Pilots to Re-Enact First Transatlantic Flight

June 16, 2005 — -- Ask 10 friends who was first to fly across the Atlantic, and chances are the most common answer will be Charles Lindbergh.

In fact, he was beaten by eight years. John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, two British pilots, made the first nonstop flight, from Newfoundland to Ireland, in June 1919.

"We came across the Atlantic in 16 hours," Brown said years later, "but it wasn't a pleasant trip."

From their description, it was horrific. They got lost in sleet and darkness. They became disoriented and went spinning toward the ocean more than once.

They flew upside down at times. They crashed on landing. But the world fell in love with them.

"We had fog nearly all the way across," Brown said. "I saw the sky once, for long enough to fix our position by the stars."

Tracing Their Path

Now, 86 years later, a group of dreamers is trying to retrace the steps of those two pioneers. They have built a copy of the Vickers Vimy biplane flown by Alcock and Brown and are waiting at the airport in St. John's, Newfoundland, planning to take off as soon as the weather cooperates.

The pilot is a man familiar to many Americans: Steve Fossett, the millionaire adventurer who flew around the world nonstop in a hot-air balloon earlier this year. But this project was masterminded by a California businessman named Peter McMillan. He cobbled together the resources to build the Vickers Vimy replica, saying a long-ago mission is relevant to the modern day.

"It really sent a signal to the world that ultimately airplanes would make it a smaller place," McMillan said.

"It's a pilot's challenge," said Fossett at a stop in Toronto on the way to Newfoundland. "This is flying airplanes the way they used to be flown."

Fossett and his co-pilot, a 747 captain named Mark Rebholz, plan to navigate with the same tools available in 1919: a compass and sextant. They will allow themselves a few modern amenities: a satellite phone, GPS locator and survival suits in case of emergency.

"We're not willing to die for this effort as John Alcock and Arthur Brown were," Rebholz said with a smile.

Open Cockpit

They are willing, though, to endure discomfort. The cockpit of the plane is open. The air over the North Atlantic, even in June, will be frigid.

The engines on the original plane were so loud that Alcock and Brown, sitting side by side, had to scrawl notes to each other.

And even an updated biplane is a dangerous way to cross the ocean. But McMillan said that in a cautious world, it sends a useful message.

"A little bit of risk-taking is the lifeblood of human achievement," he told ABC News.

Seven times on the original flight, Brown had to climb out of the cockpit to clear ice from the plane.

At times, their altimeter said they were 8,000 feet over the ocean; at least once they came within 70 feet of a crash.

When Winston Churchill, then the British secretary of state for air, presented them with the prize for making the flight, he said he did not know whether to admire them most for their audacity and determination -- or their sheer good luck.

But every traveler who flies between the United States and Britain today is retracing the route of that historic Vickers Vimy biplane.

"Well, that's the start," Brown was quoted as saying when he climbed out of the wrecked plane. "I suppose they'll soon be coming over in dozens."