On Friday evening, May 16, the three NC flying boats roared in turn down Trepassey Harbor and flew off into the gathering darkness over the Atlantic. That night was without incident as the fliers passed over the destroyers on their ocean stations with reassuring regularity. Formation flying was difficult, since each airplane had its own flying characteristics and cruising speed: NC-4 was the fastest, NC-1 the slowest. After NC-3’s lighting circuits failed during the night, the three planes were forced to break out of formation to avoid the risk of collision.

More troubles came with the onset of fog at dawn. In NC-3, Towers spotted a ship on the foggy horizon that he took to be one of the station destroyers and altered his course accordingly. Instead it was the cruiser Marblehead returning from Europe, and the mistake took NC-3 far off course. With fuel running low, Towers determined by dead reckoning that they were somewhere close to the Azores. He decided to put down long enough to obtain a navigation fix. The seas were running high, however, and the rough landing collapsed the struts supporting the centerline engines. In this condition NC-3 could go no farther — except as a surface craft.

Aboard NC-1, Bellinger was having similar difficulty. He landed without incident, but once down could not take off again through the 12-foot-high waves. Meanwhile Read, in NC-4, had also ‘run out of ships’ and was virtually lost in a fog that at one point was so thick the crew could not see from one end of the plane to the other. Losing sight of the horizon, the pilot became totally disoriented. He almost put the big plane into a spin, but recovered in time. However, Ensign Herbert Rodd, the radio officer, was successful in picking up radio bearings and weather information from the destroyers hidden below by fog and clouds.

After more than 15 hours in the air, Read’s dead reckoning and Rodd’s radio reports indicated that NC-4 was very near the Azores. Suddenly, through a small break in the fog, they sighted Flores, one of the western islands of the Azores. With Flores as a checkpoint, Read swung NC-4 eastward toward the islands of Fayal and Sao Miguel, then settled for immediate safety on Fayal. NC-4 landed in Horta’s harbor a bit before noon. Within minutes of Read’s arrival, a great bank of fog had blotted out the port completely.

Upon boarding the cruiser Columbia, which was serving as the base ship for the NCs at Horta, Read and his men were quick to inquire about NC-3 and NC-1. They learned that NC-1, trapped and punished by the great waves, had been lucky to stay afloat. Fortunately, the Greek freighter Ionia rescued Bellinger and his crew, but NC-1 finally sank three days later.

The fate of NC-3 remained a mystery for 48 hours. Before leaving Trepassey, Towers, much to his dismay, had to tell Lieutenant L.C. Rhodes that he would need to stay behind in order to reduce weight for takeoff. Towers also jettisoned tools, a chair, extra drinking water and the emergency radio transmitter. Thus, NC-3 could receive radio calls but not send them. Pure seamanship had to take over. Towers figured that within two or three days he would drift close to Sao Miguel. On Monday afternoon, May 19, inhabitants of Ponta Delgada spotted the battered NC-3. When the destroyer Harding raced out to help, John Towers stood up and shouted, ‘Stand off! We’re going in under our own power.’ He and his crew had managed to sail their crippled plane 205 miles backward through violent seas, using the tail assembly as a sail.

With NC-4’s arrival in the Azores, it was the British who panicked. Although NC-4 was not involved in the race for prize money, British honor was at stake. Hawker and Mackenzie-Grieve took off from Newfoundland and headed for Ireland on May 18. Less than halfway across they had consumed half of their gasoline. At dawn, with their radiator steaming, they had to ditch in the stormy North Atlantic.

Raynham and Morgan tried to take off about an hour after Hawker and Mackenzie-Grieve, but their Martinsyde could not lift off from the soggy field. They crashed in the attempt, and Morgan suffered permanent injuries.

