First Transatlantic Flight
See also: Transatlantic flight of Alcock and BrownBetween 8 and 31 May 1919, the Curtiss seaplane NC-4 made a crossing of the Atlantic flying from the U.S. to Newfoundland, then to the Azores and on to Portugal and finally the UK. The whole journey took 23 days. NC-4 was the only one of the three United States Navy aircraft to set out that completed the journey. The journey had been organized by the U.S. Navy to include crew rest, aircraft maintenance and repair and refueling, and had been supported by a trail of 22 "station ships" across the Atlantic giving the aircraft points to navigate by.
On 14–15 June 1919, British aviators Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight. They flew a modified World War I Vickers Vimy bomber from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Clifden, Connemara, County Galway, Ireland. Winston Churchill presented them with the Daily Mail prize for the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in "less than 72 consecutive hours" and they were knighted at Windsor Castle by King George V.
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Famous quotes containing the word flight:
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)