← The Naval Aviation Ready Room Podcast with Ryan Keys
The Naval Aviation Ready Room Podcast with Ryan Keys
The Death Spin That Nearly Ended Aviation History
00:15:54
In this Footnotes of History mini episode of The Ready Room Podcast, Captain Tim “Lucky” Kinsella, U.S. Navy (Ret.), recounts the first transatlantic flight completed by the Curtiss NC-4 in 1919. The achievement was not the result of a single daring nonstop attempt. It was a deliberate, carefully supported naval operation designed to demonstrate that aviation could be integrated into national power. Led in vision by John H. Towers and executed by a disciplined crew under Lieutenant Commander Albert Cushing Read, the mission transformed the Atlantic from a barrier into a supported route of flight. This episode explores how preparation, logistics, and institutional resolve placed naval aviation firmly on the world stage.
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At one point, the NC4 had entered a spin over the Atlantic. The worst possible emergency. The aircraft dropped, rotating violently. If you were to look at the NC4 today, you couldn't imagine it to be in a spin. It is so large, so hulking, so awkward. So to think of that thing in the darkness entering a spin is to think of certain death. But at the last moment, A.C. reed, just above the waves, he pulled it out and the aircraft leveled.
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You know, the big battles, the famous names, the headlines. But what about the stories history forgot? I'm Ryan Keys, host of the Ready Room podcast, and in this special series, Footnotes of History, retired Navy Captain Tim Kinsella discusses the obscure, the overlooked, and sometimes downright unbelievable chapters of military history. Here's lucky
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across the Atlantic, how the US Navy put aviation on the map Sitting in the cockpit of the NC4 flying boat. To our modern understanding of airplanes and flight, it's striking, especially if you are a pilot. This is not an airplane. As we understand airplanes, the cockpit looks more like a park bench made of wooden slats dropped into a large canoe than the control center of a massive aircraft destined to make aviation history. Instead of a yoke or control stick, there are two large wheels that must have been taken from either the the bridge of a ship or steam engine. Attached to them are bicycle chains that connect to a system of wires and pulleys to control the ailerons. The instruments are sparse and rudimentary, made from what looks like a carpenter's level and barely readable steam gauges. The entire cockpit is open to the elements. There is no enclosure, no insulation, no protection from the wind spray or cold. You sit exposed to the elements, goggles on, coat zipped tight, Atlantic air rushing past your face. Wind, spray, cold everything comes in. And in this flying machine, made of wood, linen, wire and glue, four U.S. navy officers and a Coast Guardsman and one Navy chief crossed the Atlantic Ocean in an aircraft for the first time in history. This is the story of how the US Navy did it. Deliberately, methodically, and why. Not in one daring leap, but one careful, deliberate step at a time. But before we get to the airplane or the cruise, we need to talk about the man with the plan. And that was Commander John H. Towers. He was one of the Navy's earliest aviators, and by the end of World War I, he had become something of a strategist and allowed, some would say obnoxious voice for aviation. Towers understood a hard truth about peacetime militaries that when wars end, budgets shrink. To prevent that inevitability Towers felt that prestige and visibility mattered. Get the Navy into the public's consciousness. Get the Navy some glory and good press. And if it was aviators that did it, well, all the better. So the British, they had aviation heroes. The French, they had air aces. But the US Navy risked being seen as conservative, traditional and tied to back battleships and the past Towers. He wanted to change that. The idea for a plan that would do just that didn't originate in Washington D.C. however, the idea for that plan began all the way across the Atlantic. In London. Before the war, the Daily mail newspaper offered £10,000, a massive sum in those days, to the first aviators to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. War, however, put everything on hold. But with the advent of peace, the challenge was revived. Suddenly, teams in Britain, France and the United States were preparing daring non stop flights. And the press loved it. One London paper declared Atlantic to fall to the airman Towers. He watched all of this and he took a very different lesson from it. As one Navy planner later wrote, the problem was not daring enough men to try it, but proving that it could be done reliably. This was a chance to show off American pluck and engineering to the world and display US Navy planning and logistics while they were at it. If aviation was to matter strategically, it couldn't depend on luck. It had to be backed by sound engineering and logistics. A transatlantic flight would do more than make headlines. It would demonstrate that the US Navy was technically sophisticated, innovative and capable of executing complex aviation operations on a global scale. This wasn't just a stunt. It was an institutional statement. The irony is that the aircraft that was chosen to do this job, the Curtiss NC Flying boats, were never designed to cross oceans. NC Stands for Navy Curtis. They were nicknamed