Albert Cushing Read, Sr. (March 29, 1887 – October 10, 1967) was an aviator and rear admiral in the United States Navy.

[2] His Academy classmates included Patrick N. L. Bellinger, Willis W. Bradley, George M. Courts, Henry K. Hewitt, Jonas H. Ingram, Claud A. Jones, and Raymond Spruance.

Read's flight started from Rockaway Beach, Long Island, took 23 days before arriving in Plymouth, England.

Later in 1919, upon returning to the U.S., Read predicted: "It soon will be possible to drive an airplane around the world at a height of 60,000 feet and 1,000 miles per hour."

An airplane at the height of 60,000 feet would be whirling its propellers in a vacuum, and no aviator could live long in the freezing cold of interstellar space."