Irish Independent Newspaper (April 2004)
Wings of Desire
By Pól Ó Conghaile
Above the clear, chilly skies of Clifden, a passenger jet is rumbling.
Any other afternoon and I wouldn’t care. But this is different.
Scratching a fuel-trail into the blue, it is making me think about the
whole nature of aviation.
I am standing on Errislannan Hill with Michael Prendergast and Pat Mannion,
local businessmen both. Casting architectural shadows beside us, a tail-fin
memorial celebrates the first direct transatlantic flight by John Alcock
and Arthur Whitten-Brown in 1919.
This summer, an American team plans to retrace the journey in a replica
plane, and we are discussing the implications for Clifden. The Irishmen’s
mission is to ensure that once the plane arrives, it stays. Pointing to
Derrygimlagh, the original landing site, they explain the happy coincidence
that made the whole thing possible: "That could be the flattest part
of Connemara".
Certainly, that’s how it appeared on the morning of June 15th, 1919.
16 hours and 12 minutes earlier, Alcock and Brown had climbed into their
converted Vickers bomber at Lester’s Field, Newfoundland. A halt
had just been called to World War 1 and the pair was out to prove, as
Alcock put it, that "there are possibilities of flying non-stop from
the New World to the Old".
Pointing their aircraft west, 1,890 nautical miles lay between them and
Clifden. It wasn’t long before the problems started. The shortwave
radio broke down. The heating in their leather flying suits stopped working.
Fog descended, so thick that neither man could make out the propeller
blades.
"The Vickers-Vimy biplane climbed and dived, struggling to extricate
herself from the folds of the airplane’s worst enemies," reported
the New York Times. "She rose to 11,000 feet and swooped down almost
to the surface of the sea, and at times the two voyagers found themselves
flying upside down, only 10 feet above water."
Turbulence tossed the machine like a leaf. She suffered split exhaust
pipes, flaming engines, rain, hail, sleet and ice. Gingerly, Brown scaled
the wings to clear air filters of snow. "We have had a terrible voyage,"
Captain Alcock said, after crash-landing in Connemara. "The wonder
is that we are here at all."
That’s the heritage. But there is another reason for the plane to
stay. Clifden, like many Irish towns dependant on seasonal tourism, has
been feeling an economic pinch of late. The area is renowned for its personality,
unspoilt beauty and lack of overt commercialism, but its season is short.
Foot and Mouth Disease, a global economic downturn and the war against
terrorism have taken their toll.
For some time now, the local development company, of which Prendergast
and Mannion are Chairman and Vice-Chairman respectively, has been on the
lookout for a focal point, an all-weather attraction that would anchor
tourism in the town. To all concerned, a museum seems the most sensible
fit.
"Two events in the same small stretch of bog," muses Séamus
Burke, Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce. The first transatlantic wireless
message sent from Clifden Marconi station in 1907 and the first non-stop
transatlantic flight. "Would you have Ryanair or mobile phones without
those?"
To make a museum live, however, a focus is required. So when the men
heard about the replica flight, they got to work. They invited the project
managers over. They entertained Mark Rebholtz, Chief Pilot, in 2001. Last
September, they travelled to Hamilton Airforce Base, California, to copperfasten
relations.
"There are others vying for the plane," Prendergast explains.
"This is where they’ve committed to, but if we can’t
come up with a place for it, there are plenty in London, Newfoundland
or the US that will. That’s the crux of it."
Sitting in a hangar outside San Francisco, the trio’s Holy Grail
– a Vickers Vimy FB27 Replica with a wingspan of 68ft – blew
them away. "It’s not until you physically touch the plane that
you realise. You have the impression that it’s hard and small, but
it’s soft and it’s large… that’s the first thing
that strikes you, how did this make it across the Atlantic?"
In 1990, Peter McMillan, a young investment broker from California, was
asking himself the same questions. Having just flown a vintage air rally
from England to Australia, dodging the Gulf War en route, he and ex-Australian
Army pilot, Lang Kidby, were looking for a new challenge. They began with
the poser: "What was the most significant aircraft in terms of changing
the way people thought about aviation?"
