1919 - Transportation

Transportation

The German airline Deutsche Luftreederie begins service February 5, flying between Berlin, Leipzig, and Weimar. It is the world's first airline (see Lufthansa, 1926).

The Farman Co. begins service February 8, flying across the English Channel between Paris and London in a converted Goliath bomber.

Imperial Airways has its beginnings in Handley Page Transport, Ltd., organized by aircraft builder Frederick Handley Page to conduct flights from Britain to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland (see 1924; politics [Page], 1918; BOAC, 1939).

Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij voor Nederland an Kolonien, or Dutch Royal Air Transportation Co. (KLM) is founded October 7 by Dutch banking and business interests under the leadership of former pilot Albert Plesman, 30, who will head the company until his death in 1953 (see 1920).

New York restaurateur-hotel proprietor Raymond Orteig, now 49, speaks at the Aero Club of America March 22 and offers a $25,000 prize for the first nonstop solo flight, in either direction, between New York and Paris; his prize will go unclaimed for 8 years (see Lindbergh, 1927).

The NC4 flying boat designed by Iowa-born U.S. Navy aeronautical engineer Jerome C. (Clarke) Hunsaker, 33, for Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor makes the first transatlantic crossing by a heavier-than-air machine, leaving Newfoundland May 16 and arriving at Lisbon via the Azores May 27 with a five-man crew under U.S. Navy Lieut. Commander Albert C. Read (Curtiss has produced more than 4,000 JN4 "Jenny" biplanes for training U.S. Army and Navy pilots in the war) (see 1911).

The Sopwith biplane Atlantic takes off from Newfoundland May 18 powered by a 350-horsepower Rolls-Royce engine and carrying 400 gallons of fuel. Pilot Harry G. Hawker, 27, and navigator K. Mackenzie Grieve fly 1,000 miles towards Ireland in quest of the £10,000 prize offered by Lord Northcliffe in 1913 for the first nonstop transatlantic flight, but engine trouble forces them to ditch, a Danish tramp steamer picks them up, London gives them a hero's welcome, and the Daily Mail awards a £5,000 consolation prize (see 1921).

A Vickers Vimy bomber powered by two Rolls-Royce Eagle engines achieves the first nonstop transatlantic flight June 14. Former Royal Flying Corps pilot John W. (William) Alcock, 27, was captured by the Turks after bombing Constantinople during the war and has left military service in March. He makes the 1,960-mile flight from Newfoundland to Ireland in 16 hours and 12 minutes, accompanied by navigator Arthur Whitten-Brown, but the two land ingloriously in an Irish bog outside Clifden, County Galway, and although they receive the Daily Mail's £10,000 prize and are made knight commanders of the Order of the British Empire, Alcock is fatally injured December 18 while trying to deliver an amphibious aircraft to Paris in foul weather (see Lindbergh, 1927).

A daredevil pilot flies a biplane through the Arc de Triomphe at Paris August 8.

Australian aviators Keith Macpherson Smith, 28, and his brother Ross, 26, take off from England in a twin-engine Vickers Vimy biplane November 12 with two sergeants as mechanics and land at Darwin, Northern Territory, December 10, having made the first flight from Britain to Australia. Keith has flown with the Royal Air Force since 1917, Ross with the Australian Flying Corps in Palestine (he made the first flight from Cairo to Calcutta last year). Both will be knighted and receive a £10,000 prize for their exploit.

Lockheed Hydraulic Brake Co. is founded at Detroit by California aviation engineer Malcolm Loughhead, now 32 (see 1916). He and his brother Alan spent $30,000 to develop a single-seat civilian biplane whose $2,500 price was too steep for most buyers at a time when so many war-surplus planes were available. Alan Loughead has become a real-estate salesman, the brothers' Santa Barbara aircraft shop will close in 1921, and Malcolm's new company will have little success until 1923, when Walter Chrysler buys Lockheed brakes for the first Chrysler motorcars (see Lockheed Aircraft, 1926).

German aircraft designer Hugo Junkers opens an aircraft factory at Dessau. Now 60, Junkers will design the first all-metal airplane to fly successfully and will establish one of the first regular mail and passenger airlines in Europe.

Europe's Orient Express becomes the Simplon-Orient Express. Suspended in 1914, the fabled 36-year-old luxury train avoids passing over any German or Austrian soil by using the 12-mile Simplon Tunnel that opened through the Alps in 1906 between Brig, Switzerland, and Domodossola, Italy (see 1929).

Canada's Grand Trunk Railway goes bankrupt, having lost large sums of money on the Grand Trunk Pacific that it started in 1903 (see Canadian National Railway, 1923).

Germany hands over the 5-year-old Hamburg-Amerika Line passenger ships S.S. Vaterland and S.S. Bismarck to the British as war reparations; they will be renamed the S.S. Leviathan (see 1922) and S.S. Majestic, respectively. The S.S. Imperator makes her first voyage as a Cunard liner December 11, sailing from New York to Liverpool (see Berengaria, 1920)

Electric starters become optional on the Model T Ford (see Kettering, 1911); most Model Ts are still started by handcranking the engine.

Henry Ford builds a motorcar factory at his family's ancestral home town of Cork in Ireland.

Bentley Car Co. is founded by British engineer and former London taxi-fleet manager W. O. Bentley, now 31, who created the B.R. 2 "Merlin" rotary engine that powered the Sopwith Camel during the war. He opens a factory at Cricklewood in northwest London, will sell his first car in 1921, and design a three-litre racing car that will win at Le Mans in 1924 and lead to luxury sedans (see Rolls-Royce, 1931).

The Citroën motorcar is introduced by Paris-born munitions-maker André-Gustave Citroën, 41, who purchases the Mors company that he headed before the war and turns his factory over to mass production of motorcars that can be sold at low prices. By 1933 Citroën will have built 90 percent of the taxicabs in Paris (see 1934; CV2, 1948).

The Duesenberg brothers set up shop at Indianapolis to make motorcars after selling John North Willys the war plant that they set up at Elizabeth, N.J., to build aviation engines and a 160-horsepower tractor engine (see 1913; 1922; Willys, 1915; Durant, 1921).

General Motors Acceptance Corp. (GMAC) is founded by GM, now 28.7 percent owned by du Pont interests. Established by GM's finance committee chairman John Jakob Raskob, the subsidiary enables dealers to finance their inventories of cars and offer long-term financing to their customers; it will become the world's largest automobile financing company (see 1939).