A and B Day
On June 14th 1919 two stout hearted and daring individuals climbed into a machine fashioned from wood, fabric, metal and the latest in human ingenuity and set out to push human achievement to another level. Roughly 160,000 combined heartbeats later they had succeeded.
There's an old saying in the flying community. Aviation is hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. I think Alcock and Brown's flight could better be described as hours of calm anxiety punctuated by terror measured in minutes, not moments. I flew airplanes for 40 years and I suppose all my anxious moments didn't add up to an hour.
Try to imagine those two, suspended in those 2000 odd miles of unexplored territory. How utterly alone they were. How removed physically and perhaps spiritually from their fellow creatures behind and ahead of them. In cloud, at night, out in the elements. Their open cockpit faintly illuminated by the instrument lighting which enabled Alcock to see the clinometer. An inverted semi circular glass tube with an air bubble which was a parody of an artificial horizon and which he had to monitor for all but the brief times when they were clear of cloud. What else enabled him to keep the Vimy on an even keel? The small pressures he felt as the machine talked to him in the new language of yaw, roll and pitch and his seat translated. All good until they hit heavy turbulence. Loss of control! In a spin. The airplane fully stalled. Descending violently but slowly. The two friends hoping for a glimpse of the ocean and enough altitude to recover. Salt spray on their lips after Alcock sorted things out. Time for one of Agnes Dooley's sandwiches and a beer.
Brown's familiarity with the stars! Something I envied the old pilots for. We navigated by beacons. NDBs, VORs. My old Captains would look outside when we broke out on top of cloud in the high Arctic. Look around at the friendly stars and nod to themselves. Nod to Brown. Nod to Magellan. A lost art which was as familiar to Brown as finding my way round my house is to me. He was out by 10 miles after 2000. That's not out. That's bang on.
I'll stretch things a bit and say they gave me a job. In the 1990s when I was flying Boeing 767s across the Atlantic I never thought much about the fact that someone had to do it first. Or else I suppose we'd still be crossing by sea. At 30 west we switched over. "Good night Gander" followed by "Hello Shanwick" on the cacophonous HF radio. We were about 4 hours out then, having departed Toronto. They would have been about 8 hours out of St.John's. Now there are thousands of people over the Atlantic every night. All slipstreaming off the Vimy.
Like Columbus, Lindbergh got the glory. Arriving in Paris 8 years later he said "Alcock and Brown showed me the way". But the press knew better. Lindy was first. Earhart was first next.
Brown hoped their flight would unite mankind and make us realize the useless "narcissism of our minor differences", as I think Frued put it. Some hope! They both knew better. Both shot down during the war. Brown's wounded leg tormenting him the whole 16 and a half hours.
But they did a grand thing. And they reminded us that there are grand things to do and with a bit of pluck, we can do them. And one day we will leave the Earth and go to Mars. And someone will have to go first. And whoever it is will be stout hearted and daring and we will be at our best through them. Just as we were at our best through Alcock and Brown.