Roger D. Connor

Charles Lindbergh’s crossing of the Atlantic was an astounding feat of airmanship, but it was a decidedly less than astounding feat of navigation.  By 1927, air navigation was hardly a mature technology, yet much of the critical equipment and procedures were well established after extensive efforts by the U.S. Navy that involved personalities such as Richard Byrd and Phillip Van Horn Weems.  Writing in the Journal of Navigation, Philip Steel notes that Lindbergh’s “early plan made virtually no mention of navigation” and he “feared that to ask openly about such matters might betray his ignorance and shake the faith of his backers.”  He then turned his back on what was widely regarded as the most effective navigational technology available and elected to “‘rely on dead reckoning for my navigation … [and] trade radio and sextant weight for extra gasoline.  What I lose in navigational accuracy I hope to gain twice over in total range.’”  In future flights, particularly those in the globetrotting Tingmissartoq, Lindbergh would never again choose to trade navigational equipment for range.  He appreciated that his Atlantic crossing was due more to luck than navigational skill and it unnerved him.  Lindbergh’s subsequent efforts to contribute to the theory and practice of aerial navigation inform a much broader and little examined push within an aviation elite to improve existing celestial and radio navigation techniques, many of which were of 19th century maritime origins, and make them more accessible to commercial interests seeking to exploit long-range aviation for profit.  Upon returning from Paris, he sought out Phillip Van Horn Weems, who was widely recognized as a patriarch of air navigation, and hired him as a tutor.  Weems evolved into a mentor and together they pioneered several technologies that would become integral in the “clipper” operations of the late 1930s, many of the notable aerial expeditions of the time and military operations in World War II and the Cold War.  These included the second setting watch and the hour-angle watch, which Lindbergh would go on to market under his name in association with Longines.

Lindbergh’s attempts to influence the development of navigation in the aftermath of his Atlantic crossing have thus far evaded scholarly treatment.  The Weems papers at the National Museum of American History reveal his attempts to influence the technology of aviation, not merely the culture of aviation.  This paper will place Lindbergh’s post-Paris navigational efforts in the context of professionalizing aviation for commercial interests and his attempts to move the technology from the realm of his own exceptionalism (or “luck”) to more reliable forms that would permit aeronautics to move from amusement to a viable mode of transport.  Primary evidence will center on communications between Lindbergh and Weems and Lindbergh’s relationship with Longines, which are well documented within the Weems papers.  A contrasting study between the preparation, techniques and equipment used on the Paris and Tingmissartoq will bring an enhanced understanding of the critical, but rarely appreciated advances in air navigation – a field in which Lindbergh was to become an established elite.