Sir John Alcock (5th November 1892 to 18th
December 1919)
I walked
passed this imposing grave many times before I realised it was the one I was seeking.
It was on a roundabout in the old part of the vast Southern Cemetery on the
outskirts of Manchester. You don’t really except graves to be buried on a
roundabout so I passed by it about three times with the usual expression of
idiocy on my face. An aviator is buried here but I think he would have preferred
to have been cremated and had his ashes released from a plane at high altitude
as this is where he spent a lot of his life.
He was a captain in the RAF but mainly known for being the first man
to fly (with another aviator John Brown) on the first ever non-stop flight from
England to America. He’s called John Alcock but he
wasn’t really all cock but more balls. He went up in the air scores of times as
a fighter pilot. He was a captain and Knight by the age he died at just 29.
He was born on Bonfire Night in 1892 just a short drive away in
Stretford. He became interested in flying aged 17. For most it was just a dream
but he got a job at the Empress Motor Works in Manchester. However he left this
coveted position when he met a French pilot Maurice Ducrocq.
He went to Surrey to work for Maurice probably because there was a realistic
chance of flying aircraft than working on them. This move worked and he got his
pilot’s licence at 24 (at 24 I was pressing buttons on a computer and didn’t
even have a car.) He joined the Sunbeam Car Company as a racing pilot.
World War I stopped play and, naturally, he joined the RAF and was
posted to Greece. He conceived and built the Alcock
Scout, a fighter aircraft built out of the remnants of unused and abandoned
aircraft. Aged 29 he was up in a Sopwith Camel Alcock and had a cat fight with three enemy aircraft, forcing two to crash into the sea (for which
he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.) This real life Acton Man
returned to base then took up a bomber to bomb Constantinople. An engine failed
and he had to turn back. After flying 60 miles the other engine failed and he
ditched the plane in the sea then swam for an hour to reach the enemy-held
shore. He was taken prisoner by the Turkish forces (that was a bad day.) He
remained a prisoner of war until the end of the war.
After the war he became a test pilot for Vickers and took up the
challenge of flying across the Atlantic. Nobody had done it before though some
had tried. There was a high chance he and his flight partner Arthur Brown would
crash into the sea and freeze to death. They did it, taking off from
Newfoundland in North America and landing 16 hours and 12 minutes and 1980
miles later in Ireland. It was no picnic. The entered fog so thick they
couldn’t see anything and flew blindly for many miles. At one point it was so
cold the instruments failed so they flew upside down for a while to get them
working. Ice formed on the wings. At one point the right-hand engine started
rattling like a machine gun and starting spitting flames. Some red-hot globules
of metal started splattering the outside of the cockpit. Somehow the engine
kept working. The electric heaters in their flying suits stopped working (the
batteries had run out) and they almost froze to death. Thankfully they made it,
travelling at an average speed was 115mph. However they almost didn’t make it,
landing in field which turned out to be boggy. This flight carried the first
mail. The aviators brought a post bag containing 197s letters franked in
America. They won a £10,000 prize offered by the Daily Mail newspaper presented
to them by Winston Churchill (worth about £500,000 now.) Days later awarded
John with a knighthood by King George V at Windsor Castle.
Life was mercilessly short and John died aged 27. After cheating death
through the war and flying across the Atlantic he died while flying in fog. The
First World War was over and he flying to an aeronautical exhibition in Paris
just before Christmas 1919. He was used to banks of fog so who knows what
happened but the plane plunged into a field in Rouen in Normandy where he
suffered a fractured skull. He was rushed to hospital
but didn’t regain consciousness and died.
There's some footage of the funeral here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S42zDFZiMDs
Get
ready…………………………………………..setting off from America………………………………………landing in
Ireland
It could do with
some CIF on it…
