Less than a minute nth after the Navy’s three week trip across the Atlantic (would have been quicker if they had put the plane on a ship!) Alcock and Brown did the trans-Atlantic non-stop on 14-15 June 1919 landing abruptly, but without injury, in a bog in Clifton, Ireland.
Their successful flight was the headline story in the NYT on 16 June 1919. Alcock and Brown were awarded the £10,000 Daily Mail prize mentioned in this story. They shared £2,000 of the prize with their aircraft mechanics.
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The first non-stop transatlantic flight was by Alcock and Brown in a Vickers Vimy from Newfoundland to Connemara in Ireland June, 1919
Not many people remember that either !
Bob
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@Bob
Well, this flight was a major feature of Colum McCann's 2013 novel "TransAtlantic", which was on the New York Times bestseller list that year
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/books/review/transatlantic-by-colum-mccann.html
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Let's not forget that Floyd Bennett Field has a neat -- and fairly large -- airplane museum. It isn't open every day, so call ahead.
I found it a moving thing to stand beneath World War II-era planes with their bomb-bay doors and to think about the men who served.
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We do well reminding ourselves how precarious early aviation was and how much courage it took to climb into one of those 20s and 30s models. The phrase, on a wing and a prayer, goes right to the heart of what it took. Aviators like Read, Lindbergh, and Markham were successful largely because flying then meant making it up as you went along, correcting, then correcting your overcorrections. Thanks to Mr. Schwach for the efforts.
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There is far more to this flight than can be contained in one article, but allow me to add a few interesting tidbits:
- NC-4 survived and was shipped back to the US. Although donated to the Smithsonian, the museum has no enclosed place large enough to show it in DC (it's as large as a 737). And so it is on display at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Fl.
- The wings were made by Locke & Co, a custom auto builder, in midtown Manhattan. Streets had to be closed after midnight to haul them to Rockaway.
- The purpose of the flight wasn't just to cross the Atlantic, but to develop technologies that could be used to commercialize trans-Atlantic aviation. It was felt that trans Atlantic passenger and cargo service could nullify the u-boat threat a future war. The route and most of the methodologies developed in the flight of the NC's inspired the Pan Am clippers of the 1930's. The first clipper route...NY-Newfoundland-Azores-Portuga-UK...was exactly the route pioneered by the NC's.
- The army, not to be outdone by the navy, circumnavigated the globe with a squadron of planes in 1921.
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@Mike
There had been plans to fly the big flying boats to Europe in the eventuality of the war continuing into 1919. After the Armistice, there was no direct need, but the plans in place, the Navy decided to try it out.
As you note, it was the most practical route for the next twenty years for commercial aviation. Most of the more famous flights were heroic exploits, but the Azores route was the non-heroic, useful one.
And Lindbergh was the 92nd man to fly the Atlantic.
https://www.amazon.com/91-Before-Lindbergh-Peter-Allen/dp/090639337X
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Technically speaking, the Wright Brothers aren't believed to be the first in flight either. According to Jane's aviation reference, the credit goes to Gustave Whitehead of Bridgeport, Connecticut. He apparently flew two years before the Wright Brothers in 1901. The Wright Brothers are generally given credit because they made a much larger effort to document the process. Images we've all seen before.
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@AndyWhen are we going to recognise the flying that was going on in Europe? Are we still too self-centered to consider the rest of the world's history?
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Funny commentaries of Mr. Schwach in regards to his crowd-control expertise. I had never heard of the NC-4 feat. The only one I had heard about was the one of Mr. Lindbergh, who made the first solo nonstop journey across the Atlantic in a day and a half, and then the other one made by Earhart.
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@alfredo ibarraGlad you enjoyed the commentary
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There was another famous long-distance trans-Atlantic flight in 1933 by Stephen Darius and another man; it is commemorated in a statue in Marquette Park in Chicago honoring the two of them. Darius and his co-pilot were Lithuanians who had emigrated to the US and who were living in Chicago. They were attempting to fly from the US to Lithuania. Sadly, they crashed in Germany just 430 miles short of their destination. They are still hailed as heroes in Lithuania. I know of this flight because Darius was a relative by marriage of my mother’s Chicago Lithuanian family. There’s a nice write-up about this flight in Wikipedia.
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Thanks to Mr. Schwach and millions of other people across the country who volunteer their time to enrich their communities.
Very nice of the NYT to recognize his efforts.
