Originally Posted by
Spooky 2
Polar crossings were certainly not common in the 60's as they simply did not make any sense from a flight planning point of view. I would be very suspect of anyone claiming that they they did polar crossings or even operations above 78 degrees.
As I understand it the first true high-latitude flights were by SAS with a DC-7C in the mid-1950s, operating Copenhagen-Anchorage-Tokyo, A 1957 timetable here (right hand side, table 2), which actually gives a timetable time for crossing the Pole.
http://www.timetableimages.com/ttima...57/sk57-03.jpg
I also believe that the principal issue for them to crack in high latitude flying in Spring and Autumn was the extended period of Polar Twilight, when the sun has dipped just below the horizon and so not directly visible to the sextant, but the sky is still sufficiently bright that the stars cannot be seen. I believe a sextant manufacturer of the era came up with an instrument that handled this, perhaps our very knowledgeable onetime navigators can explain this.
I've also wondered how you got on with Astral navigation if you were in 8/8 cloud for a sustained period. That DC-7C rumbling along at probably 25,000 feet was probably even worse than a jet for this.