Talk:Transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown

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Untitled[edit]

I moved the below paragraph just added by User:66.31.242.252 here to talk, as I've been unable to find confirmation of this information. Could a source be mentioned on this please? Sorry if it's something I missed. -- Infrogmation 04:49, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

They were picked up by a taxi from Westport, owned and driven by Martin O'Malley, a man also involved in the operation that lead to the explosive distruction of the Marconi base station in Connemara during the Irish War of Independence.

An Interesting Note on the 2005 Reenactment[edit]

Our family was on vacation and happened to be in Clifden at the time the replica Vimy was landing. The plane did a few circles around town and then landed on the golf course nearby, very close to the bog where the original plane crash-landed. There was a large parade through town, mostly consisting of period cars loaned from a museum for the occasion. Fosset and Rebholz rode in a period Cadillac limousine. There was a large part in a pub in town that night. We were actually able to talk and shake hands with Fosset and Rebholz, which you would never be able to do here in the US (They would be surrounded by security, no doubt). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jackavsfan (talk • contribs) 21:03, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

81 or 64?[edit]

The Charles Lindbergh article says 81 flew the Atlantic before him; this article says 64.Pliny 17:23, 14 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Climbing out of the aircraft[edit]

The flight nearly ended in disaster several times owing to engine trouble, fog, snow and ice. It was only saved by Brown's continual climbing out on the wings to remove ice from the engine air intakes

This is a myth. There is no mention of this in Brown's logs, he was lame and it would have proved fatal.

- (Revision as of 04:27, 20 February 2007 by User:81.154.15.154 (contribs))


Flight and motion: the history and science of flying (2009, ISBN 978-0-7656-8100-3) says, on page 90: "Some accounts of the flight say that Brown climbed out on the wings to clear off the ice, but he never claimed to have done so."     ←   ZScarpia   16:59, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The climbing out to clear ice is mentioned in a 1969 Flight article, which mentions that Brown did not include this feat in his written account, here: [1]
... Page 1 of the article here: [2] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.7.147.13 (talk) 19:43, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Merger Proposal[edit]

I'm proposing merging John Alcock (RAF officer) and Arthur Whitten Brown into Alcock and Brown. I believe these articles are duplicating each other. I've proposed Alcock and Brown as the target atricle as I believe it has more deatail. -- Rehnn83 Talk 10:34, 11 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Disagree - they are each individuals who lead separate lives apart from their flight Cjrother 14:01, 11 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree - this is an article about their flight together not about the individuals. MilborneOne 20:09, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Disagree - (see article on Laurel and Hardy). merger flag deleted. Inwind 15:49, 10 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mention of the NC-4[edit]

What do people think is the best way to mention the NC-4 flight (which preceeded Alcock & Brown and was largely popularly forgotten afterwards)? -- Infrogmation 17:58, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The "Other crossings" section seems to be unnecessary since the information here has no direct bearing on Alcock and Brown's flight, and if anything tends to detract from their accomplishment. Their flight and how it fits in the chronology of transatlantic flight is well covered in Transatlantic flight#Early notable transatlantic flights. The X Prize organization's omission of Alcock and Brown's flight is not notable. Their mistake is not worth propagating in this article. I suggest that this section be trimmed down severly. The recreating of the flight by Steve Fossett and co-pilot Mark Rebholz should stay. Silverchemist (talk) 02:51, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I fully agree. The NC-4 'transatlantic multi-hop' is mentioned in the "see also" section - perhaps a few words there to explain the relevance would suffice. Lindbergh could also go into that section. The X Prize mention should go. The 2005 re-enactment by Fossett/Rebholz is relevant and notable enough to be mentioned, perhaps in a renamed section of its own. Give it a go! --TraceyR (talk) 11:31, 3 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I have deleted the X prize paragraph and added a phrase to the NC-4 bit! Should it all go? --TraceyR (talk) 16:32, 5 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The NC-4 flight "was largely popularly forgotten afterwards" simply because it didn't prove anything useful, being a number of in effect, separate trips from one place to another, with multiple stops in between. The journey could have just as well been over land, e.g., London to Cairo. So the NC-4 flight was a fine achievement, but it was only of limited significance.
Alcock & Brown's flight OTOH proved that it was possible for true trans-Atlantic flight, i.e., to fly directly from one continent to the other in one flight just as is done by airlines and their passengers today.
As with Louis Blériot's crossing of the English Channel, Alcock and Brown changed the world, in that the world was different from then on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.31.130.99 (talk) 13:43, 29 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
... the other thing of course is that the NC-4's were flying boats and so it did not matter too much if one or two of them came down in the sea, provided the sea was calm. The Vimy OTOH was a landplane and so it had to keep flying. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.29.18.184 (talk) 10:17, 25 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Map[edit]

