Transatlantic flight
A transatlantic flight is the flight of an aircraft across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe, Africa, South Asia, or the Middle East to North America, South America, or vice versa. Such flights have been made by fixed-wing aircraft, airships, balloons and other aircraft.
Early aircraft engines had neither the reliability nor the power to lift the required fuel to make a transatlantic flight. There were difficulties navigating over the featureless expanse of water for thousands of kilometres, and the weather, especially in the North Atlantic, is unpredictable. Since the middle of the 20th century, however, transatlantic flight has become routine, for commercial, military, diplomatic, and other purposes.
History
The idea of transatlantic flight came about with the advent of the hot air balloon. The balloons of the period were inflated with coal gas, a moderate lifting medium compared to hydrogen or helium, but with enough lift to use the winds that would later be known as the Jet Stream. In 1859, John Wise built an enormous aerostat named the Atlantic, intending to cross the Atlantic. The flight lasted less than a day, crash-landing in Henderson, New York. Thaddeus S. C. Lowe prepared a massive balloon of called the City of New York to take off from Philadelphia in 1860, but was interrupted by the onset of the American Civil War in 1861.Powered by two Rolls-Royce Eagle 360 hp engines, the Vickers Vimy flown by British aviators Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in 1919. The first transatlantic flight by rigid airship, and the first return transatlantic flight, was made on 2 July 1919. The first successful transatlantic flight in a balloon was the Double Eagle II from Presque Isle, Maine, to Miserey, near Paris in 1978.
First transatlantic flights
In April 1913, the London newspaper The Daily Mail offered a prize of £10,000 toThe competition was suspended with the outbreak of World War I in 1914 but reopened after Armistice was declared in 1918. The war saw tremendous advances in aerial capabilities, and a real possibility of transatlantic flight by aircraft emerged.
Between 8 and 31 May 1919, the Curtiss seaplane NC-4 made a crossing of the Atlantic flying from the U.S. to Newfoundland, then to the Azores, and on to mainland Portugal and finally the United Kingdom. The whole journey took 23 days, with six stops along the way. A trail of 53 "station ships" across the Atlantic gave the aircraft points to navigate by. This flight was not eligible for the Daily Mail prize since it took more than 72 consecutive hours and also because more than one aircraft was used in the attempt.
Four teams were competing for the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic. They were Australian pilot Harry Hawker with observer Kenneth Mackenzie-Grieve in a single-engine Sopwith Atlantic; Frederick Raynham and C. W. F. Morgan in a Martinsyde; the Handley Page Group, led by Admiral Mark Kerr; and the Vickers entry John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown. Each group had to ship its aircraft to Newfoundland and make a rough field for the takeoff.
Hawker and Mackenzie-Grieve made the first attempt on 18 May, but engine failure brought them down into the ocean where they were rescued. Raynham and Morgan also attempted on 18 May but crashed on takeoff due to the high fuel load. The Handley Page team was in the final stages of testing its aircraft for the flight in June, but the Vickers group was ready earlier.
File:Alcockandbrown takeoff1919.jpg|thumb|left|Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in June 1919. They took off from St John's, Newfoundland, and landed in Clifden, County Galway, Ireland.
File:Alcock-Brown-Clifden.jpg|thumb|left|The plane of Alcock and Brown having landed in Ireland. While the touchdown had been smooth, the plane had landed on a peat bog and not grass as Alcock had thought, and as the plane ran on it eventually sank axle-deep, pivoting over its wheels.
During 14–15 June 1919, the British aviators Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight. During the War, Alcock resolved to fly the Atlantic, and after the war, he approached the Vickers engineering and aviation firm at Weybridge, which had considered entering its Vickers Vimy IV twin-engined bomber in the competition but had not yet found a pilot. Alcock's enthusiasm impressed Vickers's team, and he was appointed as its pilot. Work began on converting the Vimy for the long flight, replacing its bomb racks with extra petrol tanks. Shortly afterwards Brown, who was unemployed, approached Vickers seeking a post and his knowledge of long-distance navigation convinced them to take him on as Alcock's navigator.
Vickers's team quickly assembled its plane and at around 1:45 p.m. on 14 June, while the Handley Page team was conducting yet another test, the Vickers plane took off from Lester's Field, in St John's, Newfoundland.
Alcock and Brown flew the modified Vickers Vimy, powered by two Rolls-Royce Eagle 360 hp engines. It was not an easy flight, with unexpected fog, and a snow storm almost causing the crewmen to crash into the sea. Their altitude varied between sea level and and upon takeoff, they carried 865 imperial gallons of fuel. They made landfall in Clifden, County Galway at 8:40 a.m. on 15 June 1919, not far from their intended landing place, after less than sixteen hours of flying.
