Weems & Plath
The Invention of Precision Navigational Instruments for Air and
Sea Navigation
In May of 1919, eight years before Lindbergh’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.