The first decades of aviation brought both triumph and tragedy. To fly an early airplane required skill, courage, and daring, and a new breed of adventurers looked to the heavens for their challenges, thrilling audiences around the world. The development of the movie camera meant their exploits could be broadcast to every corner of the globe and recorded for posterity. With the increasing danger, several of the world’s greatest aviators were forged by fire, honing their flying skills in the bloodbath of the Great War.
The men of Germany, France, and Britain who mastered combat flying in time to prevent an early death became known as air aces. Dressed in a leather fleece jacket to counter the icy temperatures of altitude, sporting a silk scarf and oil-smeared goggles, the fighter pilot was a romantic figure. And the most romantic of all was the Red Baron. Manfred von Richthofen’s most famous aircraft was the Fokker triplane, machines which he said could climb like monkeys and maneuver like the devil.
But by the time they came into service, he was considered a legend and ordered not to fly in combat unless absolutely necessary. In 1918, he was put back to work as part of the Germans’ big air offensive. The new British Camels proved no obstacle for the air ace, who downed 17 aircraft in March and April, eight of them Camels. But on the 21st of April 1918, he was shot down and killed, most likely by an Australian anti-aircraft gunner following a dogfight.
Both sides mourned his death, with British magazine The Aeroplane describing von Richthofen as a brave man, a clean fighter, and an aristocrat. Like the Baron, many combat pilots never came back from the war, but those that did found opportunities opening up in the fledgling aviation industry. Airplanes to carry passengers, no one could see it. When it came to carrying mail, the government had to put up the money.
In 1918, the first air mail service was inaugurated between Washington, Philadelphia, and New York. And this was the first air mail stamp, 24 cents, showing a Curtiss Jenny in flight. The first few sheets of these stamps, as a matter of fact, showed Jenny flying upside down. Those stamps with the inverted centers are worth something like $4,000 each today.
After the war, a lot of Jennies were sold as government surplus. The pilots who bought them came to be known as barnstormers, gypsy flyers, flying fools. All over the country, they put on shows, walking the wings of a plane hundreds of feet up, jumping off with parachutes that sometimes failed to open, throwing their frail craft into loops, spins, dives, risking their necks for the benefit of the farmers, shopkeepers, housewives, and children who watched in awe on the ground below. Why did they do it?
In 1922, a young Charles Lindbergh, later to become the most famous aviator in the world, watched in fascination as Charles Harden made a jump from high in the sky. “I watched him strap on his harness and helmet, climb into the cockpit, and minutes later, a black dot falls off the wing 2,000 ft above our field,” Lindbergh wrote. “At almost the same instant a white streak behind him flowered out into the delicate wavering muslin of a parachute a few gossamer yards grasping onto air and suspending below them with invisible threads a human life and man who by stitches cloth and cord had made himself a god of the sky for those immortal moments. ” It was for the chance of immortality, a claim, and sheer devilment that the barnstormers risked their lives for others’ entertainment.
As if flying itself wasn’t risky enough, these flying fools performed aerobatics, jumped from flying aircraft to moving cars, and took people on joy rides. With little regulation of the aviation industry, the sky was the limit for these performers, who included Missouri native Jimmy Angel, whose specialty was a nighttime jump from 5,000 ft holding a pair of flashlights. The Ivan Gates Flying Circus trained many notable pilots and was famous for pioneering the $1 joy ride. The circus would fly into town and drop advertising pamphlets to drum up business.
For many townsfolk, it was their first close-up encounter with an airplane, and they would flock excitedly to the fields. Pilot Bill Brooks once took a record 980 people for flights during a show in Steubenville, Ohio. Clyde “Upside Down” Pangborn was another hellraiser famous for his upside-down flying, jumping from one plane to another mid-flight, and rescuing stuntwoman Rosalie Gordon mid-flight when her parachute got caught in his landing gear. The barnstormers were the toast of small-town America until 1927 when newly enacted federal safety regulations gradually closed them down.
The feds were reacting to a number of fatal crashes and to the complaints of local pilots who were losing business to the professional performers. While most barnstormers moved to other professions, some traveled to Hollywood, California to be part of the newly created motion picture industry. Stunt pilots were in high demand, with many movies featuring pilots as both heroes and villains. The stunt work was risky and spectacular and greatly contributed to the public’s perception of flying as a thrilling occupation.
