The Big Hop of 1919

It is astonishing to me that we went from the first powered flight of a few hundred feet in 1903 to attempting to fly the Atlantic in 1919. 

The Daily Mail had offered a prize of £10,000 to cross the Atlantic. The pilots called it the Big Hop. Nowadays we think nothing of it but back then they had open cockpits, primitive navigation tools, unreliable weather forecasting and many other problems. This was right on the edge of what was possible at the time. And not always on the right edge!

We talked about:

- the wonderful Hilda Hewlett, a pioneer of British aviation

- how WW1 affected the competition (and the competitors)

- Alcock and Brown and the runners up

- how to keep calm (in your lounge suit) and carry on, even as death is racing to meet you.

It is a wonderful story and David is wonderful storyteller!

Transcript

Setting The Stage: The Big Hop

Russell 0:04

Hello and welcome to Subject to Change with me, Russell Hogg. My guest today is David Rooney. David is a writer, historian, and museum curator. He was on the podcast before a few years ago, and uh uh when he was on before he talked about his book About Time. And that was a history of the measurement of time in various civilizations, and and indeed the way that measuring time changed these civilizations. But today we're going to be talking about his book The Big Hop. Uh, and this is the story of the competition to be the first to fly non-stop across the Atlantic. And this is all taking place in the early 1900s, and and to some extent against the background of the First World War. And this is one of these periods in history where technology, and not just technology, but but society as well, is changing really, really fast. And and of course that throws up all kinds of fascinating stories, and uh and the story David tells in the Big Hop is definitely one of these. Uh anyway, welcome David to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Wonderful to be back on, Russell. It's uh great to be talking to you again.

Russell 1:20

Could we start by by you saying a bit more about what exactly the big hop was and uh and whose idea it was in the first place?

Northcliffe’s Prize And Media Power

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Yeah, and it's a wonderfully evocative uh phrase, the big hop. It was mostly the American newspapers who called it that, and as you said in the introduction, it was to be the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic. And the kind of the big spoiler that I think we have to get out of the way really early on in this conversation is that the big hop was carried out in 1919, and it was John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown who did it, John known as Jack to everybody, and Arthur Whitten Brown known as Ted to his friends and family. And they completed The Big Hop in June 1919. And that's, you know, some people will know about that aspect of the story, but it was a much bigger story. Um, as you say, I mean, the period well of the First World War and then immediately after it uh was of profound social as well as technological change, and which makes this a fascinating story. But also a lot of what happened in 1919, we have to look at the war and before the war to understand how we got there. So you ask the question whose idea was the big hop? And we bring in quite early on a very, very interesting character in this story. The character is the Daily Mail, the person behind the Daily Mail is Alfred Holmesworth, later Lord Northcliffe, who in 1913, a year before war broke out, put up this huge cash prize of£10,000 for the first person to fly the Atlantic. You might assume that nobody would have been trying to do that in 1913 with the state of aviation, although by the time war broke out, two companies were making serious plans to attempt Northcliffe's prize. But of course, the prize was paused during the First World War and then it was back on in 1918. I mean Lord Northcliffe as he as he became was a really, really interesting character. He was born in the 1860s in uh quite a nice, well-to-do part of the Dublin suburbs, Chapel Izard. Nice little um villa. His father taught in a uh British military school just over the road from their house. Um they should have had a really nice uh middle class upbringing uh in in Dublin, um, but Holmesworth's father was an alcoholic. The family was never far from Pennury. Anyway, I could talk forever about Alfred Holmesworth's upbringing, but I mean it turned out to be quite a straightened existence uh financially as well as socially. They moved to to um London, moved the hands of the clock forward, he founded the Daily Mail in 1896, and within just a few years he used that newspaper to put huge amounts of money, of his money, into early aviation, which culminated in this 1913 prize offer.

Russell 4:24

Is this is he genuinely interested in aviation, or does he see this as a way because as I understand it, he was very patriotic, and does he see this as some way of sort of celebrating, you know, British endeavour?

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Really good question. Um he wanted to sell newspapers, and he was I think it's fair to say he was obsessed. He was obsessed with technology and kind of technological modernity in general, and aviation was one of his obsessions, but at the same time he also absolutely wanted to sell newspapers. Early in his in his newspaper career, he came up with the idea of what he called talking points, and he would say to his news editors, talking points every day. Instead of waiting for the news to come to you, you have to go out and gather the news, you have to send for it, and you have to find a talking point every day for the newspaper, which is what the country will be talking about for the rest of that day. Now, with without wanting to give kind of a long lecture on the early history of aviation, but a very short one, the uh the first powered flights, heavier than air flights, only took place in 1903 when the Wright brothers uh flew their aeroplane in in Kitty Hawk, in North Carolina. They were done in secret, hardly anybody saw those flights. It wasn't till 1906, when the first flights took place in Europe, in Paris, by the Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos Dumont, that the world started to catch on to this new thing which was flying. Alfred Harmsworth heard about those flights. He wasn't in Paris to see them, but he heard about them, and the next day he said to his news editor, England is no longer an island. What he'd realized was now that powered flight can take place, Britain had been, as he said, hiding behind its wooden wall of protection of the British Navy as an island, and now that wooden wall could simply be stepped over in a little aeroplane and could land in Britain. And it was then that he put it forward his first aviation prize in 1906 for the first flight to Man London to Manchester and back. This was two years before anybody had flown an aeroplane in Britain. And he became rather obsessed with aviation from a technological point of view, but also because he was deeply patriotic and unlike many people in 1906, he believed war with Germany was coming, and that the airplane would play a decisive role one way or another in whether Britain would win or lose that war.

Russell 7:06

It is amazing to think that the first flight is 1903, and uh I I actually just noticed something the other day where the New York Times gets a bit of a bashing because they had confidently predicted that powered flight was you know basically impossible for for hundreds of years, and two months later the Wright brothers take to the sky. I thought that was very funny.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

It is extraordinary. We we treat flying in many ways like it's a chore today. It's something that we have to endure. But come on, it's it's a miracle. It's it's humans have wanted to fly with the birds and the gods since since before history. You know, in the Bible, those who look upon the Lord will mount with wings as eagles. And throughout the, well, I mean, through the 18th century, when um lighter-than-air flight balloons basically uh started to carry us above the earth through the 19th century, huge numbers of experiments with heavier-than-air flight, with gliding, and then with uh powered flight. And then in 1903, these two guys in North Carolina achieved something which humans have wanted to do for thousands of years, which is magic, which is to fly, to fly with the birds. And then how quickly after that the process developed, such that in 1913, just a few years later, Lord Northcliffe puts forward 10,000 pounds to say somebody now fly the Atlantic.

Russell 8:41

Yeah, it's yeah, it's incredible. I mean, uh that's uh what, ten years on from the first powered flight? Somebody is now going to fly the Atlantic. Well, they didn't fly the ex the Atlantic because uh well, I don't know whether they would have been able to, but they never got the chance to try. So uh because the first world war uh came uh came along. So well, what were the rules uh of the competition? What was the you know, can we just were there any rules or is it just first across?

