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Aviation History
1939
1939 - 1898.PDF
JUNE 22, 1939 ff0im 625 ATLANTIC ANNIVERSARY Twenty Years Ago : How Alcock and Brown, in a Vickers Vimy, Made the First Direct Atlantic Crossing TWENTY years ago, at 8.40 a.m. on June 15, 1919, a Vickers Vimy landed at Clifden, Ireland, after making the first direct air crossing of the Atlantic. The pilot was the late Capt. J. Alcock, D.S.C., and the navigator Lt. Whitten Brown. Less than a week later they were knighted. A fortnight earlier, three flying boats of the U.S. Navy had made a crossing via the Azores, while the late H. G. Hawker and Cdr. Mackenzie-Grieve, attempting a direct crossing in a Sopwith land- plane, had been forced down in the sea and posted as missing—actually they had been picked up by a ship without wireless. The Vimy had left St. Johns, Newfound land, at 4.13 p.m. (G.M.T.) on the previous day, and the crossing of 1,880 miles to Clif den, where the machine was put down in what appeared to be a nice meadow and which turned out to be a bog, was made in a time of 16 hr. 12 min. Considering that the Vimy was cruised during the crossing at about 90 m.p.h., this was a remarkably good time and suggests a following wind of about 25 m.p.h. Apart from the following wind, however, Alcock and Brown had a fairly uncomfortable sixteen hours and suffered everything from low cloud and fog to that modern discovery, ice formation. During the greater part of the flight, nevertheless, the machine was flown at an average altitude of about 4,000 ft., and early in the morning, at about 6 a.m., Capt. Alcock climbed up to 11,000 ft. in order to enable Lt. Whitten Brown to obtain some sextant sights. This use of the sextant is to-day one of the most interest ing features of the crossing. Only in the last year or two have transport and bomber crews made any ieal attempt Capt. Alcock (centre) and Lt. Whitten Brown (right) photographed at the Royal Aero Club after their great flight. On the left is H. G. Hawker, who had been rescued from the Atlantic. to use marine methods of position finding. During the flight the navigator was able to take three sights, one on the sun, one on the moon, and one on the Pole Star and Vega. On leaving Newfoundland, he set a course of 124 deg. M. and at 3 a.m., after an observation of Polaris and Vega, he found that the machine was about 2 deg. south of its correct track. The course was then reset at no deg. M. In fact, conditions for such methods of navi gation were far from good, and after the first forty minutes' flying they only saw the sky for about an hour. It is not generally known that the Vimy carried wireless, though this was not used, because about an hour after set ting out the generator fan-shaft sheared and the equipment •-.••;. II f^—fl The Vickers Vimy taking-off from Newfoundland on the attempt. The engines were two Rolls-Royce Eagles of 375 h-P-
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