In article , Dave Kearton
writes
"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...

What??? No Spirit of St. Louis???



Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer



The difficulty I have with the Spirit of St Louis is that it's a US national
icon and that there's bound to be a fair amount of emotion tied up in
defending it.


Looking a little more dispassionately at the issue, I think Lindberg should
be remembered long after the plane fades into the dim dark past, as it was
really HIS achievement, the plane just had to be there.


By the time Lucky Lindy made the crossing, he was (what ?) the 39th pilot
to cross the pond - but the first to do it alone. Given what he went
through and the number of pilots who disappeared while trying to do the same
makes _Lindberg's_ achievement notable.

He was the 92nd person to fly the Atlantic, but I don't know how many
before him were pilots. Take a look at this:
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mtransatlantic.html

and the book "The 91 Before Lindbergh" by Peter Allen.

The plane that seems to have avoided the Usenet radar is the Vickers Vimy
that Alcock and Brown used to FIRST fly across the Atlantic.

See the above article.
1-6 (May 1919): Lieutenant Commander Albert Read of the U.S. Navy and
his crew (Breese, Hinton, Rhoads, Rodd, and Stone) of the Curtiss NC-4
flew from Newfoundland to Portugal via the Azores.

Alcock and Beown were the first to fly across *non-stop*

While single crew crossings are fairly commonplace these days, they're
dwarfed in numbers by the multi crew crossings that occur in their hundreds
daily, unescorted and unrefuelled - as pioneered by Alcock and Brown in
June 1919.


I've only done it 6 times, surrounded by a couple of hundred of other
people on each occasion.





Cheers

Dave Kearton



--
Peter

Ying tong iddle-i po!