For nearly three days NC-4 rode her moorings at Horta, kept there by high seas, rain and fog. On the 20th the weather cleared enough to permit takeoff, and in less than two hours NC-4 reached Ponta Delgada. Towers, who had arrived by sailing the last 205 miles, was already there to greet him. Despite Towers’ heroic achievement, NC-4’s Commander Read was the popular hero. Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels gave orders for Towers to proceed onward by ship — he was forbidden to fly on NC-4 even as a passenger. It was a bitter pill for the division commander to swallow. Daniels, a former newsman, apparently thought it a better story that Read in his ‘Lame Duck’ had conquered the mighty Atlantic. NC-4 was scheduled to take off for Lisbon the next day, but weather and engine trouble delayed the departure for a week. While the crew waited, they learned that Hawker and Mackenzie-Grieve had been picked up by a Danish tramp steamer and had arrived safely in Scotland.

NC-4’s crew was up before dawn on Tuesday, May 27. Lieutenant James L. Breese and Chief Machinist’s Mate Eugene S. Rhoads diligently pampered the plane’s engines. Herbert Rodd bestowed equal care on his indispensable radio set. (Much of the credit for the success of the entire NC-4 mission could be attributed to Rodd’s expert use of his radio and Read’s confidence in using his results.) At Read’s command, Lieutenant Elmer Stone advanced the throttles and sent the big flying boat charging down the harbor, then lifted off toward Lisbon.

Another chain of destroyers extended between the Azores and Lisbon. As NC-4 overflew the vessels, each ship radioed her passage to the base ship Melville at Ponta Delgada and the cruiser Rochester in Lisbon, which in turn reported to the Navy Department in Washington. Finally, word came from the destroyer McDougal, the last ship in the picket line, that NC-4 was within minutes of completing her historic flight.

In NC-4, the crew peered eastward, where the horizon was fading in the twilight of May 27. Then from the center of that darkening line there flashed a spark of light — Cabo da Roca lighthouse. They had sighted the westernmost point in Europe. Minutes later, NC-4 roared over the rocky coastline and turned south toward the Tagus estuary and Lisbon. According to Read, that moment was ‘perhaps the biggest thrill of the whole trip.’ Each man on board realized that no matter what happened — even if they crashed on landing — the first transatlantic flight in history was an accomplished fact.

After two days in Lisbon, where all three NC crews were honored by the Portuguese government, the NC-4 crew was ready to continue to Plymouth. NC-4 departed Lisbon on the morning of May 29, but a few hours later, near the Monedego River, she was forced down by engine trouble. The repairs took quite a while, and Read refused to risk landing in darkness at Plymouth. So NC-4 flew to Ferrol, Spain, for the night. The next day NC-4 completed the final leg of her flight, landing in Plymouth Harbor early in the afternoon of May 31, escorted by three flying boats of the Royal Air Force. She received a tumultuous reception from an English crowd.

During the 24-day duration of the nearly 4,000-mile flight, news of the flying boats’ progress was featured on the front page of most American newspapers. But other remarkable flights quickly followed. Alcock and Brown made the first nonstop Atlantic flight from St. Johns and crashed into a bog in Clifden, Ireland, in June 1919. Fearing that Admiral Kerr would overtake them, they put down as soon as possible to ensure that they would win the Daily Mail’s cash prize. Eight years later, Charles Lindbergh completed his solo nonstop flight from Long Island to Paris. He was followed a month later by Clarence Chamberlin and then Richard E. Byrd.

By the time NC-4’s crewmen arrived back in New York, in the days prior to ticker-tape parades, the only public acclaim they received was a private dinner thrown by Glenn Curtiss. The 1919 flight had highlighted the difficulties of flying the Atlantic. It would be 20 years before the lessons learned through the NCs’ flights were translated into regularly scheduled airline flights to Europe. On May 21, 1939, the Pan American Airways flying boat Yankee Clipper took off from Long Island and flew to Lisbon via the Azores. Six days later the airliner arrived back at Port Washington, exactly 20 years to the day after NC-4 had arrived in Lisbon.

Today if you take off from Long Island’s Kennedy Airport on your way to Europe, you may fly over Jacob Riis Park, former site of the Rockaway Naval Air Station. Eighty-three years ago three brave crews left that spot. By now, millions have flown across the Atlantic, but the honor of being first belongs to Lt. Cmdr. Albert C. Read, his crew of five and the U.S. Navy’s NC-4.

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This article was written by Edward Magnani and originally published in the November 2002 issue of Aviation History.

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