Beyond The Sea

LXXXI

In a way, it was all due to Lindbergh. His solo transatlantic flight in May 1927 proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Europe and North America were within easy flying range of one another. Enthused commercial aircraft developers began drawing up plans for transatlantic aircraft.

 

The Spirit of St. Louis on a promotional tour after its famous flight

The U.S. Government issued an Air Mail stamp in Lindbergh's honor after his famed flight in 1927. It was doubly an honor since Lindbergh had been one of the earliest U.S. Air Mail pilots. Lindbergh had been flying since 1924 --- and had nearly been fired for stunting

The first transatlantic airplane flight had taken place in May 1919. It had taken nearly 24 days and used up several aircraft of the type called a Curtiss NC. 

In 1919, the U.S. Navy succeeded in crossing the Atlantic by air for the first time in a succession of Curtiss NC-4 flying boats. Hopscotching from Long Island to New England, to Nova Scotia, to Newfoundland, to the Azores, and then on to Portugal, the prime crew all reached Lisbon in 24 days. The route was ridiculous, the elapsed time was absurd, and the planes were impractical --- but they made it to Europe

Two weeks after the Americans had spent a month crossing the Atlantic, John Alcock and Arthur Brown crossed the Atlantic too --- nonstop --- in just 16 hours by following a northern Great Circle Route from Canada to Ireland. Coming in for a landing they discovered, too late, that the nice, flat green field they had chosen to put down in was a bog. Neither man was hurt in the crash, though their modified Vickers-Vimy bomber was wrecked

Then there was the airship flight --- the R34 had successfully crossed the ocean there-and-back-again in July 1919. The regularly scheduled airline crossings of the Graf Zeppelin wouldn’t begin until October of 1928. 

In April of 1928, the Germans made history by flying a Junkers W33 airliner named Bremen across the Atlantic. Though this accomplishment was lost in the din of recordbreaking flights at the end of the decade, it worried people in the United States who were paid to be worried about such things. The airliner had only a skeleton crew of three, including its captain, James Fitzmaurice of Ireland, and it had been loaded down with extra fuel for range. Still, she was a big, all-metal aircraft with cantilevered wings, a very advanced craft for its time.

 

Captain James Michael Christopher FitzMaurice was an Irish-born aviator who crewed the German airliner Bremen  with its Captain Koehl and Baron von Huenfeld, the financial backer of the flight, from Germany to Canada in 1928. During World War I, Fitzmaurice (his preferred spelling) had joined the British Royal Flying Corps (RFC, precursor to the RAF), and consciously adopted an upper class British accent, He tried later to deny his rural Irish roots. Despite Fitzmaurice's rejection of his Irish heritage, Ireland considers him a national hero

Baron von Huenfeld, who funded the Bremen flight wanted to set many aviation records but found his aspirations frustrated by conditions in postwar Germany, and by his own health, which was always poor. His attempted around-the-world-flight in 1929 was abandoned when he became too ill to fly on. He died in 1930

Hermann Koehl was one of the founders of Lufthansa. He accompanied Fitzmaurice and von Huenfeld across the Atlantic. After 1933, Koehl retired to a small farmhouse in the south of Germany rather than work for the Nazis. He rented his Berlin apartment to the journalist William Shirer

The Junkers W33, Bremen, readying for flight

Ireland has honored James Fitzmaurice (who not only was not an active Irish patriot but won the British DFC during World War I) by naming the country's national flying school for him. Ireland has also issued a Fitzmaurice stamp. Apparently, this was enough for land developers in Massapequa, New York (pitching the town as "a bit of old Erin") to name the local airport for him. The facts on the sign are wrong; airships had gone before. Massapequa Park named streets for Fitzmaurice, von Huenfeld and Koehl

U.S. war planners knew that the Weimar Government in Germany was flouting the rearmament restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. Under the Treaty, Germany was not permitted to build war machines such as bombers or military trucks. The country was limited only to civilian commercial manufacturing. To evade this restriction, Germany had raised its production standards for all vehicles to military grade. Essentially, the Junkers W33 was a bomber airplane with upholstered seats and food service. While it obviously didn’t have the range to attack the Americas --- else it would have been loaded with passengers and a full cabin crew as a demonstration of its abilities --- clearly Germany was evolving a craft that could.  

Eventually, adapted Junkers W33s would indeed see war service in the Colombian-Peruvian War of 1932-33. 

The U.S. Army Air Corps suddenly became very interested in heavy bombers.   

 

In 1933, the United States Army Air Corps asked Boeing to develop a heavy bomber. The prototype XB-15 had a vast range, could carry many tons of payload, and was huge, but she was underpowered for her stated purpose. Affectionately called "Old Grandpappy," this one-of-a-kind aircraft inspired the B-17 Flying Fortress, the B-29 Superfortress, and the Boeing 314 Flying Boat. Old Grandpappy was used for air shows, transport, and humanitarian missions, flying food, medicines and supplies to survivors of natural disasters all throughout the United States and the world