SPEAKER_01 9:11

No, there were rules. Um when it was laid out in 1913, actually what's what Northcliffe had in mind and what what pretty much everyone had in mind was that it would be seaplanes or flying boats that would carry out this crossing. Uh, in other words, um can land on and take off from water. So the rules in 1913 were£10,000 for anyone who could cross the Atlantic in an aircraft, which included water planes, from any point in the United States, Canada, or Newfoundland. Newfoundland wasn't part of Canada at the time, to any point in Great Britain or Ireland in 72 consecutive hours, three days, right? Now, as I said, at the time they imagined in 1913 that it was likely to be a seaplane or a water plane, and so landing on the water during that flight was perfectly um possible and was indeed expected. In 1918, when the contest was remounted, the same rules applied, but by that point it was expected it would be um a land plane, an aeroplane as we as we think of them. And so that effectively meant non-stop, which meant you couldn't land in the Azores in an island, you couldn't land on water and take off because aeroplanes, um, land planes don't do that. So the rules were quite clear. By 1918, it was effectively a non-stop flight from anywhere in North America to uh Great Britain or Ireland. And interestingly, it wasn't, I mean, this was the Daily Mail, this was Patriotic Lord Northcliffe, but it wasn't restricted to British pilots or Irish pilots. It was to anybody who was a qualified, suitably qualified a pilot from any country on earth, was allowed to take part in this. So that was it. I mean, 1913, that was unimaginable that you could do that, and yet by 1914 there were two companies, one British and one American, who were in advanced plans to try to make the big hop, uh, and then the war uh intervened.

Russell 11:16

One of the things that sort of comes out in your book, I had never I was sort of slightly embarrassed by this. I had never heard of Brooklyn's, uh, the uh the aerodrome. But really quickly in England, even though I what did you say the first flight in England is in 1906, you know, very quickly. 1908, I beg your pardon. Very quickly, Brooklyn's sort of becomes the centre of English aviation, and pretty much all the characters in your book, one way or another, end up in Brooklyn's.

Brooklands: Britain’s Garage For Flight

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Absolutely. It's it's in an astonishing sight. It was a motor racing track built in 1907 in Surrey, so not far from uh London. Actually, the idea to build it came from Alfred Harmsworth in 1906, uh, who was a um motor car nut as well as an aviation guy. People who were driving fast cars at the time in 1907 in Edwardian Britain were really frustrated by the fact they couldn't drive their fast cars on the public roads. So uh he and the landowners came up with this idea of a huge motor racing track with banked ends and reverse curves and long straights where you could race, you know, ten abreast to your heart's content at whatever speed you want. I'll come on in very briefly to um the aviation that's happened there. But if you're interested in understanding the spirit of Brooklyn's, which I mean you're right, Brooklyn's is a character in this book, like no other. A lot of it's been built on in the decades since, but y but part of Brooklyn's is still what it was. It's now a museum, you should visit. It's got you know aircraft there, it's got um motor cars, racing cars, etc. The spirit of the place is still infused in the ground, right? So 1907 it was founded as a as a racetrack. Actually, the audience numbers were a little bit disappointing. 1908, the first flights, aeroplane flights in Britain took place. So two years after the Paris flights. The first official flights in Britain took place in Farnborough, another another great site for British aviation. And in 1909, with this growing body of enthusiasts who wanted to get to grips with this new technology, they needed somewhere to fly from, somewhere to build their sheds and their garages to work on the aircraft. And a portion of the central grassed area of Brooklyn was given over to a flying village in 1909. And very, very quickly, this community of crazy people started to arrive as if you know some kind of signal had been shone into the sky that this was the place to go, and it became this place where no matter who you were, where you were from in life, where you were from in the world, you could turn up, and if you could be um male or female, you could be a teenager or in your 70s, you could be from any country, and everyone would rub shoulders side by side at the cafe, the bluebird cafe that was that was opened there, in an equality that was rare, it's fair to say, anywhere else in in British society. And you could be anyone, and all you had to be was obsessed with flying, and to want to do it from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep dead on your feet, and you'll probably dream about it all night as well. And that's what happened from 1909 onwards. There were three, we'll come back to this perhaps, but there were three teams that ended up in Newfoundland in 1919 to fly the Atlantic. The pilots of each of those teams had all started their flying careers in Brooklyn's as teenagers years before the war broke out. They knew each other so well, they'd grown up together, they'd competed against each other, they'd helped each other out. And Brooklyns was just this astonishing location where I don't know, like Silicon Valley, where by close physical proximity innovation happens and the world gets moved on.

Russell 15:26

I mean, I think that's a great comparison, Silicon Valley, but it was still sort of in the garage phase where you know the individuals were still very important. Uh, you know, it wasn't some giant machine and people were just cogs.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Absolutely. Um and I mean when you say garages, I mean literal wooden sheds. Um I mean bigger, bigger than garden sheds, but not that much bigger. Uh, you know, big enough for this for the small, um, tiny little aeroplanes of the day. Uh, in many cases, you know, the guys would would sleep in the garages, in the sheds, because they couldn't afford lodgings. It was yeah, the garage phase of innovation, absolutely. And it really, and it really didn't matter if you came, if you were dirt poor. And and of the three people, the three pilots of the three teams, we've already mentioned Jack Alcock, who was from Manchester, from South Manchester, you know, as as working class as they come, uh, his first job as a teenager was as a garage mechanic in South Manchester. Fred Rainham from Suffolk, he was a farmer's boy, whose father had died when he was two at the worst possible time of the agricultural depression in Britain. Uh, he had no money. And uh Harry Hawker, who was an Australian from the suburbs of Melbourne, also a garage mechanic, also poor, no money. It didn't matter. If you could get yourself to Brooklyn's, you'd scrape your way through. And we talked earlier about the prizes that were put forward by Lord Northcliffe, but there were plenty of other cash prizes as well. Aviation then was built around cash prizes for competing races and take-off contests and bomb-dropping contests and all of this. And the money that you could earn if you were good at flying is how you would live, right? So the innovation occurred because the money you could earn by being good and by getting better was what advanced the field rather than any kind of government uh investment, of which in Britain there was effectively none before the war.

Russell 17:27

Um all the people who take place in the big hop are men. But it was interesting what you said earlier is that is that women are there right at the start of aviation. I mean, some of it is for the glamour. I mean, some of the pilots, I mean, they're terrific pilots, but but it adds newsworthiness. So so people like Amy Johnson and Emila Earhart. But I mean, Hilda Hewlett's there right at the start of British aviation.

