Harold Gatty

Harold Charles Gatty (5 January 1903 – 30 August 1957) was an Australian navigator and aviation pioneer.

Charles Lindbergh called Gatty the "Prince of Navigators."

Gatty was born on 5 January 1903 in Campbell Town, Tasmania.

He began his career as a navigator on January 1, 1917 at age 14, when he was appointed a midshipman at the Royal Australian Naval College at Jervis Bay.

Ironically, far from being a star pupil in maths and navigation, Gatty struggled to pass his courses in those subjects.

He withdrew from the Naval College in May 1920 to serve for three years as an apprenticed ship's officer with the Patrick Steamship Company of Sydney.

After World War I, Gatty became an apprentice on a steamship in the Australian merchant navy, where he learned constellations while standing night watch.

He became an expert in celestial navigation and served on many ships, some sailing between Australia and California.

After the Navy, he worked in Sydney Harbour provisioning vessels anchored there.

In 1927 he relocated to California.

Gatty opened a navigation school, teaching marine navigation to yachtsmen.

In 1928, his attention turned to air navigation.

In 1929, Gatty navigated a Lockheed Vega on a flight from Los Angeles to New York City for Nevada Airlines, in an effort to demonstrate the feasibility of coast-to-coast passenger service.

The flight made four stops and took 19 hours and 53 minutes, which set the transcontinental airspeed record for a commercial airliner.

In 1930, Gatty prepared a coast-to-coast route and navigation charts for Anne Morrow Lindbergh, whom he had also taught as a student.

Anne Lindbergh served as navigator with her husband Charles on a record-setting cross-country flight of 14 hours and 45 minutes.

The next year, Wiley Post asked Gatty to accompany him on an effort to break the world record for circumnavigating the Earth, which was previously set at 21 days by the Graf Zeppelin airship.

Gatty accepted, hoping to demonstrate the effectiveness of his navigation methods.

In 1931, Gatty served as navigator, along with pilot Wiley Post, on the flight which set the record for aerial circumnavigation of the world, flying a distance of 15,747 miles (24,903 km) in a Lockheed Vega named the Winnie Mae, in 8 days, 15 hours and 51 minutes.

The journey began on 23 June 1931 at Roosevelt Field in New York and followed a 15,000-mile course across Europe, Russia, and Siberia, due to the lack of suitable airfields nearer the equator.

Post and Gatty crossed the Atlantic, from Harbour Grace to Flintshire, in a record time of 16 hours and 17 minutes and continued to Berlin, Moscow, and Khabarovsk, then crossed the Bering Sea, landing on the beach near Solomon, Alaska, then to Edmonton, Alberta, arriving finally back at Roosevelt Field after 8 days, 15 hours, and 51 minutes.

The pair received a Ticker tape parade in New York City.

Along "The Canyon of Heroes" in New York City are thermal granite pavers on Broadway, marking the 204 Ticker Tape Parades.

No. 38 states "Wiley Post and Harold Gatty for their flight around the World/ Eight days, 15 hours, 51 minutes."

Air navigation in Gatty's time used dead reckoning.

When setting out for a destination the aircraft heading is taken with respect to a compass.

Motion over the Earth is determined by the wind triangle.

Heading must therefore be compensated for wind speed as well as drift rate.

In 1931 Popular Mechanics published an article featuring Gatty's method for computing the wind drift experienced by an aircraft:

The article also lauds the artificial horizon and turn and bank indicator that Post and Gatty used, which was developed by Lawrence Sperry and manufactured by the Sperry Gyroscope Company.

In 1931, the same year as their flight in June, Wiley Post and Harold Gatty co-wrote a complete and detailed account of their record setting circumnavigation.

Around the World in Eight Days, The Flight of the Winnie Mae.

described their preparations for the flight, and each leg of the journey.

Map endpapers were included.

In this book, Gatty gave a detailed account of a method of dead reckoning he invented that revolutionized the ability of navigators to fly safely through cloudy conditions, without drifting off course through cumulative errors.

Wiley Post installed two hatches on the Winnie Mae for Gatty to use, one overhead and just forward from his seat behind the fuel tanks, and the other on the bottom of the cabin.

Through the first, he was to observe the stars, and through the bottom hatch was to use his special drift- and -speed indicator.

Gatty observed

Within the feature in Popular Mechanics magazine of their flight, there is a diagrammatic sketch that shows the workings of Gatty's dead reckoning indicator, that, along with the skills of pilot Wiley Post, enabled them to set a new record of eight days for circumnavigating the world.

The location of the large fuel tank meant they could not see each other whilst in flight.