NavList:

Dale L., you wrote:

"Who knew?"

Right?! It's certainly an unsung bit of aviation and navigation history in the northern part of the world. In fairness, given that it took mutliple aircraft and more than eleven weeks to complete, it wasn't quite a "successful" Atlantic crossing. This flight hasn't been brought up in NavList discussions in quite a few years, so this is a nice opportunity to start fresh. :) Coutinho's bubble sextant attachment was successful and popular for a decade or more. Coutinho bubbles are also valuable collectors items.

Here's the link to the original article from Dale's post (minus the sharing link shortener):
  https://www.fai.org/news/1922-first-aerial-south-atlantic-crossing-astronomical-navigation,
and the Wikipedia article on the flight:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_aerial_crossing_of_the_South_Atlantic.

A bit of useful trivia... How does one pronounce Coutinho? In continental Portuguese "cout" is pronounced like English "coat" and "tinho" like English "teen you". Put 'em together, and that's close.

In addition to the navigational inventions mentioned in the article, there's also some relatively unknown legacy navigation in this story. They landed near St. Peter & Paul Rocks and later flew from Fernando Noronha. These small islands were key targets in Tropical Atlantic navigation for centuries. Sailing south on their way to the Indian or Pacific oceans, these small islands and several others served as "slalom gates" down the Atlantic hill. Navigators would aim for the islands. See them or miss them, they served as excellent checks on the longitude. Further south Trindade and Martim Vaz were also good waypoints (though not on this flight in 1922, of course). For Coutinho and Cabral these islands provided excellent waypoints and broke up the long flight. The distance from the Cape Verde Islands to Peter & Paul Rocks is about 40% shorter than the distance from eastern Newfoundland to Ireland for comparison.

Frank Reed