Avionics News - September 2023 - 22

Brad Parkinson teaching at Stanford in 1986.
HOW BRAD PARKINSON SAVED GPS
Continued from page 20
As a boy growing up in Minnesota, his strong interest in
navigation was growing, too. In Boy Scouts, he had learned
about land navigation. He loved maps and map reading. He
was so fascinated with canoeing in the northern Minnesota
Boundary Waters that he had detailed maps at a scale of 4
inches for every mile. He thumb-tacked about 20 sheets of
the huge map on his bedroom wall. The small area mapped
on a large scale brought him a sense of joy. The maps
covered extended canoe trips that he would navigate every
August with his Boy Scout troop.
" Positioning and engineering were built into my genes, "
he said.
He was also practicing leadership as a patrol leader and as
a junior assistant scoutmaster. As he approached high school
graduation, he needed to select a college that matched his
strong interests in engineering.
Parkinson's uncle graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy
and was commissioned as a Marine. He left the Marines in
1940 but then rejoined as a naval officer after Pearl Harbor.
On Aug. 29, 1945, he was assigned as the ship's navigator to
take the USS Missouri into Tokyo Bay so Douglas MacArthur
could accept the Japanese surrender on its deck four days
later. It was probably the most historic entrance into a port
by any vessel of any kind in the history of the 20th century.
It marked the end of World War II and the emergence of
America as a superpower. Parkinson would later show in a
big way that navigation ran in the family.
Parkinson's father was a Massachusetts Institute of
Technology graduate in architecture. For some reason, his
dad was hesitant about sending his son to his alma mater
because he worried that Parkinson might be setting himself
up for failure. This, despite Parkinson being an " A " student
and leading his class in math.
But Parkinson didn't want to go to MIT, at least not as an
undergraduate. He wanted to go to the U.S. Naval Academy
- not a big surprise since both his uncle and an older Eagle
Scout were role models for him.
Parkinson spent the year after high school graduation at
a prep school that coached students on how to apply to the
academies. His eyesight was not quite 20/20, so he went to
an ophthalmologist who taught him how to read eye charts
without squinting. He passed the eye test but wasn't worried
about passing the academic entrance exam, as he had
secured a competitive Naval Academy appointment from
Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey. He was sworn in
with his class in June 1953 where he met fellow plebe Dave
North who was in company F with him. North was later an
A-4 combat pilot in Vietnam and an aerospace journalist
22 avionics news * september 2023
and editor-in-chief of Aviation Week & Space Technology
magazine.
The Naval Academy was known for its discipline and
leadership training but also as a second-to-none engineering
school. In addition to mechanical and electrical engineering
courses, Parkinson studied navigation for two years. This
included early versions of the LORAN radio navigation
system. Gunnery studies included precision weapons
delivery, particularly the trajectory mathematics of 16-inch
naval guns. He added these technical skills to his depth
chart, which served him well in later leadership roles.
Upon graduation, in 1957, he elected to be commissioned
into the Air Force. While the Navy offered to send him
directly to MIT, he felt the USAF would make greater use
of the post-graduate education that he wanted. Some of
his colleagues also saw the Air Force as a more technical
service where young officers were being put in positions
of authority to run things. But Parkinson was also astute
enough about his path forward to realize he needed some
operational experience and declined the option of going
directly to MIT under either Navy or Air Force sponsorship.
Rather, he felt he needed to have a tour in the operational
Air Force.
He could not pass the pilot-training eyesight test, so
he elected to become an airborne electronics officer and
attended a training course at Keesler Air Force Base in
Mississippi. At first, the coursework was so basic that
Parkinson got permission to take the final exam for each
block of training without having to sit through the lectures.
He completed nearly five months of training in less than
four weeks.
He was pleased with his first operational assignment to
the 497th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Geiger Field (later
Spokane International Airport) in Spokane, Washington.
It was not to be. By the time he arrived, his slot had been
filled, and he instead was relegated to the position of
assistant base communications officer. After a few months,
his career took another major twist. He was assigned to the
Avionics News - September 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Avionics News - September 2023
