THEY DID IT FIRST

By H. Elliott

IT may be that the world was too I near the dangerous days of the war in 1919 to be properly thrilled by the hair-raising feat of a nonstop flight across the Atlantic. Or it may be that the great god ballyhoo had not developed its present stentorian lungs. At any rate the pilots of the first airship to cross the Atlantic were forgotten in a fortnight.

On June 14, 1919, a gallant team of air men, Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur W. Brown, flew from St. John's, Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland in a Vickers-Vimy biplane, powered with two 375 horsepower Rolls-Royce motors, carrying 870 gallons of gasoline. Their food consisted of coffee, ale, sandwiches and chocolate, with which they spanned the 1,890 miles in 16 hours and l2 minutes. This was nine years before the flight of that slim young man who today is still a hero in the eyes of the nation.

Perhaps Alcock and Brown made a mistake in not flying on to London so that the mob could see with its own eyes what they had really done. Today there would have been reporters at St. John's to see the pair off and others at Clifden to receive them.

In front of Lindbergh, Chamberlin, Byrd and later pilots were instruments which told them at all times whether the machine was on even keel; even though their senses might assure them into flying correctly, the instruments would serve as a check of proper equilibrium and direction. Knowing that Alcock and Brown had almost none of the instruments then which make "blind" flying possible today, yet managed to come down just where they intended to, makes one realize that theirs was truly a remarkable feat of navigation.

From Alcock's own description of his experiences we learn that almost immediately after the takeoff the tiny propeller operating the wireless dynamo blew away so that they were cut off from radio communication from the very beginning. They saw the sun but once during their entire flight, and for hours neither the moon nor stars were visible. There was a very dense fog and at times they had to descend from within 300 feet of the sea. Their hazardous position increased with the appearance of ice covering the machine for hours, caused by frozen sleet. The fog getting denser soon put the speed indicator out of working order. Captain Alcock believes they looped the loop and did a very steep spiral and performed some very comic stunts, having lost their sense of the horizon. Once during the night they did not know whether or not they were upside down. At another time, due to the heavy fog, they found themselves within ten feet of the sea. For 1½ hours before they saw land they had no idea where they were but believed they were at Galway or thereabouts.

When they landed people didn't know who they were and thought they were scouts looking for Alcock and Brown believing they were lost.

They had plenty of reserve fuel left having used only ²/₃ of their supply.

For this feat they won the London Daily Mail $50,000 purse—²/₃ to Alcock and ¹/₃ to Brown—and were knighted by the King, even though Brown was an American.

Time often remedies injustices of a contemporary verdict, and it is pretty safe to say that when today becomes history a century old, it will be Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur W. Brown who will be honored above all others because THEY DID IT FIRST.