In the 1920s, Only One Man Held the Key to Aerial Navigation Even Lindbergh got lost. Very interesting article. Lindbergh had good luck with the winds, the pilots that followed, not so much. Lindbergh still made landfall in Ireland within three miles of hi…

[image] Kennebec_Captain: John Heinmuller, also noted that the pressure distribution over the Atlantic on the two days of the flight was such that the net wind drift was zero— Pure luck. I believe that if the track could have been recorded it would show a large S curve that ended near where p…

There’s a lot of interesting details in that article. For example Lindbergh mitigated the risk of the reliance on dead reckoning by carrying extra fuel. Radio navigation, the method that sent John Rodgers sailing to Hawaii, was clearly unreliable and the equipment was heavy. Instead, Lindbergh re…

When I had a transatlantic delivery job lined up I got a book called Ocean Flying that had all kinds of interesting and now archaic navigation methods in it. One of the more interesting ones was “pressure pattern flying”. I can post some scans if anyone wants a look. There was also the “single drif…

Curtis LeMay was also a pioneer of aerial navigation: [image] 'Bombs Away' LeMay: America's Unapologetic Champion of Waging Total War From bomber general and self-professed war criminal to head of Strategic Air Command, Curtis LeMay divided America but always kept it safe. Est.…

[image] If the GPS Fails I'm Riding the Isobars Home Scuttlebutt Working the problem the other way. Instead of plotting the position on the wx chart and looking at the weather just do the reverse. Look at the weather and plot your position. Navigate using the wind speed/di…

If the GPS Fails I'm Riding the Isobars Home You’d need both current weather maps and the forecast. It was kind of difficult to get current weather and barometer while flying across the Atlantic at 100 mph in 1927, especially while constantly changing altitude and in cloud with no way to fix …

In the 1920s, Only One Man Held the Key to Aerial Navigation

Maritime Topics Marine Technology

Kennebec_Captain July 10, 2024, 1:14pm 6

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In the 1920s, Only One Man Held the Key to Aerial Navigation

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