Successful Rival Flight leads to Speculation
Exactly a month after the Endeavour took off Emilie Hinchliffe felt a brief period of renewed hope when news of the success of the Bremen was wired around the world. The German-Irish flight had crash landed in Labrador leading to speculation that Hinchliffe and Mackay may have suffered the same fate and there may finally be some concrete news.
The crew of the Bremen first made an attempt on the east to west crossing in August 1927 when they battled stormy weather for five hours before being forced back to safety. The plane was a Junkers W.331, a remarkably advanced machine compared to others used for Atlantic attempts. All metal in construction its 'skin' was made of corrugated Duralumin. A low-wing plane, it was powered by a single six-cylinder Junkers engine with a top speed of 120 mph. In April 1928 the original crew of Cpatain Koehl and Baron Von Hunefeld was joined by Irish aviator Commandant Fitzmaurice when the first co-pilot quit following an argument. Von Hunefeld had to act as a translater between the two pilots as each didn't speak a word of the other's language. They took off from Baldonnel Field though it had more than the usual challenges. Initially the wheels sunk into the turf but when they finally got going a sheep wandered across the grass runway and Fiztmaurice barely missed it causing the plane to bump up and down. Koehl thought this was the end and expected the plane to burst into flames due to being full of fuel.
Even in the air the plane struggled to gain height and the undercarriage dragged through the tops of a small copse of trees and then one of the wings hit a hedge during a low turn. They eventually left the Irish coast on April 12th at 7.20am but then nothing was heard and the waiting world expected to file the flight under the headline valiant losses. Despite a number of problems including a snapped fuel pipe, the lights failing on the instruments, the loss of their compass and headwinds halving their airspeed, the crew spotted what appeared to be a ship frozen in the barren, icy landscape below. The end of the flight was described by Edward Jablonksi in his book Atlantic Fever:
"They had no idea of their whereabouts but it was a definite port in a storm - and they had to alight somewhere soon. Circling the snow incrusted rubble, Koehl spotted a small, reasonably smooth area, obviously a frozen-over pond. this would have to serve, so he set the plane down onto it as gently as possible. The wheels touched the surface, the plane settled down and suddenly there was a lurching crunch as the landing gear ripped away when it struck an outcropping of ice. The Bremen skidded, tipped onto the nose, damaging the propellor, and then ground to a stop in a flurry of snow. None of the men aboard the Junkers was injured - wherever they were - they were safe after thirty-six and one half hours of gruelling, blind and confusing flying."
They were on Greenly Island and a thousand miles off course and their achievement had been more by luck than skill and for the families of Hinchliffe and Mackay it was a reminder of the narrowest of margins between success and tragedy. For British aviators it was also a bitter blow. In October 1927 Elsie had written to friends of her desire to finance an Atlantic flight as she "wanted to do something that is going to benefit Britain and British Aviation." She described how she wanted to land in Hyde Park in London at the end of a return flight so that she could "arouse a greater national interest in aviation."
A sad but interesting aside to the Bremen flight is the death of aviator Floyd Bennett who had been part of Byrd's famous flight to the North Pole. He was flying to rescue the Bremen crew with another pilot when he fell ill and died during the mission due to a fever arising from having developed pneumonia following a previous crash.
The crew of the Bremen first made an attempt on the east to west crossing in August 1927 when they battled stormy weather for five hours before being forced back to safety. The plane was a Junkers W.331, a remarkably advanced machine compared to others used for Atlantic attempts. All metal in construction its 'skin' was made of corrugated Duralumin. A low-wing plane, it was powered by a single six-cylinder Junkers engine with a top speed of 120 mph. In April 1928 the original crew of Cpatain Koehl and Baron Von Hunefeld was joined by Irish aviator Commandant Fitzmaurice when the first co-pilot quit following an argument. Von Hunefeld had to act as a translater between the two pilots as each didn't speak a word of the other's language. They took off from Baldonnel Field though it had more than the usual challenges. Initially the wheels sunk into the turf but when they finally got going a sheep wandered across the grass runway and Fiztmaurice barely missed it causing the plane to bump up and down. Koehl thought this was the end and expected the plane to burst into flames due to being full of fuel.
Even in the air the plane struggled to gain height and the undercarriage dragged through the tops of a small copse of trees and then one of the wings hit a hedge during a low turn. They eventually left the Irish coast on April 12th at 7.20am but then nothing was heard and the waiting world expected to file the flight under the headline valiant losses. Despite a number of problems including a snapped fuel pipe, the lights failing on the instruments, the loss of their compass and headwinds halving their airspeed, the crew spotted what appeared to be a ship frozen in the barren, icy landscape below. The end of the flight was described by Edward Jablonksi in his book Atlantic Fever:
"They had no idea of their whereabouts but it was a definite port in a storm - and they had to alight somewhere soon. Circling the snow incrusted rubble, Koehl spotted a small, reasonably smooth area, obviously a frozen-over pond. this would have to serve, so he set the plane down onto it as gently as possible. The wheels touched the surface, the plane settled down and suddenly there was a lurching crunch as the landing gear ripped away when it struck an outcropping of ice. The Bremen skidded, tipped onto the nose, damaging the propellor, and then ground to a stop in a flurry of snow. None of the men aboard the Junkers was injured - wherever they were - they were safe after thirty-six and one half hours of gruelling, blind and confusing flying."
They were on Greenly Island and a thousand miles off course and their achievement had been more by luck than skill and for the families of Hinchliffe and Mackay it was a reminder of the narrowest of margins between success and tragedy. For British aviators it was also a bitter blow. In October 1927 Elsie had written to friends of her desire to finance an Atlantic flight as she "wanted to do something that is going to benefit Britain and British Aviation." She described how she wanted to land in Hyde Park in London at the end of a return flight so that she could "arouse a greater national interest in aviation."
A sad but interesting aside to the Bremen flight is the death of aviator Floyd Bennett who had been part of Byrd's famous flight to the North Pole. He was flying to rescue the Bremen crew with another pilot when he fell ill and died during the mission due to a fever arising from having developed pneumonia following a previous crash.
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