HISTORY: Yesterday We Were in America: Alcock and Brown - First to Fly the Atlantic Non-stop,By Brendan Lynch, Haynes Publishing, 256pp. £19.99
NEAR THE site of the Marconi radio station outside Clifden, Co Galway, on a hill above the road, a large limestone tail-fin points skywards. It commemorates the first non-stop transatlantic flight in 1919 by John Alcock and Arthur Brown, who landed their tiny aircraft in nearby Derrygimla bog.
A few months after these RAF veterans first met, Alcock and Brown sailed for Newfoundland, a climatically challenged region where harsh weather, endless fog, rain, sleet and high winds delayed their departure. An uncle of mine who lived there described Newfoundland as unfit for human habitation.
The two pilots knew the risks they were taking: one competitor crashed taking off, another ditched 850 miles from Ireland and was lucky to be picked up by a tramp steamer. The potential rewards were also great: £10,000 in prize money (about €450,000 today) and global fame.
The plane’s minuscule cockpit was open to the elements, with fewer instruments than the dashboard of a modern saloon car and electric switches more commonly seen in an Edwardian house. Heavily laden with fuel and water, as well as copious sandwiches, Fry’s chocolate, Oxo and Horlicks, the author describes well the tension of the uphill take-off as the little biplane struggled to become airborne.
Travelling at just 100mph, the pioneers flew blind most of the way through dense freezing clouds. The engine noise was so overwhelming they had to communicate with scribbled notes and both were deaf for several days afterwards. The radio packed up, ice gathered on the wings, a faulty exhaust pipe turned cabling white-hot and, at one point, when the engines stalled the plane plunged 3,500 feet. Alcock managed to level off just 100 feet above the waves.
Sixteen hair-raising hours later, they made landfall in Connemara. Harry Sullivan, then seven years old, recalled the biplane roaring across the Clifden rooftops as Alcock headed for what looked like a smooth field at Derrygimla. Staff at the Marconi station tried to direct the biplane away from the bog, the pilots responding with a cheery wave. The plane landed smoothly but jerked to a halt, ending up on its nose.
Neither pilot was badly hurt and their first task was to convince their rescuers they had indeed flown from America. A full Irish breakfast followed in the radio station mess with receptions in the Railway Hotel, Clifden and the Great Southern Hotel in Galway. They were already international heroes and crowds turned out to greet them at every railway station en route to Dublin.
However, their later lives took a tragic turn. Alcock died the same year when his plane crashed on the way to an air show in Paris. A Celtic cross marks his grave in a Manchester cemetery.
Brown, who was greatly saddened at his friend’s death, walked with a limp and carried a cane all his life, the result of war wounds, rejoining the RAF as a pilot trainer in 1939.
HE NEVER RECOVEREDwhen his son Arthur was shot down over the Netherlands on D-Day, and when Brown himself died in 1948, his widow told the inquest he had suffered a physical and nervous breakdown.
The verdict was an overdose of barbitone, accidentally self-administered.
Alcock and Brown’s achievement was extraordinary and it was eight years before anyone repeated their epic flight. In somewhat rambling style, this book conveys their bravery and strong partnership.
Clifden, too, has not forgotten its aviation heroes and has been celebrating them extensively this month: the museum there contains memorabilia marking the airmen’s great adventure 90 years ago this year.
Fergus Mulligan is the author of The Trinity Year, just published by Gill & Macmillan and Trinity College Dublin, and of a forthcoming biography of William Dargan