>>I have another old dear aviation friend who passed on at age 104 last year who made 221 crossings of the Pacific in the Boeing 314 Clipper. HIS expertise was celestial navigation … hence why they flew at night.
Sort of. The real reason they flew at night was because they were crossing big oceans in an airplane that couldn’t do much more than 130MPH. They flew day and night to get to a destination.
Celestial navigation does not require night-only operation. There is still one really good “star” sighting available to a celestial navigator during the day.