Atlantic Adventure

Ref: 4304

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{detailed description}In the days when the space around the earth is cluttered with the debris of Russian experiments, the history of Atlantic flight will live not simply as a victory of mechanical contrivance and ingenuity but, more than anything, as a supreme example of human courage and high endeavour.
Atlantic Adventure is the first comprehensive account of man's conquest by air of that dangerous three thousand miles between the old world and the new. It begins with the first heavier-than-air crossing of Lieutenant Commander A. C. Read, U.S.N., in the flying-boat NC-4 on the 16th May, 1919. It took him eleven days to cross from West to East via St. Johns, Horta, Lisbon and Plymouth. On the 14th June of that same year, Alcock and Brown of immortal memory made the first non-stop dash from West to East to the West coast of Ireland, in their converted Vickers-Vimy bomber in fifteen hours. Those were the historic successes, but this book also contains the whole chronicle of the British, American, German, French and Irish attempts. Here, once again, bulging with inflammable gas, are the Graf Zeppelin, the Hindenburg and the R-100. Here, too, are the early flying-boats, the Dornier Do-X, and the famous clippers, still airborne. Here you may read of Lindberg's lonely triumph in the tiny " Spirit of St. Louis." Bert Hinkler made a historic flight across the South Atlantic—in a Puss Moth of all things. Amelia Earhart attempted a 27,000-mile round-the-world flight and came to a tragic end in mid-Pacific.
There are chapters on the great explorer Admiral Byrd, Winston Churchill's famous wartime plane " The Commando," that fascinating exercise, refuelling in mid-air, and the almost soporific commuting by the giant liners of today.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by Basil Clarke
published by Allan Wingate 1958 1st edn. illustrated, index.14x22
{condition}some foxing, annotations throughout, otherwise good, inc. d/j.
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