First Crossing: The 1919 Trans-Atlantic Flight of Alcock and Brown
Sunday, May 28th, 2023, at 2:30 pm via Zoom
The first to fly across the Atlantic non-stop wasn’t Charles Lindbergh, but two long-forgotten British airmen. Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown flew their flimsy, wood and fabric, modified Vickers Vimy bomber from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Cliveden, Ireland on June 14-15, 1919 — eight years before Lindbergh’s epic 1927 New York to Paris flight.
In First Crossing: The 1919 Trans-Atlantic Flight of Alcock and Brown, author Captain Robert O. Harder follows two Royal Air Force officers through terrifying Great War aerial combat before they are shot down and become prisoners of war. While incarcerated, both independently schemed of a way to win Lord Northcliffe’s £10,000 prize for the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic. Alcock needed an over–ocean navigator; Brown needed a pilot — what proved to be an ideal marriage. Through a combination of luck and their competitor’s bad fortune, Alcock and Brown launched themselves into aviation immortality.
Register for this presentation here: https://tinyurl.com/pzze6jem. You must register for each lecture with an email address associated with your Zoom account. If you don’t have one, you can sign up for a free Zoom account: https://zoom.us/signup.
Theodore Talks take place via Zoom on the fourth Sunday of each month at 2:30 pm, Central time. A complete list of future Theodore Talks can be found on the Mensa national Events Calendar at: www.us.mensa.org/attend/calendar.
For more information or questions, contact Brad Lucht at [email protected].
