Conquering the Atlantic

The first landplane to cross the Atlantic ( from Newfoundland to Ireland) was the Vickers Vimy of Alcock& Brown in 1919 seen here after erection at St John's prior to the successfull flight





 'Touchdown' on European soil (Clifden, Eire)




Alcock& Brown collected the Northcliffe prize of £10,000. There had been 3 other contenders.......the Sopwith Atlantic , the Martynside ' RAYMOR'
and the large Handley Page V/1500 Atlantic

The Sopwith Atlantic which ditched successfully after overheating 1120 miles out of Newfoundland.....aviators Harry Hawker and Kenneth Grieves presumed dead for several days until their rescuers, a Danish ship which  had no radio, reacheid port....hey later collected a £5,000prize for an Atlantic flight exceeding 1,000 miles


The Raymor whose Transatlantic attempt was abandoned after a second take-off crash at St John's, Newfoundland


Handley-Page V /1500 Atlantic which abandoned its planned Atlantic flight from the gravel strip at Harbour Grace, Newfoundland after Alcock&Brown's successful flight....instead it made a tour of the USA after nosing over and being repaired in Nova Scotia 

By 1927 the Wright-Bellanca had demonstrated an endurance of 51 hours overhead the USA but differences between businessman Levine and Lindbergh resulted in a customized Ryan monoplane being the aircraft Lindbergh chose for his epic New York-Paris flight, taking the Orteig prize.

Chamberlin and Levine flew the Bellanca Columbia New York - Eisleben (near Berlin) 3 weeks after Lindberghs successful flight



12 days before Lindberghs flight  the French aviators Nungesser & Coli had attempted the more difficult westward crossing from Paris to New York for the Orteig prize in the Levasseur PL-8 'Oiseau Blanc'. This had a jettisonable undercarriage and they planned to ditch in front of the Statue of Liberty. They were reported passing overhead in the west of Eire but never arrived in New York.


And in April 1927 Davis and Wooster had been lost in the takeoff crash of Keystone  'American Legion'


The Fokker C-2 'America' rebuilt after an April crash at Teterboro, took off from Roosevelt field for Paris,assisted by a 15 degree ramp ...crew Byrd, Balcony, Noville, Acosta


.....arriving overhead Paris but prevented from landing by fog, Balcony flew the 'America' 150 miles back to Ver-sur-Mer(Omaha beach in WWII) and ditched the aircraft just off the beach, all surviving.



In September 1927 British aviator Frank Courtney (inset in postcard) attempted an East-West Atlantic crossing from Plymouth UK in a Napier-Dornier Wal G-EBQO but had to put down off  A Coruña,Spain (Corunna) and abandoned the attempt ( he returned the aircraft to Dornier )   ...he made a second attempt in Dornier Wal G-CAJI in 1928  from Pisa which resulted in a successful mid-ocean ditching but still got a heros' welcome in New York


The last Atlantic crossing of 1927 was by Brock and Schlee in the Stinson 'Pride of Detroit' from Old Orchard Beach, Maine....


routing via the 1200m rolled gravel strip at Harbour Grace, Newfoundland , crossing the UK coast at Plymouth for a landing at Croydon . They succeeded with a planned round-the-world as far as Tokyo but crossed the Pacific by steamship







Set against the successes of1927 in September 3 transatlantic attempts from Harbour Grace had ended in disaster  the Canadian Stinson 'Sir John Carling',.( lost :Tully, Medcalf)


....... the American Fokker VIIa ' Old Glory'   seen on its launching ramp, Old Orchard Beach, Maine ( lost :DeWitt Hill, Bernard, Payne)


and the British Fokker VIIa G-EBTQ ' St Raphael'(  lost : Lady Anne Savile (Princess), Hamilton and Minchin)




Germans Merz, Bock and Rhode made the penultimate 1927 Atlantic attempt in November in a Heinkel floatplane....crashed taking off in the Azores, no loss of life


In December the last attempt of 1927 was made from Roosevelt field in Sikorsky amphibian 'The 
Dawn' , crew Omdahl, Goldsborough  Schroeder carrying Frances Grayson but it disappeared  off Newfoundland

1931
On January 7 1931aviators William Maclaren and  Beryl Hart departed eastwards from Hampton Roads, Virginia in Bellanca floatplane ' Trade Wind' but after refuelling in Bermuda no more was heard from them....wreckage spotted North of the Azores


Ruth Nichols left New York on June 22 on a solo W-E attempt in Lockheed Vega ' Akita' but crashed landing at St John, New Brunswick surviving with back injuries


Boardman and Polando  in Bellanca 'Cape Cod' flew nonstop Floyd Bennett Field NY to Istanbul, a 5000 mile 49 hour flight, July 1931


Clyde Pangborn successfully flew Bellanca 'Miss Veedol' from Floyd Bennett field to Wales as the first part of an almost round-the-world trip culminating in a 5500 mile crossing of the Pacific from Japan to Washington state,USA

1933


In June 1933 the CASA Breguet XIX Cuatro Vientos special successfully flew from Seville to Camaguey, Cuba in 33 hours, but it and crew Barberan, Collar and Madariaga were lost on a subsequent local flight to Mexico



Over 6 months in 1933 Charles and Anne Lindbergh thoroughly explored the Atlantic( N& S) for PanAm  in their float equipped Lockheed Sirius  Tingmissartoq,..... up into the Arctic circle summer of 1933, East to Moscow by end September, around the UK in October, down to West Africa by November then across to Brazil and back up to New York by Christmas 1933


Graphic and map from the Pan Am Historical Foundation


www.charleslindbergh.com/history/paris.asp

In 1933 Jim Mollison and Amy Johnson flew the DH84 Dragon 'Seafarer' from Pendine Sands, Wales to Bridgeport, Connecticut where it crashed on landing slightly injuring the couple....here over the Irish coast before braving the cold, wet and unfriendly Atlantic against the prevailing wind


In August 1933 Codos and Rossi flew the Bleriot-Zappata monoplane ' Joseph le Brix' a record 5657 miles W-E from Floyd Bennett field , New York to Rayak, Syria, overflying  Cherbourg, Paris, Nancy, Strasbourg, Munich,Vienna, Salonika, Rhodes, Cyprus. Their attempt in May 1934 to fly E-W Paris-San Francisco had to be abandoned at New York  www.airhistory.net/photo/408357/F-ALCC


In early August Scottish pilot John Grierson got his DH60G Moth ' Rouge et Noir ' E-W as far as  Reykjavik (while the Lindberghs were there) but overturned it on a float equipped departure....he succeeded in 1934 in  Fox Moth 
' Robert Bruce'
  en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Grierson_(pilot)

1935

1937
1937 saw the first trial flights by Imperial Airways and Pan American across the North Atlantic with potentially suitable commercial aircraft.Imperial's S.30 Empire variants had sufficient internal fuel to fly Foynes, Eire to Botwood, Newfoundland but leaving little margin for payload
Caledonia on the St Lawrence River., Montreal after its 1st transatlantic crossing via Foynes and Botwood


After arrival from Foynes ,Botwood,and Montreal, Captain Wilcockson and crew flew 'Caledonia' triumphantly around Manhattan with several film and photographic aircraft in attendance one carrying LIFE magazine's Margaret Bourke -White....over Central Park lake....


....and over Roosevelt Island and the Queensborough Bridge








Imperial used the Pan American base at Port Washington, Manhasset Bay near New York, where the Sikorsky S-42B Pan American used for the reciprocal first flight to Southampton was prepared




Merrill and Lambie successfully crossed the Atlantic in 1937 in a Lockheed Electra, overshadowed somewhat by the Coronation in Britain