Famous First Flights That Changed History

the long version

Here are Bleriot, Byrd, Doolittle, Alcock, and Brown and the others—plus the 1965 round-the-world flight over both poles! Within a few miles of the famed chalk cliffs of Dover, horror-filled spectators gasped as a little plane they had been watching spun crazily, hopelessly out of control, toward the grassy meadow sixty-five feet below. Seconds later, the plane righted itself as it crashed to the soft turf. A jubilant Frenchman named Louis Bleriot looked up from the controls, eyes aglow. He had good reason to be exhilarated—he had just completed man’s first long-distance flight over water. Louis Bleriot’s twenty-two-mile flight startled the world in 1909. This adventure, along with the daring exploits of many other pioneers of the air, is vividly described in Famous First Flights That Changed History. Both Thomas and Thomas Jr.—who had active roles in three of the sixteen history-making flights—recount all the harrowing details of the aeronautical feats of daring that have thrilled the world. Readers will find themselves involved in the romance and hazards of long-distance flying: with Lindbergh as he plays a breathtaking “game of solitaire” with the forces of nature; with the Magellans of the Air on their round-the-world air race; and with Ross Smith and his three crewmen on their trouble-plagued flight from London to Australia. Also related are some of the more spectacular failures, some of which surpass the successes in terms of sheer adventure. For the armchair pilot, there is no better history of the early milestones of flight, and the men and women who flew them.