Madam, – Joe Joyce’s tour through the archives last Monday repeated an unfortunately all too frequent mis-statement regarding the history of transatlantic aviation when he states Charles Lindbergh made the first crossing of the Atlantic by air in 1927.
The first non-stop, transatlantic crossing by air was by the pioneering aviators Captain John Alcock and navigator Lieutenant Arthur Whitton Brown. They crash-landed outside Clifden, Connemara, on Sunday morning at 8.40am on June 15th, 1919, having left St John’s in Newfoundland some 16 hours earlier.
The banner headline in the New York Timesthe following day read "Alcock Brown fly across Atlantic; Make 1,980 miles in 16 hours, 12 Minutes; Sometimes upside down in dense, icy fog." The almost certain death which awaited these early aviators if their plane crashed in the icy north Atlantic bears testament to their bravery and courage. Lindbergh's first solo flight from New York to Paris was remarkable, but it has, I feel, unjustly overshadowed the achievements of Alcock and Brown almost nine years earlier when aviation, particularly trans-oceanic aviation, using the stars to navigate, was still in its infancy.
Clifden will celebrate the 90th anniversary of this historic flight this June with a series of lectures, exhibitions and walks on the site of the landing together with a free airshow on June 13th next. Whilst many can overlook the pioneering achievements of Alcock and Brown, Clifden will continue to record and celebrate their (and our) place in aviation history. – Yours, etc,