First Flight Across the English Channel

[Bill Greenwood]

I am rereading the book on the Wright Brothers and there are lot of others trying to fly and even claimed to fly, but one who actually did was the Frenchman Louis Bleriot, in an low wing monoplane more modern looking than other early planes, I used to have a children's book that stated it well.

He took off near Calais, in 1909, the closest point to England early one morning and made it the 23 miles or so across the channel where he as much of crashed as landed.

The kids book describes it succinctly.., "Monsieur Bleriot makes a very bad landing, as usual, but no matter for he is in England and he is the first."

[Hal Bryan]

I always thought the headline on the UK's Daily Express newspaper after Bleriot's flight was especially powerful: "Britain is No Longer an Island."

[Floatsflyer]

I always thought the headline on the UK's Daily Express newspaper after Bleriot's flight was especially powerful: "Britain is No Longer an Island."

The world got much smaller beginning in 1909.

For a wonderful and funny sort of representation of the Bleriot historic feat, watch "Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines, one of the all-time great aviation movies. 🎼 They go uppity up up, they go downtity down down. Up, down, flying around, lopping the loop and defying the ground.... 🎼

[Cary]

My Gramma's best friend, whom we always called Aunt Ottilee (though not a relation), was one of the first women, if not the first, to fly across the English Channel. She was a passenger, not the pilot, and I haven't any idea when that happened, although a good guess would be some time before WWI, which would have made her about 25 years old or so. I've seen a picture of her, in her long dress (the style of the day), getting ready to board the airplane, a biplane that looked something like a Jenny. Gramma always said Aunt Ottilee was a "wild woman" in her youth. :)

Cary

[robert l]

For aviation nuts like us, any movie or documentary that has flying in it, (I especially like the older stuff) is just fodder for the imagination !
Bob

[Frank Giger]

"Monsieur Bleriot makes a very bad landing, as usual, but no matter for he is in England and he is the first."

This is my problem.

I keep doing my landings in well-worn airports, so they're neither fawned over or accepted with little notice.

[Cary]

"Monsieur Bleriot makes a very bad landing, as usual, but no matter for he is in England and he is the first."

This is my problem.

I keep doing my landings in well-worn airports, so they're neither fawned over or accepted with little notice.

You do understand, don't you, that there are at least half a dozen ways to assure a picture-perfect landing every time? The problem is, no one knows what they are. :rollseyes:

Cary

[Hal Bryan]

You do understand, don't you, that there are at least half a dozen ways to assure a picture-perfect landing every time? The problem is, no one knows what they are. :rollseyes:

Cary

I know one of them: make sure nobody is there to take a picture!

[FS-MP]

For aviation nuts like us, any movie or documentary that has flying in it, (I especially like the older stuff) is just fodder for the imagination !
Bob

Movies, old aircraft, Crossing the English Channel = "Those magnificent men in their flying machines"

A movie that almost every aviation nut will like.

A good introduction to the move is on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEGSDijpq4o

[CHICAGORANDY]

They go up-diddy-up-up... they go down-diddy-down-down.

great flick - lol

[rwanttaja]

Movies, old aircraft, Crossing the English Channel = "Those magnificent men in their flying machines"
To me, one of the big things that makes "Those Magnificent Men" so good is the fact that, for the most part, those are actual, *flying* airplanes. Not models on strings, not CGI. The actions of the aircraft in the movie are based on what performance some very, VERY good pilots could get out of them...not based on what some random computer geek thinks they need to do to further the plot.

Ron Wanttaja