In Flying Down to Rio, the RKO musical that paired Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers for the first time, the choreographer combined music and flight with a stylized aeroplane wing dance sequence. Ace Drummond was a 1936 film serial based on a comic strip that featured the adventures of an intrepid aviator. Ace Drummond was a G-man of the sky who traveled the world battling evil and flying a range of different aircraft. The ace received a significant boost in popularity when superstar aviatrix Amelia Earhart visited a location shoot in the San Fernando Valley to watch the second adventure being filmed.
As German air races resumed after the war, one of the most popular was the Gordon Bennett Trophy, founded by publisher and sports enthusiast Gordon Bennett. The race pitted the best airplanes against each other and encouraged innovation. On September the 28th, 1920, a big field of competitors flew three laps of a 100 km course at Étampes in France. First was Sadi Lecointe, taking 1 hour and 6 minutes to complete the circuit in his Nieuport 29V with an average speed of 169 mph.
Second was Bernard de Romanet in an 8 Spad S20, taking 1 hour and 39 minutes with an average speed of 112 mph. But when it came to exploration, reliability was more important than speed. Early aviators had seen the potential for aircraft to be used to explore previously inaccessible parts of the globe. And of particular interest were the polar ice caps.
The first pilot to attempt a trip to the North Pole was journalist and adventurer Walter Wellman. His 1906 polar expedition in a French-built dirigible was financed by his newspaper, but the airship’s engines exploded during testing. Undeterred, Wellman returned to his base at Norway’s Virgo Harbor the following year with an airship designed by Melvin Vaniman. Its car was built from steel tubing and reinforced wood wrapped in oiled silk to protect the crew from the elements.
The airship was powered by a Lorenzen 75 horsepower engine with two propellers mounted side by side on booms coming out from the sides of the car. Unfortunately, inclement weather prevented the ship from reaching the pole, but Wellman was able to take her on a 15-mile trial flight, making her the first motorized airship to undertake an Arctic flight. In 1910, Wellman made his final attempt, flying a new airship 1,000 miles past Cape Cod before he was forced down into the ocean near Bermuda with engine trouble, where he and his crew were rescued by a passing steamer. Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen was also interested in using aircraft for Arctic exploration.
In 1925, he took two airplanes on an expedition, losing one when he was at the northernmost point ever reached by an aircraft. For 3 weeks, Amundsen and his five crewmen shoveled ice and snow to clear an airstrip so the remaining airplane could take off. Pilot Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen successfully flew the N25 back to base after the men had been given up for dead. In 1926, Amundsen, Riiser-Larsen, and three others were the first men to cross the Arctic in an airship.
The voyage from Spitsbergen to Alaska took 2 days and was the first verified expedition to reach the North Pole. Norwegian-American pilot Bernt Balchen was another pilot who accompanied the expedition to Spitsbergen, but he did not go on the final flight. However, in 1929, he became the first person to fly across the South Pole on the expedition led by Richard E. Byrd.
A highly decorated naval officer, it was Byrd who planned the flight path for the US Navy’s record-breaking flight across the Atlantic in 1919. Byrd set off for the North Pole in 1926 on a flight as navigator with pilot Floyd Bennett. The pair claimed to have reached it. However, subsequent examination of Byrd’s calculations revealed they only got about 80% of the way before turning back due to an oil leak.
Byrd and Bennett also attempted to become the first aviators to fly non-stop between the United States and France. However, Bennett was badly injured when their Fokker Trimotor crashed during a practice takeoff. While the plane was being repaired, Charles Lindbergh took the record. But Byrd carried out his trip anyway, taking Balchen as his chief pilot and landing in Normandy on July the 1st, 1927.
After conquering the Arctic, Byrd followed up with an expedition to the Antarctic. In 1928, he took two ships and three airplanes and spent several months carrying out scientific experiments and exploring the ice shelf. On November the 29th, 1929, Byrd, pilot Balchen, and two other crew flew a Ford Trimotor to the South Pole and back to the Ross Ice Shelf in 18 hours 41 minutes. The trip was fraught with danger and they had to dump both empty gas tanks and emergency supplies to gain enough altitude to reach the pole.