Nancy boats by their flyers, but they certainly didn't look feminine. They were designed to hunt submarines. During World War I, German U boats had nearly strangled Britain's supply lines. The Navy needed aircraft that could stay aloft for hours, carry heavy loads, operate far from land and patrol the shipping lanes. So flying boats, they made the most sense to do this. The NC Boats, or Nancy boats were enormous by the standards of the day. They featured a carefully shaped hull designed to lift cleanly from the water. The hulls themselves were built at the New York Navy Yard, while Glenn Curtis's company supplied the wings, engines and final integration. The wings were vast biplane structures covered in Irish linen, stretching more than 125ft. I mean, that's longer than many jetliners that we have today. The power came from four Liberty Engines. And those engines, they weren't perfect. They probably could have come up with a more perfect engine, but they were powerful, they were standardized, and they were familiar to Navy mechanics across the world. One engine was mounted facing backwards in a pusher configuration, helping balance thrust and keep spray out of the propellers. Now, bit of Yankee ingenuity. Fuel was carried in tanks and drums lashed inside the hull. They were gravity fed and also pumped by hand to manage the aircraft's balance electrically. The aircraft was pretty advanced for its time. There was radio gear, engine monitoring and lighting. But the plane was still fragile. This was naval engineering stretched right to the edge of what 1919 technology could manage. The ANSI flying boats were the most sophisticated flying machines of their day, and they needed to be. The task that lay ahead was as complex for the time period as sending a manned spacecraft to the moon would be just 50 years later. So how did they do it? Well, the Navy, they deployed 56 destroyers across the Atlantic, spaced roughly 50 miles apart. Each ship carried radios, weather observers and powerful searchlights. And at night, the engine literally glowed with points of light. Stretching all the way from Newfoundland all the way across to Portugal. The Atlantic had been turned into a naval infrastructure. Three aircraft would attempt a crossing. The NC1, the NC3 and the NC4. But of the three, only one would finish. Commanded by Lieutenant Commander Albert A.C. reed, the NC4 initially suffered an engine failure off Massachusetts and it fell behind. The press nicknamed it the Lame Duck, but it rejoined the group in Newfoundland for the critical 1200 mile leg to the Azores. The NC1. While flying from Newfoundland to the Azores, the NC1 encountered dense fog and heavy 20 foot seas or swells. The commander, Lieutenant Mark Mitscher, landed to find its bearings and when he did so, it was severely damaged by the rough seas and I couldn't take off again. The crew, however, was rescued by the Greek freighter, the SS Iona, and the aircraft eventually sank. While it was under tow by the freighter the NC3, it was also forced down by Fogner azores. Commanded by Lieutenant Commander Towers, the NC3 sustained heavy damage in the open ocean. But in a remarkable feat of seamanship, Jack Towers and his crew used the aircraft's tail as a sail and taxied the battered boat over 200 miles through rough waters to reach Punta Delgada harbor in the Azores. Of that the New York Times later wrote, never before had an aircraft behaved as a vessel of the sea for so long, nor with such stubborn refusal to yield. In NC4 we had Lieutenant Commander Albert Cushing Reed. He was the commanding officer and Pilot. He was calm, methodical, unflashy. Exactly the type of guy you wanted in charge in a mission like this. Lieutenant Walter Hinton. He was the co pilot, sharing flying duties through all that foul weather. Coast Guard Lt. Elmer Fowler Stone handled the navigation, dead reckoning, radio bearings. Lieutenant James Breese was the engineer, constantly monitoring four engines that were never meant to run this long. And there was Ensign Herbert Rudd. He was the radio officer, fighting static and interference to keep contact with the ships below. And finally, but certainly not least, was Chief Machinist Mate Eugene S. Rhodes, who's the engineer to fly in the NC4. It wasn't just to sit in an aircraft. It was to endure the Atlantic and open air, perched on a machine that only barely imposed itself on nature. You didn't climb into a cockpit so much as clamber into a hole. The pilots, they sat side by side in what looks today like a wooden park seat bolted to the hull with no enclosure and no real separation from the slipstream. There was no windshield in any modern sense, just a modest deflector that did little more than redirect the worst of the spray. The rest came straight at you. Wind tore at your clothing. Salt stung your face. Cold worked its way through wool, leather, and layers of clothing within minutes, just to settle deep in your bones. Ahead of you, the instruments were sparse and untrustworthy. A compass, basic engine gauges, a few dials that told you less than you hoped and more than you wanted. There was no artificial horizon, no gyro, no autopilot. If the aircraft rolled or pitched, you felt it instantly in your body. Your inner ear was as important an instrument as anything bolted to the panel. Noise was constant and physical. Four Liberty engines didn't hum. They bellowed. The sound wasn't something you heard so much as something that pressed against your chest and rattled your bones. Conversation was impossible without shouting directly into