Wrong Kind Of Heroes

Heroism, History

Charles Lindbergh was the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air non-stop, in 1927.

Wrong: the first nonstop crossing of the Atlantic by air was by John Alcock and Arthur Brown, some eight years earlier.

Yet while we all remember Lindbergh, Alcock and Brown aren’t acknowledged often, not even by their own country on the centenary of their achievement:

Two WWI heroes made the first transatlantic flight fuelled only by sandwiches, a flask of coffee and raw courage to win £10,000 Daily Mail prize. So why 100 years on is Britain doing nothing to remember these magnificent men?

Oh, please.  I can think of several reasons.

  • White men
  • Worse yet, heterosexual  White men
  • War veterans mongers
  • Didn’t even try  to recruit female- or POC crew members
  • Leaving from a country stolen from the native peoples by colonialist oppressors
  • Using an aircraft once used as a weapon of war to bomb helpless civilians
  • Burning countless gallons of fuel, i.e. a leaving a massive carbon footprint
  • Showing up less brave, less able people by a pointless act of so-called “heroism”
  • Their sandwiches contained meat, and their coffee wasn’t “Fair Trade”.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.  I’m just surprised that their existing monuments haven’t been destroyed by now.

11 comments

  1. I think Lindbergh was attributed to the first “solo” crossing.
    But I catch your drift and don’t disagree.
    All “firsts” today must be of the female (fake or real) or negroid factions.

    Ever notice every time anything is associated with negroes everything about it instantly achieves trashed out ghetto status? Wanna find the “bad” part of Anytown, USA? Just look for MLK Blvd.

    1. And stay the hell away from the area around the intersection of Martin Luther King Blvd and Malcolm X Blvd.

    2. >Wanna find the “bad” part of Anytown, USA? Just look for MLK Blvd.

      Here’s another one to avoid: 0bama Boulevard. They’re out there. I saw my first one on a recent trip down to LA…headed south of the 10 on La Brea maybe a mile, and there it was. I don’t recall it being thus named on previous trips.

  3. I recommend to anyone who finds this feat to be the least bit interesting to read the Wikipedia article, at a minimum. The airplane these two flew was a biplane with an open cockpit! They lost electricity (air-powered generator) early in the flight, so no heat and no intercom. Heated flight suits also stopped working. Navigation by observation, no gyroscopic instruments! They flew as high as 12,000 feet and as low as sea level, when they almost lost it. They arrived in Ireland by crash-landing after about 16 hours of flight.

    These guys had some big brass ones for sure. Their names should be known as well as Lindbergh’s….and the Wright brothers for that matter

  4. Here is my idea of great flying:
    Beryl Markham.
    1936.
    Europe to north America, the wrong way around, against the trades.

    For a rollicking good time, read her autobiography WEST INTO THE NIGHT.

    Africa bush pilot.
    Delivered aircraft from Europe to Africa and Australia, time aloft measured in days… over trackless wasteland and oceans.
    Hollywood screen writer.
    Kenya horse racer.
    Safari leader.
    Spoke several languages.
    Crack shot. Semi-portrayed in OUT OF AFRICA with Redford and Streep, she carried a side-by-side to discourage coordinated attacks by lion mobs and uppity locals.
    She took as lovers anybody catching her eye, among them Brit royalty and Ernest Hemingway. EH called her a ‘headstrong bitch’.
    And she was African. Somebody ought to start a collection for a monument.

    This was a seriously tough broad.

  5. I’ve noticed a general loss of history over the last twenty years. The 125th of the American Civil War was a Pretty Big Deal…the sesquicentennial of the conflict was much lower-key.

  6. Alcock and Brown flew from Newfoundland to Galway. …. From someplace where nobody lives to somewhere not many want to go and then crashed. Resulting in a story in the Daily Mail – Circulation outside southern England — not much .

    Lindbergh flew from New York To Paris and everyone saw the results in the Movietonews Newsreel footage in their local movie house — Circulation — almost everywhere at the time. .

    If there ain’t pictures…. it didn’t happen.

  7. Lou Paganini was a famous geographer with whom I worked at the University of Florida in the mid-80s. Lou took me out for a doughnut my first day as a very junior faculty member at UF. He was an ultra-decent guy and always saw the best in others.

    While we enjoyed our doughnuts Lou told a story of when he was a kid on the streets of New York City when the news broke about Lindberg’s flight in 1927. All his neighbors were sitting around on the sidewalk (1920s social media) and were talking about how great Lindberg’s accomplishment was. Except for one old guy – Max Flieschman.
    Lou asked him “Mr. Flieschman, aren’t you impressed with Lindberg flying solo across the Atlantic?”
    Mr. Flieschman replied “Kid, one man flying solo across the Atlantic doesn’t impress me much. You tell me when a committee flies across, then I’ll be impressed.”

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