But the achievement earned Byrd many honors and he went back to Antarctica several times in later years, also serving on several important wartime missions to the Pacific. Commander Byrd was just one of the aviators who put huge efforts into winning the Orteig Prize for the first non-stop flight from America to France. Noel Davis planned to use a trimotor Keystone Pathfinder biplane to Paris. Charles Nungesser, World War I ace, expected to make the flight from Europe to America in a single-engine plane.
In April 1927, Clarence Chamberlain and Bert Acosta broke the world endurance record by circling New York City for an unbroken 51 hours and 11 minutes. Chamberlain also made the first ship-to-shore flight. The pair was keen to add the transatlantic trophy to their honors. However, none of the early flights were successful.
Byrd’s plane crashed at Roosevelt Field. Davis and his co-pilot were killed in another crash. Nungesser and his co-pilot François Coli set out on May the 8th, 1927 in their custom-built Levasseur PL8 biplane, but disappeared after they left Ireland. The aircraft was never found, although several Newfoundland locals claimed they had seen the aircraft flying over the island in bad weather.
The last aviator left trying for the trophy was Charles Lindbergh. Born in 1902, Charles Augustus Lindbergh was fascinated by automobiles as a child and enrolled in a mechanical engineering degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1922, age 20, he dropped out of college so he could learn to fly. 3 years later, he was hired to fly the St.
Louis-Chicago air mail route. A dangerous undertaking as he was forced to bail out of his plane on two occasions. But each time, as soon as he reached the ground by parachute, his first priority was to find the aircraft wreck and retrieve the mail so it could be sent on as quickly as possible. In 1927, Lindbergh set off on the flight that was to make him famous.
The Spirit of St. Louis, Lindbergh’s fabric-covered single-engine monoplane, was equipped with only a magnetic compass and an airspeed indicator to point the way to Ireland. His first landfall once he left continental America. Lindbergh flew a test flight from San Diego to New York without problems.
He then watched it being towed, dripping wet in the early morning rain from Curtiss Field to Roosevelt for the long-awaited takeoff. Escorted by motorcycle police, reporters, mechanics, and onlookers, it looked, as he wrote later, more like a funeral procession than the beginning of a flight to Paris. The oversized tanks in wings, nose, and fuselage were filled with fuel. At 7:40 a.
m. , the engines were started. Last-minute interviews held. Final pictures snapped.
And at 7:52, the Spirit of St. Louis began to roll down the muddy runway. Would it get off the ground or would it crash at the end of the runway? Twice its wings left the ground only to return.
And then the plane was airborne. It was 7:54 Eastern Daylight Time, the morning of May 20th, 1927. 3,600 miles to Paris. An hour later, over Rhode Island, the Atlantic Ocean less than 30 minutes away.
Cape Cod, and stretching ahead the limitless expanse of water. Lindbergh wrote, “I’m giving up a continent and heading out to sea in the most fragile vehicle ever devised by man. ” Over Nova Scotia, rain lashed the wings and seeped into the cockpit. The wind took the plane in its teeth and shook it as a dog shakes a rabbit.
Over Newfoundland, where 8 years before the big Navy flying boats had started their voyage across the Atlantic. This would be his last sight of land for 2,000 miles. As it grew darker and colder, first the fog came, and then mountainous thunderheads. Through haze so thick that only stars directly overhead were visible, he wove in and out among the clouds.
He fought the storm, the fog, and the desire to sleep, doubting his ability to endure, knowing that the alternative was death and failure. And finally, he broke the spell. The crisis passed. He was wide awake.
It was 7:52 a. m. New York time. 3 hours later, he spied the fishing boats and knew that he was nearing land.
He glided down and shouted as loudly as he could, “Which way is Ireland? ” The crew just gaped. Within the hour, he saw in the distance the rugged coastline, a bay, a village, the southwestern coast of Ireland. 2 hours ahead of schedule and almost exactly on his route.
He set his course southeastward towards England, the Channel, Cherbourg, and Paris. “Yesterday,” he exalted, “each strip of sea I crossed was an advanced messenger of the ocean. Today, these islands down below are heralds to a continent. ” At 10:05 New York time, he saw the lights of Paris.
He saw the hangars, the roads jammed with cars. Safely on the ground, he had barely cut the engine when a crowd reached the plane, shouting his name over and over again. “Lindbergh, Lindbergh. ” And when he opened the door of his cockpit, dozens of hands seized him and carried him off.
