Some readers of No Time to Stargaze might be interested to know I am a distant relative of the aviator Harold Gatty. As I understand family records, Gatty was my second cousin once removed. He was the first cousin once removed of my maternal grandmother. A tenuous link perhaps, but I am happy to claim it.
An Australian navigator, inventor and aviation pioneer, Gatty was born in 1903 at Campbell Town, Tasmania, the son of a headmaster. Gatty moved to California in 1927. There he devised his ground-speed and drift indicator, the basis of the automatic pilot which later became standard aircraft equipment.
In 1931, Gatty served as navigator with Wiley Post on the flight which set the record for aerial circumnavigation of the world, flying 15,747 miles (24,903 km) in a Lockheed Vega named the Winnie Mae, in 8 days, 15 hours, and 51 minutes. Charles Lindbergh called Gatty the Prince of Navigators.
Gatty was awarded America’s Distinguished Flying Cross by a special act of Congress and was given a hero’s welcome in New York. He wrote a safety manual The Raft Book, based on Polynesian star navigation, which was standard issue for US life rafts in World War II. He also designed the navigational system used by the US Air Force in the war. Despite not accepting US citizenship, Gatty served in the US Army Air Corps.
After the war, he moved to Fiji – where he founded Fiji Airways and served two terms in the Legislative Council – and died there in 1957.
Strangely, Gatty’s expertise in navigating by the stars was not in my mind when I called my unrelated novel No Time to Stargaze. Funnily enough, my second wife is Dutch-born, as was Gatty’s second wife.
Gatty is not as well known as Australian aviation pioneers Charles Kingsford Smith and Bert Hinkler, but I reckon he should be. Well, I would, wouldn’t I?