Women Pioneers And Hilda Hewlett

SPEAKER_01 17:53

Absolutely, and Hilda is is a is a very much less well-known figure compared with Amy Johnson or Amelia Earhart in America. Hilda Hewlett's in middle age, so she wasn't kind of a teenager when she got into aviation, she'd married a writer and poet, very much middle class. Uh, she found the whole thing stifling, and she ended up getting out of that relationship and found herself in Blackpool in 1909 at one of the first aviation contests in Britain. And the first time she saw an aeroplane take off in front of her eyes, when she first saw a sliver of daylight between the wheels of the aircraft and the turf of Blackpool race course, her life was turned on its head. And she was determined from that moment, she said, to understand everything about aviation under her own hand. So she got into a partnership with a French aviator, Gustave Blondeau, and in 1910 they founded Britain's first flying school at Brooklyn's. Now this gets a little bit contorted, but Hewlett and Blondeau's first pupil at that flying school, the first flying school, was a guy who gave Jack Alcock his first job in aviation at Brooklyn. He gave him his big break. Without Hilda Hewlett, likely Jack Alcock wouldn't have got into aviation, or at least not as quickly and deeply as he did. Similarly, Hilda Hewlett also probably gave Tom Sopwith, who's a great name in 20th century aviation, gave him his first aircraft ride and kind of gave him the bug which led to him founding Sopwith, which became Hawker, Hawker Engineering and Hawker Aviation, a name to conjure with in aviation. Hilda Hewlett went on, she moved on quickly from teaching aviation to building aircraft. She started an aircraft manufacturing business uh just before war broke out. And during the war, from their factory in Luton, with as with most aircraft and munitions factories, it was mostly female workforce, she made some of the best aircraft of the First World War. And the British Admiralty, who were not known for giving praise lightly, uh said on record and in writing that they considered the aircraft of Hewlett and Blondeau to be some of the finest made, some of the most reliable, and the way she managed the business, the quality of her kind of her quality control, the way she managed her workforce and ran her factory was noted repeatedly, not because she was a woman, but because she was good. She is a figure, not so well known, I was very glad to be able to tell some of her story in the book, is really significant in understanding British aviation in the first couple of decades. She lived a long life, her kind of public recognition faded, but without Hilda Hewlett, a lot of what I talk about would never have happened. And so it was absolutely the case that whilst, of course, women were in a minority at places like Brooklyn's, they certainly weren't absent, and uh they were treated no differently, uh, as long as they were good and Hilda Hewlett was the best.

Russell 21:05

So I guess um I mean we said earlier that that the prize is offered in 1913, but then but then you know one of these one of these things happens, which is that the the Great War, World War I, it intervenes, and I suppose one of the things it does is that it accelerates aircraft development.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Uh yes, absolutely. It accelerated it over the four years, but really it was only the the later years of the war that it really accelerated because at the start of in 1914, again I'm I'm concentrating on the British case here, but uh you can see parallels around the world. The British armed forces and the British government did not have any interest in the aeroplane at war. Uh they couldn't see any use for it, they didn't want to invest in it, and they thought it was a sideshow, and if anyone was involved in it, they'd just get themselves killed. So when when talk about the significance of Alfred Harmsworth, Lord Northcliffe, in early aviation. It wasn't just that he put his money into this, but he he would there was no louder voice fighting for the establishment to take aviation seriously to understand that the that the country which gets good first at flying will have the decisive edge at war. And he knew that he'd seen that in 1906 when he'd heard about this flight in Paris. There's a certain amount of hyperbole in this, but you know he was having to drag the British establishment kicking and screaming into seeing the aeroplane as something that they should invest in. So it was only really quite late in the day that the armed forces introduced what became the Royal Flying Corps which was the uh flying wing of the army and the Royal Naval Air Service which was the flying wing of the Navy later they'd be amalgamated only in 1918 into the Royal Air Force. So that's kind of an excursion to say that you know this the time when you know the British state was involved in aviation seriously was quite compressed. But when you think about what an airplane was in 1914 and what one was in 1918 the difference is just profound. So that acceleration was vast. At the start of the war we're talking about the ability to carry a couple of people very little weight engines which were capricious would fail routinely and would need a complete rebuild after just a few hours to the end of the war when there were heavy bombers that could travel from Essex aerodromes to Berlin to bomb Berlin just in the space of four years is um a a profound development yeah.

Russell 23:50

I was speaking to David Stevenson uh about about the end of World War I actually and his thought on air power was was less bombing because you know of course the you know the number of planes and and the amount of bombs you could carry uh would be limited back then but but really their big thing was in spotting for the artillery because if you were going to launch an attack in 1918 what you really wanted to do was to was to knock out the opposing artillery and so knowing where they were so you could blanket it with uh with gas shells which is what they did uh was absolutely vital.

War Accelerates Aviation

SPEAKER_01 24:28

Exactly right and that's what Arthur Wittenbrand was involved in. So the idea of observing so being able to see troop movements, you know eyes in the sky you can see troop movements, you can see armored vehicles movements, you can see where the guns are placed, artillery spotting but also artillery ranging. So seeing where your shells are landing and then being able to radio back to the aimers of those heavy guns to very quickly get a direct hit was significant throughout the war. And so that's so that's where aviation in the First World War started was um artillery spotting and artillery ranging. What happened very quickly was you've got those aero the small aeroplanes which are you know traveling over the enemy lines to do their reconnaissance and then returning well they'd be met by foreign opponents and what very quickly happened was dog fights because they were trying to knock each other out. So these dog fights which became you know emblematic of of wartime flying very quickly those the aircraft which was slow and stable to be a good observing platform for taking photographs right troop formations suddenly were the worst possible aircraft you could be flying in because you're in high speed dog fights and so the development of the fighter or the fighter scout um was one of the rapid developments and that continued through the war but as you say the idea of heavy bombing of long distance bombing really I mean started to make heavy bombers around 1915 and early into 16 and started to be used you know 1617. The idea of very long range so from from from Essex to Berlin the idea only came in in middle of 1918 and the the bombers were built but not quickly enough before the war ended and they they were never used but they were they were ready to be used. But I mean to come so to compare those bombers which were sitting idle in the works in 1918 ready to go to Berlin if the war hadn't ended um could to compare with one of the little um spotter aircraft from 1914 it's um it's hard to it's hard to conceive just how much development had taken place in that time.

Russell 26:39

And I know that your your characters uh or I think well I don't know how many of them but I think uh some of them certainly uh fought in the war and they had a pretty uh pretty tough time of it I think some of them I think some of them spent time in prison camps in in Germany and in Turkey and that was quite interesting to me because in Germany when you went to uh I was sort of reading up a bit about this and in and in Germany if you went to to the prison then you were expected to try to escape but it was very different back in the days of Napoleon which is which was the bit I was reading up on. I'm thinking I really must do a podcast on this because in Napoleonic times it was a parole system at least for most of the war and so the town of Verdun in France apparently was absolutely heaving with British officers sort of at the local cafe smoking their pipes and waiting to be exchanged and it's sort of a very different experience that your characters had had in had in the war.

