This Saturday, 28 September 2024, marks the 100-year anniversary of the culmination of a truly remarkable journey that happened during the year 1924- the first aerial circumnavigation of the earth.
This journey of 175 days would accomplish what previous attempts by the British, French, Italian, Portuguese and Argentinians had attempted in the early 1920's and were unable to do. In the Spring of 1923, the US Army Air Service began the task of finding suitable aircraft, assembling and training the team, and planning the mission. On the 6th of April 1924, four planes and a crew of eight departed from Sand Point Field in Seattle, Washington, skirted the coast towards Alaska and headed westward across the Pacific Ocean.
They flew in Douglas World Cruisers- a single engine, open cockpit bi-plane, equipped with no radios or avionics of any kind. Navigation was by dead reckoning skills, alone. The planes were named after their sponsoring cities- Seattle, Chicago, Boston and New Orleans. Two of the four would complete the journey.
Three weeks into the journey, Seattle- the lead aircraft piloted by the mission commander crash landed on the Alaskan peninsula. Major Frederick Martin and SSG Alva Harvey walked for ten days in the Alaskan tundra before finding civilization. Boston crashed after departing Iceland. The remaining two planes completed the trip and were met in Nova Scotia by a replacement aircraft- Boston II for the return to Seattle. They made 74 stops in 22 countries. They made it to Paris for Bastille Day on July 14.
There was a hero's welcome in Washington DC on September 12 where it's said that President Calvin Coolidge and his entourage waited for their arrival in the rain for 3 hours. They made 19 stops in 14 states on their final leg, three-week celebratory tour, across the United States. They completed their return to Seattle on the 28th of September. Although two planes were lost, all eight crew members survived. It's important to note that just less than 21 years earlier, the Wright Brothers first flew on December 17, 1903. That first flight lasted 12 seconds, traveled 120 feet and reached a top speed of 6.8 mph.
Let us celebrate this accomplishment and demonstration of the human spirit. For a link to the 1925 publication The First World Flight written by Lowell Thomas including the personal narratives if the flight team:
https://archive.org/details/firstworldflight0000thom/page/30/mode/1up
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Posted by Jim Gerberman.