PIONEERS OF THE AIR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20302, 9 July 1929, Page 13

PIONEERS OF THE AIR.

FIRST ATLANTIC FLIGHT*

CAPTAIN ALCOCK'S FEAT.

EVENT OF TEN YEARS AGO. [I'llOM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.] VANCOUVER, June 12. While airmen of several countries are grooming their planes for Atlantic flights during the present summer, it is fitting perhaps to recall that, ten years ago this month—Friday, the thirteenth—Captain John Alcock and Lieut. Arthur Whit-ten Brown made the first air crossing of the Atlantic, winning the Daily Mail £IO,OOO prize. Those pioneers built a makeshift hangar for their Bristol bomber on a hillside in suburban St. John's, Newfoundland. They were not alone in the project for crossing the Atlantic. Another plane was to carry five all-told, but when the British Government learned it was an advertising "stunt," sponsored by Mr. Ilearst, it gave 110 official cognisance to tlio entry. Ono cannot compare Captain Alcock's flight with Colonel Lindbergh's. In 1919 planes, for ocean flights, were primitive. Radio was an infant. Take-off places there were none. Captain Alcock prepared his own. There were no dependable meteorological data, no proven air navigation charts. Captain Alcock's funds were meagre to a degree. It was a gamble with fate.

Tho United Slates Government took the same view as tho British Government, that tho flight was a purely private venture, mainly for advertising purposes, and look no official cognisance of the enterprise. The Aviators Who Entered.

The Sopwith firm entered their famous tester, Harry Hawker; the Martinsydo firm it 3 greatest demonstrator, Raynham; the Vickers people, Captain Alcock. A "gentleman pilot," Vice-Admiral Kerr, entered for Hand ley-Page. Others, who never got to the starting point, included Captain Courtenay; Captain Pickles, the Australian "ace," who had a two-seater Faircy; Alfred Meadows, in an Alliance; and Captain Payze, R.A.F., in a Whitehead.

Hawker was unluckily out of it. Raynham crashed in starting, in an effort to follow Hawker out. Morgan, his navigator. who lost one foot in the war, lost tho other in the crash. Kerr was at Harbor Grace, 40 miles away, ready to start. All scorned the sacred superstition of sailormen and chose Friday, the 13th, with tho benediction of a full moon.

"Will you make it?" some inanley asked Alcock.

"Brown will make it," was his answer. "Knows his job as well as a man 'can, with all there is to go on. My part's siinplo enough. It's my trade. Navigation's the ticklish thing." So like Alcock to give tho credit to his companion, and to affirm that the flight of the Atlantic was a test of navigation, rather than aviation. His machine was a Vimy bomber, with over-all length of 43ft., 78ft. wing span, 10ft. 6in. plane width, with total weight of seven tons, carrying 870 gallons of petrol, with a flight range of 2440 miles. Incidents of War Service. "It's a curious thing," said Alcock, "that, while my Vimy is tho typo of Vickers bomber mobilised at Belfort for a bombing raid on Berlin just before the Armistice, that Handley-Pago of the admiral's is one of tho very machines fitted out in London for a similar expedition and the same objective.'" "Quito so," replied the admiral, smiling, "only, of course, we weren't getting ready to bomb Berlin, you know—just 'military works' in and about Berlin." Tho rest is British history. Alcock saw air service on the Turkish and Western fronts. Ho was the designer of a famous scout machine in 1916. Its feature was unobstructed visibility in all directions. Subsequent scouts followed its basic principles. He was ono of the first pair of airmen to bomb Adrianople and Constantinople. His last duel in the clouds nearly ended his career. After crashing his antagonist, his propeller broke and his machine fell from 12,000 ft. Ho "graduated" its fall into tho Gulf of Saros, and nono was injured. The plane kept afloat for two hours and then sank. Its three occupants swam ashore to enemy territory, a mile away. In a Turkish civil gaol, they had a rough time with filth, vermin and low diet. They succeeded in getting transferred to an interment camp, where they stayed until the Armistice freed them. Brown was shot down in 1915, badly wounded. He carried a permanent limp from an inefficient setting of broken bones. His hair went white during the operation. Ho was returned to his English homo on an exchange of prisoners in 1917.