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Byrd's dead reckoning on his 1926 North Pole flight

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2015

G. H. Newsom
G. H. Newsom*
Affiliation:
Department of Astronomy, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210USA.
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Abstract

Richard Byrd claimed to have reached the North Pole in his 1926 flight, based mostly on his dead reckoning navigation. His technique of finding distance traveled from observations with a drift indicator can ideally be quite accurate, as shown by simulations of his dead reckoning with a navigation log. But under real-world conditions, especially those of Byrd's flight, significant errors can easily occur. Since we do not have a copy of Byrd's navigation log from the flight, we cannot assess such errors, and there is some evidence that Byrd did not keep a navigation log. However, that would not necessarily lead to less accurate dead reckoning.

Type
Research Article
Information
Polar Record , Volume 51 , Issue 5 , September 2015 , pp. 560 - 565
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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