France’s president Gaston Doumergue pinned the Legion of Honor to the lapel of Lindbergh’s borrowed suit. And on his return to the United States, his own president presented him with the Distinguished Flying Cross. Charles Lindbergh had unleashed a torrent of mass emotion, the like of which has never been witnessed. He proved to the world once and for all that airplanes really could fly.
Governments all over the world issued stamps in his honor. Lindbergh awakened the world to the possibilities of flight. At only 25 years of age, Lindbergh was one of the most famous men in the world. In 1929, he married Anne Morrow, who learned to fly and traveled the world with him.
The couple traced the first transcontinental air mail passenger routes. They also demonstrated the importance of aviation in archaeological work by taking aerial photographs of Pueblo Indian ruins in Arizona. In 1930, Anne became the first American woman to obtain her gliding license and she studied navigation, later navigating the flight piloted by her husband that set a transcontinental record. Anne soon qualified as a radio operator and the couple undertook a grueling journey to the Orient.
Discovering that their refueling ship was icebound in the Bering Sea, the Lindberghs were forced to spend the night in their flying boat on the waters of Shishmaref Inlet. They spent another night on the ocean on their way to Japan following a stint of bad weather. The Lindberghs flew several mercy missions in Nanking after floods devastated the region. Unfortunately, while their aircraft was being lowered from a British aircraft carrier into the Yangtze, it flipped and was lost.
The couple returned to America to be with their baby son Charles and built a large private estate in New Jersey in an attempt to escape public attention. But the Lindberghs suffered a parent’s worst nightmare when the little boy disappeared from their home on March the 1st, 1932. The Lindberghs paid a ransom, but 2 months later, baby Charles’s decomposed body was found near their home, escalating the matter to a murder investigation. In 1934, German-born carpenter Richard Hauptmann was arrested after buying gasoline with some of the ransom notes.
He said he was innocent, but authorities found the remaining ransom money hidden in his garage. In a trial that gripped the nation, Hauptmann was found guilty of both kidnapping and murder. He went to the electric chair on April the 2nd, 1936, still protesting his innocence. The case led to the Lindbergh Law which made the crime of kidnapping a federal offense.
Clarence Chamberlain, one of the early contestants for the Orteig Prize, was ready to leave for Paris before Lindbergh. However, a former co-pilot took out an injunction against the aircraft’s owner, and by the time the case was resolved, Lindbergh had won the competition. Chamberlain took up flying during the war when he worked for an aerial sign-towing company. He then toured America as a barnstormer before becoming an aircraft dealer and company pilot for the Wright Corporation.
Chamberlain formed a partnership with Charles Levine, a millionaire businessman who commissioned a monoplane from the Ryan Aircraft Company in California. Dubbed Columbia, the plane was grounded at Roosevelt Field in Long Island for several weeks while the courts resolved a case brought by a former co-pilot Lloyd Berto who wanted to be reinstated for the Atlantic challenge. The order was lifted on May the 20th, 1927, but by then Lindbergh had left for Paris and it was too late. So on June the 4th, 1927, Chamberlain set off on an attempt to set a distance record by flying from New York to Berlin.
He had also announced he would be taking the first passenger across the Atlantic. It wasn’t until the Columbia was taxiing across Roosevelt airfield that it became apparent who that passenger would be: owner Charles Levine. Even Levine’s wife was in the dark over his trip. Levine came to the airfield dressed in civilian clothes.
Secretly, he had stored his flying suit on board. As the crowd of onlookers waved Chamberlain off, Levine suddenly sprinted to the plane and climbed on board. His wife screamed, “Stop him! Stop him!
” But the Columbia was already on its way. It was a risky flight, especially as Levine served as navigator, although he had limited navigational experience. He also took over the controls a few times despite not having a pilot’s license. During the flight, they were cheered on by the cruise ship Wonia and even flew over the USS Memphis, which was returning Lindbergh to America following his epic flight.
42 hours and 31 minutes later, Chamberlain and Levine safely completed the 3,911-mile trip to Eisleben, Germany, where they refueled using a coffee pot donated by a local farmer. The pair then headed for Berlin only to get lost and land in Cottbus to the east of the city. The next day they flew to Tempelhof airport in Berlin to be welcomed by more than 100,000 people. It was Levine’s finest moment, as he was to have a checkered career in later years, arrested for stealing and forgery and spending time in prison for smuggling tungsten.