someone's ear. And even then, much was lost to the wind and engines. The cold was relentless. At altitude over the North Atlantic, with damp air and spray coming off the hull, it wasn't just uncomfortable, it was exhausting. Hands stiffened, faces numbed. Every adjustment of throttle or control cable required effort and concentration. And then there was the constant exposure beneath you. It wasn't land or even an emergency landing field, but miles of gray, heaving ocean. The NC4 could land on water, sure, but in heavy seas, that might mean survival or catastrophe, depending on the mood of the Atlantic that day. You knew that if you went down far from the destroyer, help might come, or it might not. The open Compartment forward, originally intended for an observer or machine gunner scanning for submarines, only reinforced that sense of vulnerability. It is a reminder that this aircraft was built for war patrols, not comfort, and that its designers assumed exposure as a given. Flying the NC4, it demanded constant vigilance. There was no moment when you could relax. Engine needed monitoring. Fuel drums had to be managed by hand. Weather changed without warning. Navigation required faith and calculations done hours earlier. And yet there must also have been moments of awe. Long stretches of flying in which the aircraft settled into its stride. The sea flattened below. The destroyers appeared on schedule, their searchlights blinking reassurance into the gloom. Moments when the machine worked. The plan held in the Atlantic, briefly allowed passage. It wasn't heroic in the cinematic sense. It was cold, loud, fatiguing, uncomfortable. And precisely because of that, the achievement mattered. Flying the NC4 wasn't about bravado. It was about endurance, discipline and trust in the aircraft, in the plan, and the men who had turned an ocean into a Runway. Which is why, sitting in that cockpit today, it doesn't feel primitive. It feels astonishing that it worked at all. At one point, the NC4 had entered a spin over the Atlantic, the worst possible emergency. The aircraft dropped, rotating violently. If you were to look at the NC4 today, you couldn't imagine it to be in a spin. It is so large, so hulking, so awkward. So to think of that thing in the darkness entering a spin is to think of certain death. But at the last moment, A.C. reed, just above the waves, he pulled it out and the aircraft leveled. No speeches, no dramatics, just flying. Just flying by the seat of your pants. Just flying with pure strength and pure skill, because no one was going to pick him up. There was no autopilot, nothing but pure skill. When the NC4 reached Lisbon, crowds gathered and headlines followed. Headlines like, Americans Conquer Atlantic by Air or US Navy Flies Ocean or A new age of flight begins. The Times newspaper of London declared, america has bridged the Atlantic with wings of reason rather than recklessness. Reid and his crew were fated by royalty. Paraded through European capitals and treated not as adventurers, but as representatives of a rising power. Towers got exactly what he wanted. The Navy looked modern, competent and innovative. Afterwards, Reid, he continued his naval career quietly and rose to become commanding officer of Naval Air Station Pensacola. At the outbreak of World War II, he trained the pilots that would later go on to win the air war in the Pacific. Hinton. He became an advocate for aviation, as did Stone, Breeze and Rod. They helped shape the future of naval flight. And John Towers, well, his scheme worked. Naval aviation was no longer experimental. It was essential. Towers went on to a successful naval career, but spent most of the war in a support role. His unyielding personality, while perfect, perfect as an advocate for the early days of aviation, wasn't as well suited for the politicking of high office. He went on to be commander of the Naval Air Force Pacific Fleet, which was responsible for the development, organization, training and supply of the Navy's aviation arm. Then what about the NC4? She was dismantled and she was packaged to be shipped home, already a piece of aviation history. Fifty years later, in 1969, for the 50th anniversary of the flight, the Smithsonian rebuilt the NC4 and displayed it on the National Mall right there in Washington, D.C. and then it came home to where it belongs. Today, the NC4 rests at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola. It's one of my favorite places to stand and contemplate right there at the nose of the NC4, because if you look up and to the right, you can see the Skylab 2 command module and a replica of the lure module. And in that one turn of the head, you can see the stark contrast between the 50 years that separated them from wood, linen and wire to rockets and footsteps on the moon. John Towers, he wanted the Navy on the map, not just geographically, but intellectually. The flight of the NC4 proved aviation could be planned, supported and integrated into naval power. And that, my friends, is how the United States Navy cross the Atlantic in a rickety biplane. As always, thanks for listening and until next time, thanks for joining me as we explore the part of history that happened before the history that everyone remembers.
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Thanks for tuning in to the Ready Rooms miniseries Footnotes of History hosted by Captain Tim Kinsella, where you experience the obscure, the overlooked and often unbelievable chapters of military history. Don't forget to like, subscribe and leave a five star review. Fly Navy.