>Their nav equipment had failed after the engines quit. They had to dead reckon ... | Hacker News

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vram22 on Aug 4, 2018 | parent | context | favorite | on: Pilots who risk their lives flying tiny planes ove...

>Their nav equipment had failed after the engines quit. They had to dead reckon to Iceland.

I had read about dead reckoning as a kid in some book, but forgot or didn't know what it meant. Looked it up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_reckoning

Both that and the related idea of inertial navigation systems are interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertial_navigation_system

bogomipz on Aug 4, 2018 [–]

Dead reckoning was also infamously the reason why Allied bombs accidentally hit Prague instead of Dresden in World Ward II.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_Bombing_of_Prague

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