Chamberlain remained in the aviation industry, designing his own range of crescent monoplanes and setting a world altitude record by flying higher than 19,000 ft. In 1929, he set up an airline in the 1930s, then used its Curtiss Condors for barnstorming exhibitions before moving into real estate. Another aviator who inspired the world with his exploits was former Hollywood stunt pilot Jimmy Mattern. He crash-landed in Siberia and survived alone in the Arctic for 2 weeks until Eskimos rescued him.
Eventually, he flew in another aircraft and completed the flight. “I just received a wire from Jimmy in Anadyr, Siberia, saying he’s safe. Oh my, such a relief. And no one knows how happy I am.
”
Lockheed aircraft were notable for their performance and reliability and were flown in a number of record-breaking journeys. In 1928, Arthur Gerbal and Harry Tucker flew a Lockheed Vega known as the Yankee Doodle non-stop from New York to Los Angeles in 18 hours and 58 minutes. The next year, Frank Hawks set a new transcontinental record in his Lockheed. In 1920, Hawks had taken a 23-year-old Amelia Earhart for her first aeroplane ride at a state fair.
In 1931, Ruth Nichols set the women’s altitude record in her Lockheed Vega when she reached 28,743 ft. She also set speed and distance records. Wiley Post was the first man to fly around the world alone and the first man to fly around the world twice. Both records were set in a Lockheed.
Record breakers Lewis Yancey and Roger Williams took a Bellanca monoplane on their legendary flight from Maine to Rome in 1929. The Pathfinder became mired in fog off the coast of Newfoundland on the first leg of the flight, but Yancey’s navigational calculations were so accurate that they were right on course when they emerged several hours later. Chicago-born Yancey was a naval lieutenant during the Great War and became interested in aviation when he joined the US Coast Guard in 1925. Roger Williams was a former combat pilot and barnstormer.
The pair wrecked one plane in an earlier attempt before successfully flying the Pathfinder from the sands of Old Orchard Beach in Maine on the morning of July 8, 1929. Their 3,400-mile flight took 31 hours and 30 minutes with one unscheduled stop in Spain for a quick repair. When Yancey and Williams arrived in Rome, they received a hero’s welcome. The following year, Yancey was navigator on a flight to Bermuda that made history when it became the first airplane to spend a night at sea and take off again using its own power.
Again, Yancey’s navigational skills were crucial. Williams served in the Air Force during World War II, established his own aeronautical school after the war, and designed the Yankee Aero Coupe, receiving a 1971 Aviation Hall of Fame award for his efforts. Several notable Australians brought home a love of flying from their service in the Great War. Among them, brothers Keith and Ross Macpherson Smith.
Ross joined the Australian Flying Corps and served in the Palestine campaign, becoming the first pilot to fly over Jerusalem. Rejected by the Australian Army on medical grounds, Keith traveled to England to enlist with the Royal Flying Corps, although he never saw active service. United by their love of aviation and adventure, the brothers embarked on what was to become an epic flight from England to Australia on the 12th of November 1919. Accompanied by mechanics Jim Bennett and Wally Shiers, the men flew a Vickers Vimy on the hazardous 28-day 11,340-mile trip.
They stopped at Lyon, Rome, Cairo, Damascus, Basra, Karachi, Delhi, Kolkata, Akyab, Rangoon, Singora, Singapore, Batavia, and Surabaya before finally reaching Darwin on the 10th of December. On their arrival, the Smiths were knighted, and a £10,000 reward was split four ways. The brothers then planned to fly a Vickers Viking amphibian around the world and went back to England to prepare. But on the 13th of April 1922, tragedy struck.
Keith arrived late for a test flight of the new aircraft at Weybridge near London, only to watch it spiral into the ground, killing both his brother and mechanic Bennett. It was Ross’s first flight for several months, and he had never flown a Vickers Viking before. Investigators returned a finding of pilot error as the cause of the accident. Ross’s body was returned to Australia where he received a state funeral.
