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1 “We’ve Come to Fly the Atlantic” An aura of unreality seemed to surround us as we flew onward towards the dawn and Ireland . the distorted ball of a moon, the weird half- light, the monstrous cloud shapes, the fog below and around us, the misty indefiniteness of space, the changeless drone, drone, drone of the motors. —Lieutenant Arthur “Teddy” Whitten Brown t the turn of the last century, most outsiders viewed the Dominion Aof Newfoundland as little more than a high-walled wedge of ancient rock and timeless timber rising out of storm-tossed, cod-filled waters. Cool, bleak, and sparsely inhabited save for a couple of small towns inland and the fishing villages dotting its fringe, the giant island off the eastern coast of Canada was considered one of the British Empire’s more isolated and uninviting COPYRIGHTEDoutposts. An airplane had never MATERIAL touched its stony soil. But in the early spring of 1919, just months after the Armistice stilled guns and grounded aero squadrons across Europe, several teams of aviators and mechanics, along with a flock of reporters, began converging on the capital of St. John’s. “We’ve come,” one late arrival explained to an uncommonly busy innkeeper, “to fly the Atlantic.” It was about time. It had been six years since Lord Northcliffe, owner of London’s populist newspaper the Daily Mail, had announced a prize 6 cc01.indd01.indd 6 66/10/11/10/11 33:15:15 PMPM “we’ve come to fly the atlantic” 7 of £10,000 ($50,000) to the first person to cross the ocean by a heavier- than-air flying machine. (Lighter-than-air apparatus—a category that included balloons and all airships held aloft by bags of helium or hydro- gen gas—were barred from the competition.) Northcliffe’s challenge, issued on April 1, 1913, stipulated that the flight be made in fewer than seventy-two hours and that the takeoff and landing points be some- where in the United States, Canada, or Newfoundland on one side, and the British Isles on the other. The rules further stated that the start could be made from land or water, but in the latter case the plane had to cross the coastline in flight. Stoppages were allowed on water, and a competitor’s craft could be repaired en route. The competition was administered by the Royal Aero Club and was open to any pilot of any nationality who held a license issued by the Paris-based Federation Aéronautique Internationale, aviation’s interna- tional governing body. All that was required were a £100 ($500) entry fee, registration with the club fourteen days prior to the first anticipated flight, and a suitable plane. At the time Northcliffe issued his challenge there was no airplane capable of making the crossing, which was just shy of nineteen hundred statute miles at its shortest distance, between Newfoundland and Ireland. Then the Great War caused the competition to be suspended. When it was renewed in 1918, the situation had materially improved for interested parties. The prize money, augmented by offers from a tobacco firm and a private citizen, now totaled £13,000 ($65,000). The combination of more efficient engines, better instruments, smarter design, and a deeper understanding of aerodynamics promised to sig- nificantly increase the odds of any postwar attempt, though the obstacles remained formidable and a successful crossing was by no means a sure thing. A few plucky pilots were persuaded that the right plane just might remain airborne long enough for the twenty to thirty hours needed to cross the ocean. Manufacturers, their eye on the huge commercial poten- tial of hauling passengers, mail, and freight, were understandably anxious to outfit them in such an aircraft. All told, there were eleven competitors in various stages of prepara- tion for the prize by early 1919. All but one were British. In renew- ing his challenge after the war, Lord Northcliffe had tweaked the rules. Now “aeroplanes of enemy origin or manufacture” were prohibited from entering, which kept Germany’s large and nimble Gotha bombers out cc01.indd01.indd 7 66/10/11/10/11 33:15:15 PMPM 8 the big jump of the race. Although there had been reports that France and Italy were preparing to field teams, neither country posted an entry. An accident in New Jersey cost two Swedes their plane, removing the only non-British contender. Because the prevailing winds in the Northern Hemisphere blow eastward, helping to push aircraft toward Europe, all but one of the competitors planned to follow a west-to-east course. The one who didn’t was Major J. C. P. Woods, pilot of a single-engine biplane called the Shamrock. On April 18, 1919, Woods set off from England for his planned departure point of Limerick, Ireland. The converted torpedo bomber promptly dropped into the Irish Sea with a dead