The NC-1 sinks beside USS Harding (DD-91) at the end of its transatlantic attempt, May 1919.
The Curtiss NC was a flying boat built by Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company and used by the United States Navy from 1918 through the early 1920s. Ten of these aircraft were built, the most famous of which is the NC-4, the first airplane to make a transatlantic flight.
The NC-1 sinks beside USS Harding (DD-91) at the end of its transatlantic attempt, May 1919.
The Curtiss NC was a flying boat built by Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company and used by the United States Navy from 1918 through the early 1920s. Ten of these aircraft were built, the most famous of which is the NC-4, the first airplane to make a transatlantic flight.
The U.S. Navy’s transatlantic flight expedition began on 8 May 1919.… On 16 May, the three Curtiss NCs departed on the longest leg of their journey, from Newfoundland to the Azores Islands in the mid-Atlantic. Twenty-two more Navy ships, mostly destroyers, were stationed at about 50-mile (80 km) spacings along this route. These “station ships” were brightly illuminated during the nighttime. Their sailors blazed their searchlights into the sky, and they also fired bright star shells into the sky to help the aviators to stay on their planned flight path… US Navy warships “strung out like a string of pearls” along the NC’s flightpath … The NC-4 had no more serious problems, and it landed in Lisbon harbor after a flight of nine hours, 43 minutes. Thus, the NC-4 become the first aircraft of any kind to fly across the Atlantic Ocean – or any of the other oceans. By flying from Massachusetts and Halifax to Lisbon, the NC-4 also flew from mainland-to-mainland of North America and Europe…The part of this flight just from Newfoundland to Lisbon had taken a total time 10 days and 22 hours, but with the actual flight time totaling just 26 hours and 46 minutes… The “NC-4” later flew on to England, arriving in Plymouth on 31 May to great fanfare,[7] having taken 23 days for the flight from Newfoundland to Great Britain
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