Test Pilots, Peril, And Mindset

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Well it is and that's a really I mean I'm trying to avoid too many spoilers because there are so many twists and turns in this story that I I mean truth really is stranger and far more dramatic than fiction. The war played such an important role in all of the characters we've talked about Alcock and Brown we know that they succeeded in flying well both of them signed up to fight in the First World War. Jack Alcock joined the Royal Naval Air Service Ted Brown joined the Royal Flying Corps as an observer I'll say too much about what happened but for the first two and a half years Olcock wasn't fighting he was training. He was such a good pilot in 1914 that they wouldn't send him to any front so he was sent to Eastchurch to train pilots and he trained you know hundreds or thousands of them for the first two and a half years but he ended up demanding to go and fight he believed that was how he should best serve his country and he ended up at one of the fighting fronts for the Royal Naval Air Service and yeah he had a very hard rest of his war and the point you make about about the parole system which was still in use in some um in some parts of the Turkish war I'll say no more about that certainly not everywhere in the Turkish system Ted Brown fought at the Western Front and very quickly very quickly had a very very bad war um of course you know we know they both survived because they flew the Atlantic in 1919 of the other characters that I've mentioned um Fred Rainham and Harry Hawker who were the the pilots respectively of Martinside and Sopwith who also got off the ground in Newfoundland to attempt the big hop they were both test pilots in the war. So just as important as pilots training and fighting was was people building airplanes in huge numbers and for them to be tested and then delivered and Hawker and Raynum both were two of the most well Hawker was probably the most famous pilot in the world by the time the war ended he was he was absolutely on top of the test flying mostly for Sopwith which was one of the biggest manufacturers in the war. Fred Raynham was like uh he was like a test pilot for hire he worked a lot for Martinside which is a name that few people remember now but they were a really big and important manufacturer uh in the First World War but he also test flew for pretty much all the other companies including Hewlett and Blondo um he tested the first batch of uh Hilda Hewlett's uh aircraft of the type which Ted Brown would subsequently uh fly so whatever they were doing and being of course being a test pilot was no uh easy life no it's a terrible life it's a terrible life you know and the the history of the history of aviation and the history of spaceflight is the history of test pilots I mean that's a story for another day but of course what they were flying were untested aeroplanes that's why they were testing them in in many cases experimental aircraft testing new innovations in that accelerated program we've talked about well those new innovations were happening fast and they had to be tested in the air and it was people like Hawker and Raynum who did that testing and it was highly dangerous. Rainum very nearly died after one test flight went badly wrong over Brooklyn's a lot of Brooklyn's was still grass but there was a lot of buildings because aircraft construction was happening there and of course this vast concrete racetrack around the perimeter it's luck and his skill that meant he landed on grass. If he'd landed on buildings or or concrete from height he would have he'd have been killed instantly so they had hard wars they had hard air wars and I think we have to understand that or we have to at least appreciate that to understand what the answer to a question which I've been asking myself for 30 years since I joined the Science Museum as a trainee in 1995 31 years and first saw the aircraft that flew the Atlantic piloted by Jack Alcock with Ted Brown beside him and looked up at this fabric and spruce device with an open cockpit and thought what on earth would possess anybody to get in that and fly 2000 miles across the Atlantic in 1919 and yet that's what they did. And so we have to understand surely we have to understand the psychology of having emerged from a war only weeks before they started making their preparations to go to Newfoundland just weeks before the war had ended and they'd had such difficult wars to imagine I mean there must have been elements of survivor guilt. They'd seen so many of their friends and colleagues die in the war. They'd survived and particularly when you find out what happened particularly to Ted Brown but also to to Jack Alcock there must have been a sense of scores to settle. Yeah and so it seems inconceivable to me that people would voluntarily do what those people did but they did and uh and I mean humanity has them to thank for it.

Russell 33:00

Well okay so so I think I think that takes us across the Atlantic to Newfoundland. And in a way and just like Brooklyn is a character in the book I sort of feel Newfoundland is a character in your book because it seems like an absolutely terrible place to be to be launching an attempt to cross the Atlantic because it's got it's got terrible weather it's you know it seems to be you know mountain and bog with hardly a square yard of flat terrain so so why are they leaving from Newfoundland?

Why Newfoundland And The Route Math

SPEAKER_01 33:32

I think you've described it perfectly there. It's the worst place on earth that you would imagine flying a 1919 aircraft from and they knew it you know this wasn't a surprise to them when they arrived and and in fact Hawker and and and the others would often remark on if you were looking for propitious flying grounds this is not the place you would look however the real challenge of the big hop in my view was engines and fuel not airframes. The airframes was a challenge enough but the real challenge was an was engines that would see you across 2000 miles or up to 20 hours of continuous flying without so much as as a as a grumble and fuel sufficient with sufficient energy density to be light enough to be carried but with enough energy in it to power those aircraft engines. And so it was a very obvious bit of calculus for them they had to fly the shortest possible distance to make this attempt and the shortest distance from North America to Britain and Ireland is from the east coast of Newfoundland to the west coast of Ireland and so all of the people attempting the the the Big Hop knew they had to fly that journey why Newfoundland to Ireland and not in the other direction because the direction was um was wasn't laid down in the rules the rules explicitly said you can go either way but there's prevailing winds that blow west to east over the Atlantic and I mean we're talking about maybe 40 or 45 miles an hour winds at the sort of altitudes that they would be likely to be flying. So it would make a huge difference in fuel economy as well as speed. So everybody knew with the aircraft you had the engines and fuel available you had to fly from Newfoundland Islands in in that direction which meant first of all you had if you were if you were British you'd have to build your aeroplane in your factories in Britain and then ship it in crates disassembled to Newfoundland and then reassemble it and test it and you'd have to find somewhere anywhere suitable for a long enough takeoff run which would have to be a long run because these aircraft would be very very heavily loaded with all the fuel they needed to make it across the Atlantic and as you said there's not a square foot of clear ground that didn't have ditches or trees or a bog it was appalling it was absolutely terrible but everyone knew they had to do it. So I mean Sobwith which was Harry Hawker's company Sobwith was first to to get a team together to get an aircraft built but also to send somebody out early to scout for a for an aerodrome or rather for land that could be turned into an aerodrome Martin side were second that was Fred Raynham's company they sent a scout out as well who turned out to be uh the guy who would be navigator for their attempt Charles Morgan so he went out early to to find a flying ground he got influenza on the on the ship to Newfoundland so he spent a couple of weeks in hospital when he arrived of course this was the big flu pandemic oh yeah which killed more people than the war killed. We have to remember that when we understand how people saw the big hop in 1919. The third group was Handley Page we can talk about those a bit later but um they never made it off the ground for their big hop the fourth group was Vickers which was Jack Alcock and Ted Brown's company and they were really late to the party and for whatever reason they didn't manage to send a scout early so when they arrived only in the middle of May they not only had to receive their aeroplane build it test it put right all of the problems but they also had to scour the island for an aerodrome what do what do I mean by that? I mean you couldn't look at kind of Google Earth you know they had to rent a motor car and drive sort of 14 hours a day up and down the Avalon Peninsula looking for any piece of ground that might be suitable, get out, measure it, pace it out, work out what the direction was because the direction of takeoff mattered a lot to do again with prevailing winds and inevitably every day day after day they'd come back to their digs in St. John's the capital of Newfoundland with kind of glum expressions on their face having failed to find anywhere. This went on for for for days.

