Copyright International Film Service, Inc.
A GROUP OF DE HAVILLAND PLANES AT BOLLING FIELD NEAR WASHINGTON
There are many lessons like that which the airman who is new at the game must master. Gradually he becomes more and more expert and more and more self-reliant. Then, if he is of the stuff that heroes are made of, perhaps he may distinguish himself by his daring accomplishments in the air. The more daring and successful he appears to be, the more certain it is that he has covered that long road of careful preparation with exacting thoroughness.
CHAPTER XI
The Future Story of the Air
Since the days when the first man ascended into the clouds in a Montgolfier fire balloon, and since the days when the Wright brothers tried their first gliding experiments and proved that men might hope to soar with wings into the sky, many glorious chapters have been written in the story of the air.
Surely the most inspiring and significant achievement in aerial progress is the great trans-Atlantic flight made in the latter part of May, 1919, by a flying boat of the U.S. Navy. A force of fliers in three airships under Commander Towers attempted the flight from New York to Lisbon by way of Halifax and the Azores, in three “legs” or continuous flights, but on account of disastrous weather conditions, only one of these planes, the NC-4, under Lieutenant-Commander A. C. Read completed the trip successfully. The enthusiasm of the entire world was fired by this feat and it is difficult to estimate fully its epochal significance.
Simultaneous with this flight and even more daring in plan, was the attempt by an Englishman, Harry Hawker, to fly direct from St. Johns, Newfoundland, to England in a Sopwith biplane. Through an imperfect action of the water pump of his machine Hawker was forced to descend and was rescued twelve hundred miles at sea by a Danish vessel. However, the highest honor is due to this man of the air who embarked on so brave an adventure.
The next trans-Atlantic flight was made about a month after the NC-4 had blazed the air route across the ocean. This was a non-stop, record-breaking trip of Capt. John Alcock and Lieut. Arthur W. Brown—an American—in the British Vickers-Vimy land plane from St John's, Newfoundland, to Clifden on the Irish coast. These daring pilots made the distance of 1900 miles in sixteen hours—an average speed of 119 miles an hour.