error that happened here. (she's an airforce crash investigator, specializing in human factors). If I can steal her hat for a moment, the underlying problem is that the necessary information to get the bombs on target is in three places.
1) The ops map. This has the routes, the targets and the initial points are clearly marked. However it is large scale, the grids are hard to read and it has no base numbers.
2) The target list (para b). The grids and base numbers are explicitly stated, but the information isn't graphical, so it needs to be put on a map
3) The in-game clipboard map. This can be any scale you want, and shows grids and base numbers. It's also useful because it shows your nav location and heading and is the main tool most of us use for in-game navigation. However, beyond marking a route you can't put any ops graphics on it. When zoomed it, it's hard to have an overall picture of the operational area.
For the other targets using either the ops map or the target list with the clipboard map is enough, because the clipboard map labels clearly put the names on the bases. However at Stuttgart the clipboard map is dense and the label is placed somewhat ambiguously. To resolve the ambiguity, you must use all three inputs, which starts to get complicated. A simpler solution is to ask someone who knows. You asked Kurt on channel 122, but Kurt fell victim to the same ambiguity and confirmed A51 as the target. I was listening on 122, and had I caught this exchange I would have corrected it, but I didn't catch it.
The rest is history.
Part of the problem at Three Mile Island was the requirement for operators to integrate 2 graphical inputs with a table to know if their coolant was boiling or not. Part of Tenerife was the pilots not catching an exchange on their frequency but not directed at them. Map ambiguity has been involved in more military messes than I can even name. The simple answer (and my previous one) is "backbriefs", but even backbriefs are not a solution, just another layer of defence that will sometimes fail. When I consider this on a systems level, the better answer would have been to recognize the map ambiguity (in fact, I had the same issue when I was was writing orders) and directly label the operations map with the grids and base numbers.
Cheers
