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Transportation History

The Big Hop

The North Atlantic Air Race

by (author) Gavin Will

Publisher
Boulder Publications
Initial publish date
Oct 2008
Category
History
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780973027181
    Publish Date
    Oct 2008
    List Price
    $29.95

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Description

On June 14, 1919, a Vickers Vimy biplane lumbered into the air from a field in St. John s, Newfoundland. More than sixteen hours and 3,000 kilometres later, the British crew of John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown brought the aircraft to a crash landing in a bog near Clifden, Ireland. The race to fly across the Atlantic Ocean had been won. It is hard for us today to fully appreciate the celebrity status accorded Alcock and Brown and their contemporaries in the world of aviation. Aircraft were flimsy, unreliable novelties and the men and women who flew them possessed incredible courage, daring, and vision. Many of them have been forgotten, but others have become legends: Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Wiley Post, and Richard Byrd. The Big Hop tells the stories of aviators who challenged the Atlantic Ocean between 1919 and the end of the Second World War, with a focus on the role played by Newfoundland and Labrador. It tells how these pioneers lived, and, all too often, how they died in their quest for glory.

About the author

Gavin Will is a publisher and journalist who lives in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Gavin Will's profile page