The flight had the support of the Portuguese government, who made available an aircraft for this crossing, as well as the services of a warship, the NRP República, whose task was to shadow the aircraft, and provide refuelling services (the abbreviation NRP stands for Navio da República Portuguesa and denotes a ship belonging to the Portuguese Navy).
There was nevertheless widespread enthusiasm for this enterprise. The two airmen were Sacadura Cabral (the pilot) and Gago Coutinho (the navigator). There was a further difference in that the Portuguese flight joined the two capitals (Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro) and not the two continents, a journey which would be much shorter. The aircraft they used was a seaplane, whereas the Vickers Vimy was a land-based aircraft. The distance between Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro, at 8,383km, is nearly three times greater than the distance covered by Alcock and Brown, and it was, therefore, not possible to make the journey in one continuous flight, since no contemporary aircraft could carry enough fuel for such a trip. The first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic is only superficially comparable with the flight of Alcock and Brown. The year 1922 marked the centenary of the Independence of Brazil, and two Portuguese airmen decided to emulate the flight across the North Atlantic by making a similar crossing of the South Atlantic. Read was decorated by both the US and Portuguese governments for this record-breaking flight.Īn airship made the double crossing of the North Atlantic a month afterwards and, later in 1919, a Vickers Vimy aircraft similar to that of Alcock and Brown made the first England-Australia flight. The interest in making the first flight to reach far-flung destinations persisted for some years. On this journey, Read had called at Lisbon on May 27, to the wild enthusiasm of the Lisboetas, and he finished his journey at Plymouth four days later. The first leg of his trip (New York-Faial) measured over 3,800km, and the distance from the Azores to Plymouth via Lisbon was another 3,000km. Two weeks beforehand, a US Navy Curtiss flying boat piloted by Lieutenant Commander Albert Cushing Read had flown from New York to Plymouth in Devon over six days via Faial in the Azores, and with 23 stops on the way. They achieved the crossing in 16 hours of flying time and covered 1,890 miles (3,040km). They were responding to a challenge set by the Daily Mail in April 1913, offering a prize of £10,000 to “the aviator who shall first cross the Atlantic in an aeroplane in flight from any point in the USA, Canada or Newfoundland to any point in Great Britain or Ireland in 72 continuous hours”.
The first non-stop flight over the Atlantic Ocean was made by John Alcock and Arthur Brown in June 1919. They flew a Vickers Vimy aircraft from St John’s in Newfoundland to Clifden in County Galway, on the west coast of Ireland. The years following the World War had seen efforts by many airmen to complete the first flights over the oceans of the world. This year marks the centenary of the crossing of the South Atlantic by two Portuguese airmen.
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