World War 2 Empire Pioneers

The possibility of regular services to the countries of the then British Empire grew stronger when Sir Alan Cobham began his series of trailblazing flights. At first he used a de Havilland D.H.50 powered by a 335 hp Armstrong-Siddeley Jaguar Left TheVickersVimy, builtoriginallyasa bomber. Its excellent performance made it a favourite for long-distance endurance flights. Below left The Cu rtiss NC-4 flying boat, which achieved fame asthefirst aircraft toflytheAtlantic, albeit with a stop at the Azores. Right The Ryan monoplane ‘Spirit of St. Louis’ in which Charles Lindbergh electrified the world by his solo crossing of the Atlantic on 20/21 May 1927. engine. In this he flew from London to Rangoon and back in 1924, and then from London to Cape Town and back in 1925. The following year, its wheels replaced by floats, the same machine flew to Australia and back. By then people were seeing air travel in a new light, especially after the Australian Bert Hinkler showed the world what could be done in a light aeroplane well within the reach of many pockets. He had already flown non-stop from London to Turin in 1920, piloting an Avro Baby biplane with a Green 35 hp engine. Eight years later, in an Avro Avian powered by a 35 hp ADC Cirrus II, he made the first solo flight from England to Australia — some 17,700 km (11,000 miles) in 15½ days. In 1929 he flew a D.H.80A Puss Moth — a two/three- seat monoplane powered by a 120 hp de Havilland Gipsy III — from New York to London, making the first non-stop flight between New York and Jamaica. Such flights, graphically demonstrating the rugged reliability of the aircraft of the time, did more to sell aviation to the travelling public than all the expensive advertising in the world. But of all the routes that beckoned to these post-war pioneers, the most enticing was Europe- America, across the North Atlantic. As early as 1913, when there existed no aircraft capable of such a journey, the London Daily Mail had offered a prize of £10,000 for the first non-stop flight between North America and Europe. Come the end of the war there were many long-range machines but the first men who set out to fly the Atlantic in 1919 were not competing for this prize. On 16 May three Navy-Curtiss flying boats, NC-i, NC-3 and NC-4, left Trepassey Bay in Newfoundland and headed for the Azores, 2,208 km (1,380 miles) away. Powered by four 400 hp Liberty 12 engines, these aircraft spanned 38.4 m (126 ft) and had a maximum speed of 146 km/h (91 mph). They had a range of 800 km (500 miles) but only one of them, Lieutenant-Commander Read’s NC-4, completed this first leg. NC-4 went on to make history when it touched down in Plymouth Sound on 31 May to become the first heavier-than-air machine to fly the Atlantic. The first pilot to try for the Daily Mail prize was Henry Hawker, flying a Sopwith biplane powered by a 375 hp 12-cylinder Rolls-Royce engine.

Hawker took off from Newfoundland on May 18, 1919, and almost immediately ran into terrible weather. The engine cooling system failed and finally, after 2,240 km (1,400 miles), Hawker and his navigator made a forced landing and were picked up by a Danish ship. A month later, two more Englishmen accepted the challenge. The pilot was Captain John Alcock, his navigator Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown, and their mount yet another Vickers Vimy. After battling through thick fog, they sighted the Irish coast ahead and Alcock decided to land. He chose what seemed a level piece of ground, but the aeroplane ended its historic flight with its nose buried deep in an Irish bog and its tail raised forlornly to the sky. Fortunately both men were unhurt, having flown 3,023 km (1,890 miles) in 15 hours 57 minutes and proved that aeroplane services across the Atlantic were more than poss- ible — they were inevitable. The first non-stop crossing of the South Atlantic was made in a Breguet XIX piloted by two French aviators, Dieudonné Costes and Lieutenant le Brix. For 1927 their machine was interesting — a single-engined biplane of all-metal construction except for the fabric covering its wings and tail. A flight lasting 20 hours 50 minutes took the two Frenchmen from St Louis to Port Natal, Brazil, a distance of 3,220 km (2,000 miles).

That year also saw what remains to this day the most celebrated long-distance solo flight in the history of aviation. On May 20, 1927, a 24-year-old American named Charles Lindbergh took off from New York and headed across the Atlantic towards Paris. His aeroplane, a Ryan NYP powered by a single 237 hp Wright J-5C Whirlwind radial, was exceptionally small for such a crossing. It had a wing span of only 14 m (46 ft) and a maximum speed of 200 km/h (124 mph). After 28 interminable hours Lindbergh sighted the coast of Ireland, and 5½ hours later his aeroplane, the Spirit of St Louis, touched down at Le Bourget near Paris after a flight covering 5,776 km (3,610 miles). In August 1931 another great pilot, Jim Molli- son, crossed the Atlantic from Ireland to Nova Scotia in a D.H.80A Puss Moth. In February of the following year he flew from Lympne, Southern England, to Rio de Janeiro in 3½ days, becoming the first aviator to cross the North and South Atlantic solo. His aeroplane belonged to the de Havilland Moth family, aircraft which revolutionized private flying. The first D.H. Moth flew early in 1925, powered by a 60 hp ADC Cirrus 1 four-cylinder engine driving a two-bladed propel- ler 1.93 m (6 ft 4 in) in diameter. This classic design attracted attention almost as soon as it appeared: the British Air Ministry subsidised a number of flying clubs, equipping them with Moths. A whole generation of men and women flew these de Havilland biplanes for pleasure, and the fighter pilots who were later to prevail over Southern England and the Channel received their initial training on them.