Out of the Dust
By Bob Betz
(Wampsville, NY) The front page of the Lyons Republican for June 20, 1919, had an interesting article on the current advances being made in world transportation.
Fly From New World to Old By Airplane in 16 Hours
Dream of Aviation Realized
The final goal of all the ambitions which flying men have ventured to dream since the Wright brothers’ first rose from the earth in a heavier-than-air machine, was realized Sunday morning when two young British officers, Captain John Alcott and Lieutenant Arthur W. Brown, landed on the Irish coast after the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
Their voyage was without accident and without unforeseen incident, so far as can be learned. It was a straight away clean-cut flight achieved in sixteen hours and twelve minutes – from Newfoundland to Cliften, Ireland, a distance of more than 1,900 miles.
But the brief and modest description which comes from the airmen at Cliften tells of an adventurous and amazingly hazardous enterprise. Fog and mist hung over the North Atlantic and the Vickers-Viny biplane climbed and dived, struggling to extricate herself from the folds of the airplane’s worst enemies. She rose 13,000 feet, swooped down almost to the surface of the sea and at times the two aviators found themselves flying upside down only ten feet above the water.
In landing, the machine struck heavily and the fuselage plowed itself into the sand. Neither of the occupants was injured.
Enthusiasm over the success of the trip, it is commented, has not been accompanied by any minimizing of the great danger the aviators encountered. Once, the airmen said, they barely escaped being plunged into the sea when the machine went onto a flat spin. Early in the flight the half gale in which they took off from St John’s tore off the propeller that drove the wireless dynamo and made radio communication impossible. At the same time, Lieutenant Brown says, a stay wire had broken, but of this he did not speak of to his companion until they landed. Captain Alcott said he would have turned back had he known this.
The aviators said that they did not feel hungry during the flight, but were extremely thirsty.
The Viny bomber, in its flight across the Atlantic, carried a number of mascots, including a dog and cat, but the real one was an American flag belonging to Lieutenant Brown, the plane’s navigator. It was a symbol of citizenship that is American, despite his birth in Scotland and the fact that he is still on the active duty list of the Royal Air Force. The flight was truly a British-American project, and the colors of both nations were aboard, as well as two gallant representatives of the nations.
It is a report that seems to have a bit of embellishment. I cannot visualize the plane upside down let alone ten feet above the water.
Bob Betz is an independent historian who volunteers in the Madison County Clerk’s Office Archives. While working there, Betz has recaptured stories of Madison County’s past ‘out of the dust.’ His columns are taken from historic documents and written in the language of the era. He can be reached at history@m3pmedia.com.