Russell 38:03

I must admit I sort of you know raised an eyebrow a bit when you said how everybody was cooperating with everybody else because I mean people weren't necessarily prepared to share the airfield that they'd managed to create were they so there alright so I've just mentioned Handley Page which was this this fourth company the teams of the three other companies Sopworth Martin Side and Vickers Harry Hawker Fred Raynham Jack Alcock as I said they'd all grown up together as young people at Brooklyn's before the war handley the Handy Page team was different in so many ways the Handy Page aircraft was was much much bigger than the other aircraft and talk about the aircraft in a minute but it was an absolute monster of a four engine needing the biggest aerodrome you could imagine.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

But Handley Page the leader of their team which was a four-person crew was a Royal Navy admiral in his 50s Mark Kerr not at all like the Brooklyn boys you know in every respect he'd he'd um been born in a palace um he he he had close links to to royalty uh he was an admiral in the Royal Navy he was in his 50s and he was working uh for handy page which had the directors of handy page had deep pockets he himself had deep pockets he knew the Prime Minister of Newfoundland personally and so so he was very well connected an establishment figure the other three were these scrappy Brooklyns guys who just wanted to continue what they'd been doing at Brooklyn's before the war had stopped their fun they wanted to pick up and carry on in 1919. So those three groups famously collaborated so many things went terribly badly wrong and in every case those three groups would come together and they would they'd help the other people who just suffered whatever tragedy or calamity they'd help out. Handley Page stood aloof throughout all of this their aerodrome was nowhere near St John's they had access to land that nobody else had um they did uh Mark Kerr didn't hang out at this at the hotel where all the others were staying in St. John's he stayed in a in a big house um with a fleet of Rolls Royce put at his disposal for his sojourn on the island. And then when you know when Vickers and Jack Alcock uh arrived and were looking for a takeoff ground they got into talks with Mark Kerr about using the big aerodrome that Handley Page had developed and Mark Kerr strung them along letting them think that an agreement would be arranged and then at the last minute said you can only use our aerodrome after we've taken off for Ireland and you're gonna have to pay for the aerodrome as well the whole um the whole development cost which was huge. So basically um the um he was uh Mark Kerr sabotaged the Vickers plans so yes there was it wasn't you it wasn't a unified collaborative endeavour there on the island but actually when Vickers had that huge setback it only made them come out swinging and it put fire into their into their bellies to say right okay if that's how you want to play then we're gonna do everything in our power to get off before you and I mean history relates that they they succeeded.

Russell 41:28

They found another aerodrome suitable for their uh large aircraft yeah and history relates I mean you sort of hinted at it but but how dangerous is this at this stage because because things have moved on quite a lot so and yet it feels like it's still right at the edge.

Rival Teams And Runway Drama

SPEAKER_01 41:50

Even in 1919 to fly the Atlantic I mean it's pr it was proved to be possible but it was only just possible. The big challenge as I mentioned earlier was engines. When when engineers talk about sort of mean time between overhauls in other words what's the duration after which you have to take the engine apart completely completely overhaul it and rebuild it it was just a a a handful of hours except for the very best engines if you were going to have a flight lasting 20 hours then an engine that would work for 10 is no good of course. There were some engines by 1919 which were good and the Rolls Royce Eagle and its little sibling the Falcon were what all uh four teams at Newfoundland used. The Eagle was an incredible machine it was the first Rolls Royce aero engine. Rolls Royce didn't want to get into the aero engine game they were quite happily making motor cars and motor car engines but the British government sent seeing that they needed aero engines which were powerful and reliable encouraged them to move into that game and the Rolls Royce Eagle turned into this extraordinary power plant the DNA of which you can see in every Rolls Royce turbofan flying huge airliners around the world today. I mean the story of Rolls Royce as an aero engine maker started in the First World War with the Eagle. So the engines were getting better but still you know they failed you have a problem with the coolant in the radiator and the engine will stop. All of the flyers at Newfoundland had had uh plenty of trouble with engines in the past and then you've got weather which was unknown above the Atlantic nobody had ever been that high above the Atlantic I mean the the meteorologists would send ships to the mid Atlantic and they'd they'd take their weather readings as best they could and they'd send balloons up to try and get weather readings at altitude but not as high as these aircraft would fly. So I mean so really the meteorological reports of the weather over the Atlantic were informed guesswork as much as Science. The airframes themselves they were basically fabric, basically linen, stretched over a timber or occasionally a bit of tubular steel framework. The fabric was covered in a a protective lacquer called dope, which stiffened it and stretched it. But instruments were rudimentary. There were radios, but usually wouldn't work, and they were heavy, so most pilots didn't want them anyway because they'd rather carry a bit more fuel or a slightly heavier, better engine. Compasses, maybe, airspeed indicator, yeah, but I mean navigation was by sextant and astro navigation. So aviation really was right on the edge for a 2,000-mile 16 to 20 hour flight over the Atlantic, where if anything goes wrong, your only option is to ditch. You'll never take off again, but you might survive ditching. Ditching is where you kind of land, you glide down and you land sort of in a controlled fashion. The very worst thing that could happen, which was talked about by many as the weeks in spring 1919 went on in the hotel in Newfoundland, was what happens if there's a sudden catastrophic failure and then you go vertically down. And then the aircraft becomes your grave at the bottom of the Atlantic and is never found. So when I talk when I talk about kind of the mindset of the people who got into those cockpits, knowing all of that very well, they still did it.

Russell 45:32

It's remarkable. So so shall we talk a bit about the uh the attempts? And and obviously the main one that we should talk about is Alcalk and Brown, because that's the one uh that succeeded. But do you want to say something about the other attempts?

