Documented **navigational errors in aviation history** have mainly resulted from general navigation mistakes—like misreading instruments, weather misjudgments, or equipment failure—rather than directly from uncorrected Coriolis effect. However, the Coriolis effect does cause measurable errors in celestial navigation and dead reckoning over long distances if not properly accounted for, especially before the age of modern inertial navigation and GPS.
Notable points:
- **In early aviation**, especially for long transoceanic flights using celestial or bubble sextant navigation, failing to correct for the Earth’s rotation (including Coriolis error) could result in positional inaccuracies of several miles by the time a flight reached its destination. For example, at certain latitudes and speeds, a navigational error of about 3–3.4 statute miles could occur if no correction was made, which increased for higher speeds and longer distances[2].
- **Historical records from the RAF during WWII** mention that navigation errors—sometimes “enormous”—were quite common due to the limited accuracy of navigation methods, with only a small fraction of aircraft successfully finding their targets or convoys. Corrections for Coriolis (called “Z” correction) were a recognized part of long-range navigation, and omitting them could add to cumulative navigational errors[5].
- **Errors over the North Atlantic**, discussed in aviation journals, commonly occurred due to a combination of factors, including miscalculated winds, instrument errors, and occasionally unaccounted-for rotational (Coriolis) effects, leading to aircraft arriving off-course and sometimes drastically correcting near destination, especially before widespread radar and GPS[8][9].
While **most major navigation errors involved a mix of factors**, uncorrected Coriolis effect could add several miles of error, enough in the days of manual navigation to result in missed landfalls or forced corrections late in flight[2][5][8]. The widespread implementation of computerized and radio-based navigation has largely eliminated Coriolis as a direct cause of such incidents in modern aviation.
Sources
[1] How Airplanes correct for the Coriolis Effect - Walter Bislins https://walter.bislins.ch/bloge/index.asp?page=How+Airplanes+correct+for+the+Coriolis+Effect
[2] Earth's Rotational Effect on the Bubble Sextant | Proceedings https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1940/october/earths-rotational-effect-bubble-sextant
[3] The coriolis effect and air travel - Physics Forums https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/the-coriolis-effect-and-air-travel.705337/
[4] Coriolis effect - The Dreadnought Project http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org/tfs/index.php/Coriolis_effect
[5] [PDF] A History of Navigation in the Royal Air Force - RAF Museum https://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/documents/Research/RAF-Historical-Society-Journals/Journal-17A-Air-Navigationin-the-RAF.pdf
[6] Aircraft Navigational Errors https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/5B030FFD893667B0B446EDBAF6B44166/S037346330003112Xa.pdf/aircraft_navigational_errors.pdf
[7] Do planes have to compensate for the earth's rotation? : r/askscience https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/g0iq4/do_planes_have_to_compensate_for_the_earths/
[8] Challenges of Air Navigation | Time and Navigation https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/navigating-air/challenges
[9] Abnormal Errors and Aircraft Separation over the North Atlantic | The Journal of Navigation | Cambridge Core https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-navigation/article/abs/abnormal-errors-and-aircraft-separation-over-the-north-atlantic/3A64C4CC70C70B23A92651681DBF5E88
[10] [PDF] Inertial Navigation - Forty Years of Evolution https://www.imar-navigation.de/downloads/papers/inertial_navigation_introduction.pdf
