Believe it or not --- Charles Lindbergh was not the first aviator to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
and the first plane wasn't the Spirit of St Louis.
It was a Navy seaplane named NC-4 piloted by a Coast Guard aviator named Elmer Stone!
The full story is next on Marking History.
Here is the historical marker to honor the men of the US Coast Guard who established Coast Guard Aviation back in 1925.
This marker is located in Essex County, Massachusetts.
The flying boat you see here on the marker is very similar to the first airplane to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
US Coast Guard aviation has a long history beginning in 1903.
Personnel from Kill Devil Hills Life-Saving Station helped carry materials to the launch site
for the first successful heavier-than-air aircraft flight by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, NC.
It was surfer-man John T. Daniels who took the famous picture of man's first powered flight on December 17, 1903.
Only sixteen years later, the Coast Guard's first pilot named Lieutenant Elmer Stone
completes the original trans- Atlantic crossing on board the US Navy's NC-4 seaplane.
It was May 27, 1919
eight years before Charles Lindbergh made his historic solo flight across the Atlantic .
When the United States entered the Great war in April 1917,
the U.S. Navy needed flying boats to patrol against German U-boats in the Atlantic.
The Glen Curtiss Airplane and Motor Company had supplied the British and Russians with flying boats throughout the war
and was among the premier designers and manufacturers of this type.
So it wasn't surprising that in 1917 the Navy and Curtiss decided to work together
to produce a new large aircraft to be known as the Navy-Curtiss or the “NC” flying boat.
The new planes affectionately known as Nancies had a wingspan of 126 feet and an overall length of 69 feet.
These seaplanes landed and took off from the water.
They had four Liberty engines that produced 1,200 hp.
One engine was centrally installed above the fuselage,
and two others were supported on each side, between the upper and lower wings.
A pusher engine was located in the back of the plane.
In 1919, officers in charge of the U.S. Navy decided to demonstrate
the capability of their seaplanes with a first transatlantic flight.
Because the planners knew that seaplanes had to stop several times along the way for repairs and refueling
theirs was not to be a continuous journey.
For comparison, Lindbergh made his solo transatlantic trip in less than a day and a half.
NC-4 would take almost three weeks to cross the Atlantic.
At every stop, from New York to Lisbon Portugal,
they had to wait for parts to be delivered or bad weather to clear before they could take off again.
Originally, four seaplanes designated NC-1, NC-2, NC-3 and NC-4, would fly together
as a group across the Atlantic.
However, due to storm damage and fire, NC-2 was cannibalized to fix both wings of NC-1
before the journey even began.
Unlike Charles Lindbergh, NC-4 pilot Elmer Stone had some help.
This huge Navy seaplane had a crew of six.
The commander/navigator and two pilots rode in the open cockpits.
A radio operator and two flight engineers resided in the back,
but were able to squeeze forward between the fuel tanks to visit the other crew.
The Commanding Officer and Navigator for NC-4 was US Navy Lieutenant Commander Albert Read.
He sat here in the nose of the plane
with only googles and flight suit to protect him from the elements in the open cockpit.
Two pilots sat here in tandem.
It was piloted by Third Lieutenant Elmer Stone.
He had the honor of being the very first trained aviator in the US Coast Guard.
The Navy requested him on this first trans-Atlantic flight
because of Stone's vast experience and abilities flight- testing seaplanes and his navigation skills.
Navy Lieutenant Junior Grade Walter Hinton, was his co-pilot on this mission.
E.H. Howard had been chosen to go as one of the flight engineers, but two weeks before the journey began
Howard lost a hand in misjudging his distance from a whirling propeller.
Consequently, he was replaced by Ensign Eugene Rhoads.
On Friday evening, May 16, 1919, eighteen aviators in three Navy seaplanes sped through the waters of
Trepassey harbor Newfoundland and lifted off into the gathering darkness over the Atlantic.
The evening take off was necessary so that they could reach the Azores
before sunrise the next day and enjoy daylight landing conditions.
They would not fly alone in the dark.
Twenty-one US Navy destroyers were stationed at 50-mile intervals across the Atlantic Ocean.
The destroyers served as visual and radio navigation aids and communication links.