Engines, Weather, And Navigation Risks

SPEAKER_01 45:47

Well, yes, because uh this was a contest uh and it became a race. So I've mentioned the fact that there were four teams at Newfoundland in the spring of 1919 ready to attempt the big hop. Three made it off the ground hoping that their next landing would be in Ireland. And the first off the ground by far was the Sobwith team with Harry Hawker at the controls and a navy man called uh Matt Greeve as his navigator uh in a single engine Sobwith aircraft. It was quite big, but it I mean it wasn't a tiny little thing, but it was a single engine. Hawker was very keen on single engines because he believed if you had a twin engine, you couldn't continue on one engine even if one failed, so why carry two? Right. You're almost doubling the risk. He believed so, and it was very controversial at the time, but he made a lot of um he made a lot of technological innovations for the aircraft that he designed with Sopwith. Uh he was first away on May the 18th and got off the ground just because of course the aircraft was very heavy, but he managed to get off the ground and crossed the cliffs of the St. John's coastline and then dwindled till he was a speck in the sky as he carried on over the Atlantic. I'm not going to say what happened, except to say that he had enough fuel for 24 hours. The journey was expected to take a maximum of 20 hours. It might be quicker if they had if the wind was in their favour. The whole world was watching this. The first aircraft to take off, first of all, the first aircraft to fly above Newfoundland on their test flight, and then the first aircraft to attempt the big hop, which was the biggest news in the world at that time. Everyone knew when he'd taken off, everyone then turned their attention to the west coast of Ireland, and then the time of his expected arrival approached, and then passed, and they never arrived. So um the story of what happened uh over the Atlantic and what happened as the world was looking on, every newspaper was absolutely covering this, you know, six editions per day or whatever were bringing the latest on Hawker and Grieve, uh Lost Over the Atlantic. So I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say what happened, but um that was the biggest news of of May 1919, and it was it there was the feeling of great loss among everybody looking on that the most famous pretty much violet in the world didn't make it across the Atlantic was was palpable. Um one hour after Hawker and Greeve took off, the Mardin side aircraft took off. That's Fred Raynham, and I mentioned the guy earlier, Charles Morgan, his navigator. A very, very, very difficult takeoff. I'm not going to say what happened next, except to say that uh it didn't go well. And uh it was a reminder to everybody, a very, a very hard reminder to everybody, as we've just talked about, just how much on the edge this attempt was and how the tiniest thing might mean the difference between success or failure. That left Handley Page and Vickers the only two in the race, and this I've mentioned the rivalry between the two. The race really was on. Handley Page were very well resourced, they had this big powerful aeroplane, a four-engine, four Rolls-Royce engines. Uh, and Vickers had a twin-engine, smaller aircraft, the Vickers Vimi. Um well you say it was smaller, but it's still pretty huge, isn't it? It's it's big, yeah, yeah, yeah. It the Vickers Vimi was was one of the Berlin bombers uh that the government um commissioned, they commissioned from Handy Page and from Vickers, they commissioned Berlin bombers in 1918 after there'd been some particularly bad air raids uh over Britain. Um they decided they wanted to bomb Berlin uh and they commissioned this four-engine bomber. Handy Page were already making twin-engine bombers. Uh Jack Alcock flew them in uh in Turkey. The the Vickers machine was a little bit smaller, twin-engine, but it was also big. And as I've said, it it survived. Um, it's at the Science Museum. I grew up under its wings as a trainee and then as a member of staff for years. Uh you're right, it's huge. I mean, it's so big. It's visitors to the flight gallery at the Science Museum would be forgiven for missing it. It's so it's kind of paradoxical, it's so big you almost can't see it because you can't step back well enough to see this big bomber. There's actually a replica was made at Brooklyn's and it sits in its own hangar of Brooklyn's. If you any of your listeners have a chance to visit, you must and see the replica because you get a much clearer sense of the scale of the machine when it's got space around it. But but yes, it was a big machine um filled with fuel and oil, and then these two seats side by side of real squash at the front, for Alcock in the right hand position to fly it, and Brown sitting next to him with his sextant and his uh computation calculator and his charts.

Russell 51:12

I mean I don't know how much you want to say, but uh but you know, you've you've teased us, you know, so far. So, you know, I'm getting quite quite hopeful that you'll say a bit about uh about how their attempt went.

The Attempts Begin: Hawker Leads

SPEAKER_01 51:28

Well, okay. I mean we know they made it. They made it across, they made it to Ireland, June 14th to the 15th, 1919, their 20-hour journey from Newfoundland, St John's, to a place about halfway down the Irish coast uh in County Galway, a place called Clifton, uh, and they landed, having made the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic and made history in doing so. The story of what happened in those 20 hours is just mind-blowing. I believe strongly that Jack Alcock was one of the finest pilots in the world. He was exceptionally experienced. He'd flown, I mean, before the war, he was one of he was he'd been the the work he'd done in Brooklyn's and elsewhere before the war, he'd flown more than most other pilots during the war as a as a trainer and then as a heavy machine pilot in the Turkish um area. He was level-headed. He was he was he wasn't fearless, uh he he had fear, uh, but he kept it under control and he knew how to use that. He um he wasn't careless, uh, but he understood risk and he would take risk, but he would measure it and calculate it. He really was the best possible temperament for an aircraft pilot at the time. Um he was a great team player, he was a great leader. So the fact that he was at the controls of what was probably one of the best aeroplanes that had been developed in the war, the Vickers Vimy was a very good machine, it was a very um forgiving machine. And so, for all of that to be right, two of the best engines, Rolls-Royce Eagles, the best fuel in the world. Alcock and Brown had worked with Royal Dutch Shell to develop basically a new form of of gasoline, of petrol, for aviation, because I mean the characteristics of fuel needed for these engines to work was really significant. The fuel has to be as light as possible to allow the aircraft to fly, but for there to be enough of it to power the aircraft for the long distance meant that that calculus was really hard. And really, the only fuel that could have made it possible was this special fuel developed by Shell from uh basically from an oil field in Borneo. Very long story. I will cut it short, don't worry, Russell. Um, but basically, all the fuel on Earth of that kind that existed uh was at Newfoundland in 1919. So basically it was so special that it was all shipped out to Newfoundland. So they got all of this right, right? The aeroplane was the best you could get, the engines were the best, the fuel was terrific, the pilot was the best, and in Ted Brown, although he wasn't a professional navigator, nevertheless, he was an exceptionally adept amateur navigator. He was trained as an engineer, uh, he was an American citizen who grew up in Britain, and so he straddled the Atlantic and he crossed the Atlantic so many times uh in his engineering career on steamships. Each time he'd go to the bridge and ask the captain and navigating officers if he could practice his sextant sightings of the sun and stars, and they would give him uh a lesson every time in in astro navigation on the decks of all of these ships he crossed the Atlantic. So he he knew his stuff, and Alcock and Brown absolutely got on with each other. They only met in the spring of 1919 at Vigors, but they really hit it off, they were complete opposite of each other temperamentally, and sometimes that doesn't work, but in Alcock and Brown it absolutely did work. Um they had utter respect for each other. So everything was right that could be right, and that's why they made it across, in my view. But everything that could go wrong did go wrong in that flight. So the weather was not what was expected. The meteorologists had got it wrong. So the speed, the direction of the wind, which um affected their navigation calculations, wasn't correct. The storms that they hit, the fog that they hit, the icing up of I mean, for instance, at one point they were travelling quite high because they were trying to avoid the ocean. So travelling high is the safest thing you can do in uh in many cases in aircraft. If you fall, you've got farther to fix the problem. Um but the higher you go, the colder you get. And if you're travelling through cloud, then you get ice forming. And at one point the the hinges of the ailerons, the ailerons are the flaps at the back of the wings, uh, which control uh effectively the direction you go, as well as to an extent the altitude. The hinges froze solid, so these huge uh control surfaces were useless. All the Dolcock had was the rudder and elevators at the tail. Luckily the Vimi was forgiving, so that was alright. You could bring it low enough to the only way to de-ice them was to bring it low and hope the ice melts, uh which it did.

Russell 56:44

Um I mean, as I understand it at one stage, they they actually flew into a snowstorm and everything, and the snow got into everything.