engine. Woods and his navigator were rescued by nearby picnickers, but the plane was ruined. “The Atlantic race,” declared its soggy pilot, “is pipped.” The Shamrock was the exception that proved the rule. Any aircraft hoping to cross the Atlantic from east to west would have to battle ornery headwinds that, depending on their velocity, could trim ten, twenty, or more miles off a plane’s hourly pace while draining its fuel supply in the process. It obviously was more advantageous to sail along on the west- erlies. Hence the aviation world’s new center: St. John’s, Newfoundland, one of the oldest and easternmost settlements in North America. Its proximity to European shores had prompted radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi to receive the first transatlantic wireless message there in 1901. Now, nearly two decades later, several airplanes were being crated and making the long trek to St. John’s by steamer, along with their crews and mechanics. Eventually four teams would be in St. John’s. Wagering was fierce in England. It was hard to bet against test pilot Harry Hawker, a clear-eyed Australian who had set a variety of speed, distance, and altitude records around the British Isles. The slightly built thirty-year-old, who also had made a name as an auto racer, neither drank nor smoked, believing either vice would affect his greatest asset: his steady nerves. He hadn’t fought in the war, but in his line of work he’d taken more risks and suffered more injuries than many who had. The press, always on the lookout for a properly hyperbolic tagline, took to calling this survivor of multiple crashes “the man who won’t be killed.” Hawker’s navigator was Lieutenant Commander Kenneth Mackenzie Grieve, a career naval officer with just four hours of flying experience behind him. Their single-engine biplane, the Atlantic, had been specially designed at the Sopwith factory at Brooklands, outside London, where all cc01.indd01.indd 8 66/10/11/10/11 33:15:15 PMPM “we’ve come to fly the atlantic” 9 the major British airplane manufacturers built and tested their machines. The Atlantic boasted a unique streamlining feature. Hawker planned to pull a lever shortly after takeoff, releasing the wheeled undercarriage. The sudden loss of several hundred pounds of weight, coupled with the improved wind resistance, figured to increase the Atlantic’s speed to a brisk 100 miles per hour over the ocean. This goodly clip meant Hawker could plan on a controlled crash some seventeen to twenty hours later in Ireland, assuming no mechanical breakdowns or navigational errors en route. There would be, at a minimum, some significant bruising of the crew and plane in attempting a belly-flop landing. But the gain in speed was considered well worth it. The men would share a single cockpit and, in the event of a forced water landing, the detachable lifeboat built into the upper part of the fuselage. Not to be outdone was the Martinsyde Company, which fielded a smaller two-seater. It was lighter and more streamlined and could hum along at 110 miles per hour, despite having a less powerful engine than the Atlantic. It was called the Raymor after its pilot, Freddie Raynham, and his navigator, Captain Fairfax Morgan, whose cork leg was an unfor- tunate souvenir of his naval air service in the war. Another manufacturer, Handley Page Ltd., entered the largest plane available, the new V/1500 bomber. It measured 126 feet wingtip to wingtip, and had four Rolls- Royce Eagle engines driving two tractor and two pusher propellers. It carried a crew of four, including its fifty-five-year-old commander, Admiral Mark Kerr, who in 1914 had become the first British flag officer to learn how to fly. Each team sought the best spot to build an aerodrome—a rather grand term for the primitive takeoff strips that would have to be carved out of the raw and rocky countryside. “Everybody thought Newfoundland in spring would be teeming with flat green fields like England, ideal for flying,” Morgan recalled. “It turned out to have very little but low hills and a lot of uneven ground that I could see was going to be swampy when the winter snow melted.” To make room for the requisite length of runway each plane needed to get airborne, fences, trees, and stumps were removed, ditches filled, and boulders carted away. In Kerr’s case, houses and outbuildings also had to be knocked down. Meanwhile, waiting for the arrival of their converted Vickers Vimy bomber were Captain John Alcock and his navigator, Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown, just two of the many demobilized airmen cc01.indd01.indd 9 66/10/11/10/11 33:15:15 PMPM 10 the big jump determined to continue their aviation careers any way they could after the war.

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