This article tells the story of the first successful flight around the world, accomplished by a team of U.S. Army Air Service pilots in the early 1920s. It highlights the risky nature of aviation at the time, the informal competition with other nations, and the groundbreaking impact of this achievement.
In this age of 15-hour nonstop flights, it’s hard to imagine a world where even flying a couple of hundred miles was risky business. But aviation in the early 1920s was often a deadly endeavor. After all, it had been less than two decades since the Wright brothers successfully demonstrated that powered airplane flight was possible. Yet somewhat akin to the current commercial race to space, the early 1920s was an era of aviation risk taking and sheer chance.
Some three years before Charles Lindbergh made his 1927 Atlantic crossing, a team of U.S. Army Air Service fliers made the first successful around the world flight. Not in one go of course, but in fits and starts that involved an informal competition with France, Britain, Portugal and Argentina. The Americans ultimately won out. In “Into Unknown Skies: An Unlikely Team, A Daring Race, and The First Flight Around the World,” author David K. Randall pulls together a compelling narrative of this wholly underappreciated aviation feat. Even those who are well-versed in the history of aviation will find that Randall’s account is revelatory. The flight was an aerospace game-changer which coincided with the explosion of the U.S. newspaper industry. Reporters hung onto every new bit of detail they could garner during the long westward journey around the globe. Arguably, the only thing comparable to the coverage of this flight in the latter half of the 20th century, at least, would be NASA’s Apollo lunar landings. The U.S. Army Air Service funded the flight with the full cooperation of the navy whose destroyers were prepositioned along the route to resupply the aircraft with food, oil and gas, parts, tools, even whole engines to keep the planes running. When funding for the flight was approved by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, the Army Air Service chose Donald Douglas’ DT2 biplane as their aircraft of choic
Aviation History First Flight Around The World Flight U.S. Army Air Service Charles Lindbergh
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