SPEAKER_01 56:52

Absolutely. So two two really bad things happen things happened. Well, many, many. So the radio failed right at the start, so they were cut off from any contact with the outside world. They'd planned to radio their position every hour, um, uh, so that never happened. Then the exhaust on one of the engines, the uh the right-hand engine, exploded. They're flying along, all is going well, and then all of a sudden the sound of what sounds like machine gun fire in Alcock's right ear, a sound he would have known very well, and they look round and they see that the the exhaust is fractured and like that it's hanging, it's it's red hot at this stage, and it's starting to glow white hot until the whole thing just melts and falls into the slipstream. So most of the cylinders in that engine were now exhausting to the to the air. So there's flame coming out of the engine. The sound is tumultuous, and as as Jack Alcott was concentrating on the controls, thinking, right, what do I need to now get into my head to resolve this problem? Brown looks over his shoulder at the engine and sees that one of the cylinders, the flame from it, is playing on one of the bracing wires holding the um the aircraft together, the the top and bottom wings together. These are steel wires under tension, and it's starting to glow red hot.

SPEAKER_02 58:12

Huh.

Inside The Vimy: Gear And Crew

SPEAKER_01 58:12

Now that uh now that wasn't a good thing, right? That wasn't the worst thing that happened. As you say, they ended up flying into um uh whether it's cloud, fog, or snow, kind of all came together. So they couldn't see anything. Now this shouldn't be a problem because Alcock had flown so many uh journeys where that was the case. He had a sense of his position in the sky, his orientation, and he could correct. As long as he had access to the simple instruments, most particularly the airspeed indicator, as well as the compasses. But at that moment, the the snow started to pack into the it's called the pito head of the airspeed indicator. Effectively, it made the airspeed indicator fail in front of his eyes, the needle just jammed. And long story short, he lost control of the aircraft, and because they were in this very dense fog or snowstorm, he couldn't see a thing. He had no idea how to bring himself out of it. They fell into a very steep dive. They knew that, they could feel that, and the engines started to start roaring because the speed of their dive was was making them spin out of control. So he had to shut the engines down, shut them off. He could see from the compasses spinning wildly that they were in probably in a spiral dive, but you need to be you need external visual cues to know how do I correct to get out of the dive. You can get out of those dives, but you have to be able to see the world around you, and he couldn't see a thing. So they were in this dive. Ted Brown had been in a situation like this before, I'll not say too much about that, but he knew what was coming, so he just gathered up his um notebook and loosened his safety belt because he they expected that the next thing they would know would be they'd hit the ocean. They hoped that they'd come out underneath the lower surface of that fog bank or whatever it was, before the ocean floor. In other words, that the that that that fog would stop a little distance above the ocean, and they'd therefore get their sight back and they'd have enough space and time to recover the aircraft. But it was it could well have gone down to the surface of the ocean, the next thing they'd know would be they'd hit. Well, they did come out underneath the lower surface, thank goodness. But not by much. Like 100 feet, and the speed they were going and the direction they were going, it was 50 feet before Alcock had been able to very quickly and instinctively, because he was such a good pilot, work out. I mean, they were basically um sideways at this point, uh, work out what was going on, start the engines back to life, and they roared back to life immediately. The Rolls-Royce engines really were that good, and he was able to pull them out of that dive with 20 feet to spare between the Vimi and the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. They said afterwards that they could taste the salt spray from the Atlantic on their lips, and they felt that they could, well, I mean, this was uh they were telling a story by this point, that they could hear the cheated ocean the roaring, and that they felt that they could reach out and touch the white caps on the surface 20 feet, 20 feet, imagine that, in a big heavy aircraft that's falling out of the sky, and because Jack Alcock was one of the greatest pilots of his age, he was able to save them, save both of them, and save the aeroplane very quickly and with great relief, was able to take it back up to a more safe height, turn back in the direction of Ireland because they were going backwards, uh they were heading back to America at this point, and they'd survived that. I mean, that was sort of like two-thirds of the way through the flight. Many more things happened after, things that happened before that. You can imagine, can't you? Um, that when I mean and um Ted Brown never forgot this. He was putting that they just had a sandwich, uh, and Ted was putting the food wrappings back into the cupboard behind him in the cockpit. And he remembered Jack Alcock just grabbed his shoulder and turned him rounded and pointed ahead and downwards. And Ted looked where he was pointing, and he could see, and Alcock had this huge grin on his face, and they could see white breakers against two islands just off the west coast of Ireland, Eschel and Turbert, and they could see ahead, they could see the mainland of Ireland, and then at that moment, um, Ted Brown wrote in the Navigator's logbook four words in sight of land, and they are four words that make history. Um, they they flew uh very quickly, they crossed the coastline, uh, they flew around a bit to try and find some well, some people for a start, uh, and then somewhere to land. Luckily, they were very close to the Clifton Marconi Wireless Station with huge wireless masts, which was a great landmark for them. And they came into land in Clifton, spot on where Ted Brown had been aiming for since Newfoundland, which was halfway down the coast in County Galway, and landed. Twenty hours to make history.

Russell 1:03:41

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:42

Yeah.

Russell 1:03:43

Actually, there's um there's a there's a there's a photograph in your book that made me smile, because after all the quite extraordinary goings on in the flight, uh, you know, there's uh there's Jack Alcock in a lounge suit. Uh Absolutely. And he and he's cross he's in he crosses the Atlantic in a lounge suit. I mean he's got a very heavy flying suit over it, but but he but he just looks like uh I don't know. I it's so relaxed.

Into Storms: Near-Disaster And Recovery

SPEAKER_01 1:04:11

Like like he'd like he'd gone out for a Sunday drive around the park. Absolutely. Yeah, he was in a lounge suit with the flat cap that he and many other aviators of the age would wear. And then over it, his his, as you say, his flying suit, which was made by Burberry, a heated flying suit. Ted Brown at that point was still technically in the RAF. And so he wore his RAF uniform, this stiff RAF uniform under his flying suit. And so yeah, I mean, 20 uh a 16-hour flight, I think I might have said a 20-hour flight, is a 16-hour flight in a lounge suit and a stiff RF dress uniform, and then I mean you and you so you see these photographs of them at the Clifton Wireless Station where they're taken in to have a hot bath and breakfast and gather themselves. And the photographs of them just strolling around outside, you know, cigarette in hand, uh, just sort of packing their belongings into a into a bag and just looking for all the world like they've just taken a train journey or a or a motor car drive. Um it's incredible.

Russell 1:05:18

Yeah, well, people people had a bit more class back then. You know, you know, we'd we'd be there in our trainers and our and our sweatshirts. Um so so what kind of reception did they get? Because uh, well, I mean, well, one thing I know is that uh you're the man of history, the man who's everywhere in uh in the 20th century, you know, Churchill is Churchill's there.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:42

Churchill, of course, was there. I mean, so uh the the the so they landed in in a remote part of the west coast of Ireland in County Galway. So, first of all, they had to get from from there to the Royal Aero Club in London, which was the organisation managing this. Contest for the Daily Mail. So, you know, they they they end up in a car from Clifton Wireless Station to Clifton, and then from Clifton to Galway, there's a reception at Galway, huge crowds. I mean, just in the journey, um like a two-hour car journey from Clifton to Galway, through the Connemara Mountains in the mist, along the side of the road, as word got out that this great feat had been achieved. You know, the people of Galway were turning out to stand by the side of the road and cheer. In the car is a Daily Mail journalist who was on the scene in Clifton, ready to take their story. So he's interviewing them in this car journey. They get to Galway and there's a great reception at Galway, but they're dead on their feet. Uh Alcock is not a public speaker, so he kind of breaks breaks down when he's trying to give a speech. Uh he's just he's embarrassed and and and just overwhelmed by it. So have a night in Galway, then it's off to Dublin, where there's a much bigger reception, and then it's the ferry over to Hollyhead, and then it's a train from Hollyhead to London East. And at every station on the way, the train stops, and crowds are there. And you know, if they get out of the train, which they did at a couple of stations, they were hoisted onto the shoulders of onlookers. It was a tumultuous reception. When they get to London, I mean the car journey from I mean it's a procession, really, from London Euston to the Royal Aero Club for a big reception was just London was rammed with people to see them.