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Here's a more extensive story about the flight written by the historian, Marc Wortman. The article was featured in the April 2019 issue of Smithsonian Air and Space Magazine.
https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/a-hand-in-aviation-history-nc-4-180971747
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Although Lindbergh deserves to be remembered for his historic flight, it should also be recalled that he was a rather despicable man.
He led a double life, with two separate families that were unaware of each other.
He was an isolationist when FDR was trying to rally the nation to face the Nazi and Fascist threat.
And last but not least, he was an admirer of Adolph.
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From 1960 (when I was 11YO) and for several years thereafter, I passed by Fort Tilden every summer day, on the way to Long Shore Beach Club (and, when it closed, on the way to The Surf Club) either in the back of the family car (on weekends) or in one 'hitch-hiked' and heading west from "the circle" on the Queens-side of The Marine Park Bridge (long since re-named 'for' Gil Hodges).
'2d best' remembered' is the first Geodesic Dome I ever saw … on the grounds of Fort Tilden east of its entrance. 'Best' remembered are a couple or three 'hills' that -- even before the eyes of an 11YO -- were obviously unnatural … and which I and my 13YO sister imagined, given the cold war 'heat' of the era, to be ICBM 'hiding places.' (Though, commencing the summer of '61, my older sister and I hitch-hiked with our baby sister -- born in June 1960 -- in the arms of one of us ['twas a different time and a safe and 'private' place for Irish Catholics of all ages] baby sister never suggested what she thought might be under those hills.)
P.S. By the time Fort Tilden was decommissioned -- if not long before -- it was publicly revealed that those unnatural 'hills' actually had been ICBM 'hideouts'!
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Not totally forgotten...there is an entire book by Ben Burns (published in 2012) that details the flight from the perspective of the pilot, Walter Hinton. It is titled, The Flying Firsts of Walter Hinton: From the 1919 Transatlantic Flight to the Arctic and the Amazon.
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@Blakely Meyers It’s pretty disappointing that one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world wasn’t able to find out that an entire book on Walter Hinton and his crew, which provides incredible insight into this and many of the flying firsts of Walter Hinton, was readily available on the internet...searching for “walter Hinton books” was enough to get it to show up in Google...
The book by Burns is unique in that Ben Burns, an exceptional journalist and historian, had a direct relationship with Hinton and had spent hours interviewing Hinton over the course of that relationship.
For anyone who finds this article interesting, I can not recommend this book enough times. Hinton did so much more than the NC-4 and the stories in this book are truly incredible.
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Nice story on an almost forgotten achievement. Perhaps, as a long-term plan, this display moves at some point to the USS Intrepid Museum for maximum visibility?
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This was a great achievement at the time, and deserves to be remembered. The crews of the planes involved were true heroes who helped pave the way for our international air transport system.
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I found this article interesting. It is amazing to think how much stories like this one once riveted the nation, and to some extent the world, but then are nearly forgotten as time marches on. (We can only hope that Trump will someday be nearly forgotten.)
One paragraph confused me: "Later that day, the NC-4 had propeller problems. Mr. Schwach credits someone who was just along for the ride — not officially a member of the crew — with requisitioning ship propellers that were adapted for the NC-4: Richard E. Byrd, then a junior Navy officer who had been working on navigational methods and equipment for the NC seaplanes. He became famous a few years later as a polar explorer."
So was Byrd to blame for requisitioning the wrong type of propeller and thus causing the propeller problems? Or should he be credited with finding workable replacement propellers? This part of the story is unclear.
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@Dan Frazier There were problems with propeller parts that needed to be replaced. Byrd had been assigned to Nova Scotia in WWI and knew where spares were being stored, rather than have to ship them from elsewhere. That is my understanding.
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The first Trans-Atlantic flight may be a matter of definition but Alcock and Brown crossed the Atlantic from Newfoundland to crash in Ireland at Connemara on June 14, 1919.
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My grandfather, Stephen A. Burke was a machinist 2d class on the U.S.S. Melville escorting the planes over. He received a printed section of NC-4's wing covering celebrating the successful flight over. Really great to see this being remembered and celebrated in this way!
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Pretty cool, and sad they're forgotten. And please don't forget the person who made the first non-stop, solo crossing of the Atlantic the hard way, against the prevailing winds, east to west: Beryl Markham, who was, by the way, a woman.
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@Harold Smith
The Times should do a "forgotten no more" article on her.
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@Harold Smith ... chronicled in her quite wonderful memoir, West with the Night.
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