As the Mod's have to read all linked material....I shall only describe an Article I found very interesting about the early days of aerial navigation over long distances or over water by Lindberg, Weems, and others.
I recall reading with great. interest about the proving of Air Mail Routes and other aviation ventures like Immperial Airways and Pan Am Airways.
Lindberg used a very simple Dead Reckoning System to navigate and made landfall within a few miles of his intended point of arrival....after about 30 hours of flight with no sleep and no auto-pilot of any kind.
His accuracy was amazing...but what helped was a unique situation over the North Atlantic where the Winds worked to create a near zero drift situation.
Lindberg later got lost on a night flight over th waters south of Florida and nearly became a statistic common to early aviators....running out of fuel and landing in the water.
The first attempt to fly to Hawaii from California by the US Navy ended that way and the Sea Plane crew finished the. trip by sailing the airplane several hundred miles to the islands....which took them ten days.
The article can be found in the February 2013 Edition of the Air and Space Magazine under the title "In the 1920's Only One Man Held The Key to Aerial Navigation" and is an interesting account of how US Naval Aviation was instrrumental in improving Aeronautical Navigation and the role that a Naval Officer named Weems played in that.