NavList:

I don't trust this book. I don't hate it, or dispute anything specific. I just don't trust it.

I bought a copy of "Precision Astrolabe: Portuguese Navigators and Transoceanic Aviation" a few years ago. It has some fantastic information and some great story-telling, but the author is projecting. He is projecting his own adoration of Portuguese history and culture onto his subject. And he is projecting his own knowledge of mid-20th century air navigation and aviation onto the flight of Coutinho and Cabral nearly five decades before he researched this work.

In short, Fracis Rogers was an ardent lusophile. And Francis Rogers was and ardent aerophile. Or in less obscure terms, he loved Portugal, and he loved aviation.

The book itself is an oddity. It barely exists in libraries, and it has never been digitized. I think the title is deadly. The publisher in the US was a minor house in Taunton, Massachusetts. The publisher in Portugal was part of the nationalist machinery in the authoritarian "Salazar" decades. Rogers was feted by authorities of the dictatorship when he visited Portugal to research this book. Of note, it was published published as a prelude to the fiftieth anniversay of the flight, which was a national --and nationalist-- celebration in March 1972.

Should we read it today? Well, of course! But question it.

Frank Reed