On June 14, 1919, Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown climbed into their Vickers Vimy biplane at St. John’s, Newfoundland, and pointed the nose toward Ireland. The machine, modified to carry 865 gallons of fuel, lifted from a makeshift field cleared of walls and boulders. For sixteen hours and twelve minutes the two men fought through dense fog, sleet that encased the Vimy in ice, and a near-fatal spiral dive that left them flying just ten feet above the Atlantic swell. Brown, navigating by dead reckoning and only two star shots, coaxed the Vimy through a horizonless night. At 8:40 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time on June 15, they sighted land near Clifden, County Galway, and thumped down into a boggy field. The nose buried itself in the peat; the wireless staff rushed out to find Alcock temporarily deafened and Brown dazed. Their telegram to the Vickers mechanics read simply: “Landed at Clifden at 8:40 A.M. … Total time, 16 hours 12 minutes. ALCOCK AND BROWN.” The Daily Mail £10,000 prize was won, but far more was proven: the Atlantic could be crossed by heavier-than-air craft in a single leap, and aviation’s oceanic era had begun.