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In May of 1919, eight years before Lindberg's famous solo flight, three small planes set out from Newfoundland headed for London in an attempt to make the first trans-Atlantic flight. Only one of them made it. Twenty-five hundred feet below on board a station tracking ship, a young navigator, Lt. Cdr. Philip Van Horn Weems, U.S. Navy, gazed up and thought there must be a safer and simpler way than using a small armada of ships as beacons for the flight.
For centuries, man had relied on the heavens, on the circling planets and the constant horizon, to guide him in his travels. A compass, a sextant, and charts were the necessary tools for plotting a course, but these required time for computations and a place to spread out and study the charts. The timeworn system of celestial navigation was ill suited to the cockpit, but the airplane was here to stay. Lt. Cdr. Weems, a brilliant, inventive, and determined young man knew as he tracked that first flight that navigation was his destiny and he went on to revolutionize the field with his ideas, writings, and inventions.
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