In the days before GPS, how did planes find their way back to their aircraft carrier, especially since the carrier would not be where it was when they took off?
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There _were_ scrambled homing beacons available – [the navy ZB-series of homing adapters (the rest of the system were AN/ARR, ARC-5 blah blah)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/ARC-5).
[Here’s a good breakdown of how they worked.](http://www.skywaves.ar88.net/Presentations/YE-ZB%20Presentation.pdf) – basically, as the homing transmitter on the carrier rotated, twice a minute, the morse letters it broadcast changed every 30 degrees. The morse letter would correspond to a compass heading that the pilot had to fly to get back to the carrier.
So as you flew, every 30 seconds your ZB receiver would blip out a morse code letter. You check your decode card for the letter and that gives you a rough 30 degree cone heading back to the boat. As you drift through those heading cones or the carrier moves the letters change and by the time they’re changing rapidly you probably have the boat or one of its escorts in sight.
But, there were other ways – some naval aircraft (torpedo bombers and the like) would have multiple crewmen, one of whom could do radio navigation, dead reckoning w/ a map and/or a crude calculator thing (like a compass crossed with a slide rule) using your heading OUT from the carrier, your speed, carrier’s heading, ITS speed etc.
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