The head of the Air Corps made a dawn flight today to mark the 75th anniversary of the first east-west crossing of the Atlantic by air.
Brigadier General Ralph James took off at breakfast time in a repeat of the historic trip made in 1928 by the Bremen, low-wing German-built Junkers monoplane.
That plane flew from the Casement Aerodrome at Baldonnel, near Dublin, just nine years after the first air transit from the United States, by Britons John Alcock and Arthur Brown, whose aircraft landed on a bog at Clifden, in the Connemara of Co Galway, in June 1919.
One of the pilots on the historic later journey from Dublin was Irishman James Fitzmaurice, the son of a prison officer from Portlaoise, Co Laois.
A private ceremony to salute that feat went ahead at Baldonnel yesterday when a plaque was unveiled to mark the spot from which the original Bremen took off.
Today the 1928 flight was recreated in a 21st-century twin-propeller plane, piloted by Brigadier James.
The event was orchestrated by the Irish Air Corps, in partnership with the South Dublin County Council and the Bremen 75 committee, made up of a number of historical and local interest groups.