Magnificent men in their flying machines!

The Cross

Atlantic Flight

 

...Ancient Romans Loved Their Deadly Games

 

On 1 April 1913 Lord Northcliffe, owner of the Daily Mail newspaper, offered a prize of £10,000 for the first non-stop flight over the Atlantic by a heavier-than-air aircraft. Rival newspapers acted like the whole thing was a big joke. Some even offered their own reward for a successful airplane flight, to Mars.

 

The rules were simple:

 

1. The flight had to be from any point between Great Britain and any point in Newfoundland, Canada, or the United States.

 

2. The flight must be non-stop.

 

3. The flight had to be under 72 hours.

 

Many believed the Daily Mail challenge was crazy and some even believed it was downright criminal, asking people to basically kill themselves in a hopeless pursuit. With the advent of WW1 it was put on hold. But with the conclusion of the Great War in November 1918, Lord Northcliffe re-launched his Daily Mail challenge.

 

The war’s end had led to a fall in orders for aeroplane technology. Several British firms saw the Daily Mail competition as a way to stimulate the civilian industry instead.

 

The newspaper’s proprietor Lord Northcliffe saw it as something greater. A decade earlier, he’d been among the crowd who witnessed Europe’s first powered flight in Paris. He’d met Wilbur Wright.

 

“Britain is no longer an island,” Northcliffe had warned the politician Winston Churchill.

 

The aeroplane, he said, was vital to the future of their country. “We must get hold of this thing and make it our own.”