Sir Keith became a Vickers spokesman although he found it difficult to interest the British company in marketing to the small Australian market. He also served as vice president of British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines and as a director of Qantas Empire and Tasman Empire Airways Limited. Today, the Vickers Vimy used for the Smith brothers’ momentous flight is on display at Adelaide Airport in South Australia. Queenslander Bert Hinkler was another pioneering Australian.
Following service as a gunner observer in France during World War I, for which he received the Distinguished Service Medal, Hinkler worked as a test pilot in England for Avro. Hinkler broke numerous aviation records and won the Britannia Trophy for his 9-and-a-half-hour flight to Italy. A journey that was intended to be the first leg of a record-breaking flight to Australia, but had to be abandoned due to mechanical problems. Finally, after several other aborted flights, Hinkler became the first man to fly solo from England to Australia.
The journey took 15 days in his Avro Avian and he arrived in Darwin on the 22nd of February 1928. He became an instant celebrity and was awarded the Air Cross for the finest aerial exploit of the year. In 1931, Hinkler became the first person to fly solo across the South Atlantic during a flight from Canada to England via Jamaica and Africa. Two years later, while attempting to break the flying record to Australia, he died when his Puss Moth crashed in Italy’s Tuscan Mountains.
Of all the early Australian aviators, none could match the charisma and sheer showmanship of Charles Kingsford Smith. In a time when pilots were eared for their daring deeds, Kingsford Smith, or Smithy as he was affectionately known, and co-pilot Charles Ulm, were familiar faces in newspapers and newsreels. Smithy won the Military Cross for gallantry in action during his service as a fighter pilot in France before working as a barnstormer in America and then an airline pilot in Australia. In 1927, Smithy bought a Fokker Trimotor in the United States from polar explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins, which he had fitted out for a record attempt to Australia across the Pacific.
He named it the Southern Cross. On May the 31st, 1928, in front of a huge crowd of onlookers, Smithy, co-pilot Ulm, and radio operator, navigator, and engineer James Warner and Harry Lyon left San Francisco’s Oakland airport en route to Australia. The first stage of the flight was a 2,400-mile journey to Hawaii, which took 27 hours and 25 minutes. The next leg was a 3,100-mile flight to Fiji, which they flew in 34 hours and 30 minutes.
The final stage to Brisbane was 1,900 miles, which took them 20 hours. A crowd of 25,000 people was waiting to greet them at Eagle Farm when they arrived on the 9th of June on the first flight to cross the Pacific. In the Southern Cross, Smithy also made the first non-stop flight across the Australian continent and the first flight across the Tasman Sea to New Zealand. He flew around the world in 1929 and made the first west-to-east crossing in 1934.
But in 1935 on a flight from England to Australia in the Lockheed Altair the Lady Southern Cross, Smithy and co-pilot Tommy Pethybridge disappeared between India and Singapore. Smithy was just 38 years of age, but his achievements made him one of the world’s great pioneering pilots. At a time when women were prevented from working in many industries, female aviators were surprisingly plentiful. Pioneering African-American pilot Bessie Coleman broke sexual and racial barriers by obtaining her pilot’s license in 1921 and becoming a popular stunt pilot.
Sadly, she was killed in a flying accident in 1926, aged just 34. Eleanor Smith had a more fortunate flying career. In 2000, at 89 years of age, becoming the oldest person to land the space shuttle by simulation. As a freckle-faced 16-year-old, Smith became the youngest licensed pilot in history, and quickly set about making a name for herself.
She set distance, altitude, and endurance records, and made headlines when she became the only person to fly under New York’s four East River bridges. A record still stands. Smith was also the first woman to pilot a military aircraft and the first to refuel in midair. English-born pilot Amy Johnson was another aviator who commanded headlines.
She learned to fly at the London Aeroplane Club in the late 1920s while working as a secretary, but soon moved into aviation full-time, becoming the first British-trained female ground engineer. In 1930, Johnson’s father and oil baron Lord Wakefield helped Johnson purchase a Gypsy Moth for £600. Known as Jason after the family fish business, the single-engine plane was made from wood and fabric and had an open cockpit with no radio. The only instruments were an airspeed indicator, an altimeter, an indicator for turning and banking, and a compass.
Johnson flew 11,000 miles to become the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia. A million people lined the route between Croydon Airport and London’s West End to welcome her back to England. The following year, accompanied by co-pilot and engineer Jack Humphreys, Johnson made the first flight between Britain and Japan. In 1932, Johnson married Scottish pilot James Mollison, a fellow record-breaker.