Russell 1:07:34

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:35

And then and then a day or two later at the Savoy Hotel is the big reception, the Daily Mail Party thrown by Lord Northcliffe to hand over the£10,000 check and the prize. Now, Northcliffe couldn't be there actually that day. He just had a surgery for it on his throat. So he uh he sent his news editor. Uh, but as you say, Winston Churchill, who was the Secretary of State for War and Air at that time, was present to hand over the prize. Um, so and there are photographs of this as well, and it's lovely, just this embarrassed-looking Jack Alcock with an with a sort of with Ted Brown by his side, and you can just see them shuffling their feet and looking at the ground because they're not used to this kind of attention, are the centre of attention. And what happens next came as a complete surprise. They had a lunch before this the big prize giving ceremony, and Churchill was sitting next to Alcock, and Churchill said to him, just in passing, in the conversation over lunch, there's gonna there's gonna be something for you. And and Alcock, well, all right, he thought it was gonna be like a Royal Air Force medal for you know courageous flying or something like that. Once Churchill handed over the cheques, he then paused, everyone hushed hushed expectantly, and then says that they're to be knighted. Yeah, they're to be knighted, you know, a day or two later by the king. And Alcock in particular was just completely thrown by this. The idea of this, you know, he's 27, grew up in South Manchester, his mother served drinks at the local pub, his father was a coachman, and they you know grew up in the working class streets of South Manchester, worked in a garage, and ended up here in front of Winston Churchill, about to be knighted by the king, having performed what I think is one of the most extraordinary feats of modernity, to prove that it's possible to fly great distances over great oceans. And there he was, Sir Sir John Alcock, Sir Arthur Whiton Brown.

Russell 1:09:36

Hmm. Amazing. It is interesting though, you have these huge crowds in Ireland, you know, all the way through Ireland, and in London it's like people are going going crazy. They're they're knighted, Churchill's there. And yet if you were to ask me who was the first person to fly the well, I know now, but I would have said Lindenberg? You know, why are they not better known today?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:03

I think it's really interesting to think, and I I agree with you. I think if you ask most people who first flew the Atlantic non-stop, if they had an answer, they'd say Charles Lindbergh, 1927, when he flew from New York to Paris. And I mean his achievement in 1927 was absolutely remarkable. Uh I mean the journey was so much longer, of course, to fly from New York. Effectively, it was New York, effectively to Newfoundland without stopping, and then across the Atlantic and then down to Paris, like 3,600 miles. So Lindbergh's achievement was amazing. And what he did first was to fly the Atlantic non-stop solo. But why did we forget Alcock and Brown of 1919? I think uh I think there's probably a couple of reasons why that's the case. I think timing was just wrong. When you when we remember that when they flew the Atlantic in June 1919, the terms of the peace of the Grey War hadn't been agreed at Versailles. Right. So, in many senses, the war had that there was an armistice, but the war hadn't been concluded. And so people were still, and it was only weeks, really, when you think about it, since everyone in Britain, you know, had family members involved in the war in one way or another.

Russell 1:11:16

Yeah.

“In Sight Of Land” And Landing

SPEAKER_01 1:11:17

And the aeroplane at that time, bear in mind that civil aviation did not exist, it hadn't been invented, so commercial flying wasn't a thing. What people associated aeroplanes with was uh death in the war or crazy people before the war experimenting and um and crashing and and um doing mad things at places like Brooklyn's. The aeroplane, I think people were quite relieved to turn their back on this escapade as quickly as they could. It was in the papers for a few weeks, but I think the timing just wasn't right because people had the war in their mind. I mentioned the influenza pandemic, the the flu pandemic was raging around the world still at this point, and more people were killed by flu than by the war, so that was in people's minds, and so there was a certain temporary period where the transatlantic flight, the big hop, was a distraction, a welcome distraction from all of this, but I think people were moving on quite quickly. The second reason is that Alcock and Brown were absolutely not celebrity-minded, they did not want to be famous, they wanted to fly. They were uh Alcock wanted to fly, and um Brown wanted to get back to engineering. Uh, they were reluctant heroes. Yeah, and so while they did plenty of public appearances, they didn't court the fame, uh, and and they just wanted to get back to their normal lives as quickly as possible. Then I think we need to look at 1927 and what what was happening in 1927. Well, uh when Lindbergh flew, I mean Charles Lindbergh, this tall, handsome uh Midwesterner, in towards the end of the roaring 20s in America, when you know celebrity and people like Lindbergh had great PR campaigns behind them, they had great press teams, everything just worked. It was the time was right in 1927 for the world to celebrate this great figure of Lindbergh, uh, who'd made this um extraordinary achievement. However, however, he never forgot who'd gone first. It's said that when he landed in Paris in 1927, he said to the crowd, Why all this fuss? Olcock and Brown showed us the way. And earlier you mentioned Amelia Erhardt and Amy Johnson, both of whom, after their famous uh great flights, they both acknowledged the flights, the flight of Olcock and Brown as being one of the most important in history and the least remembered and appreciated in history. So they remembered, and I think just as time went on, the world uh forgot. And and and you know, so I grew up at the Science Museum with this aeroplane sitting in the middle of this gallery, uh um like a like a huge lump. Um, but the story of the people and the people around those two great figures, Alcock and Brown, was it's it's hard to tell in a uh in a museum gallery. So to be able to bring to be able to bring it out from the shadows and to stand all cock and brown alongside Lindbergh and Uh Hart and Johnson has felt a great joy, actually.

Russell 1:14:26

And all the other characters in your book, uh, I mean we've we've had to skip over some of the uh but I mean just some of the stories in the book are just jaw-dropping stuff. Uh it's terrific. Look, um we should end it there, I think. I think I think we've done them justice. I think that's uh that's terrific. So um uh is there anything else or or do you think we're done now?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:52

Uh I I think we're done. I think I think I I would have been happy to talk about what happened to Walcock in later in 1919, but actually uh for the same reason as how I ended the book, uh I I rather like the idea of this being an achievement, not a tragedy. Okay. So I so so I'm I'm happy to leave it there. And I think you've covered everything in an exemplary fashion in your questions, so thank you.

Russell 1:15:18

Not at all. Okay, um David Rooney, thank you very much indeed.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:23

Thank you, Russell. It's been a great pleasure.