Naval Air: Why Aircraft Carriers Need Ouija Board
December 12, 2023: The flight operations personnel of American aircraft carriers have, since early in World War II, relied on devices called Ouija (wee gee) Boards to sort out where aircraft would be positioned during flight or pre-flight operations. The term came from the séance & card game versions of Ouija Boards. The aircraft carrier version was improvised after early Pacific War carrier actions showed a need to keep track of the locations, movements, and maintenance/readiness standards of carrier aircraft on the flight and hangar decks of carriers. It was used for more than seventy years and has only in the past ten years been phased out in favor of electronic versions.
The Ouija Board table had a 1:192 drawing of the flight deck on it, and 1:192 models of aircraft depicting where aircraft are while being fueled, armed, waiting for movement to the hangar deck below, or ready for takeoff. This is particularly critical since you could have dozens of aircraft on the flight deck, in various stages of readiness for takeoff, or having just landed. A second Ouija Board showed the situation on the hangar deck, where aircraft underwent maintenance, repairs or were simply stored when not needed right away.
To avoid confusion and chaos, the obvious solution (a small scale model of the flight deck, set up in a room, in the towering “island” on the side of the flight deck, with a view of the flight deck) came to be. It was never replaced mainly because the Ouija Board worked so well, was cheap, did not break down and was easily replaced in case of damage. On the downside, each carrier had a slightly different method of placing bolts, tacks and whatever was available (such as cigarette butts) on the model aircraft, to indicate their status. So as flight deck control personnel moved from carrier to carrier, they had to learn a new Ouija Board system.
https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htnavai/articles/20231212.aspx