He proposed to her in mid-flight, 8 hours after they met, and she accepted. Soon after the wedding, Johnson embarked on a solo flight from England to Cape Town, South Africa in a Puss Moth and broke her new husband’s record. Dubbed the flying sweethearts, the couple set off on a flight around the world together in 1933, flying a De Havilland Dragon Rapide. However, they were nearly killed on the flight from South Wales to the United States when they crash-landed in Connecticut after running out of fuel.
Fortunately, neither was seriously injured. “Well, Jim and Amy, if you feel all right and are ready, we’re going to take off for Floyd Bennett in New York. I thought before we took off that you might like to say something to the folks here in Bridgeport. ” “Yes, thanks.
I would like the opportunity of thanking everyone here for their kindness. Unfortunately, we didn’t arrive in quite the way we anticipated. But we are here next the great thing. And though beauty was never my strong point, I suppose that now it is still less so.
At any rate, if you would bear with our appearance, we just, as Amy has said, want to say how grateful we are. I know my mother must have been very worried, but I can tell her too that I’m just about all right and she needn’t worry at all. And I do thank everyone at home for their wishes of sympathy and of congratulations. Thank you very much.
” “Well, you got it worse than I did, Jim, but won’t you tell everyone yourself how you’re feeling now? ” “Well, I’m feeling very fit now. I may look very much worse than I actually am, but I’m very fit and I’m very glad to be here in New York again with all my friends. ” The couple divorced a few years later and sadly Johnson was killed in 1941 while ferrying an aircraft for her work as a transport pilot during World War II.
She is remembered as one of Britain’s greatest aviators and was a role model for generations to come. The most famous woman pilot to come from the antipodes was Jean Batten, known as the Garbo of the skies for her enigmatic beauty. Born in Rotorua in 1909, 18-year-old Batten decided to become a pilot after hearing Charles Kingsford Smith speak in Auckland. Her father refused to support her dreams so Batten and her mother left for England so Batten could take flying lessons at the London Aeroplane Club.
In December 1931, she earned her pilot’s license. Batten continued to improve her flying skills and eventually gained her commercial license, but was not interested in just flying for a job. She wanted to break records. Her first attempt was in April 1933 where she intended to break the England to Australia record held by Johnson.
This ended in disaster when she crash-landed in Karachi. Her second attempt was on April 21st, 1934. This also failed, but on her third attempt, she was successful. Starting on May 8th, 1934, she arrived in Darwin 14 days and 22 hours later, breaking Amy Johnson’s record by 6 days.
She was received with a rapturous welcome. Before returning to England, Batten did a six-week aerial tour of New Zealand, giving speeches and attending civic functions. After landing, she was the first woman to make the return flight from Australia back to England. “I do hope that by my flight to Australia and back again to England, I have done a little to encourage other people to take to flying and to demonstrate that flying is not quite so dangerous a sport or hobby as the majority of people imagine it to be.
And I also hope that by my flight I have done a little to strengthen the bonds of friendship not only between England and Australia but between England, Australia, New Zealand and all the dominions and colonies of our empire. ” Batten’s next long-distance flight was across the South Atlantic from West Africa to Brazil. The record of 85 hours was held by James Mollison. She took off from France and after two stops in Africa arrived in Port Natal, Brazil in 61 hours and 15 minutes, almost a day faster than Mollison.
The public waited expectantly for Batten’s next dramatic feat. Her next flight was to be England to New Zealand, which entailed crossing the dangerous Tasman Sea. On October 5th, 1936, Jean took off from England. She made Australia in six days, setting a new solo record.
Her second touchdown was Sydney where she received a huge welcome. Jean took off from Sydney and arrived in New Zealand 10 and a half hours later. She was received by mass crowds of proud and ecstatic New Zealanders. This was to be Jean’s final flight.
She felt content with her achievements and the flying world also recognized them, making her the first woman to receive the medal of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, aviation’s highest honor. Jean Batten, Queen of the Sky. For the rest of her life, she lived very privately and died in obscurity in Spain in 1982. However, her achievements have not been forgotten with Auckland Airport’s Jean Batten International Terminal named in her honor.
