By the summer of 1926, one problem remained unsolved in aviation: nobody had flown nonstop from New York to Paris. A single page of The Sunday Star that August laid out one very fun idea, and another paper laid out a very practical, yet dangerous idea. here’s both played out.
The Sunday Star, Aug 22, 1926
Floating Airports
The first: a proposal from engineer Howard R. Armstrong for a chain of floating landing platforms, "seadromes," anchored across the Atlantic Ocean at 400-mile intervals. Each one nearly 12 acres, rising 80 to 100 feet above the waves on stilts, steady enough to survive a storm, complete with a hotel and restaurant for passengers waiting to refuel. Armstrong had already tested a six-foot model in his own swimming pool, sailing it against a five-foot replica of the ocean liner Majestic to prove it could hold steady through waves scaled up to 75 feet. He predicted $75 tickets within a few years, and a New York-to-Paris trip complete in 24 hours.
The Sunday Star, Aug 22, 1926
(Note: the original clipping's text reads "Howard R. Armstrong." Every outside source confirms this engineer's actual name was Edward R. Armstrong, chief of experimental research at DuPont, matching the role described. Almost certainly a misprint or scanning error in the original, not a separate person.)
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The second plan, that same day in another paper: just fly the distance directly. But that was dangerous. Captain Rene Fonck, a decorated French war pilot, was preparing a nonstop attempt in a three-engine Sikorsky biplane, and the paper quoted him calling it "the biggest stunt yet left for the world to do."
Douglas Daily Dispatch, Aug 22, 1926
WIkimedia Commons: Rene Fonck
What Happened Next
Neither plan worked the way either man believed it would.
The seadromes were never built. Armstrong spent years afterward trying to secure funding, and came close more than once, but the project never survived past small models and government hearings.
Fonck's flight ended one month later. On September 21, 1926, his plane crashed on takeoff at Roosevelt Field, Long Island. An extra landing wheel buckled during the run, the aircraft collapsed, and it burst into flames. Two crew members, radio operator Charles Clavier and mechanic Jacob Islamoff, were trapped in the closed cabin and died. Fonck and his co-pilot escaped.
Rocky Mount Telegram, Sept 21, 1926
Photographs of the wreckage ran days later, the plane reduced to a burned steel frame, alongside portraits of the two men who died.
Palm Beach Post, Sept 25, 1926
Nine months after that August page ran, a single pilot in a single-engine plane solved the problem neither approach had. Charles Lindbergh flew alone, nonstop, from New York to Paris in May 1927. Neither the seadromes nor Fonck's crew are why the flight was possible when it finally happened. The lessons from the wreck, about weight, fuel, and what a plane could safely carry, are part of what made his flight survivable.
See you tomorrow. – Chris
Extra Bits
Rene Fonck was, by the time of this crash, already one of the most decorated pilots to come out of the First World War, widely credited as the top-scoring Allied fighter ace of that conflict. He flew with France's famous "Stork" squadron, hence the photo.
The two crash-coverage papers disagree slightly on the flight's planned distance, 3,800 miles in the original August piece, 3,560 in the September crash report, and on whether Fonck and Curtis were "uninjured" or suffered "minor injuries." Small variances, typical of wire-copy reporting, left uncorrected here rather than silently resolved.
For members who want to see where all this led: archival footage of Lindbergh's actual 1927 takeoff is attached separately. Worth noting this clip is from the following year, outside today's 1926 sourcing, included as context rather than a primary document.
Sources
The Sunday Star, August 22, 1926
South Bend News-Times, August 22, 1926
Rocky Mount Telegram, September 21, 1926
Palm Beach Post, September 25, 1926