In an expeditionary sense, in terms of the aerial photographs (nobody
had seen the Taj Mahal or Victoria Falls from the air before) and sheer
spirit, there was only one answer. McMillan vowed to relive the Vimy’s
trailblazing adventures, bringing to life their impact in a world where
commercial air travel is routine, uncomfortable, even boring.
Aviators like Alcock and Brown showed that the aeroplane, long considered
a tool of war, had tremendous civilian applications, he says. "I
wanted to build a time machine and experience the world as a larger place,
while reminding others of the debt we owe to the forgotten pioneers of
the air who deserve a place alongside Magellan, Columbus and Captain Cook."
Beginning with a set of original drawings on microfilm, McMillan assembled
a team, led by Chief Engineer John LaNoue, and ushered them into the unknown.
From box spars to gargantuan V12 engines, steel tube fuselage to cotton
covering, extreme pains were taken in a $1m quest for authenticity.
So far, all has gone to plan. In 1995, a 15,000-mile adventure from England
to Australia retraced the seminal Smith brothers’ flight of 1919.
In 1999, the 9,000 miles from London to Cape Town followed, originally
flown by Pierre van Ryneveld and Christopher Quintin Brand in 1920. Alcock
and Brown’s route, the third great Vimy flight, will be the replica
plane’s swansong.
In an era where innovation often happens at the molecular level, the project
sweats a real sense of adventure. Modern navigational equipment has been
dispensed with and, surrounded by timber, steel, canvas and petrol, the
pilot’s muscles will royally ache. Pat Mannion puts it bluntly:
"She handles like a pig."
"It’s very uncomfortable, noisy and there’s a high degree
of vibration," says Mark Rebholtz. "It’s cold too, there’s
no denying it. You’re stationary, sitting in a seat, you can’t
stand up or stretch your legs, it’s a very long endurance contest."
To a pilot with a keen sense of aviation history, the accuracy of any
re-enactment is paramount. "Anybody can go into a store and buy a
$500 GPS system and go across the ocean, but I’d be getting bored
and sleepy with that. With this, there’s a distinct possibility
we’ll miss Ireland."
There will be concessions, of course, to Canadian law and commonsense.
Alcock and Brown had no way of telling weather beyond the horizon, but
once the replica has been troubleshot and shipped to Newfoundland this
May, Rebholtz will remain in constant communication with meteorologists
and airline dispatchers.
Thus, although June 14th would be the best departure date historically,
he and McMillan will take what they can get in a two-month summer window.
"I am going on a good day – even if it means sitting in St
John’s for two weeks," he says.
Nor will risks be taken with hypothermia. Cruising at a maximum altitude
of 9,000 feet, pilots will wear electric warming socks and exposure suits
similar to those worn by oil-riggers in the North Sea. "If we’re
not wearing them and we go in the water," Rebholtz explains, "we’ll
be dead within 45 minutes." If they do go swimming, a satellite phone
and GPS locator will be broken out immediately.
That night, driving to meet the few remaining souls in Clifden with direct
memories of the event, both adventures came alive for me. The sky was
a glassy black, the moon a sickle. Salt had been scattered in anticipation
of frost. By contrast, approaching 8.40am that fateful Sunday morning,
Brown was still nudging his pilot through fog with maps, sextant and a
compass.
"It was an awful wonder to hear the plane coming over you,"
recalls John Coneely, who was 10 at the time. Hearing a frightful roar,
he and his sister chased outside. "I thought it was something coming
down on the house and we’d be killed… but our mother came
back from the cows and said it was the noise of an aeroplane."
Brown had aimed for London, but was pretty sure this was Ireland. Scribbling
his thoughts into a logbook, he held it up for Alcock to read. In response,
the pilot took the plane low and circled over Clifden, scouting for an
outlying meadow on which to land.
"It was the first plane we ever saw," says Harry O’Sullivan,
11-years-old as he recalls. He remembers a balloon floating over the mountains
during the war, but nothing like this. "My mother and brothers were
downstairs. They heard the noise, went out, saw it circle around. At maybe
four or five hundred feet, we saw the big plane. We saw it and we looked
at it."
From their cockpit, the men spotted the nearby Marconi masts. "Before
coming to earth near the Clifden wireless station, Alcock circled the
wireless aerials, seeking the best spot to reach the earth," the
New York Times reported. "But no suitable ground was found, so he
chanced it in a bog".
