In 1967, Lee Cannon enlisted in the Air National Guard, where he served eight years as a navigator. In 2024, he sat down with his daughter, Leah, at StoryCorps to explain the unique nature of his job, and to fill in the gaps of a remarkable story he had once told her when she was a child.
TRANSCRIPT:
Lee: Most people have no idea what a navigator is because planes don't use those anymore, and they haven't in probably 30 years. But when I became a navigator, there was not a high degree of radar systems available. There was very little international radio available. So, I had to learn to navigate using the stars, used a machine called a sextant that poked up through the top of the fuselage, and at night, using the system of triangulation, picked three different stars and located them on the chart, and the degrees between the stars, and that basically told where we were. And so, you continually “shot the stars,” so to speak, and that moved you along on your course.
Leah: You had a story about one of your flights that you went through the Bermuda Triangle.
Lee: (laughs)
Leah: And I always…I want you to share more about that because that was right up my alley. And when you told me, I was like (gasp!)
Lee: Well, and part of that is because you were a child and you expected a lot of things that were weird and unknown about.
Leah: I guess.
Lee: But the only thing in effect of flying in the Bermuda Triangle is, I could say “I flew in the Bermuda Triangle.”
Leah: Okay.
Lee: But nothing else occurred.
Leah: Nothing happened on your airplane??
Lee: (laughing) No.
Leah: I could have sworn you told me.
Lee: And we didn't get lost or anything.
Leah: I thought you told me that some of the, uhm…
Lee: Instruments.
Leah: Yeah!
Lee: Yeah. I think I made that story up, Leah.
Leah: Are you kidding me??? I—(laughs)
Lee: (laughing) You wanted to hear so much about that. I mean, you really pushed me about wanting to know more. So, you know, I couldn't tell you anything. But to make you happy, I made up things.
Leah: This whole time. This whole time, I thought that you flew through the Bermuda Triangle and every one of your engines stopped working. And then when you landed, they all came back online. You told me, you told me that you had instrument issues. You told me that you're plane, all your engines, you said, “We had four engines, and the first one went out and we're like, ‘But we still have three.’” And you told me this whole story, and I think maybe one of them--well, I guess one of them had to stay working--and then you landed and they checked them out and nothing was wrong and they worked!
Lee: (laughing) That's right!
Leah: I am finding out now, almost approaching 50. It's okay. It was one of those great stories.
Lee: I was getting ready to say it's what you wanted to hear!
Leah: Everybody exaggerates stories. I mean, you hear a ghost story and you're like, “Okay,” but…but…
Lee: I want you to understand in all of these almost 50 years that you and I have been related to one another, everything I told you wasn't like that most of the things I told you were real events.
Leah: So, question everything. Question everything is what the lesson is here.
Lee: That’s right!
Leah: That's so funny, because I was like, “I'm gonna get dad to tell his Bermuda Triangle story!” And now the story is: you fooled me all this time. That's okay. It was a good story.
