It was Tuesday, 15 July 1919 and for the residents of Clifden on
Ireland's west coast this was not to be a normal day. Just before 08.40
hours, descending out of the gloom, came a large, twin-engine aeroplane
lining up for final approach. One or two on-lookers recognised the
danger straight away for this was an area of soft bog, but their
attempts to alert the pilot were in vain.
The aircraft began to sink and, with a squelch, came to a sudden stop,
the tail rearing up in the air. Dazed and with fuel filling the cockpit
the two-man crew scrambled out, grabbing what they could. After a flight
lasting 16 hours and 28 minutes, Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant
Arthur Whitten-Brown had won the race to be the first to fly non-stop
across the Atlantic.
It was a rough ending for a race that began in April 1913 when Lord
Rothermere, aviation philanthropist and owner of the Daily Mail, offered
a prize of £10,000, roughly equivalent to $1,000,000 in today's money,
to 'the aviator who shall first cross the Atlantic in an aeroplane in
flight from any point in the United States of America, Canada or
Newfoundland to any point in Great Britain or Ireland in 72 continuous
hours'.
Illustrated by many unique photographs this book tells the story of the
race, delayed for almost six years by the First World War. Many aircraft
would be entered but few would even get off the ground. The teams faced
great difficulties in preparing for the challenge of crossing one of the
most hostile stretches of ocean on Earth.
The authors not only reveal tales of failures and technical
difficulties, but of the intense frustration of waiting for the perfect
weather-window. And even when finally airborne, Alcock and Brown's
flight almost ended in disaster on several occasions as weather
conditions almost conspired to cast them down into the grey, cold waters
of the Atlantic and almost certain death.
