Dawn flight marks anniversary of Atlantic crossing

The head of the Irish 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, 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 the Baldonnel military airbase 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.

The original flight has come to be regarded as one of the most important in aviation history. It was achieved against prevailing westerly winds, and lasted a marathon 36 hours. The aircraft landed on April 13, 1928, on a frozen reservoir on Greenly Island, between Newfoundland and Quebec.

Later, two million people turned out in New York to greet James Fitzmaurice and his fellow pilots Captain Hermann Koehl, a Bavarian, and Baron von Huenefeld, a Prussian.

They were all awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross by the United States President Calvin Coolidge, the first foreigners to receive the honour.

Later the fliers got a tumultuous reception in O’Connell Street – and were subsequently received by the ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II in exile in Holland.

Then, the Irish take-off was witnessed by the president of Ireland’s Executive Council, W T Cosgrave, Defence Minister Desmond FitzGerald – whose son, Dr Garret FitzGerald, was later to become Taoiseach – and the German Consul-General as well as other dignitaries.

The airbase was yesterday the focal point of an Air Corps military ceremony, followed by a blessing and re-naming of the aircraft that will recreate the flight, as the “Fitz,” the name by which the Irish co-pilot was known.

The repeat flight will be followed by a campaign to return the original plane to Baldonnel, to become the centrepiece in an interpretative centre in one of the original hangars.

James Fitzmaurice joined the flight after a distinguished career in the First World War, when he was twice wounded.

He later joined the Royal Flying Corps and then became a pioneer member of the Royal Air Force.

Afterwards he left the British forces to become part of the Irish Army Air Corps in the newly-independent Ireland.

He was involved in a previous east-west Atlantic crossing a year before his 1928 success. In the years before the crossing was finally achieved, six aircraft and 16 lives had been lost.