NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Art Leung
Date: 2025 Oct 29, 10:25 -0700
Being landlocked, I have found other ways to take sights. Aviation bubble sextants are the solution to my particular problem. While I prefer the Kollsman periscopic sextants, I have also had good results with a Tamaya Coutinho sextant. The Coutinho sextant has bubble vials to properly erect the frame to local vertical and these are on nautical sextant frames.
I am not saying that this is what you saw on the documentary. A quick flash of newsreel footage might not be enough to tell if a sextant is a Countinho-type. However, Bill Morris mentions that C. Plath did participate in the development of the Coutinho sextant and that the Graf Zeppelin used a Countinho sextant for its around-the-world voyage.
A Coutinho-Pattern Bubble Sextant | The Nautical Sextant
A picture below of an original. I have previously shared pictures of my Tamaya here on NavList.
