Weems and Plath Weems Chrome Stormglass with display - Manual (Page 5)

In May of , eight years before Lindbergh’s famous
solo flight, three small planes set out from Rockaway
Naval Airstation, NY headed for Plymouth, England 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.
For centuries, man had relied on the heavens, on the
circling planets and the constant horizon to guide him in
his travels. An accurate clock,
a compass, a sextant and
charts were the necessary
tools for plotting a course,
but these required time for
computations and a place
to spread out and study the
charts. The timeworn system
of celestial navigation was
ill suited to the cockpit,
but the airplane was here
to stay. Lt. Cdr. Weems,
a brilliant, inventive and
determined young man
knew as he tracked that
first flight that navigation
was his destiny, and he went on to revolutionize the field
with his ideas, writings and inventions.
The challenge he undertook was complex and involved
the invention of new methods and new tools. It required
a horizon system independent of the sea horizon that
was often not visible from the cockpit of a plane. Weems
worked for years to develop a new kind of sextant and
to find someone to manufacture it. When an accurate
timepiece was needed, Weems invented the Second
Setting Watch with its inner rotating dial. He produced
the famous Weems Plotter, the more precise and easier
to use plotting tool, which is still one of our most
popular plotters.
The Weems & Plath ® Story
Capt. Philip Van Horn Weems