The Paris Air Show is in full swing at present, a prominent feature of the landscape on the way from the city out to Aeroport Charles de Gaulle.
It was en route to the first such event after the first World War, the Paris Aeronautical Exhibition of December 1919, that Capt John Alcock met his fate. The simple accident happened only six months after Alcock, with his navigator Arthur Whitten Brown, had completed one of the most daring exploits in aviation history.
Alcock and Brown's crossing of the North Atlantic was not the first. Indeed, flying the Atlantic was very much in fashion in 1919. Earlier that year Lieut Cdr Albert Read had hopped across the great divide, flying from Trepassey Harbour in Newfoundland to the Azores, and then on to Lisbon.
Alcock and Brown were followed at a more leisurely pace on July 13th by the British airship R-34 which completed the first two-way crossing by air. But Alcock and his partner were the first to make the flight directly.
Alcock was born in Manchester in 1892, and trained to be an engineer. Like many youngsters of his generation he was captivated by the aeroplane, and gained a reputation as a skilful pilot. In 1919 a prize of £10,000 was offered by the Daily Mail for the first direct flight by a heavier-than-air machine across the North Atlantic. The Vickers aircraft company provided Alcock with a modified twin-engine bi-plane for his attempt to win the prize.
The pair took off from Newfoundland just after 4 p.m. on this day 80 years ago, June 14th. 1919. The wind direction for the crossing was ideal; an elongated anticyclone stretched east-west across the Atlantic just south of the proposed track, and was to provide strong following winds for most of the 1900 mile journey.
There were however, active fronts embedded in this westerly flow of air, and the aircraft experienced alarming turbulence, dense fog, heavy rain, and even snow. So poor had conditions been over the ocean that the original plan of flying on to London was abandoned, and the aircraft came down instead on Derrygimla Bog near Clifden, Co Galway. But Clifden was far enough to win the prize.
The landing at 8.40 a.m. on June 15th was recognised throughout the world as heralding the era of long-distance air travel. Arthur Brown lived on until 1948, and saw this great potential realised.
Alcock, however, died only a few months later when his aircraft became enveloped in thick fog over Normandy; he descended to get his bearings, and the aircraft struck a tree not far from the city of Rouen.