In the confidence of June, of course, Derrygimlagh would have appeared
firm and verdant. Passing Cleggan Head, however, they were steering a
course for wispy tufts, stacks of turf and squelching stretches of swamp.
Dipping down, the Vimy ploughed into a short, deep four-track furrow,
burying its nose in mud. "If they’d landed anywhere else they
would have been killed," John Coneely says.
Thankfully, injuries were slight. Soldiers, wireless operators and others,
dressed in pyjamas and coats, rushed to the spot and offered assistance.
"Yesterday I was in America," Alcock said. "I am the first
man in Europe to say that."
Standing on the foundations of the wireless station, destroyed by irregulars
in 1922, Pat Mannion traces the flight path over Clifden Bay. "It
brings up a lot of discussion," he says. "You’d often
hear older people arguing over the facts. People are proud of it."
There is another memorial, a graffiti-bothered lump in need of paint.
From here, Alcock and Brown sent a telex, claiming their £10,000
prize from the Daily Mail. Whisked away and received as heroes in London,
they delivered the first transatlantic mailbag, received their money from
Winston Churchill and were knighted by George V at Buckingham Palace.
News spread like wildfire.
At Clifden, it seeped rather more slowly. Few in the town were even aware
of Alcock and Brown’s plans, Harry O’Sullivan remembers. British
soldiers had Marconi cordoned off; news crossed the Atlantic before it
did the bay. "We had the war, hardships and a lot of trouble in the
world at that time. Foreign news didn’t arrive. It was more local."
In school the following morning, John Coneely remembers general excitement
about the noise, but views had been obscured by fog and there was little
discussion of Alcock and Brown’s accomplishment. "In Clifden
people didn’t really think like that at all. They didn’t really
understand it. The pilots were taken away to Galway very quickly."
Locals eventually made it through to the plane, of course. But even then,
the attitude was more one of resourcefulness than reverence. Spars, ribs
and pieces of metal were plundered and used to plug gaps and keep cattle.
Some were tracked down, the plane was repaired and it can still be seen
at the Science Museum in South Kensington. But many remain scattered throughout
Western Connemara.
Indeed, it is hard to conceive that such a monumental achievement was
once considered "foreign news", that it remains overshadowed
in local folklore by songs and tales of much less globally significant
events. But that, one supposes, is how folklore is made. At the time,
the local Marconi station, a sophisticated complex with its own rail link
and over 100 employees, blew Alcock and Brown away. And the memories of
people like John Coneely return to that – to ‘Coney Mountain’
and the Civil War.
"When I’m on the plane to the US I often think of what those
guys did," Harry O’Sullivan says, happily admitting that it
was only in retrospect that the civilian significance of the flight emerged.
"They were good guys."
As for Clifden’s chances of retaining the replica, the jury is out.
"It’s a wonderful part of the world," Peter McMillan says,
but a recent engine refit was costly and the Vimy needs roughly $300,000
of sponsorship to guarantee takeoff. Necessarily, whoever forks up will
have their own opinions on what makes a good and fitting home.
"This may be a slightly naïve view, but I suspect adventurers
of that period, although they obviously had sponsors and had to develop
media interest, were genuinely inspired by the excitement of being first.
Today, expeditions are enormously expensive. There must be more media
hype, more collateral sold; sponsors have to feel like they’re getting
value for their investment. It may have been a little easier then, in
the sense that the achievement tended to stand on its own."
Visiting Derrygimlagh felt like "walking on hallowed ground",
Mark Rebholtz says. "As far as I’m concerned, the Alcock and
Brown flight is one of the most important there has ever been. I believe
the Chamber of Commerce also feels and recognises that."
To have the plane here, ensconced in a state-of-the-art museum, would
bring visitors, tourists and aviation enthusiasts, he says. "It would
also bring proper closure".
At Clifden, Prendergast, Mannion and Burke are waiting for news on a development
grant for their museum too, and must be feeling much the same way. But
as summer approaches, pride is stirring and a sense of excited ownership
is in the air.
As Séamus Burke puts it: "We can’t afford not to have
this plane".
For updates on the Alcock and Brown replica flight, including flight schedules
and information for potential sponsors, see www.vimy.org.
© Pól Ó Conghaile, 2004
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