By Eamonn Keyes
The centenary of the first round-the-world flight takes place on September 28th2024.
To celebrate this Robert Foden will be giving a talk on the flight on Saturday 14th September at the King St. Halls as part of this year’s Orkney Aviation Festival.
Remarkably, this involved travelling to Orkney, where they landed at Houton on 30th of July 1924. Whilst in Orkney they had a boat trip round Scapa Flow where the German fleet scuttled only 5 years previously was still very much visible. Orkney’s place in aviation history should never be underestimated, as many firsts took place in the islands, and one of the engineers in the Douglas company, which built the aircraft involved, was from Flotta.
The first successful manned flight in a powered aircraft took place on December 17th1903. This first flight was made by Orville Wright, who travelled at a breath-taking speed of 6.8 miles per hour (10.9 km/h), and covered 120 feet (37 m), which took all of 12 seconds. This was into a freezing headwind of 27 miles per hour at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
Less than 20 years later the challenge was now on to fly around the world. In the intervening period aircraft had been used to bomb cities and enemy soldiers, shoot other aircraft down in aerial combat and take reconnaissance photographs. Flights had been extended to cross the English Channel, done by Louis Blériot in 1909, and eventually the first non-stop Atlantic crossing had been accomplished by Alcock and Brown in a converted Vickers Vimy bomber, ending up in a bog near Galway in the west of Ireland in June 1919.
The challenge of flying round the world attracted several national teams. In 1922 an unsuccessful attempt was made by the British which ended in a forced landing in the sea near Burma.
The USA, after World War One now a confident world power, was to conquer this challenge with a supreme example of pilot skill, engineering development, military organisation and the power of the dollar.
In 1924 the US Government backed mission to fly around the world took off using 4 aircraft designed and built by the Douglas company. The Douglas World Cruisers were adapted from the D2 torpedo bomber which included a redesigned fuel system. It had both wheels and floats which were changed depending on the terrain they were to be flying over. The 4 airplanes were named Seattle, Chicago, Boston and New Orleans.
The organisation of the flight used the resources of both the US military and civilian services. This ensured that at ever stop-over both machines and men were well taken care of, especially when rescue operations were needed, and it was the largest peacetime operation of its day.
The aircraft were equipped with no radios nor avionics of any sort, leaving their crew to rely entirely on their dead reckoning skills to navigate throughout the venture.
The main aircraft modification involved its fuel capacity. All the internal bomb carrying structures were removed with additional fuel tanks added to the wings and fuselage fuel tanks enlarged in the aircraft. The total fuel capacity went from 115 gallons to 644 gallons.
The crew, who were trained before the challenge on aircraft prototypes, were:
- Seattle (No. 1):
- Maj. Frederick L. Martin (1882–1956), pilot and flight commander, and SSgt. Alva L. Harvey (1900–1992), flight mechanic (failed to circumnavigate)
- Chicago (No. 2):
- Lt. Lowell H. Smith (1892–1945), pilot, subsequent flight commander, and 1st Lt. Leslie P. Arnold (1893–1961), co-pilot
- Boston (No. 3)/Boston II (prototype):
- 1st Lt. Leigh P. Wade (1897–1991), pilot, and SSgt. Henry H. Ogden (1900–1986), flight mechanic (failed to circumnavigate)
- New Orleans (No. 4):
- Lt. Erik H. Nelson (1888–1970), pilot, and Lt. John Harding Jr. (1896–1968), co-pilot
All aircrew survived, but two of the aircraft failed to complete the journey.
Media interest grew as the challenge progressed with welcoming receptions in Japan, Calcutta, Paris and London. A stop-off at Hull for the 3 remaining aircraft meant the machines could be overhauled ready for their onward flight.
Remarkably, this involved travelling to to Orkney, where they landed at Houton on 30th of July 1924. Whilst in Orkney they had a boat trip round Scapa Flow where the German fleet scuttled only 5 years previously was still very much visible.
En route to the next stop in Iceland the 3 planes became separated in fog and fearing for the crew of the New Orleans the Boston and Chicago returned to Orkney where they dropped a canister with a message in it. That canister was recovered but its whereabouts today is unknown.
The New Orleans had, however, made it successfully to Iceland but the Boston failed to complete the trip and ended up having to ditch in the sea.
When the New Orleans and the Chicago eventually reached the US they received a hero’s welcome. The flight had taken 175 days and covered 26,345 miles, and the average speed for the arduous journey was 75mph.
Robert Foden’s talk on the Centenary of the Douglas Circumnavigation Flight takes place on Saturday 14th September at the King St. Halls as part of this year’s Orkney Aviation Festival
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