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Admiral Gago Coutinho was a pilot for the Portuguese Navy in the 1920s. He is famous for his 1922 flight across the South Atlantic with fellow navigator, Commander Sacadura Cabral, the first flight to use celestial navigation for an oceanic crossing. Admiral Coutinho designed the instrument and developed the methods for the flight. He worked with C. Plath, a German manufacturer of nautical instruments, to improve the sextant over the next 15 years.
NASM.1988.0091
bulk 1922
Embassy of Portugal, Gift, 1988
0.05 Cubic feet ((1 folder))
National Air and Space Museum Archives
This accession includes a map of the flight and seven photographs. Two photos are of the Fairey IIID Mk. II Seaplane "Lusitânia," Three are of the Fairey IIID Seaplane "Santa Cruz," the airplane which made the flight, and one of those three includes the pilots, Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho and Artur de Sacadura Cabral. The remaining two photos are of sextants. The first is the original sextant used on the 1922 flight. The second is the commercial version manufactured by C. Plath. Finally, there are the manuscripts on the new sextant: one in English, one in Spanish, and one in German.
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Admiral Gago Coutinho Collection, Accession 1988-0091, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
Aeronautics
Navigation
Fairey IIID Seaplane
Transatlantic flights
Collection descriptions
Archival materials
Photographs