The greatest of all the aviatrixes was Amelia Earhart. When 11-year-old Earhart saw her first airplane at the Iowa State Fair, she was less than interested, describing it as a thing of rusty wire and wood. She was in her early 20s when a World War I ace in a Toronto flying exhibition blew his plane directly at her and a friend in an attempt to scare them. Earhart stood her ground and later credited the moment with awakening her passion for flying.
“I did not understand it at the time,” she said, “but I believe that little red airplane said something to me as it swished by. ” Two years later, Earhart took her first flight and decided to become a pilot. To pay for flying lessons, she drove a truck and worked at the local telephone company. She’d soon bought her own airplane and in 1923 became the 16th woman in America to be granted a pilot’s license.
Earhart became well-known as a pilot, but had to sell her yellow biplane when she suffered financial problems. But her aviation career got back on track in 1928 when she was selected to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, albeit as a passenger because she did not have instrument training. On arrival in Wales, she said to reporters, “I was just baggage like a sack of potatoes. Maybe someday I’ll try it alone.
” While in the United Kingdom, Earhart bought a new plane which she shipped back to the States. She was now a fully-fledged celebrity dubbed the Queen of the Air and Lady Lindy because of her resemblance to aviator Charles Lindbergh. Crowds cheered her in ticker tape parades. She visited the White House and she earned thousands of dollars from product endorsements.
Soon after returning from the UK, Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the North American continent and back. She also took part in competitive flying and was an active campaigner for female pilots, endorsing separate aviation records for women. In 1934, she refused to fly actress Mary Pickford to open the Bendix Air Race because women were banned from entering. Marriage to publisher George Putnam in 1931 didn’t slow her down.
And the following year, Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. She landed in Ireland 14 hours and 56 minutes after leaving Newfoundland, having battled strong winds and mechanical problems that prevented her from reaching her original destination of Paris. In 1935, she entered the record books as the first person to fly solo across the Pacific from Honolulu to mainland America. The 2,408-mile flight took 18 hours, and she was met by thousands of cheering fans when she arrived in Oakland, California.
Earhart was at the height of her popularity when she set out on her final flight in 1937, a 29,000-mile epic flight around the world accompanied by navigator Fred Noonan in a custom-built Lockheed Electra. Earhart and Noonan traveled 22,000 miles across four continents. But on the 2nd of July, the aircraft mysteriously disappeared and the wreckage has never been found, sparking numerous conspiracy theories. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has received many reports, including claims that Earhart and Noonan were captured by the Japanese and later executed.
There was even a wild theory that Earhart was forced to perform some of the Tokyo Rose propaganda broadcasts for the Japanese. “Well, ever since Earhart disappeared, there have been a number of explanations or attempted explanations as to where she ended up landing. Did she land on an island? Did she fall into the ocean?
Was she captured by the Japanese? Is she living in New Jersey? I mean, there are all sorts of different topics, all sorts of different theories. However, the most credible explanation is that Earhart and Noonan were forced to ditch their aircraft into the sea near Gardner Island.
A woman’s skeleton was discovered there in 1940 and removed to Fiji for examination, but later lost. Recent archaeological excavations have uncovered improvised tools, an aluminium panel that could be from an Electra and part of a woman’s shoe. ” Expedition leader Ric Gillespie: “After 13 years of research, after five expeditions, we know for certain now that something very odd happened on that island and in a time period right around the time Earhart disappeared. We don’t know for sure what that thing that happened was, but it left behind a castaway marooned on the island who died there and seems to have been a woman of Earhart’s ethnic background and general stature.
So, somebody who looked a lot like Amelia Earhart died on that island. We know that. ” But with no conclusive evidence yet emerging, it’s possible this mystery may never be solved. “Amelia Earhart has been missing since 1937.
She was a major figure who was flying around the world, a personality, a pilot, a major women’s figure, a variety of things. She did a lot for aviation. So when she disappears off the face of the earth in 1937 and no one finds her, the speculation just begins to grow and over the years it continues to grow, with all the different theories, with all the different little pieces of information or just gossip or hearsay that come in, and everyone wants to try to solve this great mystery. ”
Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh, and Amy Johnson.
Pilots with a spirit of adventure and matchless courage who became legends in the field of aviation and inspired future generations with their achievements.