The Secretary of State for Air, Winston Churchill, presented Alcock and Brown with the Daily Mail prize for the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in "less than 72 consecutive hours". There was a small amount of mail carried on the flight making it also the first transatlantic airmail flight. The two aviators were knighted one week later by King George V at Windsor Castle.
The first transatlantic flight by rigid airship, and the first return transatlantic flight, was made just a couple of weeks after the transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown, on 2 July 1919. Major George Herbert Scott of the Royal Air Force flew the airship R34 with his crew and passengers from RAF East Fortune, Scotland to Mineola, New York, covering a distance of about in about four and a half days.
The flight was intended as a testing ground for postwar commercial services by airship, and it was the first flight to transport paying passengers. The R34 wasn't built as a passenger carrier, so extra accommodations were arranged by slinging hammocks in the keel walkway. The return journey to Pulham in Norfolk, was from 10 to 13 July over some 75 hours.
The first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic was made by the Portuguese naval aviators Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral in 1922. Coutinho and Cabral flew from Lisbon, Portugal, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in stages, using three different Fairey III biplanes, and they covered a distance of between 30 March and 17 June.
The first transatlantic flight between Spain and South America was completed in January 1926 with a crew of Spanish aviators on board Plus Ultra, a Dornier Do J flying boat; the crew was the captain Ramón Franco, co-pilot Julio Ruiz de Alda Miqueleiz, Teniente de Navio, Juan Manuel Durán, and Pablo Rada.
The first transpolar flight eastbound and the first flight crossing the North Pole ever was the airship carrying Norwegian explorer and pilot Roald Amundsen on 11 May 1926. He flew with the airship "NORGE" piloted by the Italian colonel Umberto Nobile, non-stop from Svalbard, Norway to Teller, Alaska, USA. The flight lasted for 72 hours.
The first night-time crossing of the South Atlantic was accomplished on 16–17 April 1927 by the Portuguese aviators Sarmento de Beires, Jorge de Castilho and Manuel Gouveia, flying from the Bijagós Archipelago, Portuguese Guinea, to Fernando de Noronha, Brazil in the Argos, a Dornier Wal flying boat.
File:Charles Lindbergh and the Spirit of Saint Louis.jpg|thumb|right|upright|Charles Lindbergh with the Spirit of St. Louis – 1927.
In the early morning of 20 May 1927, Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field, Mineola, New York, on his successful attempt to fly nonstop from New York to the European continental land mass. Over the next 33.5 hours, Lindbergh and the Spirit of St. Louis encountered many challenges before landing at Le Bourget Airport near Paris, at 10:22 p.m. on 21 May 1927, completing the first solo crossing of the Atlantic.
The first east-west non-stop transatlantic crossing by an aeroplane was made in 1928 by the Bremen, a German Junkers W33 type aircraft, from Baldonnel Airfield in County Dublin, Ireland.
On 18 August 1932 Jim Mollison made the first east-to-west solo trans-Atlantic flight; flying from Portmarnock in Ireland to Pennfield, New Brunswick, Canada in a de Havilland Puss Moth.
In 1936 the first woman aviator to cross the Atlantic east to west, and the first person to fly solo from England to North America, was Beryl Markham. She wrote about her adventures in her memoir, West with the Night.
The first transpolar transatlantic crossing was the piloted by the crew led by Valery Chkalov covering some over 63 hours from Moscow, Russia to Vancouver, Washington from 18–20 June 1937.
Commercial airship flights
On 11 October 1928, Hugo Eckener, commanding the airship Graf Zeppelin as part of DELAG's operations, began the first non-stop transatlantic passenger flights, leaving Friedrichshafen, Germany, at 07:54 on 11 October 1928, and arriving at NAS Lakehurst, New Jersey, on 15 October.Thereafter, DELAG used the Graf Zeppelin on regularly scheduled passenger flights across the North Atlantic, from Frankfurt-am-Main to Lakehurst. In the summer of 1931, a South Atlantic route was introduced, from Frankfurt and Friedrichshafen to Recife and Rio de Janeiro. Between 1931 and 1937 the Graf Zeppelin crossed the South Atlantic 136 times.
The British rigid airship R100 made a successful return trip from Cardington to Montreal in July–August 1930, in what was intended to be a proving flight for regularly scheduled passenger services. Following the R101 disaster in October 1930, the British rigid airship program was abandoned and the R100 scrapped, leaving DELAG as the sole remaining operator of transatlantic passenger airship flights.
In 1936 DELAG began passenger flights with LZ 129 Hindenburg, and made 36 Atlantic crossings. The first passenger trip across the North Atlantic left Friedrichshafen on 6 May with 56 crew and 50 passengers, arriving at Lakehurst on 9 May. The fare was $400 one way; the ten westward trips that season took 53 to 78 hours and eastward took 43 to 61 hours. The last eastward trip of the year left Lakehurst on 10 October; the first North Atlantic trip of 1937 ended in the Hindenburg disaster.