They were also there to provide weather intelligence, and if necessary, rescue service.
These "station ships" blazed their searchlights and fired bright star shells into the night sky
to help the aviators stay on their intended flight path.
Now you might get the impression that the flight was a very simple affair,
having the security of all those Navy destroyers strung out between Newfoundland and the Azores.
But remember, this was 1919, when aerial navigation across a great trackless sea was difficult,
when aircraft radio was primitive and definitely unreliable,
and when many flight instruments had yet to be invented.
It was not going to be easy to zero in on nine tiny islands scattered over several hundred miles of ocean.
If an eastbound pilot missed the Azores during the 1380 mile flight,
his next landfall was Africa, hundreds of miles away.
The night passed without incident.
The huge flying boats flew over the destroyers with reassuring regularity
during their midnight flight to the Azores Islands.
During the night, the planes broke formation to avoid the risk of collision.
Troubles began at dawn with the onset of dense fog.
Because of the weather, NC-3 misidentified a different ship on the foggy horizon
as one of the station destroyers. Which took the plane off course.
After running low on fuel, Commander Towers decided to land his plane and crew
to get a navigational fix.
The seas were running high and the landing was so rough that the impact collapsed the struts supporting the engines.
At this point NC-3 could only float.
NC-1 had similar navigation problems with the fog but landed on the rough seas without incident.
Once down, however the plane could not take off again
because they were battling 12 foot high waves that were breaking over the hull.
Luckily the twelve crew members from NC-1 and NC-3 survived.
NC-3 had to be sailed and taxied backwards some 250 miles to the Azores
--- a formidable adventure on its own.
The NC-1 was lost at sea but her crew rescued by a Greek freighter.
NC-4 had also lost sight of those Navy ships and was virtually disoriented in the fog.
At one point the fog was so thick that the crew could not see from one end of the plane to the other.
Soon, Coast Guard pilot Elmer Stone became totally disoriented,
causing him to almost put the cumbersome plane into a dreaded spiral dive.
Only Stone's vast experience and training got the plane righted in time.
After more than 15 hours in the air, Commander Read's dead reckoning navigation and Ensign Rodd's radio reports
gave assurance that NC-4 was very near the Azores.
A sharp lookout was kept by all hands.
Suddenly, island greenery appeared through a small break in the fog.
It was Flores, one of the western islands in the Azores chain.
Using Flores as a checkpoint, NC-4 landed at Horta harbor a bit before noon on May 17, 1919.
Within minutes a great bank of fog blotted out the port completely!
After almost three days of rain, fog and high seas, NC-4 took off for their next stop,
Ponta Delgada, 172 miles away, which they reached in less than two hours.
The crew was ready to take off for Lisbon Portugal the next day,
but weather and engine troubles delayed departure for a week.
Finally on Tuesday morning May 27, 1919 NC-4 took off on the final leg of its transatlantic trip
from Ponta Delgada, the Azores to Lisbon Portugal, a distance of 920 miles.
Another chain of destroyers extended between the Azores and Lisbon.
As NC-4 overflew them, each ship radioed her passage to the base ship in Lisbon,
who in turn reported to the Navy Department in Washington, D.C.
On the final leg of their journey it was getting dark.
All eyes in NC-4 peered eastward where the horizon was fading into the deep purple of twilight.
Then at 7:30, at the center of that darkening line there flashed a diamond spark of light.
it was the Cabo da Roca lighthouse, the westernmost point in Europe had been sighted!
The big aircraft passed over the Portugal coastline and turned southward toward Lisbon.
Twenty minutes later, on May 27, 1919, the NC-4s keel sliced into the waters of the Tagus River.
Lisbon gave the crew a great ovation which lasted almost two days.
A transatlantic flight, the first one in the history of the world, was an accomplished fact!
After May 1919, the world knew that aviators would fly the Atlantic again.
But only one plane was the first to make that transatlantic flight.
That honor belongs the US Navy, to Lieutenant Commander Albert Read, 3rd Lieutenant Elmer Stone and the rest of the NC-4 crew.
Today this historical flying boat resides in the Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.
Charles Lindbergh, speaking of his 1927 solo transatlantic flight to Paris said,
If history can be taught with stories
they can never be forgotten.
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