How GPS could have changed history

  • Published
  • By Brian Hagberg
  • 50th Space Wing Public Affairs
SCHRIEVER AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. --  January marked the 25th anniversary of Operation Desert Storm, a campaign remembered for a variety of reasons, not the least of which that it marked the first time U.S. military forces used the Global Positioning System in combat. Since then, GPS has grown to serve more than 3 billion users and touches virtually every aspect of life.

While it's easy to take the benefits provided by GPS for granted, there was a time when timing, navigation and positioning were far less precise and hardly reliable. Let's look back through history to some people and moments when GPS could have come in handy.


Christopher Columbus
By now, anyone who has attended elementary school in the U.S. has heard the tale of Columbus' "discovery of America." In an effort to find a sea route from Western Europe to the "Far East," along with fame and fortune, Columbus set sail in August 1492. He made landfall two months later on one of the islands in the Bahamas. His incorrect assumption he had landed in Asia could easily have been corrected with the use of GPS. The precision positioning and navigation could have helped Columbus realize his earlier calculations about the Earth's circumference were off and helped him understand he had reached an entirely different continent.



Lewis and Clark
While the expedition headed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark was highly successful, the three-year, 8,000-mile trek could have been even more successful with GPS. Imagine being able to travel west in the 1800s with precise coordinates and detailed topographical information. Many settlers could have been spared some of the hardships of traveling through the mountains with this in their possession.



The Donner Party
Speaking of settlers who could've used GPS, the Donner Party story is one of the most infamous tales of hardship and survival. Led by Jacob and George Donner, the group of 89 emigrants attempted to take a shortcut from Fort Bridger, Wyoming to California. Unfortunately for the group, the shortcut actually added close to 100 miles to their trip, and because the route hadn't been well-traveled, cost them valuable time, according to history.com. The time lost forced them to attempt to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains in late-October. A heavy snow blocked the mountain pass and trapped the group for several months, during which time they were forced to resort to cannibalism to survive. Only 45 of the 89 members of the group made it to California. Had they been equipped with GPS, the group could have quickly seen the error in the "shortcut route" and probably made it to California intact.



Battle of Shiloh
According to civilwar.org, on April 6, 1862, Confederate troops launched a surprise attack against the Army of the Tennessee near Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee. Known as the Battle of Shiloh, the Confederate attack pushed the Union troops back and, amidst the confusion of battle orders for the Third Division, the reserve unit led by Maj. Gen. Lew Wallace, were either unclear or lost in translation. Either way, Wallace led his men on the march to join the right flank of the Union forces. Unfortunately, the road he chose was taking his division to a position which no longer existed. All told, Wallace marched his men for seven hours without joining in the battle at any point. According to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's report, "owing to its being led by a circuitous route [Wallace's division] did not arrive in time to take part in Sunday's action." Had Wallace had the benefit of GPS, his division may have arrived in time to join the fight on the first day, possibly preventing a second day of battle.




Percy Fawcett
Col. Percy Fawcett made a name for himself in the early 20th century both as an explorer and World War I veteran. According to a 2004 report in The Guardian, Fawcett helped the Bolivian government survey the frontier in Brazil, which led him to begin a search, with his oldest son Jack and friend Raleigh Rimmel, for the lost city called "Z." The group never returned from the Amazon, and no sign of them has ever been found. Theories about the group's fate have ranged from being killed by hostile natives, or hungry jaguars, to Fawcett "going native." Clearly, GPS could have helped Fawcett both map the territory he ventured into, and return from it, thus saving the lives of the more than 100 people who subsequently searched for the famous explorer.







Amelia Earhart
Arguably one of the most famous American pilots in history, Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic in 1932. She used her fame to advance aviation and feminist causes, serving as the first president of the Ninety-Nines, an organization of women pilots, according to history.com. Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan disappeared while attempting to circumnavigate the world on July 2, 1937 on the leg from New Guinea to Howland Island. According to the biography on ameliaearhart.com, three U.S. ships were stationed near the tiny island and ordered to keep all their lights on to provide markers because, as Earhart said, "Howland is such a small spot in the Pacific that every aid to locating it must be available." Unfortunately for Earhart, the most precise aid wasn't yet available.



D-Day
The Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944 marked a turning point in World War II. The liberation of Europe had begun. According to history.com, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower had actually chosen June 5 as the day to launch the invasion; however, the weather leading up to that day made it impossible to successfully deploy the paratroopers behind enemy lines to set the stage for the invasion. Had Eisenhower had the benefit of GPS, he may have been able to keep the original date of June 5 for the invasion. Additionally, the paratroopers who were mis-dropped in the hours before the landing would have been able to determine their precise location behind enemy lines.





Battle of the Bulge
On Dec. 16, 1944, the German Army launched a major offensive to try to split Allied forces and regain control of the Western front. The Battle of the Bulge, named because the Allied front line began to resemble a bulge, lasted more than a month, namely because snowstorms in the region prevented Allied air forces from providing support to troops on the ground. Again, if the Allies had been equipped with GPS, the battle possibly could have been turned back much earlier. Though, this would have prevented the "rescue" of the 101st Airborne by Gen. George Patton at Bastogne.



Bermuda Triangle
The 500,000 square miles of ocean between Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico have become infamous for the number of aircraft and vessels disappearing, often without a trace. The Bermuda Triangle, or Devil's Triangle, as the area is more commonly known has gripped imaginations throughout the 20th century. It's hard to say whether GPS would have prevented all the tragedies that have occurred in the area, but certainly would have been beneficial to the Navy pilots who flew a practice bombing mission over the area in December 1945. The five bombers had a compass malfunction, throwing them off course. The bombers, and the 14 members of the crew were never seen again (a plane found in the Everglades in 1989 may be one of the five, but it has not been confirmed as such by the Navy).

(Photos courtesy of the following: https://ndstudies.gov/, https://www.army.mil, https://www.dodlive.mil, https://ilovehistory.utah.gov, https://www.americaslibrary.gov, https://www.history.army.mil/, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov, https://loc.gov and https://en.wikipedia.org)