Transatlantic flight
Thaddeus S. C. Lowe prepared a massive balloon of 725,000 cubic feet (20,500 m3) 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.
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 Mark Kerr; and the Vickers entry John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown.
[11][13] 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".
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 (on Long Island), covering a distance of about 3,000 miles (4,800 km) in about four and a half days.
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 8,383 kilometres (5,209 mi) 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 (Navy Lieutenant), Juan Manuel Durán, and Pablo Rada.
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.
[18] 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.
[19] 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.
[20] The first transpolar transatlantic (and transcontinental) crossing was the non-stop flight [ru] piloted by the crew led by Valery Chkalov covering some 8,811 kilometres (5,475 mi) over 63 hours from Moscow, Russia to Vancouver, Washington from 18–20 June 1937.
[21] 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.
Between February 1934 and August 1939 Lufthansa operated a regular airmail service between Natal, Brazil, and Bathurst, Gambia, continuing via the Canary Islands and Spain to Stuttgart, Germany.
In the 1930s a flying boat route was the only practical means of transatlantic air travel, as land-based aircraft lacked sufficient range for the crossing.
On 5 July 1937, A.S. Wilcockson flew a Short Empire for Imperial Airways from Foynes to Botwood, Newfoundland and Harold Gray piloted a Sikorsky S-42 for Pan American in the opposite direction.
[33] As the Short Empire only had enough range with enlarged fuel tanks at the expense of a passenger room, several pioneering experiments were done with the aircraft to work around the problem.
[38] Mercury, piloted by Captain Don Bennett,[39] separated from her carrier at 8 pm to continue what was to become the first commercial non-stop east-to-west transatlantic flight by a heavier-than-air machine.
Sir Alan Cobham developed the Grappled-line looped-hose system to stimulate the possibility for long-range transoceanic commercial aircraft flights,[41] and publicly demonstrated it for the first time in 1935.
[47] On 21 July 1939, the first aircraft, (G-AFCI "Golden Hind"), was first flown at Rochester by Shorts' chief test pilot, John Lankester Parker.
Men and women were provided with separate dressing rooms, and white-coated stewards served five and six-course meals with gleaming silver service.
In January 1942, Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited Bermuda on his return to Britain, following December 1941 meetings in Washington D.C., with US President Franklin Roosevelt, in the weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Ministry of Aircraft Production would provide civilian crews and management and former RAF officer Don Bennett, a specialist in long-distance flying and later Air Vice Marshal and commander of the Pathfinder Force, led the first delivery flight in November 1940.
"[54][55] The organization was passed to the Air Ministry administration by retaining civilian pilots, some of whom were Americans, alongside RAF navigators and British radio operators.
Later jet airliners, including the larger and longer-range Comet 4, were designed so that in the event of for example a skin failure due to cracking the damage would be localized and not catastrophic.
Land-based systems such as VOR and DME, because they operate "line of sight", are mostly useless for ocean crossings, except in initial and final legs within about 240 nautical miles (440 km) of those facilities.
[82] Passengers Kilometers (Billions) The fastest crewed flight on this route is 1 hour 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds, achieved by an eastbound SR-71 Blackbird on 1 September 1974.
The flight departed from Beale Air Force Base, California and landed at Farnborough International Airshow, crossing virtual radar gates over New York and London to spare them from sonic booms.
[85] In September 2013, Jonathan Trappe lifted off from Caribou, Maine, United States in an attempt to make the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by cluster balloon.
[107] A short time later, due to difficulty controlling the balloons, Trappe was forced to land near the town of York Harbour, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