A map of the route taken would be interesting. Drutt (talk) 01:14, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

New book on Alcock & Brown published[edit]

(Disclosure: I know this author) A comprehensive new book entitled "Yesterday We Were In America" by Brendan Lynch, was just published by Haynes & Co. (April '09). Seems it should be included in the article. Can anyone suggest where it might suitably fit? Don't want to just plonk it in crassly.

Also, the Trivia ref. to one of the propellers is not true, according to Lynch. He notes, "one prop is at Brooklands, other is missing" (BrendanLynchBooks.com). --Cajmcmahon (talk) 17:17, 1 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the 'missing' one is being used as a ceiling fan in a Dublin restaurant. Richerman (talk) 17:08, 15 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I tried to read this, but found it impossible. It's all padding; the kind of book where the sentence 'After the end of World War One' is followed by three pages telling you about WWI. Good luck to anybody who can find anything in it worth adding to the article.TheLongTone (talk) 11:29, 24 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

More about the flight itself[edit]

I added a chunk based on a dubious website. But more and better should be added. 01:13, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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External links modified (January 2018)[edit]

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12 hour or 24 hour clock consistency?[edit]

The article alternates between 24 hour time and 12 hour time. We should pick one form or the other and stick with it. For example, in one sentence a time of "15:20" is given (which to anyone who uses a 12 hour system is 3:20 in the afternoon). However a few sentences later a time is given of "5:00pm." My suggestion is to use the 24 hour system as it is more globally recognized (yes?). Jersey John (talk) 17:52, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It is confusing. The Science Museum website says that Alcock & Brown took off at 16.12 GMT (I think 13.42 local DST, as Newfoundland was 2.5 hours behind the UK in summer on the recently introduced Daylight Saving Time, or 3.5 hours behind GMT) and landed in Ireland at 08.40 GMT, 09.40 local DST, 'after 16 hours and 28 minutes.' I am not sure that, even now, people realise quite how daring it was to fly the Atlantic, in 1919, necessarily partly at night, without blind-flying gyro instruments, without radio (because it broke down), without Navy rescue ships strung along the route and with no possible diversion airfields.

https://www.scienceandindustrymuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/alcock-and-brown Khamba Tendal (talk) 18:36, 28 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Crash landing?[edit]

I've excised the phrase 'crash landing'. The fact is that it would have been a perfect landing had the ground not been a morass, causing a nose-over. The cite given was for an Irish tourist website, which I would not expect to avoid sensationalist and inaccurate language.TheLongTone (talk) 13:23, 21 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Map[edit]

Re. the preceding, I'd say the pilot, on coming to a stop, said, "Yeah, I think I'll give that landing a 9. On the Richter scale ..." Sorry.

I see this pernicious phenomenon so often on the Internet: When you blow up the location map, w/ the two little red dots, the dots are ABSENT in the blow-up. Because the blow-up has no English words on it, failing to identify any country or location, let alone those named in the main text, the blow-up is useless.

Fix.

Jimlue (talk)

Xeros[edit]

I found this in the article "[Alcot] was taken prisoner in Turkey after the engines on his Handley Page bomber failed over the Gulf of Xeros." But that is not what the reference says at all. The reference says "30 September 1917, his Handley-Page bomber was shot down over the sea and he and his crew were captured by Turkish forces." The engines did not "fail" which implies enemy action did not cause the plane to crash. The geographic place name "Xeros" does not appear in this reference. The original sentence linked Xeros to Gulf of Saros, without explanation of the name discrepancy. I consulted two geographic reference works from 1990, closer to this flight than now (2022). It may be that the United Kingdom called the Gulf of Saros by this name at that time, but one of my references is The Times Atlas of the World, published in 1990 in London, England, and it does have Xeros in the index as a small village in Cyprus, but calls the Gulf "Saros". For all of these reasons I changed the sentence to match the reference. Nick Beeson (talk) 14:00, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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